Prometheus Discussion (spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

so i finally got around to seeing prometheus this weekend.

it was pretty ok, but i have a lot of issues with it. never mind the ham-fisted exposition, or the wafer-thin characters…the lack of pathos or empathy, and the disregard to build any. all that sucks, but i have a lot of issues with the movie’s plotline. i guess a lot of people do.

  1. the opening scene (cellular decay–this represents—giving life?) is poisoning and destroying your cells really all that viable as even a movie-plot’s method of creating new life?

  2. why would there be a medical machine in Vicker’s pod calibrated for men only? actually, why would such a limited, “extremely rare and expensive” machine exist on a coed ship? --say “because Weyland.” ok, why wasn’t it in HIS pod, then?

  3. what was the deal with Vicker’s insufferable attitude? she rolls her eyes at her father’s relationship with David and acts petulant for most of the movie for no reason. she seems to have no authority nor does anyone do what she wants. there’s speculation she’s a droid herself, as she overpowered David and (some other reasons but i don’t care). the only character development or attempt at nuance only made the movie more convoluted, it would seem to me.

  4. why the secrecy of Weyland being on the ship? if he is supposed to be some kind of Howard Hughes shut-in germaphobe “wants to live forever” type, why was he perfectly nonchalant about a blooded, post-self-op near naked sick woman who may or may not be infected with something running into his med lab? why is everyone so fucking cool with it? “here’s a lab coat, Miss Newstitch. have a seat, let us blurt out more exposition.”

  5. why didn’t she tell ANYONE about the fucked up stuff David had JUST TRIED TO DO TO HER? why wasn’t she afraid?! why was she left alone after fighting her way loose from the gurney?!

  6. why would the dude in charge of mapping technologies be the only one who gets lost?

  7. why would he (and the biologist) who were so afraid they wanted to bolt all of the sudden want to pet some alien? they see a holographic replay of these giants running from something, become so afraid they want to hightail it out of there, come across some alien lifeform under those parameters, and presume it’s just a cute cuddly thing??

  8. why would there be a holographic recording of ONLY the negative events? what even was that? if it’s like some kind of futuristic security cam footage, why did it only record those “interesting” bits? oh–AND the sequence for flight, so David can learn to fly those ships. because: deus ex machina.

  9. what were the Engineers running from? it seems to be they had chestbursters come out of them-but they are what turn into the xenomorphs (the deacon), so i don’t get it. they’d have to be running from, i guess, the squid thing that plants the eggs inside (squid-face-hugger?) which confuses me because…

  10. what does all the junk do? we have a) black goo that deconstructs you cellularly into NOTHING but creates life b) black goo that turns people into mutated monsters but doesn’t disintegrate them c) hammerpedes (cobra-worm) that turn people in to mutated monsters just the same d) black goo that creates/contains xenomorphs??? e) canister eggs and vials of this goo, yet hammerpedes that spread the same shit, and a process were the goo must infect a male, then he sperms into someone and can get them pregnant with the Trilobite, which ten plants an egg and hatches the protoalien.

  11. how did the trilobite grow so massive locked in a medical chamber without any nutrition at all?

i guess i’m just lost. i don’t see what the engineers woudl be running from–if THEY eat the black goo, it makes them fall apart and grants life. they need humans to consume it–then fuck, THEN trilobites are born, THEN then trilobite has to egg a host, THEN a chestbursting protoalien comes out. so what were they running from? because it couldn’t have been an Alien xeno like (i think) people presume.

there’s tons more to ask (like how did that silly little rock hold the alien space ship up and keep the starlette from being crushed!? or why was the engineer who was awakened from cryo so eager to unquestionably kill every person in sight–then to track down the protagonist and try to kill her? or hey–if you cut through your abdominal wall and muscle, can’t you NOT RUN AND JUMP for like, a while?)

i liked this movie, but i fear it doesn’t make any sense.

2

I recommend you check the discussion thread that started when it was released in the theaters…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=653756&highlight=Prometheus

3

Yes. The only way to sum it up is ‘WTF?’

Hell, my eight-year-old still describes being stupid as saying ‘Hey, little buddy’.

4

You’re right, it doesn’t. I participated in the quite lengthy thread about this movie (linked above) from when it was still in theaters, but I’d advise you to just not think anymore about all the plot holes, contradictions, and things that were just plain dumb about this movie. There is no way to explain them using only the information we are given in the movie, so unless you want to construct an elaborate backstory yourself then there’s no point spending any more time trying to make sense of it.

Personally, the more I thought about all the problems with this movie the less I liked it, so if you feel you like it now then it’s probably best to just put its flaws out of your mind.

5

That would be the biologist who spends the first part trying to be observant and impartial, only to want to befriend the fanged penis?

My emotions as the credits started: :smack: :confused: :frowning: :mad:’

The reviews baffled me. Every character was a stereotype. Captain Planet had more nuance. And it was uneven. All the action was in the last half hour. Even the first Alien had a decent amount of build up but not too much.

6

I think the medical machine that’s designed only for a males could have been a great example of foreshadowing but instead it became the sci-fi equivalent of running from a generic slasher, make into the car only to find the car won’t start right away.

7

Friend of mine asked me what it was like.

My two word review.

“Beautiful Nonsence”

8

Early horror films relied on the person being isolated and not being able to call anyone because the lines are cut or similar. Now it’s “Ah! My space-cellphone is out of space-batteries! I can’t call the space-police to kill the space-monster” I can’t remember the last time I went to the woods or somewhere isolated and forgot to charge my phone.

9

well. fuff.

i was hoping someone would be all “DUUUUUDE you missed this obscure key-point, HERE is how it all makes sense…”

i guess not.

10

I loved a lot about the movie but must admit…the story was full of holes. The fully grown penis-vagina monster in the medical bay (that somehow grew hundreds of times it’s original size without any food) was truly the stuff of my nightmares. Much was right with this film but much was not.
Comes out on DVD this week and I’ll probably buy it.

11

Of the 11 plot questions posed by the OP, I’m not sure if #10 specifically addresses the scene where one of the guys gets turned into a crab-walking Cirque-de-Soleil wannabe who jumps around like a bloodthirsty spider-monkey.

Frankly, when such a full-on WTF? moment is a minor aspect of the film, you’ve got problems.

12

They tried to splice the DNA from the big awe scenes of Contact and Close encounters with the adrenalin scenes from Aliens and Predator in hopes of creating something bigger than the sum of it’s parts, but instead the ‘creature was born inside out, and it exploded’/Thermian

13

I’m not sure how many of these are intended interpretations, and how much of this is just me fanwanking. I enjoyed the film, but I won’t argue that it was a mess overall - “beautiful nonsense” describes it perfectly. A lot of the questions, I just flat-out don’t have an answer for. Those ones, just skipped.

Because Weyland. Fankwanky, but my spin on “calibrated for men,” is that the machine could, in fact, work fine for a woman in most respects. Except a Cesarian section, which would obviously necessitate a bunch of extra machinery to take care of the kid once it was removed. It makes sense that they’d pack the machine (to keep Weyland alive) but leave out the optional add-ons related to things like child birth.

Vicker’s got daddy issues, not in the least because the old bastard just won’t die, and get out of her way. And now he wants to live forever, meaning Vickers won’t ever be able to get out from under his shadow.

Tell who? The only people for her to tell, are the people who set David on her in the first place. They leave her alone after that, because she’s not important to them anymore. They wanted to see what would happen if someone was infected by the black oil. Turned out, the results weren’t what they hoped, so they don’t care about her anymore.

He was on drugs. Seriously - right before he and the worst zoologist in the known galaxy get killed, the zoologist notices that he’s got smoke coming out of one of his oxygen feeds in his helmet, and asks him if he’s smoking tobacco in his space suit. The guy says something like, “Yeah, right. ‘Tobacco.’”

My fanwank is that, between that scene, and the one where they both get killed, they hooked their airfeeds together and both were ripper stoned when the penis worm showed up, which at least partially explains why that guy was so incredibly stupid. Partially.

I figure that wasn’t so much “only the negative bits,” as it was, “the most recent recording.” Which was of everyone in the facility being killed.

My only guess here is that we’re looking at several different compounds. The place was a research station, after all, and most research stations have more than one experiment going at a time. It also might have been malfunctioning, either because it’s been sitting around for fifty thousand years, and has spoiled to some degree, or (if it is indeed a bunch of different compounds), several different strains were mixed when the containers leaked all over the floor.

This is true, but it’s also such a standard action movie cliche (hero takes a ridiculous amount of punishment, but isn’t physically slowed down at all) that I don’t really begrudge it in this film. I was actually kind of impressed that they included a couple token shots of her stumbling around, clutching her stomach.

14

I watched this for the first time this weekend, and this scene struck me as being in the movie because they suddenly realized that they needed to kill off some more characters before it ended.

I was deeply disappointed by the film. I mean, it’s visually very striking in a number of places, but it’s so badly written with so many dull characters that I had a hard time with it. I liked the android and the captain and that was about it.

15

Apparently, it had something to do with Jesus

16

The medical pod was inside that luxury life pod, which also contained Weyland’s cyropod. Unlike Vicker’s cryopod which was located with the rest of the crew’s.

17

I haven’t seen this myself, but I’ve enjoyed reading everybody’s “WTF” reactions. I notice that the DVD release is being advertised with a “Questions will be answered” tag line, so maybe the director’s cut will address some of these issues–or try to.

18

Deeply disappointed exactly describes my feelings too.

“Prometheus” had the potential to be a classic, an absolute classic, of science fiction cinema. Instead it ended up a badly written, confused mess. The ball got dropped so badly with this movie.

There ought to be criminal charges laid. “Manslaughter of a beloved series” or “first-degree murder of audience expectations” or something like that.

I’d like to be able to pin the blame squarely on Damon Lindenhof, but unfortunately Ridley Scott has to shoulder the responsibility of hiring him in the first place.

19

It’s been theorized by some that Vickers is a synthetic, which can help explain some of the OP’s questions. I’m partial to this idea myself, as there is the evidence throughout the film that would imply that she is not human.

20

hmmmmm.

well. after hearing an interpretive review, i can get a little more on board with some stuff.

but not much.

the two best points made were

  1. this was always designed as at least the first part of a direct sequel (which may or may not tie more into the Alien mythos).
    so there simply has to be a lot of unknowns as you exit, leaving you wanting answers in sequels. i kind of thought of that, like the second to last harry potter movie (not the first of the two part finale, but the second to last stand-alone installment). that movie was nothing but exposition and set up. me, not being an HP fan, had no prior knowledge since i didn’t see the before (nor after) films. so, as a fanboy, i guess it made sense. but for the average viewer, it was the middle part of a story you didn’t know.

maybe Prometheus is just that.

  1. think about Alien as a stand-alone film. it makes sense in retrospect because we have the Alien series mythos to backwards apply to the film. but really, alone, it was just WTF as this one. all of the sudden that guy’s an android?! but hey! he was in cryo! he EATS. what is that thing on his face?! what’s it doing?! ok why all of the sudden did a thing burst from his guts?! how did that thing grow so HUGE so fast with no food?! what the hell was that monster boney chair gun thing in the ship?! where did those eggs come from!? who sent the beacon?!

and so on.

so i think as a standalone unit, Alien might come off as an even MORE poorly written bit of schlock, but we have all this after-the-fact understanding of what it all means.
so maybe if we give this beautiful nonsense some time, maybe…