Prometheus discussion with open spoilers [edited title]

[iamthewalrus_3]

@alphaboi867

The whole “FTL by 2089” thing is a necessary conceit.

I don’t have a problem with FTL in the next 50 years. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s not necessarily something that would happen incrementally. If in 30-40 years, we have computers that can start making real advances in physics… sure. It could happen.

[Locrian]

I LOVED this film SO MUCH! Ridley’s best!

Ever since I was a kid and saw Alien, I always wondered what kind of species would build a ship like a ring of ring baloney, now I got my answer.

So these aliens are created through the womb of a cute and sexy as hell scientist and an infected biologist. Talk about a hybrid!

[carlotta]

I agree with pretty much all the complaints in this thread. I loved Alien and Aliens and have watched each multiple times. These characters make Brett and Parker and Hudson look like frickin geniuses.

I would simply like to register my extreme objection to the line “It’s a mural!” uttered in the same tones of awe as “My God, it’s full of stars!”

Yes, hard as it is to believe, a technologically advanced alien race you found because of paintings on walls was …able to paint on walls!

[Lamia]

@carlotta

I would simply like to register my extreme objection to the line “It’s a mural!” uttered in the same tones of awe as “My God, it’s full of stars!”

Yes, hard as it is to believe, a technologically advanced alien race you found because of paintings on walls was …able to paint on walls!

Maybe they were just impressed that the Big Bald Guys went to so much trouble decorating the room they used to store their canisters of black goo. They didn’t stop with the giant stone head, they did murals too! That’s some fancy weapon storage facility.

[msmith537]

@Lamia

Yeah, this is basically my feeling about the later movies in the series, although I don’t feel it’s really a problem with the first one. (Nor with Prometheus, as Weyland Corp isn’t after the xenomorphs yet.) It’s not clear in Alien how much the company knows about the xenomorphs, and I can’t remember if it’s even explained why they want to get ahold of a live one until the second movie. Since the blood of the xenomorphs is a powerful acid, it could be that the company wanted to study that and use it in weapons and/or for industrial purposes. But certainly by the end of the first movie it seems like these critters are more trouble than they could possibly be worth.

IIRC, Ash the android from the first film was acting on behalf of the company and the company sent them to the planet. But I don’t think it was ever clear if they knew what it was or what they planned to do with it.
I did like that the big Mr Clean alien was a giant dick though. Aliens usually are so pretentous and give these long boring expositionary dialogue about how we humans are so dangeous and immature that they need to wipe us out of the universe. He basically reacted the way we might if we were woken up by a band of talking monkeys.

[Red_Barchetta]

@carlotta

I would simply like to register my extreme objection to the line “It’s a mural!” uttered in the same tones of awe as “My God, it’s full of stars!”

Particularly as “My God, it’s full of stars” isn’t in the movie…well, the only one that exists anyway

[SenorBeef]

Prometheus running a 7.8 on IMDB right now. That’s gotta be a fanboy bump, right? But it’s almost 41k ratings, so…

I was looking through the IMDB page and I see Damon Lindelof was a writer. Which is funny, because during the movie I actually thought to myself that the character actions were stupid and inexplicable enough to almost hit Lost level. Apparently writing characters as mystery boxes with random motivations and illogical actions is his MO.

[Locrian]

@Bozuit

Questions about the film:

Why did David mess about with the black goo anyway? I never got that part.

I thought the same freaking thing. This is due to the “comatose” Weyland Senior who tells David to “Try Harder.” (???) We don’t know if dipping the black goo to make a baby was part of David’s programming, specific instructions, or even a backup plan Weyland was going with. Maybe Weyland thought a hybrid would eventually bring a cure for death to humans, or maybe he knew it would bring chaos?? Either way, his androids show up on ships 200 years later…

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@SenorBeef

I was looking through the IMDB page and I see Damon Lindelof was a writer. Which is funny, because during the movie I actually thought to myself that the character actions were stupid and inexplicable enough to almost hit Lost level. Apparently writing characters as mystery boxes with random motivations and illogical actions is his MO.

I never saw Lost, but I had plenty of friends and co-workers who were fans, and after the show ended their bitching could be heard over the sound of heavy machinery.

You’ll be happy(?) to know that he’s been called in to re-write World War Z, a movie that never should have been made in the first place. Word is that it’s the 3rd Act that he’s mostly working on, which is weird because IMO he’s shown himself to be utterly incapable of writing an ending twice now.

[SenorBeef]

Wow, that sounds awful. World War Z was a massive dissapointment since it apparently has nothing at all to do with the actual material it’s based on, but instead just turns into a generic “hero tries to prevent the apocalypse movie”, but now Lindelof is involved? No doubt it’ll be an abortion that serves only to piss off the people who enjoyed the source material.

[Omniscient]

I just got back from a Sunday evening showing of Prometheus in 3D. The trailers for the movie were awesome, really really awesome. I loved the Alien movies and my expectations were high. All in all, I’m a bit disappointed after seeing it though. The visuals were pretty terrific, at least the space, outdoor shots and effects anyways. I saw a 3D version and it was used to pretty good effect. However, the part that is probably spoiling it is that so many parts made no darn sense. I suspect that at least a portion of that is my being out of touch with the “Aliens Mythology”, and the rest is either going to be bad story telling or me missing things in the viewing.

So, for those of you who might be Aliens nerds and saw the movie this weekend, help a brother out.

1. What was the deal with the white dot holograms on the Engineers ship/installation? We see David seemingly trigger them in the tunnel pretty much immediately upon entering, then again they seem to happen spontaneously in the control room. What were they? Recordings? How would David have known about them? Shouldn’t someone have asked to see more if that’s the case?

2. In the beginning when the Engineer landed on what you’d guess was Earth millions of years ago, what was he up to? Was that whole dying, agonizing pain, disintegrating thing intentional? It didn’t really seem like it. But why else would he have landed there alone and drank that nasty stuff? The stuff he drank, that was the same stuff from the canisters in the installation, right? We’re supposed to deduct that the Engineer’s DNA dispersed itself into the water and led to the first bits of life that eventually evolved into Humans, right? Or are we supposed to instead assume that there’s a more direct path from that DNA to people?

3. The cave paintings? So the Engineers, millions of years, after “seeding” the planet were stopping by to visit every few thousand years? What’s the point of that? Were they as violent and out for death then too? Sometime between when they visited the Egyptians and now they decided to go all batshit and plan a holocaust?

4. WTF was David’s plan with infecting Holloway? Did David somehow know they’d have sex immediately after? Because if not, it probably wouldn’t have been a very productive move for him. Obviously David was trying to import a chest burster to Earth long before Burke.

5. How did David know so much about the Engineers and their tech. I can buy the whole language/reading thing I guess, but how’d he know to trigger that hologram on the first trip in?

6. So Weyland’s entire plan was to meet with the Engineers and ask them to heal him? That’s all fine and dandy, but why all the evilness along the way? Why hide? Why have David infect Holloway and try and bring back a sample?

7. The black stuff. Is it a biological weapon? Something else? It infected the worms and turned them into those viper like things, right? It infected and killed the headless alien and Holloway. The same stuff that disintegrates the Engineer in the opening scene. Versatile stuff that. WTF.

8. Zombies…really?

9. What happened with the Biologist after he got killed. Shouldn’t he have had a chest burster in there?

10. How does all this fit into the Alien mythology? I forget the start of the original Alien. Did the Nostromo somehow connect with either Shaw and David’s ship or this planet?

That’s enough for now. Was this movie just stupid or am I missing something. I want to think this Sci-Fi holds up under scrutiny since there wasn’t enough action or horror to stand on that alone.

[Locrian]

@Lamia

Shaw’s claim that the Big Bald Guys planned to kill us with the black goo then changed their minds is one of the more bizarre leaps of logic made by the characters in this movie. There was plenty of evidence, including a huge pile of corpses, to indicate that something had gone terribly wrong 2,000 years ago and killed (nearly) all the BBGs in the area. Shaw’s inference that they’d changed their minds about coming back to Earth struck me as rather like finding the wreckage of the Titanic, filled with the skeletons of dead passengers, and saying “Hmm, I wonder why they all decided not to go to New York after all?”

She figured out when they woke the survivor that no matter how long, this race was going to Earth no matter how many we’re dead. There was still a chance for the Promethians to eradicate Earth and hopefully live happily ever after there. Kill Earth, THEN find a way to kill the stupid virus they used.

At first, it appeared the plan went sour, but the waking Albino immediately followed his orders: Get to Earth, dump bio-virus. Wait. Grow fruit, have lots of large Albino kids.

[Locrian]

@misterW

Also, what exactly is the nature of these aliens?

I assumed they were parasite types like in the past movies, but what was the deal with the human-like creature that went beserk right outside the ship, until it was run over, burnt, and shot to death?

Remember this bio weapon was in the beta stage. And he wasn’t implanted like so many others in later years in the Alien series. He simply drank it.

David spiked his drink either because he was told to, or that’s how he interpreted Weyland telling him to “try harder.”

Or maybe Weyland never told him that. There’s one mystery.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Locrian

Remember this bio weapon was in the beta stage.

I’m sorry, I must have missed the part(s) of the Alien movies where we learned that the Xenomorphs were some kind of bio-weapon. I must have similarly missed the part(s) in Prometheus where we learned that the black goo or anything else was a bio-weapon. Could you help me out and refresh my memory on those points?

[grude]

Was anyone else dissapointed with the info given in the movie?

Alien 1979 presents one of the best depictions of first contact ever in my opinion, humans finding evidence of alien intelligence is a total accident, they find a millions year old wreck.

The ship is awe inspiring, is it organic or artificial? The vaguely giant humanoid pilot seems to have a feeding tube or breathing tube or natural proboscus growing into its face, in fact one of the humans notes in shock that the pilot seems to be bonded or growing out of the ship! WOW think about that for awhile.

The cargo of eggs it is carrying, what are they? Bioweapon, food, medicine? Who knows.

Oh no wait they are big muscular albino guys

[Locrian]

@Snowboarder_Bo

I’m sorry, I must have missed the part(s) of the Alien movies where we learned that the Xenomorphs were some kind of bio-weapon. I must have similarly missed the part(s) in Prometheus where we learned that the black goo or anything else was a bio-weapon. Could you help me out and refresh my memory on those points?

This is how the “Promethians” or Xenomorphs were going to wipe out their new home. They had a map of the universe, focused in on Earth (why David was seen holding the holograph of our planet) and was planning to bring the virus/bioweapon here. Maybe they didn’t create it, but discovered it and thought they could control it. Sounds too human to be creepier to me.

David knew the goo was organic, was told ( or so we think ) to “try harder” by Weyland. Try harder for a cure, a bargain, or maybe just try harder to get a biological lifeform back from this planet. ( just like Ash in Alien, programmed to bring an Alien back, or Reiser in Aliens, told to impregnate the females.) Maybe the Alien knows the cure for death, maybe we can make it fight death.

The planet they were they thought they were “invited” to was a testing ground for this weapon. It didn’t work, wiped out the Promethians. They were still either driven/under orders/ malicious/whatever, to keep with the plan. As another poster pointed out, maybe the drawings were a warning, just like the beacon in Alien. “DO NOT FIND US! IT WILL BE AN AWFUL WEEKEND FOR YOU!”

Since the DNA was a match (which is unclear as to now), survival seems to be a trait we share.

Still, when the team woke up the remaining survivor, David spoke SOMETHING to it, and it raged. It ( the survivor) knew it was a threat to its species survival. It’s been asleep, it doesn’t know the humans lived. When it saw this, its first reaction was to defend itself, for its species, and leap to the control deck and still try to “cleanse” planet Earth for a chance at survival.

It seems the Promethians had the same reaction to the dead one they discovered who was decapitated, most likely, by the door. The black goo got loose, infected them, and they had their own little version of Aliens, just with large, white aliens, and died just like all the humans did on LV-426 centuries later.

As far as where this Alien DNA came from, to inflict itself into others, may have been created, discovered, whatever. But I think with Weyland and “The Company”, plus our addiction to finding the perfect weapon in bio or nuclear weapons, our sharing of similar DNA is just that same goal any species wants: survival.

I thought it was funny when the remaining alien woke up and started kicking ass, just because it was like finding a guy in a fallout shelter-- 40 years after he went in-- and trying to convince him the Cold War is over, the Ruskies are now called the Detroit Red Wings and Borscht isn’t really that bad.

To make this entire story line short, ( too late ): curiosity killed the humans. Just like it did with our large, white DNA-mates.

[Locrian]

And a big KUDOS to** cmyk**. His analysis is my favorite.

[twickster]

Omniscient, I merged your OP into the thread already in progress.

twickster, Cafe Society moderator

[Astral_Rejection]

I reported it for a possible name change so that people realize this is the place for open discussion of Prometheus.

[Saint_Cad]

Anyone else sitting until the end of the credits notice a reference to the Weyland Corporation and the date 10-11-2012? I wonder what that is all about.