• Prometheus 2012 • Spoilers Thread









I just returned from the premiere.

Cutting to the chase, the movie succeeds on a great many levels. It might be one of the most impressive 3D films I've ever seen. Visually it's absolutely gorgeous - easily Scott's best looking film. I guess the plot's been spoiled above so the question becomes: how does it work on celluloid? I think it works. Is it complex? Yes. There's a lot happening here and Scott does a good job of making sure it never gets off the rails. Every scene is important from a story standpoint so pay close attention to what might appear to be throwaway scenes.

This is not Alien: it's not sic-fi horror, it's sci-fi sci-fi. There is definitely suspense but it's not the same suspense you get from a slasher. People who are panning the movie for it not being like Alien in building this overarching tension are totally missing the point. In fact, I would go so far as to call those people morons. Why would Scott simply recreate or reimagine Alien? I applaud him for doing something different and succeeding at placing it in an existing universe.

We bitched a lot about how the space jockey depicted in Alien is not in the same position in Prometheus. Answer is clear now: it's not the same guy. The engineer in Alien is also clearly covered by the same type of giant facehugger that the engineer in Prometheus gets hit with.

I have a lot to reflect on and there's certainly a lot left unanswered. This is the kind of film where you need other people to join the discussion. That makes it a success.

I also like the proto-xenomorph at the end of the movie. It's pure fan service but a great way to close. It's got a pointed head and the last shot of the film is of it opening its mouth and an inner mouth starting to protrude. There's a lot more evolution to go before we get to the xenomorph from Alien but it's on its way.

EDIT: With regards to my earlier post about 'simple is better' and whether or not Prometheus follows a simple plot, I'd say that the movie's plot is more complex than Alien but not convoluted to the point where it gets derailed. It comes close, but the themes are familiar enough to the Alien universe that it doesn't distract (i.e. Peter Weyland / company wants Alien). I would say the religious aspect is more of an overarching philosophy than part of the plot.

There is a LOT left unanswered for fans hoping to know exactly how we get from Prometheus to Alien but I don't know how interesting the next instalments would be. A lot of the hype for Prometheus was around tying the film to Alien but if we leave that premise and jump on the "who are the engineers and why do they want to eliminate us" story, there might not be enough to hook audiences. I was more interested to see how we get to the state of affairs on LV-426 and a "Prometheus trilogy" doesn't appear as if it would tackle that. It's inferred how we get there by the end of this film, but it isn't dealt with directly enough.

Awesome! Congrats on getting to see the premiere. I have to wait until a week from tomorrow.

so why did the Engineers give a star map/invitation to early man as a way to find their WMD planet? And there were other ships on that planet. Did they have the same accident that the one ship did? If so, that's highly unlikely, if not, then why didn't they launch and begin their attack on Earth?

Shaw calls it an invitation but that's not to say the engineers meant it as that. It wasn't a message that said "come here and play" it was more of a map that said "we came from here."

Maybe it's meant to mean that when humans are advanced enough to figure out what this means and can travel here, that's as far as we want them to evolve and we'll destroy them to start anew? Or maybe it just means nothing.

Part of the message of the film is "why do people do things? Because they can." David himself is sort of proof of this. He asks Hollaway "Why was I created?" and the response was "Cause we can." There doesn't have to be any real purpose to it, it just "is what it is."

It sounds like the film’s Pandora’s Box / Forbidden Fruit epitaph of choice is the byline from Jurassic Park: “(Your) scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” In other words, humans in the film are blindly enthralled with their chance to meet The Creator. Because of their blindness, they fail to realize that they aren’t fit to do so.

Maybe the film is a coming to terms with the fact that creation and other God-like abilities aren't the be-all-end-all? To impress The Maker (or at least avoid his wrath), humanity has to reach a level of intellectual and emotional progression that is presently beyond their comprehension. (Or, as “The Phantom Carriage” would term it, humanity would have to achieve fully matured soul.)

In a NY Times article, Scott and Lindelof portrayed the film as a state of theological neuroses wherein The Creator, humanity, and the creations of humanity are all equally disheartened with one another.

[spoil][align=left] He’s Not Done With Exploring the Universe. ‘Prometheus’ Returns Ridley Scott to Outer Space.

It is the year 2089 when Elizabeth Shaw, an archaeologist with a spiritual bent, chips through a wall in a cave in the bleak mountains of Scotland and finds out that the human race is not alone in the universe. Illuminated by her torchlight is a 35,000-year-old painting of people worshiping a giant, who is pointing to a small cluster of stars.
“I think they want us to come and find them,” she says, eyes alight.

Feel free to start screaming anytime. The words “we’re not alone” can be a doorway to either salvation or terror.
That is the knife edge on which the British director Ridley Scott has balanced “Prometheus,” his long-awaited return to the universe without mercy or comfort that he first created in the 1979 movie “Alien.”

“Prometheus,” due June 8 from 20th Century Fox, is the first science fiction directed by Mr. Scott since “Blade Runner” in 1982 and the first he has made in 3-D. The movie, with a screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, follows the adventures of the archaeologist Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace, who gained fame as the girl with the dragon tattoo in the Swedish film trilogy. Aboard the hubristically named spaceship Prometheus she uses an ancient star map to guide her to an obscure moon of an obscure planet in the hope of meeting her maker.

Joining her on this cosmic cruise are, among others, Charlize Theron as a chilly corporate executive, Meredith Vickers, with mysterious motives; Michael Fassbender as David, an android of equally ambiguous talents and agenda; and Logan Marshall-Green as Holloway, Shaw’s colleague and love interest. Guy Pearce also appears in various guises as Peter Weyland, the leader of an interplanetary conglomerate that owns the ship and much of the rest of the galaxy.

Exactly what happens out there, neither Mr. Scott nor anyone else will say. Web sites have been devoted to frame-by-frame analyses of trailers, images and whatever clues Mr. Scott and cast members have let drop.

Among the viral goodies out there is the Web site of Weyland Industries (837.53 million employees), with an ad for its new line of David androids and a 2023 TED talk by Weyland in which he rattles off technological achievements, including the ability to make robots indistinguishable from humans. “We are the gods now,” he announces.

Uh oh.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that things don’t go well. In Greek mythology Prometheus, after all, was chained to a rock and had his liver eternally pecked out for the crime of stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans.
On the phone from London, where the film was mostly shot, Mr. Scott described it as “ ‘2001’ on steroids.” He said he liked Stanley Kubrick’s notion of “a police agency in the universe that will give a ball of dirt a kick.”

“God doesn’t hate us,” Mr. Scott added ominously. “But God could be disappointed in us — like children.”

The star map leads to the same planet that the ship in “Alien” will visit 30 years later, but Mr. Scott said “Prometheus” was not a prequel to that 1979 movie, which was a kind of haunted-house story featuring the crew of a space freighter being picked off by a monster that makes its debut by bursting out of someone’s belly. Moviegoers, he has said teasingly, will be able to discern the DNA of “Alien” in the new movie, but whether he means the gritty dystopian setting or the gooey stuff of life itself — or both — time will tell.

After five sequels and a series of comic books, Mr. Scott said he figured the franchise was finished, comparing the monster with a joke gone flat from too many tellings. Three years ago, eager to get back to science fiction, he thought there might be a way back into the “Alien” world, to “rescue” the franchise, as he put, it by picking up a loose thread from the original movie that had been neglected.

In the first film the unlucky freighter crew finds a derelict spaceship, and in the pilot’s chair is a giant humanoid being with an exploded chest. In the very next scene a strange egg opens up and wraps itself around the face of a crew member, played by John Hurt. “Once John Hurt looks into that egg, the film took off,” Mr. Scott said. But he was surprised nobody ever asked him about the “space jockey,” referring to the being in the pilot’s chair, which he called a “very obvious and glaring question.”

“Who was he? Why did he land there? Was he in trouble?” Mr. Scott wondered. And why was he carrying a cargo of such “wicked biotechnology”? Mr. Scott acknowledged that he himself did not know the answers and thought that James Cameron, who directed the first sequel, “Aliens,” would address the question. “Jim is more of a logician.”

But the enigma remained. He pitched the idea to Fox, but in the process of developing it, he said, “a grand new mythology” emerged.

That mythology is Mr. Scott’s own particular mash-up of high and low culture. On the one hand, he said, he was inspired by the current quest to look for life beyond Earth, under the sands of Mars and in the oceans beneath the ice covering Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“I think, wow, this is a pretty useful basis for my film,” Mr. Scott recalled.

At the other end of the credibility scale is the pop archaeologist Erich von Daniken, who argued in books like his 1968 “Chariots of the Gods” that there was archaeological evidence in the form of things like the Nazca lines in Peru that we had received visitors from outer space. His claims gained no traction among professional archaeologists, but, Mr. Scott said, “to me it all made sense.”

In news conferences and in conversation Mr. Scott has evinced sympathy for the notion — popular in some circles, including the Vatican — that it is almost “mathematically impossible” for life on Earth to have gotten to where it is today without help.

“It is so enormously irrational that we can do this,” he went on, referring to our conversation — “two specs of atoms on a carbon ball.”

“Who pushed it along?” he asked. Have we been previsited by gods or aliens? “The fact that they’d be at least a billion years ahead of us in technology is daunting, and one might use the word God or gods or engineers of life in space.”
And would we want to meet them again? Mr. Scott’s countryman the cosmologist Stephen Hawking has suggested that we should be careful Out There. “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” Dr. Hawking said.

Mr. Scott agreed: “Hopefully they won’t visit.”

As the movie suggests, however, we might not be able to resist visiting them, whether they like it or not.
Behind the Prometheus legend is the idea that “the gods want to limit their creations; they might want to dethrone God,” said Mr. Lindelof, best known as one of the creators of the television series “Lost.” (He wrote the final “Prometheus” screenplay, revising a script by Mr. Spaihts.)

Mr. Lindelof said he had almost driven off the road when Mr. Scott first phoned: He was given two hours to read Mr. Spaihts’s script while a guard waited outside. He described the process of working with Mr. Scott as “you do everything you can to prevent him from thinking you’re an idiot.”

The dilemma with science fiction, he said, is that the questions it raises can be more engaging than the answers provided.
“I hope no one thinks we are overly pretentious,” Mr. Lindelof said. “We set out to make something entertaining and thrilling to watch, not a band of people sitting around talking about the meaning of life.”

In keeping with its Promethean theme the movie is laced with generational conflict, Mr. Lindelof said. There is, for example, the robot David. “Hey, a bunch of humans seeking out their creator,” Mr. Lindelof explained. “David knows exactly who created him, and he is not impressed by his creator.” He can see, hear and think better than humans and is stronger than they are too.

Nor are all the humans so impressed with David: Vickers refers to him as “a toaster,” ordering him out of the room. But Weyland describes the android as the son he never had, saying David has everything he would ever want in a son, except for a soul.

David smiles.[/align][/spoil]
Thanks for the review and thoughts, CoGro. How would rank this film in relation to other sci-fi films released in the past 3-5 years?

That's a great article and really sums up the movie very well. Once you see it, it'll put it in greater context.

It's definitely one of those movies I've been thinking about non-stop since I saw it. If great sci-fi leaves you with more questions to ponder than answers without having completely derailed the experience then this is great sci-fi.

Thinking back to original sci-fi works from the last five years or so, the following comes to mind:

• Inception
• District 9
• Children of Men
- (Star Trek was good, but not original)

I'm sure I'm missing some other worthy films here. Outside of a few moments, Prometheus feels like it could have been made in any decade and been just as relevant. Visually, it's a very important film and I don't think it'll get the credit it should because of how spoiled we've gotten with VFX. I'm talking perfect visuals both from a cinematography and VFX standpoint. It's the rare movie you absolutely need to see in 3D.

I'm a big Chris Nolan fan and Inception is one of the more exciting and original sci-fi films of the past decade. Prometheus is in that territory. There are going to be moments as you watch the film where you think "I'm watching a special film" and other times you think "what exactly is this getting at?" It comes together in the end but doesn't emotionally punch you the way I thought it would for me. That's not to say there aren't chair-squirming "holy fuck" moments cause there are. It's just that with the focus on several characters, there isn't enough room for Shaw to be your "in" to the movie that Ripley was for Alien. As a result, it lessens the impact of the drama when shit goes down.

Remember the famous "heartbeat" moment in Alien when Ripley is shitting her pants, looking around corners to see if the Alien is there? By that point it's just Ripley and the Alien. We are Ripley. We are fully engaged and feel as much at risk as she is. In Prometheus we never get that and there's no systematic build up to a "last man standing" scenario. Like I said, completely different movies with different objectives, but it's our connection to the characters Prometheus lacks that might take it down a point or so.

Amazon already has the pre-order for the BluRay up. There's a promotion where the first 5000 to pre-order get a free ticket to the movie. I don't know how many they sold, but I pre-ordered earliest today and got my ticket a few minutes ago: amazon.com

No shit. I just preordered and got the code almost instantly.

Thanks

at this Rotten Tomatoes review title: "In space, no one can hear your disappointment."

[align=center]end of film spoiler pics[/align]
[spoil]


[/spoil]

so could someone explain the evolution process of this thing. the drop of black goo gets swallowed by dude, dude screws woman, woman pulls out squid/proto-facehugger by C-section, proto-facehugger grows giant and mouth rapes Engineer and deposits another baby inside Engineer, within minutes this erupts out of chest of Engineer almost fully grown, party. Is that basically how it goes or are there steps missing?

I'm beginning to believe this is a reboot rather than a prequel. the birth of this alien isn't matching the birth of the others. Where do the eggs come from then?

Just how big is this thing? I haven't seen the movie yet, but is it possible that the creature could be the true form of the Engineers; the marbled god look being just another bio-mech suit?

Which shouldn't be surprising, since Scott has been making a point of not using the word "prequel."

I really was hoping that this movie would NOT explain away everything. Where's the fun in that?

Maybe that's the queen! The evolution may be different when hatched from human. I like the evolution aspect of all of this

Here's the next movie:

The alien from this one is a queen.

It finds it's way onto an engineer ship and starts laying eggs. In the meantime one of the enginneers wakes up and is sent to destroy planet X. Realizes all these eggs are on his ship, finds the queen and kills it. Starts to fly off and is attacked by a facehugger that implants an egg.

Another queen bursts forth from the engineer and the ship crashes on the original "alien movie" planet. Therefore explaining where the Queen in Aliens comes from.

LV-426 is near Zeti 2 Reticuli, which is where Prometheus is set. It'll have to be a ship from that planet. They mention Zeti 2 Reticuli at the beginning on Alien.

Nothing would suggest that to be the case. Especially because the intro sacrifice scene shows an engineer in his purest form being dissolved.

The proto-Alien literally explodes from the Engineer. It's not as much a chest burster as it is a body burster. The engineers are about 1.5 times the size of a human being so I figure this proto-alien is a bit smaller than an adult human.



bearvomit, that's basically what happens but there's a rhyme and reason for why that makes sense in this universe. Pay close attention to the intro scene. It's not a reboot and it's not a prequel. The next movie is NOT ALIEN. There's more evolution and more events need to take place.

I also don't think it's a bad thing that there's a lot unanswered. I think this is what Scott meant when he vehemently suggested this wasn't a prequel. He didn't want audiences to have the expectation that EVERY LAST QUESTION would be answered about the universe in 2 hours. Clearly there's stuff that needs to happen before eggs come into play and even before LV-426 becomes relevant.

Well I broke down and watched a very poor, darkly lit bootleg of this thing. I just couldn't wait any longer, since this is still not out in theaters here. What's the verdict? It's good! Not great, not a classic, but good. 4 out of 5. What keeps it from being brilliant?

Well for one, there's plot holes abound. Having the extra ships on the planet caused logic problems. If there was an accident on one, it was unlikely to have happened on the others, thus they should have left and lay waste to Earth 2,000 years ago as planned. Also, why give primitive man a star map to their weapons depot? If that wasn't the Engineers home world, that would be like you coming from Texas and giving a map to Indonesia and saying "come and find me there".

It tries to straddle the line of being both a high action blockbuster and high minded art at the same time and never really reaches either. Action scenes like the Prometheus crashing into the Derelict, while spectacular, are over quickly. The horror has the same problem. There are some creepy moments, but the sheer terror reached in Alien or the heart pumping action in Aliens are never reached. The cobra thing was fantastic, the reanimated head was cool, but the Engineers weren't well played at all in my opinion. That's this films biggest flaw. It never made up it's mind what it wanted the Engineers to be.

At the start of the film we get a wonderful scene of life beginning on Earth through the purposeful sacrifice of one Engineer. Wearing a druid cape, he drinks a liquid which begins to dissolve his body, he falls into the water and his DNA is reorganized into the building blocks of life on Earth. Okay, cool. The Engineers are malevolent, highly intelligent beings who are interested in teraforming planets. They even apparently visit different civilizations across the Earth at later dates to check on their creations. So they're our nice creators. Um...not exactly.

Later we see holographic security recordings of these Engineers barreling down their ship's hallway. One even busting his ass as he trips and falls! Another gets his head cut off by a door slamming shut! So they're not the most agile creators. Gotcha. But are they still nice? Well, no, they've been working all this time on some biological WMD's apparently and were hell-bent on shipping them to Earth, UPS style, when shit went down and all but one died (save the others who are obviously on the other ships.)

So why so mad? Well we never find out. Instead we find one and wake him up and he gets really pissed that we're there and goes about pounding heads with other heads and running all Jason Vorhees after the girl! Some creator he turned out to be! But we never find out why exactly that they hate us. That gets saved for the sequel that they're all too quick to rush off towards instead of telling this story to conclusion.

Yeah, we get some cool monsters to hide from, yeah the tech on display is awesome and the effects are top notch and we even get a Xenomorph at the end but it all just feels like there was so much potential there. Characters aren't fully developed, scenes are rushed and others left dangling. There are big ideas on display here but the film would rather rush through those to get to the next slimy monster oozing in the muck.

It could easily have used another thirty minutes to an hour, fleshing out some background details and motivations. Let's compare and contrast creator with creation. Let's see some more of David interacting and questioning humans on his role in life. Let's see some examples of how David is like us and how we are like the Engineers. Let's see some of Vicker's backstory instead of her dramatically proclaiming "FATHER" as if we should care.

With a better writer on deck this thing could have been handled like that basketball David twirls while riding a bike. Instead, it's a rim shot at best.

Someone had claimed awhile back that the film was nearly 3 hours long at an early screening. Perhaps there are some bits on the cutting room floor that would have made some parts feel less rushed or confusing?

Only 48 hours before I finally get to see this thing!

I can think of two scenes where they've changed things from the trailers. The dude who gets mutated no longer has the elongated arms and claws. He does walk like a scorpion with his legs bent backwards over his shoulders though! The other part is this scene from the trailer.



I don't think this is in the film anymore. He doesn't just calmly walk over to Shaw. He full on tackle/spears her into the corner as she releases the squid on his ass.

Roger Ebert loved it:

Good to get your thoughts, bearvomit though I believe this is a movie that is made for 3D and the big screen. Wish you would have waited for your first impression to be one of spectacle as much as substance.



I don't think this is as much a plot hole as it is an unanswered question. We don't know exactly what the engineers' motivation is. Shaw asks "why do you hate us?" but that might not be the case. The planet might have changed in the 2000 years since those drawings were made. There's a huge puzzle here and only a small piece of it has been revealed to the audience. We can debate whether doing this in a feature is wise as opposed to a weekly TV series, but I don't consider this to be a plot hole.



I don't think this movie had to resolve the question of "who are the engineers." Scott would argue that if you came into the movie wanting that answer straight up because you thought this was THE Alien prequel, then you went in with the wrong expectations. I'm starting to come around to the idea of wanting a Prometheus sequel because I'm now sufficiently hooked to finding out what the deal is with the engineers.



Vickers - Weyland is my biggest character gripe with the movie. That's too crucial a relationship to be as underdeveloped as it was. Especially since Vickers dies soon after. I see the dichotomy between her relationship with her father v. Shaw's relationship with her's but it lacked the right punch.

I agree with Roger Ebert - this is great sci-fi that inspires debate about its ideas and mythos, and by design leaves a lot unanswered for that purpose...until the next time. I think Harry Knowles is correct when he said "If you carry expectations of Alien and Aliens, you will be disappointed." This film doesn't follow that format.

I don't think there's any less greatness on display from a filmmaking standpoint. I do think that the film would have benefited from less characters (though it would be tough to buy that only 4 or 5 people are required on this trillion dollar expedition).

I'm going to see it again tomorrow but my overall feeling is that it's a divisive movie, but one that's well made.

The more I think about this movie the more I fucking hate it. There was SOOOOO much potential here for a absolute killer sci-fi/thriller spectacle movie that just gets wasted in it's on self aggrandizing. Let's dissect the C-section scene for an example of wasted opportunities.

Okay, Shaw learns she's 3 months pregnant which she says is impossible for A) she's infertile and B) she only fucked 10 hours ago. Okay, fine, they treat this fairly well with her panic attack/beat down on the attending medical crew as they try to put her into cryo-sleep for the journey home. She reaches the med-pod surgery thing and it tells her that it's only programmed to work on men for surgeries. Um ... whatchutalkinboutwilis? This is a trillion dollar intergalactic space ship where they know how to put people to sleep for years with only a hangover as a side affect but they can't program to do surgeries on the mystical creature known as woman?!

Okay, fine. She says fuck it, I'll walk you through this. I know how to program machines to do surgeries on women. I'm an archaeologist after all. So she climbs into this machine, gets her syringes ready which we presume is pain killers and this thing goes to work. Now here is a totally missed opportunity here where they rush WAY TOO FUCKING FAST in getting this thing out. I want tension in this scene dammit. This is ground breaking sci-fi shit right here. I want to sit back and be uncomfortable for a minute as I watch this character go through hell.

She doesn't bleed a lick from this laser cutting her stomach wide open like a Thanksgiving turkey. It reaches in like the claw game at Chuckie Cheese where you try and win that iPod that is right fucking there but it's obviously super glued to the bottom so there's no chance in hell. But this time she won the price, a squid! Where's the sci-fi in that?! How bout have some creativity here guys. This thing looked EXACTLY like a squid. No crazy jaws, no flippers or bug eyes or crazy Giger shit ... No, it's something out of the tank at P.F. Chang's!

No here's the clincher that just proved to me "Sir Ridley Scott" doesn't know shit anymore. This machine suddenly goes into "oh shit, I've got a chest-burster in my stomach mode" and staples her shut like a six year old with tourettes on a plank of wood. This is another part where they should have taken their sweet time. Make her panic as this creature is held an inch over her chest and head as the machine stumbles to close this hole in her stomach. Make it miss a few times, reload, "oops, that one didn't take, I've got to start over." All the while this thing is going crazy over her. Instead she slips out, shuts the hatch and down the hall she goes.

And what is the reaction she gives to the first people she sees? It's not, "oh shit, I just pulled this fucking ALIEN thing outta my stomach and it's down the hall right now!" No, the first words out of her mouth after performing a C-Section on an actual alien from her own stomach is, and I quote from the bootleg, "You've been asleep...here on the ship...all this time...why?" Bull-FUCKING-SHIT!

Fuck you Ridley Scott you English wanker. You made the Engineers look like a Phil Collins music video puppet!

Ok, so I just watched this movie... TWICE. Yes, I actually sat through it twice in one day. Once in 3D, then in 2D for comparison.

My verdict: I absolutely love this film. I am totally captivated by it and can't wait to see it again.




That particular surgical machine, one of only a half dozen or so ever made, was on board for Mr. Weyland only. No one else was supposed to use it.

As for not buying into the rest of the scene, well shit, I was grabbing my fucking balls during that entire scene, and thought my asshole was going into prolapse. If it didn't affect you, then it didn't affect you, but I was totally drawn in and on the edge of my seat throughout the film.

I've read elsewhere about "plot holes" in this movie, and I swear to god I have no fucking clue what that means. I'm just not seeing it. I even tried to pick apart shit and see what the problem is, but nope I was still sold the 2nd time through.

well I'm glad you liked it.

you can go here to find some high quality scans of the art book out now.

I haven't seen this one yet, but feeling disappointment in a foggy development or understanding of these beings might have zero to do with a viewers pre-concieved notions of an Alien connection. I'm just sayin'. Because I might see it and wish they had explained more too, and I could give a hoot if there is an Alien connection or not. That said, maybe I won't mind, I like a little gray-area.

Thanks for all the spoilers/reviews btw. Word.

Right on. You definitely have to disconnect your expectations from knowing Alien (the sequels don't count because they deviated so much from Ridley's intent). Ridley has said several times that the film has Alien DNA but is not the prequel some were expecting.

It was an exploration story rather than a survival story. The questions asked were: What is out there? Where did we come from? David worked perfectly as the metaphor for WHY (because we can). The story is about humanity, not Engineers or Aliens, so I thought Shaw's decision at the end was especially poignant. We as the audience don't learn any more than she does. Rather than return home, she continues on into the unknown to find her answers.

I think a Prometheus 2 would be fantastic if she carried the story by herself (ala Sam Rockwell in Moon). I have a fantastic vision that mimics Dr. Frank's journey in 2001: ASO. Tie the story into what happens to the Engineers on LV-426 if the need to explain something is really there. There is a TON to take in. This film is incredibly deep, so I feel its objective flew over the heads of people crying Plot Hole.

The only part I felt fell flat was the Weyland/Vickers arc. My impression was that a lot of this relationship was cut. I get the motivation behind each of them, but in what way does Vickers serve the story? Bander, maybe you picked up on something and could explain your thoughts on that.

I'll try to read more into her when I see it again in a couple of days.

I'm glad you guys picked up on that too. That plot thread felt like it was abandoned as soon it was created. I want to think the Blu-Ray will feature a longer cut with those scenes fleshed out. What the fuck was with Guy Pearce in old man makeup? Why not bring in a distinguished older actor? Was there intention to see a young Weyland at some point - whether by rejuvenation or flashback?

The final shot of the film also felt out of place. It was like something the studio tacked on because there was no Alien. Shaw's story ended on a perfect note. The "birth" of the alien was unnecessary.

I get the impression the Engineers are deeply religious. The head chamber looks more like a church than any lab or storage facility. The idea of planting life on a planet and then cultivating it to a certain point, only to eradicate it with bio-weapons designed after the image of a death god could just be a ritual of sorts.

well here's something to chew on. From the mouth of Ridley Scott:


[hr]
Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?

Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.

[hr]

Jesus was an alien.

here's a quick list I found on another board:

[spoil]
[align=left]• I'm a biologist who has ZERO interest in this dead engineer body here

• I'm the geologist who HATED the biologist, but hey, let's roll out together

• Oh fuck, we got lost somehow...even though we literally created an entire map of the place we're exploring minutes ago and everyone else got out OK...in the middle of a storm

• There's a blip on the scanner for a life form 1 click to the East?!?! FUCK DAT SHIT, we're going West, I ain't fuckin' with NO alien lifeforms...OH! A cute little snake! C'mere snake...OH GOD. Did I mention that earlier, I had NO interest even in the DEAD alien?

• Oh, I'm really sick and instead of even REMOTELY attempting to save myself, I volunteer to have Charlize Theron BURN me alive

• Oh that guy? He just had a GIANT SNAKE in his mouth, but we don't need to mention it again

• I ran away from two people and gave myself surgery on this MIND-BOGGLING male-only surgery capsule (btw, that thing is in Theron's character's emergency escape because you know...it makes sense for her to have a male-only surgery capsule)

• We spent over $1 trillion on this mission, and even though there were only 12 of these surgery capsules made...we could only afford this male-only one..even though the Weyland representative is a female and the main person who helped get the mission going is also female

• AWESOME, I cut the alien out, thank goodness NO one chased me even though David was SUPER adamant about me keeping the alien inside me and it's even BETTER that no one ask why the fuck I have 8 staples in my stomach

• Thank God I know the code to open this door here, OH Mr. Weyland is here!

• Oh yah, the geologist came back to life as a zombie and murdered 3 of the crew, but we don't need to talk about that either

• Stringer Bell instantly figured out what the aliens were doing (military base obviously) by just killing the zombie geologist

• You can escape from getting crushed by a huge alien ship by rolling to the left a couple of times, but don't run in a straight line like an idiot otherwise you WILL get crushed by a huge alien ship

• Hello, Elizabeth? This is David. I'm completely decapitated but no worries, I can still contact you via radio somehow? Also, don't worry, neither my body nor my head moved AT ALL during that HUGE crash I just went through

• Oh btw, that engineer is PISSED and is coming to kill you, but apparently door locks don't exist in this world and he's gonna roll up on you as soon as I finish this sentence

• Us? We're just the Captain's lackeys. Oh what? He literally said he could crash Prometheus into the alien ship himself and to save ourselves? NAH, we BOTH decided to become heroes and sacrifice our lives as if we were deciding what to eat for dinner, steak or ramen? EASY CHOICE. We're going down with the ship, HANDS UP![/align]
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Bearvomit:

I was just about to do a play by play "explanation" of what your Trekkie mind just displayed as total mental retardation, but instead I'll just say it:

You are a fucking retard.

Why do people need every damn thing spelled out for them in a 2 hour movie? My god, the general public either has plates in their heads or they are just deaf and blind.
Every thing you mentioned is "explained" as much as it needs to be if you shut the fuck up, and WATCH THE MOVIE. Strange concept, I know...

Just came back from an afternoon screening. I watched Alien last night, but I feel like I didn't really need to do so in order to understand and enjoy this film. I have to admit, the film worked for me on more of a visceral level than anything remotely intellectual. But that tends to be the inclination with most films.

David and the design choices on the "engineers" and the various types of slimy alien creatures were the most intriguing aspects of the film. The "marble god" look of the "engineers" was both haunting and beautiful. Also, the moment when the head of the snake-like alien creature regenerates after being cut off during its attack was creepy as shit.

About David, I am a huge fan of Lawrence of Arabia (one of my top 3 films of all time) so I was delighted by this aspect of his characterization. Very cool.

Some other things I found interesting were the briefing scene with the elder Weyland via hologram; the drab, gray, bleakness of the alien landscape; the intense surgery pod scene; and the potentially iconic birth of the xenomorph at the very end.

Overall, it's a mixture of very neat things but it isn't an instant classic or a wholly amazing film. A 3/5. Fairly good show, Mr. Scott.

I think a lot of the problems could be fixed with an extended cut, but I have to agree that Fiefeld's and Milburn's antics were kind of dumb. They could have even come up with an excuse like, "Oh, the storm is interfering with the mapping equipment." Something would have been better than nothing.

Was a just me or was Elba being a total dick about them being lost? He just kept fucking with them and joking about it the whole time, which seemed really inappropriate. Was it just his way of trying to calm them down?

Oh, and the med pod was obviously meant for Charles.

Nitpick: What's with the most aggressive and high-strung guy being a pothead? Why do the suits have smoking functionality built into them? Did someone from the 1950s design them? Now you can enjoy flavor country while taking a stroll on Mars!

Bandersnatch you can suck my cod satchel. I have a different opinion on this film which A LOT of people are calling absolute garbage. Character motivations as well as reactions are just not realistic in this film. The visuals are fantastic, the mythology they are trying to create is compelling but the execution is pedestrian. And yes, the worst Star Trek episodes leave this film in the black goo it crawled out of.

- Stuff like having David's head in the exact same spot after the crash as it was before the crash is just stupid writing that takes you out of the narrative.

- Why did Holloway commit suicide so quickly? He had no idea what he was infected with, whether it was terminal or just a bad skin rash! Instead he just walks into the flame thrower and is never spoken of again.

- Shaw is upset for a moment and back to business the next.

- Why not have Fifield come back first all crazy mutant like, killing people, and Holloway sees this as his future and THEN walk into the flamethrower? At least give the guy some motivation.

- And Vickers exclaiming "FATHER" coupled with Zoolander level facial expression PLUS cuing dramatic music was LAUGHABLE!

But hey, suck Ridley's balls if you want, after you finish mine.

edit: Bandersnatch, how bout you explain WHY this is such a great movie narratively. Let's hear why this poorly written drivel is actually just a misunderstood masterpiece.

Can we at least close the book on making prequels to sci-fi movies that were released decades ago?

Especially, when the motivation seems to be that the tech has finally caught up to the directors original and glorious vision.

I don't want to have to go through this shit, yet again, with Blade Runner.

This is what I'm talking about. His head is NOT in the exact same place after the crash.

In all fairness, bearvomit did preface his plot-hole diatribe with:



And some of it does ring of nitpickyism. But to each their own I suppose.

None of those critiques is disuading me from seeing this one. I just don't do opening weekends very well anymore. I'm angsty in a crowd I'm not in charge of.

I don't know what other popular sci-fi universes there are to mine?

I'm not against prequels / sequels to decades-old franchise, I just want them to be good. I think Prometheus is a good movie. Divisive? - yes. Terrible? - far from it. I'm happy it came out and I'm happy I saw it.

A lot of these "plot holes" are things that plague 90% of movies that have ever been released. We could play this game with Dark Knight, Star Wars (OT), Avengers or any other popular film. We forgive minor faults if they're outweighed by entertainment value; if we don't like the story, we play the nitpick game to justify why the movie "objectively" fails.

Yeah, having a problem with a character's motivation is not a plot hole.

this movie was good. it unfortunately had a lot of hype and a serious legacy to uphold, with Ridley returning to his Alien universe. but it succeeded as a prequel/sequel and a sci-fi action movie.

Since the movie is doing well with its receipts, the sequel will probably get a green light. I hope it does as I completely enjoyed spending time with this film. So much so, that I was a little disappointed when Shaw started to go into her Ripley monologue at the end. I was anticipating another fifteen minutes or so of story.

With Lost, Lindelof employed the image of Ouroboros for a character. I think it’s a good approximating symbol for the movie. The cycle of simultaneous vitality and destruction is such that the Engineers create and then want to destroy their creations through creatures that procreate through destruction. Moreover, humanity gets to meet one of their makers and ends up using one of the creator's own weapons to destroy him. (As David puts it, Shaw gets to “kill her parent.”)



I would say this duality is just the nature of the universe. Other’s might reference the Hindi Creator/Destroyer Shiva or cite Job 1:21.

Regarding Lawrence of Arabia, until this film, I didn't get the famous match scene's connection to the Prometheus legend. Thanks, Ridley. Consequently bv, Prometheus is the Greek antecedent of Christ. Prometheus’ sacrificial suffering gave humanity special knowledge.

Speaking of movie references, does anyone else think that David had morphed into a HAL / C-3PO hybrid at the end of the film? The snake in the Head room and the rolling spaceship chase were probably Raiders allusions. The guy who got bit by the snake is obviously derivative of Hooper from Jaws.





There is no indication that the other ships had “bio-weapons.” Maybe the ships are there as a back-up in case something went wrong on the designated carrier ship? Surviving Engineer crew and canisters could be transitioned over to a back-up ship to carry out the mission.

The fact that humanity would seek out their makers may be an unattended consequence for the Engineers. Or, it could be a built-in fail-safe mechanism to ensure humanity's destruction if they got out of hand. Alien already established the concept of an accelerated gestation rate. So, it makes sense that the face hugger would mature rapidly. The scene could have been staged and edited better. But, it worked for me.




I thought the Engineers looked like The Thing from Another World.




I loved the Geiger-style art design. I found the relief above to be especially neat:




I think Scott found it in more interesting to have the audience fill in the blank on the specifics of their relationship based on Vickers’ establishment as an emotionally ravaged individual. To me, the lack of a clarification works thematically, because it mirrors the unexplained purpose for man’s creation by the Engineers.

The birth/death scene with the Xenomorph bookends the birth/death scene at the start of the film. Since it gives the audience an Alien and fits in with a larger theme of the film, I like it.

I didn't mind the Alien birth at all for both of these reasons.

I thought it was a cool way to end the movie, especially considering the haunting piano music in the credits.

It's an interesting article. Personally, I really dig the idea that the xenomorph is the destroyer - the symbol of selfish life - to the engineers' creator.

New viral video pointing to 10.11.12:

[align=center]VIDEO[/align]
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[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/GDanyJA5aRU&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]
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I think Cavalorn nailed the main points of the film. For those who think that he is over-analyzing, I would point to any of Doc Jensen’s Lost recaps. Lindelof is a mythology wonk and really does permeate his scripts with such heady stuff.

In general, I think people are missing Scott’s point about Christ. Scott indicated that the film merely flirts with the idea that the Messiah was an emissary of the Engineers. It does not literally take that stance. Case in point, the film takes place in 2093. If the catastrophic event that causes the Engineers' demise occurred approximately 2,000 years prior to the expedition, it happened around 93 AD and not 30 AD (the year of the crucifixion).

Ridley says up to half hour of more footage on the disc release:
The first running cut was 2h 27min.

[align=center]VIDEO[/align]
[spoil]
[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/9t02XlBpwEI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]
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going to see the imax 3d in an hour... the read above was great. As far as the 2000 year thing, 90 years off would only be a 4.5% deviation which would match most probability equations margin of error. If it were exact, it would be cheesy.

I want to see it a second time this week, especially because of all the great dialogue the film is generating.

The more I think about it - and there are certainly many opponents to this viewpoint - the more I feel Prometheus is one of the most thought-provoking films I've seen in 10 years.

I mentioned it in my review but I believe time will be very kind to this movie. I'm already pumped to see the extra content on the Blu-ray.

Great movie. I thought it ended too quickly, and Vickers needs to stop, drop and roll but...

Standout moments:

- How the Prometheus barely made a dent in the Engineers ship.
- Hands in the air as the Prometheus kamikazes itself.
- Wish we had some sort of "dialogue" from the Engineers, subtitles maybe?
- Where's the creatures that hatched from the dead engineers by the doors?
- David wasn't evil, just dry and focused.

- I still think that was a queen that hatched at the end?
There's obviously some evolution left.

- I like thinking the goo was kinetic ala Ghostbusters 2.
"We've changed the atmosphere of the room"

- I liked the religious aspect of Shaw.
- "Are you a robot?"

The questions mentioned above.

- The head has moved to the edges of that chamber.
It's body is close by and you can see its "com" flashing as David speaks.

- Everyone knew what the staples meant that saw them.
She puts on a suit after that and no one sees.

- Holloway was obviously in pain when he asked for the fire.
His insides could have been killing him.

- The lifeboat only had 2 weeks so those pilots knew they were going to die one way or another. Hands up!!

- Ildris was just speculating about the depot, I don't think he was telling us "Deadpool" style.

I figured it did its job, pulled out and crawled away and died, just like in Alien.

Saw it again tonight and it held up. There's a couple areas from a cinematic perspective that I have small quibbles with but overall I appreciated the film far more having read material posted on this board.

We need a screen grab of the Alien birth at the end: I think I saw the Alien AND an egg-like vessel come out of the engineer's chest?

The Art of the Film book arrived today. I highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in this story. Anyway, the alien at the end is called the Deacon. It's supposed to be a feminine creature, referencing the mother of all Aliens, Shaw. I think it fell out of an amniotic sack, Cogro. The book compares its birth to that of a foal.

I saw it again, too. I still think the biggest problem with the film is Peter Weyland's lack of development (and by extension Vickers as well). He is seeking eternal life, but that can't be the only motivation. How much did he know going into this? Why did he have to falsify his own death? Why was David acting upon his presumable instructions to infect Holloway?

Ridley is known for being ruthless with his edits. I do think it was a mistake to reduce Vickers to comedy relief with "Are you a robot?" and "This pod is configured for a male."