Prometheus - Spoilery thread of Spoilers

hbi2k wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

I think everybody is missing the mark here about David's motivations behind poisoning Holloway. It actually had nothing to do with Holloway directly, but instead it was because he wanted Shaw to get infected with an alien baby.

And how did he know that would happen? The thing to remember is that David knows *everything*. He studied the crew's dreams for two years, and apparently he knew or learned enough about the Engineers to use all their machinery and even speak their language by the end of the film.

Yeah, and none of that made a damn bit of sense either. Speaking the rudiments of their language I can sort of buy, if they're going with the idea that the Engineer language is at the root of all human language and he's been doing nothing but studying human language for two years. But operating their machines like it wasn't even a thing? Knowing all about the effects of the black goo when he hadn't yet interacted with the Engineer machines and had NO way of knowing what it was? Nope. I call bullcrap.

To me, the amount of knowledge that David has suggests strongly that he knew everything about the Engineers even before he ever got there. He just knew far too much far too quickly into the film. However, there is nothing explicit in the film that states to this fact, which is unfortunate, but like I said, I could totally see them filling in these gaps pretty easily in a sequel.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think the easiest explanation for David's behavior throughout the movie is that he was deliberately trying to use the Engineers to murder everyone on the Prometheus and, potentially, on planet Earth.

I love this idea. It completely explains why he wanted to bring the infected Shaw back to Earth. It still doesn't explain why he knows so much about the Engineers though, which is why I suspect his motives must be coming from some one higher up than Wayland or himself.

And why was I thinking about The Thing during the entire second-half of the movie? That goo was just too good at turning organic life into hideous monsters.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

What's the value in speeding things along? Weyland is in stasis. He doesn't need this to go faster. And he isn't woken until David gets him up.

When Vickers asks about casualties after the long sleep it's clear stasis is not without risk. David could have been in a rush to accomplish Weyland's goals before Weyland died, even sleeping.
I need to think a little more, but I tend to agree we're over analyzing here.

Sure, but I still the the simplest explanation that best fits the facts is to assume that David is autonomous.

Saw the movie today. I thought it was a decent summer movie with some complaints. It is easier to point out the negative so here it is:

-Although I don't like it when a 3D movie does obvious things to say "HEY LOOK, 3D OBJECT COMING AT YOU!", the 3D just didn't seem to add anything to this movie. Avatar is still the only 3D movie I've seen that has done it right, and Prometheus was supposedly shot with 3D cameras.

-I have two different thoughts on David poisoning Holloway. The first one is that he is desperately trying to do Welyand's will to "try harder" by trying anything. My second thought is that David is clearly very curious. He watches Shaw's (and I assume the other crew) dreams. Maybe the "try harder" instructions mixed with his curiosity triggered him to be reckless. Before he is instructed to "try harder" David's curiosity seems a bit reckless by triggering the recording and opening the vault door. We never get a Bishop-like line from David that he is unable to injure humans, but I would guess that there would be some programming in David that keeps him (and all his robot comrades) from turning into a Cyclon-like uprising. Maybe this David has "special" programming from Weyland?

-On the watching Shaw's dreams subject, I rolled my eyes when Shaw was shocked David knew how her dad died. Maybe someone mentioned it? Maybe David has access to files? I'm guessing you don't need to watch someone's dream to find out how their father died.

-Speaking of reckless, wow, these are the worst scientists ever. I understand that we can't spend half the movie watching them dusting off artifacts on the planet, but taking your helmet off? Maybe technology is so advanced that diseases aren't much of a problem (which I doubt, considering Shaw's dad died from Ebola), but this is an alien world! David should also have been seriously reprimanded for opening that vault door when it turned out the atmosphere was ruining it. I guess he did save Shaw's life though when she went for head, so they may have given him a pass. Also, why weren't they pressing David to tell what the writings said?

-So what was with the head coming alive? Wasn't it a surprise enough that it looked human? It needed to magically come alive and explode?

-Yes, the geologist with the scanning balls getting lost is somewhat ridiculous and the biologist not be careful around the c*ck-worm was even worse.

-In the vault mural wasn't there something resembling our familiar xenomorph? Maybe the black goop formula had a side effect if "used" improperly would evolve into a xenomorph?

-I feel like with this movie (and some others), in order to explain inconsistencies or ambiguous pieces in the story we give the filmmaker way too much credit. Maybe the editing wasn't great or the running time needed to be cut down. You can't explain everything away by saying that the filmmaker did it on purpose to make it a better story. Sometimes I think we give them too much credit.

-I thought Noomi did a good job acting like she was in genuine pain, but come on. With all the running and jumping despite any pills, all those staples would have been tore out and her guts would be hanging out.

If any good came of this movie, I will be introducing the wife to the Alien Trilogy. It just made me want to go back and watch Alien and Aliens all over again. Even Alien III, Fincher Rules; shut up!

KingGorilla wrote:

Even Alien III, Fincher Rules; shut up!

f*ck yeah Alien 3!

High five!

"-In the vault mural wasn't there something resembling our familiar xenomorph?Maybe the black goop formula had a side effect if "used" improperly would evolve into a xenomorph?"

I had noticed this as well. I even went online and looked for that specific scene, and it is indeed a xeno. Clearly these engineers are aware of the xeno race. Perhaps all the containers methodically lined up in that specific room carried the "base" materials to create a xeno race? Hence the mural to identify it as such. Perhaps all those other containers stacked up in the ship itself each had a different race of species that they created? And the one the engineer drank at the beginning was filled with the human "base".

They are after all called engineers, would it be too far off to assume they have the ability to engineer all kinds of species?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Also, seeing ALG's OP makes me not want to ever create anything, in fear that he tear it apart like he does anything that isn't perfect. Christ, man.

Hey! I'm pretty sure I resent that implication. I just like picking things apart and figuring out why they work, or don't. Prometheus is one those things that practically begs you to analyze it. Although I'll grant you Scott et al probably wanted me to focus more on what does it all mean rather than character motivation and story logic.

Anyway, here's a take I quite liked:

So, the primary reason I loved the movie is clear, and I can sum it up in one sentence: Prometheus is a brilliant movie about the unfettered conceit of humankind.

And on the other side of the coin: SMS conversation between Shaw and The Engineer.

A thing we were discussing on the way out of the film is the way androids are usually portrayed in sci fi. They are highly logica facsimiles of humans, whose usual response to matters of emotion is a slightly bemused "I do not understand this human thing called love". As if removing emotion from a human gives you Lt Cmdr Data.

The thing is, if you remove large parts of the emotional processing from humans, you actually get a psycopath/sociopath. You get someone who will happily watch someone drown just to see what happens. You can hard-code Asimov's laws into that all you like but you may just end up with a being that takes an extremely word-of-the-law approach to moral boundaries. Someone who may, for example, feel justified using a crewmember as a test subject for their boss if they could somehow argue it's what they wanted because they said they'd be prepared to "do anything".

jamos5 wrote:

To me, the amount of knowledge that David has suggests strongly that he knew everything about the Engineers even before he ever got there. He just knew far too much far too quickly into the film. However, there is nothing explicit in the film that states to this fact, which is unfortunate, but like I said, I could totally see them filling in these gaps pretty easily in a sequel.

And that's the problem, innit? If the viewer has to rely on elaborate suppositions that are not supported by anything that we actually see onscreen just to make the basic plot and character motivations work, then something is seriously, seriously wrong with your movie. There's leaving things to the imagination, and then there's leaving large and necessary chunks of plot on the editing room floor (assuming the writers ever had an explanation to begin with).

I think my fundamental disagreement is I don't think "it wasn't all clearly spelt out" is ever a valid criticism for a work of narrative art.

The Economist had another lucid take on why it was bad. Personally, I enjoyed it, even with all the holes. And I've enjoyed everyone's picking it apart in this thread as well. It's a movie that keeps on giving.

Maq wrote:

A thing we were discussing on the way out of the film is the way androids are usually portrayed in sci fi. They are highly logica facsimiles of humans, whose usual response to matters of emotion is a slightly bemused "I do not understand this human thing called love". As if removing emotion from a human gives you Lt Cmdr Data.

The thing is, if you remove large parts of the emotional processing from humans, you actually get a psycopath/sociopath. You get someone who will happily watch someone drown just to see what happens. You can hard-code Asimov's laws into that all you like but you may just end up with a being that takes an extremely word-of-the-law approach to moral boundaries. Someone who may, for example, feel justified using a crewmember as a test subject for their boss if they could somehow argue it's what they wanted because they said they'd be prepared to "do anything".

I've definitely been trying to get into this sort of head space. I don't think the film really helps, as David is portrayed as seeming to have some sinister intent. I do not think he expected Shaw to get pregnant, though I think he was delighted. "Hey, something happened! Let's freeze her and buy ourselves time to take her someplace we can study her". That was my impression at least. He saw it as an interesting development.

It is also important to recall that, when they first arrived, all evidence pointed to the engineers being dead. So when Weyland commands "try harder", David goes and does all that he can. He finds a suitable host to ..."inject" this DNA into. Holloway could have gotten sick, he could have developed super powers, he could have died then and there. No one knows. David was just performing an experiment, and the result was Shaw becoming pregnant with a creature of sorts.

The Conformist wrote:

"-In the vault mural wasn't there something resembling our familiar xenomorph?Maybe the black goop formula had a side effect if "used" improperly would evolve into a xenomorph?"

I had noticed this as well. I even went online and looked for that specific scene, and it is indeed a xeno. Clearly these engineers are aware of the xeno race. Perhaps all the containers methodically lined up in that specific room carried the "base" materials to create a xeno race? Hence the mural to identify it as such. Perhaps all those other containers stacked up in the ship itself each had a different race of species that they created? And the one the engineer drank at the beginning was filled with the human "base".

They are after all called engineers, would it be too far off to assume they have the ability to engineer all kinds of species?

I noticed the mural with the Xenomorph straight away, and pretty much knew at that point the aliens were engineered to be weapons. What I didn't consider is that different jars would contain different base DNA. While it doesn't explain why it took longer for Holloway to dissolve (maybe because he only had a drop?), that would create a level of consistency. When ingested, the DNA base basically dissolves and sort of pollinates a world for new life. Were David to dissolve in a water source just as the man in the beginning, you'd probably have the same effect as Earth, only with xenomorphs instead.

This would also help explain why the worms in the Earth transformed to a snake-version of the Facehugger, why Shaw would get a Facehugger type creature in her womb (which was still f*cking weird), and if the original footage of Mohawk Man going berserk as a zombie really had him with an elongated head in the shape of a Xenomorph, that would even make a bit more sense.

Though it is unusual that ingesting the goo has a different effect from being coated in it. Again, there was too much strange sh*t going on, and then when the c*ck-worms went all Facehugger on biologist man, well, it merely killed him and then hung around inside his throat. It didn't plant any eggs or anything.

Still, the black goo being base DNA for different creatures does add some level of consistency that allows the film to make some sense.

Oh, something else someone mentioned was why the jars were leaking the black goo at all. I feel like the room was a sort of storage chamber, and once the atmosphere was broken it was similar to breaking quarantine and all Hell breaking loose. The atmosphere changed and the goo was no longer being kept in ideal conditions.

Something that occurred to me reading the blog entry that Alien Love Gardener posted, I think there's a big theme here of the created and the creator, in particular the created always wanting the approval and love of the creator. I didn't make the connection before, but everyone's reaction to the Engineer, wanting to be loved, approved of, have purpose, reflects what Theron's character seeks from Weyland, her father. This also begs the question of whether David has any sort of emotion, or at least an imitation of, or not. Does he act as he does for approval from Weyland, his creator? Or simply because he was programmed to obey him first and primarily? Some of these questions require repeat viewings, I think.

I think there may be different meaning in his statement about being free without parents than many interpreted, though. Free from creators, we are capable of doing as we like. In the presence of them, we are constantly trying to seek approval or live up to their standards.

I'm going to have to watch the film again.

I am wondering how saddled the writers became with the AVP nonsense. That is really where all of the alien influence on mankind came from. Predator 2 just sort of dusted that in towards the end. But AVP 2 really went whole hog on it.

Why Prometheus was disappointing I think is it told an origin story that we never really asked for. We basically got Xenomorphic midichlorians.

Another interesting take on the movie:
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012...

KingGorilla wrote:

I am wondering how saddled the writers became with the AVP nonsense. That is really where all of the alien influence on mankind came from. Predator 2 just sort of dusted that in towards the end. But AVP 2 really went whole hog on it.

Why Prometheus was disappointing I think is it told an origin story that we never really asked for. We basically got Xenomorphic midichlorians.

I think a lot of people went looking for an origin story and were disappointed they got Big Idea gothic sci fi instead. I blame Lost.

This is definitely the most analyzed movie post launch I have ever seen. So many articles trying to parce things together. I think that says a lot.

One thing that really stuck out for me is between this and Blade Runner I think Ridley has some issues with his father. Serious issues.

Maq wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

I am wondering how saddled the writers became with the AVP nonsense. That is really where all of the alien influence on mankind came from. Predator 2 just sort of dusted that in towards the end. But AVP 2 really went whole hog on it.

Why Prometheus was disappointing I think is it told an origin story that we never really asked for. We basically got Xenomorphic midichlorians.

I think a lot of people went looking for an origin story and were disappointed they got Big Idea gothic sci fi instead. I blame Lost.

.

So you blame Damon Lindeloff? When I saw that in the credits I had some trepidation.

Lots of interesting stuff to respond to here, but for the moment I just wanted to ask if anyone else found the main theme from the score incredibly out of touch. (Someone above mentioned it being too loud in the audio mix, which is also true.)

The main theme, with its boringly, derivatively "inspirational" major-scale melody, prompted chuckles pretty much every time it appeared (which was far too often). It felt so much more suited to say, Remember the Titans or some Tom Hanks-starring, based-on-a-true-story, chronicle-of-human-courage movie than to, you know...an Alien film. I kept thinking it was some kind of joke I wasn't getting. That's how incongruous it felt.

kincher skolfax wrote:

Lots of interesting stuff to respond to here, but for the moment I just wanted to ask if anyone else found the main theme from the score incredibly out of touch. (Someone above mentioned it being too loud in the audio mix, which is also true.)

The main theme, with its boringly, derivatively "inspirational" major-scale melody, prompted chuckles pretty much every time it appeared (which was far too often). It felt so much more suited to say, Remember the Titans or some Tom Hanks-starring, based-on-a-true-story, chronicle-of-human-courage movie than to, you know...an Alien film. I kept thinking it was some kind of joke I wasn't getting. That's how incongruous it felt.

We've been discussing in IRC how awful the score was. Essentially it sounded like knock-off, second-rate Hans Zimmer. It's especially bad in light of how amazing Jerry Goldsmith's Alien score was at creating an atmosphere of solitude, fear and despair with strings that sound like f*cking strings.

I felt bad for Charlize Theron. Whenever she started frantically giving orders the music drowned her out.

Actually, whenever anyone tried to communicate anything urgent over the radio, the music drowned them out.

The score, while not great, was actually thematically closer to the movie that I WANTED than it was to the movie that I got. The main theme communicated discovery, revelation, curiosity, exploration. None of that was a theme in this movie.

Tanglebones wrote:

We've been discussing in IRC how awful the score was. Essentially it sounded like knock-off, second-rate Hans Zimmer. It's especially bad in light of how amazing Jerry Goldsmith's Alien score was at creating an atmosphere of solitude, fear and despair with strings that sound like f*cking strings.

The fact that the score was so out of touch with the mood and the setting is a perfect symptom to me of why this movie has such an identity crisis.

NSMike wrote:

The score, while not great, was actually thematically closer to the movie that I WANTED than it was to the movie that I got. The main theme communicated discovery, revelation, curiosity, exploration. None of that was a theme in this movie.

Yes! That's a better way of putting it. It was like it was a score for a different film altogether.

I mentioned this on Twitter, but I really feel like this film was held back a bit by its connection to Alien. Working within the established mythos of the Alien movies inevitably leads to a lot of very basic questions that the movie can't answer but that also aren't relevant to the story being told. How the black goo interacts with the life cycle of the xenomorphs, and how the space jockeys of this movie tie into the space jockey of Alien, aren't really important questions. Likewise, David's motivations and nature are confused by the viewer's knowledge of Ash and Bishop from the later movies.

And really, the movie's weakest links are its ties back to Alien. The scenes with the mutant snakes and the berserker crew member not only confuse the nature of the black goo, they don't really add much to the storyline. They could have easily been cut, but they seemed to have been included for the sake of tying things back to the biomechanical horror of the Alien movies. Likewise, the reveal of the xenomorph at the end was just hilariously tacked-on, an obviously meaningless shot just for fans. But isn't it a little disappointing to find out that the xenomorphs we know and love started out as the result of an unholy union between Cthulu and Voldemort?

Cutting all that out wouldn't make the movie better (it still has some pretty deep structural flaws), but it could have at least helped keep it more focused. As it is, it feels like an independent story that was shoehorned into the Alien universe for marketing purposes with predictable results.

Everything Clocky said.

Also, when she puts David's head in the bag and unceremoniously tosses it to the ground we couldn't stop cracking up because it reminded us of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ROX...

kincher skolfax wrote:

Everything Clocky said.

Also, when she puts David's head in the bag and unceremoniously tosses it to the ground we couldn't stop cracking up because it reminded us of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ROX...

I was thinking 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag myself

TempestBlayze wrote:

This is definitely the most analyzed movie post launch I have ever seen. So many articles trying to parce things together. I think that says a lot.

That could say a lot of good things or a lot of bad. It is one thing trying to get thematic meaning, which many of us are. But many of us are also trying to make sense of the events of the film, which isn't necessarily as good.

I think some of the discussion is not intentional on the part of the film makers.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I mentioned this on Twitter, but I really feel like this film was held back a bit by its connection to Alien. Working within the established mythos of the Alien movies inevitably leads to a lot of very basic questions that the movie can't answer but that also aren't relevant to the story being told. How the black goo interacts with the life cycle of the xenomorphs, and how the space jockeys of this movie tie into the space jockey of Alien, aren't really important questions. Likewise, David's motivations and nature are confused by the viewer's knowledge of Ash and Bishop from the later movies.

And really, the movie's weakest links are its ties back to Alien. The scenes with the mutant snakes and the berserker crew member not only confuse the nature of the black goo, they don't really add much to the storyline. They could have easily been cut, but they seemed to have been included for the sake of tying things back to the biomechanical horror of the Alien movies. Likewise, the reveal of the xenomorph at the end was just hilariously tacked-on, an obviously meaningless shot just for fans. But isn't it a little disappointing to find out that the xenomorphs we know and love started out as the result of an unholy union between Cthulu and Voldemort?

Cutting all that out wouldn't make the movie better (it still has some pretty deep structural flaws), but it could have at least helped keep it more focused. As it is, it feels like an independent story that was shoehorned into the Alien universe for marketing purposes with predictable results.

You're right, which is one of the reasons I want to see the film again. Now that I'm not looking for ties to Alien, I want to judge the film on its own merit. However, in terms of your last point, the opposite is actually true. Ridley Scott wanted to make an Alien prequel, but as progress was made he wanted to avoid having the Alien in there at all. Basically, Scott was much more interested in the Space Jockey than he was in the Alien itself.

I liked the idea of Ridley Scott expanding the universe beyond the Alien. I felt that Anderson's way of handling it in AvP was dumb and predictable, and I would have expected an actual film-maker to have had more knowledge of the film history than he evidently had. As mentioned previously, this film takes a lot of elements from the Star Beast script, such as Pyramids, Jars and Tentacle-Monsters. There was a lot of discussion and ideas between Dan O' Bannon, Ronald Shussett and Ridley Scott about these creatures being biomechanical, and if you take a good look at the creature in the first film you'll see a lot of that hinted in the creatures physical design. I think where people lost this was the design of the creature in Aliens, where it took a more organic, skeletal or exoskeletal physique that suggested a naturally occurring creature.

Prometheus has a lot of room to expand on that, and it technically did. But even within the context of the film itself, trying to figure out how that black goo works is strange because the behavior seems to change as the movie progresses.