Prometheus: The Spoiler-Ridden thread to discuss the Big Ideas

[LOL LDO]

The characters were definitely the problem for me.

None apart from Shaw seemed to be developed. Idris Elba seemed to be in a completely different movie from the rest, no clue what they were doing with his character. The two scientists were awful, idiotic, and brought nothing. Charlie was all over the place as well.

[diebitter]

I agree about some of the issues with the movie. The characters were pretty bad, with the exception of David and Theron (and even Theron's were sketchy). The other issue with the film was one that plagues bad horror movies - it relied on idiocy to drive the narrative. Think Friday 13th 'let's split up and search in dark places even when we know there's a killer' to see what I mean.

Alien is the perfect example of not relying on idiocy in characters to drive the story. You could argue Harry Dean Stanton wandering off to find the cat was that, but at that point they thought they were looking for a small thing, not an 8-foot killing machine with more teeth than the Osmonds.

[diebitter]

It's a shame, with better thought in scripting, better characters (and fewer characters) with better motivations, this really could have been up there with 2001 and Solaris as one of the true greats.


I really did like the ambiguity and open-endedness of the ideas and visuals though.

[tommyg8]

Crosspost from the OOT thread -

Part of why I found the movie to be underwhelming was the surrounding cast on Prometheus, who did not at all come across as genius intellectuals worthy of being on this "biggest discovery in the history of mankind" type trip. Initially I thought they were part of Shaw's crew and she had requested they all come with her or she doesn't go blah blah etc but when they were waking up it seemed that the majority of them were meeting each other for the first time.

Tbh if society had the ability to make 'David', why wouldn't they send 10x of him with perhaps one or two humans?

[MSchu18]

Originally Posted by diebitter

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

I think it is a parable for eating from the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden.

which leads to my next point... Who's says that the last "engineer" that was found on LV223 was actually the actual original lifeform and indeed not an alien "Android"?

when the Nostromous gets to LV426, the Alien is already a Silicon base life form... not carbon based.

[g-bebe]

some of the points above are valid and some I think it's just necessary to suspend disbelief. as to why we just don't send androids, I chalk it up to the unique quality of human nature (or in Shaw's case, a strong faith) and how it affects how we act in certain situations. yeah it'd be great if people didn't touch the goo in the first place and didn't **** around with **** even though they are supposed to be top of the line scientists/geologists/biologists, but suspend disbelief -- they are there to investigate and explore. I don't see why a scientist would want to pass up the opportunity to make that kind of groundbreaking discovery (like bagging the Engineer head and bring it back to the ship) in the heat of the moment. it's what they are all after.

my only eye-roll moment of the film would be how the Captain and his two pilots immediately sacrificed themselves. very hollywood-y moment from characters that didn't really show any initiative (besides the Captain when flamethrowing the madman reborn-geologist) to get their hands dirty throughout the film.

didn't cross my mind at all that Vickers is a droid, but I don't think she is. did they mention specific ages of her or Weyland? I didn't have any problem with her being his daughter. I also think it was completely within David's programming (on Weyland's behalf) to promote some kind of "incident" like infecting Charlie, I don't think he was acting outside of his creation. I felt ultimately it was very analogous to Ash in that he was completely aware of the objective of the overall mission and the crew was not -- why else would he instinctively start operating the Engineer ship controls and produce the holograms, open the chamber door, find the Engineer pods, etc. he was acting on a specific agenda, while not fully aware of the nature of the goo or Alien culture and technology.

I think a lot of the explanations/theories put forward, particularly by db and elbuenicco are spot on. the Engineers spawned life on Earth at the start of the movie by some kind of ritual sacrifice and the mother ship takes off. the Engineers at various points in civilization must either interact with earthlings or leave signs of their existence for them as a method of monitoring them. specifically db's point about Charlie kind of being disintegrated/decomposed instead of transformed by just drinking a touch of the goo is a good note, because I feel it meshes well with the quick shot of the (earth)worms in the chamber before the ooze overflows, turning them into the eels thanks to prolonged exposure.


I can see why Scott and co. denied it was a prequel. it clearly explores different subject matter like religion/faith/creation, and while obviously in the same universe of events, there's still story to fill in between the end of Prometheus and the start of Alien -- more Alien evolution to occur, that is.

as for the space jockey, I think from a nits perspective the proportions were taken care of. Kane and co. in Alien finding the space jockey with the chest burster looked like almost twice as large as them, and the Engineers were of course similarly larger than David/Weyland/Shaw when they freed him from his pod.


edit: while rereading my own post, I remember another thing I wanted to mention: the madman who was hiding outside the cargo door, that was also a very weird scene. it was the bearded geologist who had acid sprayed onto his facemask which melted. He then reanimates and hides outside the cargo door and while still a humanoid, starts wrecking people. What gived there? I didn't make the connection with him becoming an alien or anything like that. he was also propped up in front of the cargo door in a Exorcist-esque pose, creeeeepy

[Cotton Hill]

To be honest the movie was too short for what they were trying to do, everything felt very rushed the last half hour or so.

[DOOM@ALL_CAPS]

Saw the movie and i would give it something in the B-range (leaning towards B or B- tbh).

One question I want answered is if the Engineers are building a weapon, who were they at war with? Possibly other Engineers?

Also, I think it would be cool if humans were their first attempt at a weapon but we didn't turn out too well. Therefore, they built a new weapon and are testing it on us.

[JMa]

What were those hologram-like things that were running after they enter the Alien ship for the first time? Also appeared when David went into the cockpit for the first time IIRC.

[g-bebe]

just some kind of re-enactment ability of the ship I imagine, showed the Engineers running to try to get into the chamber room and then similarly booting up the map system in the pilot room

[Dominic]

it was a holographic recording

[BigPoppa]

Leaving aside why a cursory examination of one site on an Earth-sized moon would let us know it couldn't possibly be the Engineer home:

Why the hell did the cave paintings point to the place they apparently used for building weapons rather than to the Engineer home plant?




+1 to not understanding why the guy we thought was dead reanimated and Hulked-out in the cargo bay

+1 to not liking that someone who'd just had an Alien pulled from their abdomen then been stapled shut could run flat-out with no ill effects other than some grunting

+1 that they tried to jam way too much into the movie (too much plot, too many characters, too many action scenes)

+1 mirrion for being pissed that trained scientists acted like overly curious Cub Scouts when they get to an unknown and possibly lethal environment.

Still enjoyed the movie, though.

[BigPoppa]

Liked this from the comments to that Livejournal link:

"I saw a more prosaic tale of a species at war and specialising in bioweapons, long-lived and calculating, making test sites where lesser but compatible creatures would one day be wiped out by prototypes."


and this:

"The planet is LV223...Leviticus 22:3

'Say to them: 'For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the LORD."

[MSchu18]

Originally Posted by diebitter

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

because David was told to... "Try Harder"

same thing that infected HAL9000, the human element.

Originally Posted by diebitter

10) what the hell was the whole pregnancy thing there for?

as a consequence of David Obeying his programing^, which effectively produced an abomination of the original Virus/Element of the engineers procreation was introduced.

[Cotton Hill]

There are tons of questions one could ask, but mine is simply, why did the Engineer at the just start killing everyone for no real reason?

Like the Engineer's are clearly very intelligent, advanced species, wouldn't he want to try to figure out wtf was happening for a minute before randomly attacking, particularly since they could communicate with him. Also there was a whole group and he wasn't armed, woudln't it have occured to him they might have had some sort of weaponry so attacking them hand to hand might not have been wise. It just seemed odd it would have reacted so mindlessly violently for no particular reason.