Prometheus: The Spoiler-Ridden thread to discuss the Big Ideas - The Lounge Discussion and Review on Literature, Arts, Culture

diebitter · 06-05-2012, 06:27 PM

*** DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS ***

Okay, I want to talk about Prometheus, but it's a film you should not have spoiled before you see it. DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND INTEND TO, IMO.

DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS, OR A FACEHUGGER MAY GET YOU

Okay, I have a number of questions I'd like to ask of people that have seen it.

I have some ideas of my own + some I've heard, but I'm interested to hear more.

1) What exactly is going on in Scene 1 where the Engineer drinks the goop and disintegrates?

2) What causes David to deliberately infect the guy with the black goop?

3) What's the point of the installation? Is it a seeding operation (a kind of biological version of The Genesis project in Star Trek 2), or a biological warfare installation?

4) Is David obeying his programming or overcoming his programming?

5) What are the engineers running from (I think it's obvious there's been a leak/escape/malfunction, but I'd like to hear other opinions)

6) Do you think David is antagonising the awakened engineer, or just trying to communicate?

7) What is the engineer trying to do?

8) If you believe David, why would the Engineers intend to destory Earth life, but then decide not to?

9) How comes the Engineer and human DNA match perfectly?

10) what the hell was the whole pregnancy thing there for? (I found it ridiculous to see a woman go through that, then run and jump around like an athlete for 20 minutes)

That'll do for a start. I'll post my thoughts tomorrow

ValarMorghulis · 06-06-2012, 04:40 AM

1) Not sure. Perhaps they are broken down and are reborn via the glop/churning water into a different form.

2) I think his main goal was to bring back the Engineers and at that time, the black goop was the only sign of life.

3) Yeah, I think it was a biological weapons camp and that they intended to seed it on Earth like the captain said.

4) I would say obeying.

5) Yeah, I think there was a leak in the biological weapons (which was the octopus like aliens) and they killed all the Engineers except they didn't get into the chamber where the final Engineer slept.

6) I thought just trying to communicate

7) I think he has a mission to kill the humans on Earth so assumes they'll try and stop him, so just kills all in front of him when he wakes up.

8) That was the unanswered question which made Shaw want to go back to their home planet.

9) I guess it was a match in terms of what they were looking for which is a DNA from which ours was derived. The implication being that we didn't evolve from the apes but the Engineers created us with their dna or gave birth to us or combined their dna with that of the apes to create us.

10) That's a really ridiculous scene. Why it's there: I guess it fits in with the Alien theme. Also I think that it leads to the Alien creature (from the first Alien movie) being 2 parts Engineer, 1 part human and 1 part octopus alien.

elbuennico · 06-06-2012, 08:31 AM

first of all, the movie is all about the theory of ancient civilization.

1) scene one is on earth. engineer drinks the thing that will transform him and give birth to the primitive soup. that also explains why we share almost the same DNA. They brought life to earth.
The spaceship we can see in this scene is totally different than the derelict.
Were these engineers the same ones we see later in the film? Not sure at all. Some engineers may have good intentions and other could be "bad guys".
This still has no answer.

2) On David infecting the guy.
David seems to know a lot more than others. When he enters ship, touches things, etc… it’s like he knew what there was in there.
Some say according to the timeline that he could have gone there before. It fits in the timeline and that would explain why all of this looks familiar to him.
I think he was programmed to infect someone on the ship to experiment it if this have good effects or bad effects. Remember also that the old guy doesn’t want to die. Their goal is to have access to a technology that could possibly make you live longer.

3) some kind of military camp with biological weapons.

4) I would tend to say he is obeying its program for the reason I gave above.

5) Something turned wrong in the derelict for sure. An infection ? probably since we see clearly see chestbursters destroyed their bodies.
So, the real question I think is where are those chestbursters now ? and the xenomorphes ? They should be there alive or dead.
So, going back to my first point, did bad engineers made a kind of war with good ones ? and took back with them the facehuggers, xenos ?

6) I think David is asking him to have access to their powerfull technology of giving life (and cure the old guy). That’s why engineer becomes angry I think. Cause he didn’t seem threatening at all before David spoke to him.

7) enginner is trying to kill us since we wanted to steal their technology.

8freerunner8 · 06-06-2012, 08:34 AM

Saw a screening last night, wow...Ridley has delivered again...I thought the film was just great.

Fun easter egg before I answer the questions: The Weyland corporation from this movie is the name of the corporation in Ridley's Blade Runner that created the replicants.

1. No idea, very weird scene. Cool Cgi though with the zooming in/running along the cracks in his skin.

2. Damn. that scene must have happened during my restroom trip.

3. Yeah the captain hit the nail on the head. It was definitely a production center or staging area for the engineer's weapon.

4. I believe David, like ash (alien) or bishop (aliens) are confined to their programming. I don't believe they have the ability to overcome it.

5. I think they were running from the serpents/aliens that attacked the two men who were left overnight on the ship. Had to have been a premature birthing of one of the weapon pods.

6. Communicate

7. I think the engineer was trying to get the ship into space to complete his mission of unleashing the bio weapons on earth. I thought he looked surprised when he awoke and saw humans in front of him. After he realized what was happening he went into beast mode.

8. I think they were about to destroy earth, but then the aliens got loose.

9. What above poster said.

10. I thought the scene was pretty intense, took a little long, but I thought it was cool. It was definitely an homage to the original alien birthing process.

AND DAMN THE NEW ALIEN IS COOL, I love how they made it look like the face huggers from the original....VERY COOL

diebitter · 06-06-2012, 08:49 AM

One point to add.

The engineers visited earth when man was intelligent enough to represent it in art.

this smells of 'coming to assess their handiwork' to me. It would explain the whole intending to destroy, and then deciding not to, imo.

Not sure how the identical dna fits this though. It suggests each seeding has a 'goal dna' to get to, maybe?

elbuennico · 06-06-2012, 09:36 AM

Engineers want to destroy us 'cause humanity is acting like gods, like them.
Remember this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2BxH...layer_embedded

"We are the Gods now".

diebitter · 06-06-2012, 10:02 AM

More questions

11 is Charlize Theron also an android?

12 in the past, a bunch of engineers were chestbursted. where are the chestbursters now?

elbuennico · 06-06-2012, 10:55 AM

Charlize is not a droid.

12) you didn't read my post I guess.
My point is that there are 2 different types of engineers, evil ones who want to destroy us cause we act like gods, terraforming planets, etc.. etc... and they might consider us like a potential threat now that we have reach a very high level in technology.

and good ones who gave us birth (opening scene), creation of primitive soup.

Chestbursters should be somewhere. So I guess there have been some kind of war between engineer. the good ones could have attacked the evil ones on this planet infecting them with chestbursters and then once done have left, taking back their now alive biological weapons.

just speculation but that would fit

diebitter · 06-06-2012, 07:04 PM

okay, here's my take on it.

I think the first scene is on primeval earth, before life has taken hold. The engineer here watched a large spaceship fly away, so he's been dropped off maybe, and he drinks a large draught of some sort of the black goop deliberately, knowing his DNA will then seed the planet. It seemed to have a religious/ritualistic element - so maybe the religion of The Engineers demand it must be seeded with a sacrifice.

This engineer his sacrificing himself to seed the planet. My take on this based on the rest of the movie is that the black goop is an extremely powerful but hard to manage 'genesis' mechanism that will only work properly (but not entirely predictably) if the seed organism drinks a lot down. A little drop of it just causes sickness and organism mutation rather than organism disintegration, and the process whereby the black goop bonds onto the DNA and disintegrates/stimulates life based on it.

The black goop is for seeding, but it is powerful and if left alone will start producing life-forms without the 'control' of a pattern of DNA to base itself on, and the Engineers are aware that letting it loose alone produces rampantly aggressive organisms that are destructive - which means even on planets that are seeded there is some chance that planet will produce rampantly aggressive, non-higher-intelligent lifeforms.

The engineers therefore check planets they've seeded after a billion years or so, to see how the genesis-seeding has gone. If it finds 'acceptable' life forms (ie showing higher intelligence), it leaves messages to indicate where they come from, and leave.

I've got more ideas about David etc, what happened at the Engineer base that derailed stuff etc but that's what I've come to so far, and thought I'd post this so far.

One other thing - I think the Space Jockey in Alien seemed significantly bigger than the ones in Prometheus. Are there different types of Space Jockey? That might feed into what elbuennico said about good and bad Engineers maybe?

Is the sudden disappearance of Engineers from the (several) facilities sign of a war between races maybe?

mrw8419 · 06-07-2012, 06:08 PM

a cool interview with damon lindelof

http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/artic...amon-lindelof/

Dominic · 06-08-2012, 06:30 AM

I think it's unclear whether Vickers is an android. She could be Weyland's biological daughter, or she could very well be a "Nexus 7" like android model, while David is a "Nexus 6." 7s would have emotions while 6s would not.

The only reason I say that is that Vickers is probably a tad young to be Weyland's daughter, unless he had her when he was 70ish. Possible, sure, but not likely.

And I think the whole "decided not to" might be a misunderstanding you're all having. I don't think that Noomi meant they Engineers were going to destroy Earth but decided not to - because it's pretty clear they were going to until they were stopped by the infection/aliens. And the Last Engineer was on his way to Earth to destroy it.

diebitter · 06-08-2012, 06:32 AM

How was it clear they were going to?

Dominic · 06-08-2012, 06:36 AM

I'll have to see this again...

While it was visually stunning and I was intrigued with the themes and main story point of "where do we come from," I don't feel the characters were well developed or cast, beyond the three leads. Charlie was strangely written and the actor performed him as nothing more than petulant. The two who get left behind on the moon and died were also one-dimensional. And how did they not get back to the ship when that's exactly why they left the rest of the party in the first place? That was needlessly annoying, when instead, they could've just been exploring.

And the main thing that bugged me was how reckless these so-called scientists were about contamination:

they breath in alien air
they touch and prod alien life forms
they bring alien remains on the ship

I mean, all that is jut plain stupid.

And what's with David bringing the goop on board and feeding it to Charlie? Why? How would that help Weyland live longer? How would David know what it is to begin with?

evildeadalive · 06-08-2012, 07:42 AM

How about going off to have sex while you are the only person the two guys stuck in the caves are in contact with. That's like cheesy horror movie cliche number one...

||.||.|| · 06-08-2012, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 8freerunner8

Fun easter egg before I answer the questions: The Weyland corporation from this movie is the name of the corporation in Ridley's Blade Runner that created the replicants.

Are you sure? Isn't it the the Tyrell Corporation? I think it's the Weylan-Yutani Corporation that owns the Nostromo in Alien. Weyland-Yutani is the company in Aliens.