Prometheus discussion with open spoilers [edited title]

Cafe Society
81

That didn’t make any sense. Also when someone reported that Fifield was outside the ship, they opened the cargo hold for him, without checking him out at all? At this point they knew that people were being infected or altered.

As to why the BBG’s had DNA identical to humans; perhaps life did evolve on Earth and they were taken elsewhere where they evolved further?

And did the opening scene indicate that they were 3 x 10^14 kilometers from Earth? If so, then that sounds like the planet was 31 light years away, although they said that they had been traveling for only about two years.

82

One of the flaws that bothers me the most is that the black goo is never explained. I don’t mean how it works… I mean what it does. I don’t mind it being totally unrealistic. I just want to know exactly what’s at stake, and how much danger our protagonists are in.

The black goo kills the BBA at the beginning movie, but also creates DNA. It poisons and dissolves Charlie, but makes bioworms at the same time (in his eye, in the dirt, etc). It creates a tentacle monster in Shaw, and melts the plastic of Mohawk-dude’s helmet. It turns him into a zombie, I guess, and explodes the BBA’s recovered head. It doesn’t hurt David at all, despite being dangerous to their spacesuits. I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting.

So I’m completely unclear on what it does, or why it does it.

83

I took that to mean that they had faster than light technology.

In 80 years. 'cause you know, that kind of tech is just around the corner, don’t ya know!

It’s the natural progression of things. From walking, to horses, to cars, to planes and then it’s just a short jump to 1.07925285 × 10^9 kph.

84

All we know for sure is that if an android slips some into the drink of a human male, and then he has sex with a human female, it will impregnate her with a squid monster, which will grow huge with no appreciable caloric input, then can in turn orally impregnate a BBG, which will result in a proto-xenomorph, which can lay eggs, which spawn face huggers, which orally impregnate humans with more xenomorphs.

What is so hard to understand here? :smiley:

85

As I said in the other thread, this was a pretty crappy movie.

You know what struck me about it the most? It was one of the same things that struck me as odd (and bad) about another movie that everyone LOOOOVED but that I thought stunk: I don’t even remember (or know) most of the characters’ names. I remember Vickers, and Shaw, and David. Other than that, they were just A Bunch Of Secondary Characters. Shaw’s Boyfriend Doctor, the Captain, the Navigator, the Other Guy That Helped Fly The Ship, the Older Lady, the Biologist, the Geologist, and Some Other Guys. FFS, there were only SEVENTEEN people onboard the Prometheus; why didn’t they all have names, not to mention characterizations?

I also thought the pacing of the movie sucked. FFS, everything happens in like 24 hours once they wake from cryosleep. They wake up from 2 years of cryosleep, land on an alien planet a couple of hours later, and then head right out the door without doing any recon or diagnostic work at all. The crew didn’t use or even seem to need the loads of gym space and workout equipment that we were shown. They also were apparently unconcerned with any possible alien biology in any way whatsoever.

If the opening scene wasn’t a rogue BBG seeding our planet with his DNA as his fellows left the planet in their Big Bad Spaceship, it was a pointless scene.

I got tired of the way that nobody talked about anything and how what should have been traumatic events were just ignored or forgotten moments after they concluded. I mean, come on: giving yourself a make-shift abortion while awake? And then moments later being able to run and jump and get hit in the stomach with a club and then lowering an robotic body and then rappelling and THEN running away from a crashed doughnut spaceship? :dubious:

I gotta stop now. There was so potential in this movie, and it was all pissed away for nothing. There’s no tension. There’s no suspense. There’s no sense of “what’s gonna happen next” to it at all. It was beautiful to look at, at times, but even a lot of that left me going “WTF?” For instance, why was there a huge BBG head sculpture? And why was the fact that it was there IGNORED by everyone of the humans who saw it?

Okay, okay. I’ll stop after this bit: I’d give the movie a 5.5 out of 10, and the .5 is only because there were some excellent shots of a scantily clad Noomi Rapace’s butt, and she (and her butt) totally fucking rocks.

86

I agree with this 100%. But the goo didn’t melt Mohawk’s helmet. That was the acid blood of the moray eel when he cut it. Also, I think people are over thinking the parentage of the xenomorph. Bald aliens are genetically human, so it doesn’t matter that the facehugger impregnated the Engineer. The xenomorph could have been implanted in anyone.

Was I the only one who found the score of the movie distracting, intrusive and annoying? It sounded more appropriate for a Civil War movie and swelled at odd moments. If I notice the score at all, that’s a sign something is off.

Visually, this movie is stunning. Script-wise, it’s a half-baked mess with gestures toward profundity completely undermined by its pure inanity. I mean, Jesus Christ, really? Facehuggers as retribution for killing Jesus? The mind boggles…

87

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Guy Pearce’s makeup was terrible. I’ve seen better work from 15 year old kids submitted to Fangoria. It was so bad it took me right out of the movie every time he was on screen.

88

Did they completely ignore Alien v Predator’s xenomorphs in the Aztec temple in Antarctica? It seems like they JUST created the xenomorphs last week then?

89

I kind of thought the engineers seeded us because they needed more hosts. Look, a whole nice lovely planet of potential hosts.

I was also disappointed in the movie for many of the reasons mentioned (the weird character reactions, lack of communication, bad old person make-up job and as someone else mentioned, the score). Michael Fassbender is a treasure though, here’s on to bigger and better things for him!

90

Yeah, I didn’t know who he was until after I saw this movie. Looked him up on IMDB and realised I’d already seen and loved him in several other films without drawing the connection. Great actor (speaks fluent german as well apparently). If he was a company, I’d be buying shares.

91

No, that’s deliberately left unanswered as is the question as to why they decided to wipe out humanity.

The fact that they’re left unanswered is the reason the movie ends the way it does.

92

Was it explained what killed the Engineers on the planet? We saw the holographic recording of them running, and the one being decapitated by the door. I presume something went wrong with their biological agent black goo, and were running from an infected Engineer or something, but I don’t remember if that was explained.

Also, can someone remind me how we know that the Engineer was leaving to go to Earth and finish it off? Was it just assumed that that’s what he was going to do, and better to be safe than sorry and take out his ship? I went to the Wikipedia page to see if it was explained in the plot summary there, but it just says

The Engineer didn’t say anything to David; he just listened to what David said, ripped his head off, hit and/or killed the others, and launched his ship. So how did David know what the Engineer was going to do?

And I definitely don’t know why the Engineers apparently went to Earth circa 35000 years ago and showed humans where the biological chemical weapon planet was. Maybe it is supposed to be unknowable, since they are aliens and a lot of their motivations would be totally alien to us, but I keep wondering about it.

I didn’t think it was terrible, but it wasn’t good, and it was distracting. And I kept thinking that Weyland would get healed and transformed back to youth, because why else hire Guy Pearce to play the character rather than someone who’s actually old? Pearce is one of my favorite actors ever, and I always like seeing him in movies, but I don’t know why he was cast there.

Despite my questions and complains, I enjoyed it. I found it very tense in parts. It was absolutely beautiful and had some great acting. Everyone is rightfully pointing out how great Fassbender was in it, but I also love Charlize Theron. One of the reviews I read (maybe io9?) that pointed out that Vickers had a somewhat sibling rivalry with David. She was tense with David and only agreed to sleep with the Captain only after he asked if she was a robot. Theron was very good at the chilly character who was somewhat overwhelmed at points but mostly keeping it together.

93

That wasn’t the first xenomorph. The ship in Alien was older than when this movie happened. And you can see a wall relief sculpture of a xenomorph in the giant face room. It’s clear xenomorphs are an already known and previously existing possible consequence of the black goo.

94

That’s backwards. Shaw claimed they created us and then changed their minds and decided to destroy us.

95

I think the headless engineer must have been infected and the others killed him by chopping his head off with the door, preserving his head until it was reactivated at which point it exploded. But I’m not sure if all the others were killed by him or if some were infected and sploded too.

David knew what the Engineers were doing because he watched the holo vids of what happened and saw the computer schematics of their plan. Remember him holding the Earth in his hands?

I don’t think it’s weird that he could speak to them because he already extrapolated the basics of their language before the mission, learned the written language from the hieroglyphs all over the base, and then heard them speaking in the holovids. It was a process.

96

I didn’t get the impression that Vickers was a robot at all.

Yep, the AvP films are not canon for the purposes of this film. Granted I don’t think anything actually shown onscreen contradicts them; only Scott’s words and the marketing material do.

We saw a holographic representation of his flight plan to Earth, and he’s flying a warship filled with bioweapons. Genocide seems like a safe bet.

97

Just saw it. Awful. Story line full of holes, characters acted inconsistently and stupidly. Good special effects; is that why some people liked it?

98

The Vickers thing reminds me: there were two scenes that were played like they were big reveals and totally fell flat. First, when Charlize Theron is talking to the Old Dude, and adds, “Dad.” Duh-duh-DUH! Even though if you had been conscious at all during the previous five minutes, you already got that.

Secondly, the big reveal of the xenomorph at the end. Yeah, I know they had to show it, but guess what? Alien I is 30 years old, we know what it’s going to look like. Plus we already saw the queen in the artwork in the Giant Head room. The way they built it up with the music and the shots of it morphing, you’d think they thought no one realized this was a prequel to Alien.

In the minor gripe column, there was so much silica flying and quick edit jumps, that I could barely tell what was happening in the sand storm rescue scene. I finally gave up trying to figure out who was where and rested assured knowing that no major characters were going to be killed off in the first half hour.

99

If you’re right then it’s even dumber that she’d decide to seek out the BBGs at the end of the movie, and as I said I already considered that the worst decision ever.

They couldn’t have known for sure (although no one seemed to express any doubt about this), but there was evidence that this had at least been the BBG’s original plan:

It seems more likely to me that once the surviving BBG realized that he’d been in stasis for a very long time and all his colleagues were dead then destroying the Earth wouldn’t be his top priority. He’d presumably try to get in touch with the home planet (if it exists) first, but I don’t think I’d be willing to bet my home planet on the mission being called off or abandoned. Compared to most of the other things that happened in the movie, the decision to kamikaze the BBG ship was pretty reasonable.

Heck, I got it as soon as the hologram of Guy Pearce appeared early in the movie. I was surprised when the revelation that he was her father was presented in a manner that indicated it was meant to be surprising.

100

Beautiful movie. Some really spectacular scenery, and also some really beautiful actors (some of whom definitely can really act.)

Unfortunately the movie is kind of a bimbo–beautiful but dumb.

I totally agree with the various people who pointed out that these characters’ actions MAKE NO DAMNED SENSE. I mean…you’ve got two guys (allegedly scientists) who are so totally freaked out by ancient dead bodies in an ancient ruin (ancient dead extraterrestrial bodies, probably the Greatest Scientific Discovery of All Time), that they act like a couple of twelve-year-olds and decide to run back to the ship (and get lost on the way). Then, these same two fraidy-cats encounter a scary-ass alien snake-thing that emerges from a puddle of black goo, and repeatedly makes blatantly obvious threat displays. What’s their reaction? “Awww, look at it–here kitty kitty kitty! Oh, look, it’s flaring its widdle hood and hissing, just like a cobra! Maybe it wants to play!” :smack:

And I realize no one wants to sit in the theater for a couple of months while the starship crew sits in orbit, running remote scans, then sending down robot probes to scout out the territory, then bigger probes to return samples to carefully sealed labs, and so on, but you could at least have some dialogue, throw up a caption “TWO MONTHS AFTER LV-423 ARRIVAL”, cut to the characters arguing “The probes have gotten us all the data they’re gonna get–we didn’t travel 34 light years just to sit up here in orbit! We land at local dawn at Site 247A!” (And why tell us how far away this planet is in kilometers?) Maybe have some other character arguing that no, it’s still too dangerous, throw in some plot shenanigans to account for why all the probes miss the incredibly blatant dangers, etc.

I also agree with what several people said in that I kept expecting Weyland/Guy Pearce to pop up all “healed” and young again. Or, in this movie, maybe Not-Weyland/Guy Pearce, just Something That Looks Like Weyland/Guy Pearce. But otherwise, why hire Guy Pearce to play someone who’s 102 years old?

Also–I know this one has also already been pointed out in the thread–but right there in the theater as it’s happening I’m thinking “If a huge linear object is falling on you, maybe you should run off to one side!” Which both of them fail to do. Squish!

As to Shaw deciding to fly off to visit the BBG homeworld–I dunno, maybe she’s planning to open a can of their own biowarfare whoopass on them? That would make some sense at least–as much sense as anything else anybody does in this movie.

:smiley: