Look they filmed those scenes in ICELAND. Fricking ICELAND! Of COURSE it was meant to be another planet … have you SEEN Iceland? It’s one of the least Earthlike places on Earth.
Look, it’s later revealed that the Engineers have our DNA. So it’s implied that they seeded Earth with (their) life. Which means that the opening scene was Earth, or could be Earth, or just represented any Earth-like planet that they did this on. I think the big reason why Ridley Scott tried to deny the whole ‘Alien prequel’ thing is he didn’t want any clunky, fanboy pontificating like we’re seeing here! A sign of a good storyteller is not relying on idiot-proof, spoon-fed exposition…
[quote=“Isamu, post:76, topic:636980”]
This post (by Isamu) exactly.
i will go with Explanation B. I used to write reviews of B movies and softcore movies, and one of the issues I had to deal with was what I called the Comic Book Critics Conundrum. Comic book critics will sometimes write lengthy screeds about the hidden psychological aspects of Glowing Gigantic Man or the aesthetics of death by electro-ray. Some of it can be interesting, insightful and amusing, but on the few occasions I’ve read such work I’ve always had an uneasy awareness that the story being written about is most likely a pile of adolescent testosterone spew and nothing more.
Similar pitfalls exist in B-movies. One searches for insight, intelligence, characterization and so forth, but mostly one finds formulaic scripting, acting and direction at best, or the garbled natterings of wasted minds at worst.
So, when you find an almost good characterization or halfway decent plotting in a B movie, you have to wonder – have you found something good or are you projecting qualities into the film that actually don’t exist?
In the case of “Prometheus,” an A movie, I think all the signs point to a binge of coke-addled blah-blah-blah being the basis for the story.
Bah! I think you guys are all being too judgmental. I think Scott from the start planned this as a trilogy (or two films at least) and all the supposed plot holes were there deliberately. Not thru laziness but simply to, as the old saying goes, leave the audience wanting more. I don’t know if it’s been referenced yet, but this YouTube reviewer does a very good job of analyzing the film (from a decidedly non-fanboy, non-comic-book-nerd POV!) In the end he doesn’t have all the answers about the film either, but that’s the point!
Which is completely arse-backwards, at least for me. If you want me to continue with your franchise, make me want more of the same, not more because this one was unsatisfying.
Yeah me too. Imagine if our original makers were the xenomorphs. But an uncorrupted, benevolent xenomorph. What we’ve only seen up until now are corrupted, bastardized forms of them as just killing machines. But the true original xenomorphs and 100 times more powerful, and they are on a mission to wipe out the lesser xenomorphs. That would be fun.
I’d agree, if the movie had acknowledged the plot holes - like, if one of the characters had said, “How the hell did they manage to seed Earth 1 billion years ago, and still end up with descendants genetically identical to them?” or, “So, like, why did they leave us those star maps to a weapons facility?” or, “Why is Vickers such an idiot?” Barring something like, Occam’s Razor leads me to believe that the writers are dumber than they think, rather than smarter. Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the stupidity of Hollywood screenwriters.
As I said in the other thread, if this is true then I think even less of the movie and of Scott. It’s one thing to try and fail to tell a coherent story, and another to deliberately create a story that’s holes in hopes that the saps who paid $8 to see it will cough up another $8-$16 for the sequels. That’s basically just scamming your audience.
it can’t be the case. i mean, maybe for a few HUGE glaring omissions, maybe–
but how is a sequel going to explain why the main point of Vickers was to be a total bitch for no real reason, when no one really liked or respected her, even tho she wasn’t just the boss of the company who hired all of them–but was de facto president/ceo of said company–which, what CEO does that?! and on that note–since the ACTUAL president/ceo was fakin’ being dead for no real reason AND WAS ON THE SAME MISSION, why would SHE go as well? who is running the company while these two idiots are off in hypersleep “half a billion miles” from earth? and also vickers–who probably wasn’t a robot but could have been a man (this is my theory–she’s a dude. the whole disdain at the "closest thing to a son comment; the male-only med pod; her strength; the weird sexual tension. think about it…) who runs in a the dumbest way from disaster to an unceremonious death…? sequel fix that.
how is a sequel going to explain why david needed to LEARN stuff through lessons when he’s a damn superhuman machine who could just download info?
or why a geologist would go to school to learn in and degree in rocks and fossils only to be scared shit-stupid the first nanosecond upon seeing a fossil? or why a biologist would travel “half a billion miles” across space to look for life but be scared shit-stupid the first nanosecond upon seeing confirmed alien fossils?–but then be shit-brave-stupid the first nanosecond upon seeing a clearly dangerous living alien black-slime dickcobra?
–how’s a sequel going to explain that the term “half a billion millions” doesn’t even get them out of our own solar system?
this movie is just stupid and bad. it just is. there could be some nitpicks to big stuff that can be made right again w a sequel, but nothing is going to pull this out of the bullshit spiral of stupidity it so willfully dove into. it’s just a really cool, pretty, STUPID, illogical movie.
Maybe it’s a satire.
The problem with explaining all the plot holes in later movies is that the audience may not stick around for the later movies. I was very eager to see Prometheus, but I’m not likely to see any sequels because the first one let me down so much. It was the same for Star Wars prequels (saw 1 in theater, 2 on dvd, no interest in the 3rd) and the Matrix (1 and 2 in theaters, no interest in 3rd). The sequels would have to be phenomenal for me to be interested in seeing them.
Well, I don’t know what to say other than Ridley Scott is way more of an artist than either George Lucas or the Wachowski bros. Both of them had one huge initial hit, and then just sold their soles for the sequels. 
Well from the “it could have been worse” camp does anyone remember how during production there was a rumor from an insider that the Space Jockeys were going to force two male crew members to have sex as an experiment? Everyone was like WTF are you kidding? But now having seen the movie I’m wondering if originally the squid baby/first facehugger came about that way, or if Shaw was originally male?
So hey we could have had a movie with heavy christian overtones show us that the origin of the aliens and facehuggers was gay sex, wouldn’t that have been great!:eek:
The movie had a very tortured production too, Scott flip flopped between “alien prequel” and “original story” several times, tons of rewrites and new writers. Probably a miracle it came out as well as it did.
I don’t know about satire, but I’ve always been kinda bothered by the really gross stupidities the “scientists” indulge in, most especially the scene where the one guy whips off his helmet just because there’s air. That kind of thing was stupid, and widely mocked for being stupid, back when they did it in 1950s SF films. It makes me think they included the scene DELIBERATELY, perhaps as an “in your face” for the sort of SF fan who would find it outrageous. But there’s not a consistent pattern to it. The much more likely theory is that it’s actual, likely drug-addled idiocy.
Squids: a little-known hazard of gay sex.
The real tragedy is when the squids are unwanted, because the parents break up.
“Congratulations, Reggie. It’s a… Squid.”
If they’d brought a few Men In Black with them, there’d have been no problems at all.
Even if it was satire, it would still be idiocy. The thing about deliberately making a shit movie is that you’re still making a shit movie, even if it was on purpose.
I agree. Hell, even before that scene, after they first land and the black pilot guy says that it’ll be dark in less than six hours so the first EVA will have to wait a day and the idiot, over-eager scientists say ‘No way man!’ and overrule him. They spent a trillion dollars and how many years to reach that place?! No. You wait another day. There’s a reason you’re supposed to have the pragmatic, sensible, para-military guys in charge of things, not the neo-hippie scientists!!