That’s not a plot hole, and requires no fan-wanking to understand.
Yes, it is a plot hole. Explain the magic blips.
(Feel free to incorporate your “Ash was lying” fanwank.)
You’re clearly not debating in good faith anymore, but here goes:
Ash gives them “motion detectors” he “threw together” to find the alien he “didn’t expect” to find from the distress beacon Weyland-Yutani “didn’t” know was out there. Every step of the way, Ash was lying to them. Clearly, the motion detectors didn’t work on micro-changes in air density (as revealed on-screen by Ripley), and were custom-built by Weyland-Yutani to facilitate tracking and catching the Alien.
I expect your retort will be that my explanation is a fanwank, but it’s really not the same. The movie reveals that the mission was specifically sent to catch the alien, Ash was attached to the crew to help achieve that goal, and that the crew was expendable. Therefore, it’s not a fanwank at all to say that the company sent along some tools to capture the alien.
You know Spoke, it really doesn’t speak well of Prometheus that the only defenses you can make for it are “Well, Alien wasn’t perfect either! Plenty of people didn’t even like it when it came out!” and “Anyone who doesn’t like Prometheus is Comic Book Guy! Comic Book Guy, Comic Book Guy, Comic Book Guy!”
The point is that you can nitpick any SF movie, CBGs did nitpick these earlier movies to death (see the Carpenter quote), and these movies are now regarded as classics of the genre. In fact, Prometheus has had a better public and critical reception than any of them.
Horseshit.
But everyone in this thread knows you’re off base, so I’ll just leave it at that. 
(Bolding mine).
Ahem. I see what you did there.
Semi-magic technology described by technobabble in a far-future science-fiction movie is a pretty minor offense.
I gave the link before, but, seriously, go read the Wikipedia page. It’s a pretty decent description of what constitutes a plot hole.
When the central plot of your movie is about contamination with a biological agent, having the characters be so blase about taking their helmets off and breathing deep is a major hole.
When your biologist tries to pet a penis-cobra, your cartographer gets lost, your ship’s captain leaves the bridge unmanned, your main character is assaulted and nearly killed by the evil robot, then is buddy-buddy a few scenes later, it’s laughable.
Do you actually not see how those are different complaints than technobabble around a minor piece of sci-fi equipment?
So if every SF movie can be nitpicked or receive criticism does that mean that every SF movie is a classic of it’s genre?
Plus, I thought comic book fans were the ones that loved these films and made them cult classics? All the comic book readers I’ve known were big fans of Blade Runner, Alien, The Thing since the VHS days.
And why are you generalizing everyone? What about the people who liked Blade Runner and Alien and The Thing when they first came out but disliked Prometheus?
Me personally, I’m glad the film is doing well because that means more SF and rated R films with big budgets. I’m also glad that it’s doing well for fans like you who want to get a sequel.
But damn, not everyone is going to like everything that you like.
Pfft. I haven’t even made a good start on potential Alien nitpicks.
Let’s see…
We’ve established that we have on-board imaging technology which allows us to peer inside a patient in real time.
We’ve established that the facehugger that latched onto Kane was feeding him oxygen and keeping him alive, presumably to some end.
Yet when the facehugger falls off it doesn’t occur to anyone to take a quick look-see inside Kane to make sure it didn’t leave anything behind? Or at the very least to make sure that it didn’t do any damage, and that Kane doesn’t, for example, have internal bleeding?
(Gee, iamthewalrus(:3=, would that be a plot hole? 
)
So now Kane has an 8-pound bouncing baby alien inside him, and he doesn’t even notice? I think most pregnant women would tell you that an 8-lb critter wriggling around inside you will get your attention.
The creature emerged from Kane’s chest. So it’s been knocking around his heart and his lungs and he wasn’t even feeling mild discomfort from the organ displacement?
And then there’s the whole Scooby-Doo-esque “Let’s split up and look for the monster” approach to finding the alien. Jinkies, that’s stupid! I half expected a long hallway shot with doors lining both sides of the corridor and the characters chasing each other back and forth to the strains of “Yakkety Sax.”
I could go on, but hopefully you see the point. You can bitch and moan and look for defects in any SF movie.
I think Prometheus is a wondrous piece of filmmaking. It just seems to me that too many posters are having a can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees problem.
I am content to let history judge.
I posted it before, but here’s Carpenter’s comment:
So yeah, he was getting blasted by fanboys the same way Ridley’s picture is getting blasted in this thread.
Not a plot hole. Ash is fully aware of what the alien is doing. There’s an earlier scene where he’s examine something through a microscope and turns off the monitors quickly when Ripley walks up behind him. He wants it to do whatever it’s going to do.
I’ll grant you this one, although I don’t know where you came up with an 8-pound figure.
They went in threes to begin with, and Brett only separated to catch the cat. Ripley and Parker were only a room away when he died. The captain had a flamethrower, and Ripley and the other girl for support on the motion tracker. They weren’t nearly as stupid as you’re trying to make them sound.
If some other movie was 100% flaws, that doesn’t make Prometheus better. Attacking other movies doesn’t defend Prometheus.
I’m glad you enjoyed the movie. Believe it or not, I enjoyed some of it, too. Great visuals, superb acting job by Fassbender, and wonderful world-building with the sets, etc. it’s just a shame I feel the writing and plot didn’t live up to the quality of those elements. I don’t get why you’re so dismissive of that. You’re acting like pointing out flaws in Prometheus is a personal attack on you, and it isn’t. There’s room in this conversation for both fans and detractors, and there’s no reason to take this so personally.
No, here’s my point:
I think Prometheus is a real gem, a visual wonder with a depth that will reward repeat viewings and enough lingering mysteries to fuel conversation and debate for years to come. I think that in time it will join the ranks of the classics.
Now you may disagree, and that’s fine, but the fact that you can come up with a list of objections to the script doesn’t make your case. I can come up with a similar list of complaints for whatever movie you may happen to love.
Spoke has a point. Those who find flaws with the movie are on the same side as Hitler.
Although Spoke does seem to have an ironic misunderstanding of the word fanboy. He feels that the people who criticize the movies are fanboys, whereas he, who dismisses all criticism of the movie as evidence of some sort of character flaw on the criticizer’s part, and who seems to take it personally when it’s criticized, apparently is not.
Random thing I just remembered. The scene where the Scottish husband and wife are discussing why the engineers might’ve created life, and were having some psuedo-deep conversation about the creation of life that I can’t quite remember the details of, she suddenly turns and says something like “EXCEPT ME, YOU HATE ME BECAUSE I CAN’T MAKE BABIES 
:(”
and I could only think “Holy shit bitch, really? We’re here possibly about to make first contact with alien life, our creators, and you have to turn it into your personal drama even though it has nothing at all to do with what we were talking about? And you made it sound like I was accusing you somehow, even though we discussing this Big Important Discovery here and it wasn’t just some thinly veiled excuse to hate on you for having a wonky uterus”
And then I would’ve decapitated her.
Oh, I’m sure that scene was necesary for the oh so subtle foreshadowing or something, but at the time I could only think “wtf, really bitch?!”
What are acceptable criticisms of a film in your opinion?
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Wouldn’t that make Spoke a fanboy?
Yeah, that was my point - his behavior displays something far closer to fanboyism than anyone else in the thread.
Other thought about the movie: The Weyland twist is pointless and stupid both from a storytelling/logical point and an emotional impact from the audience way. I’m not sure if I was supposed to be shocked or otherwise affected but it just seemed pointless.
What would be more interesting is… what if Weyland was openly aboard the mission, and did the recruiting himself, and basically sold it as “I want to make the greatest discovery in history before I die, and I want to give you the chance to help”? And then he plays a true believer, seems charming and likable… but then… it turns out that it’s all about trying to find the secret for immortality for himself, and he’s willing to sacrifice the rest of the crew to make it happen. Instead of pointlessly faking his own death, he could be portrayed as a likable pioneer into a villain. Would’ve been a more interesting route for the movie to take anyway.
Thanks for the link. The dude in the video was just as on point here as he was with his criticism of Terminator: Salvation.
On Prometheus: “Nothing these characters do seem to make any sense!”
The atmosphere contained about 20% Oxygen. I believe the only way that a planetary atmosphere can maintain a high level of such a reactive gas is for it to be produced by biological processes.
Thus the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere is a very strong indicator of at least single celled [or there alien equivalent] organisms being prevalent on this planet.