Kaldor wrote:What claims? My only claim is that you're wrong. The characters motivations make total sense, no 'fanwank' required.
People don't act like the biologist acted. This is not a debatable point, it's just a statement of basic fething reality.
And yeah, you typing out a paragraph of stuff you made up in your head to explain the actions of a minor character is perhaps the definitive version of fanwank. Don't like the term, don't do it.
Thanks for playing, Sweetheart.
Seriously, it is okay to accept that part of a movie you liked wasn't that good. Just let it happen. The release you feel will be tremendous. You won't have to act like an ass on the internet any more. You can just say 'yeah, that part was a little weak but didn't impact my enjoyment of the movie'.
What a wonderful world that would be. No stupid arguments about trivial but indefensible things. You can make that world happen. Just... become a reasonable person capable of accepting that a thing you like can have weak points. From there reasoned analysis of film might even become achievable.
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?"
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?"
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.
An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.
I don't understand how people can't wrap their heads around the idea that a character under extreme duress might do something stupid.
I mean, just read the Darwin Awards for some examples of people that do stupid gak. It happens all the time.
Kaldor wrote:An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.
...
If the Biologist had been established to have a bold adventuring personality (which he sort of did in the first few minutes of his intro), that might of worked. But then he turned to pudding with the geologist and wussed out, spending every moment prior to his eminent doom shaking and going "oh my gosh what is that!" EDIT: Heck, the stupidity of that has already been noted by TV Tropes under Idiot Ball: Yes, go ahead and pet the strange hissing cobra thing; we all want to see what happens. Scratch that, we've paid to see it.
It's not like they didn't just find a bunch of corpses with giant holes blown into their heads (not that them getting lost isn't silly in itself).
Also, Steve Irwin was a TV personality. Not exactly a good example of 'real' people, unless we're now counting the Kardashians as anything other than a bunch of losers who play losers on tv. And Steve Irwin never went to an alien planet either, and he wasn't a biologist. He never even went to college (he didn't look like a nerd either).
I fail to see how Steve Irwin is at all a good comparison, though things didn't exactly go so well for him either XD
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.
I've explained this to you several times now. You keep pretending to not get it, so that you can keep pretending there isn't a single little thing wrong with a movie you liked. Do you see how Mannahnin said "I liked the movie, but his behaviour was not credible"... that's because he's a reasonable, smart guy. You can be just as reasonable, you know.
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Kaldor wrote:An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.
Steve Irwin didn't run away scared from the site of a dead body, only to play with a poisonous snake an hour or so later. Seriously, give it up.
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.
There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.
There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.
There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.
There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?
The characterisations aren't one of them.
What, the same squid thing that has a pregnancy cycle of a few hours, implying it probably matures pretty quickly. That was the thing you had a problem with?
The only person not grasping the simple, basic idea is yourself, for days you have repeated the same point, and everyone has disagreed with you. Does that not tell you something. Stop trying to defend the indefensible, because you must be doing that, or you have very little concept of humanity and how people act.
The reason is that they're supposed to be people. People don't run away scared from something that isn't actually dangerous, and then go up and pet a snake a few minutes later. Those kinds of wild behaviour swings exist in whacky comedies and some of the more dreadful Victorian stuff, and in every case it was done to make some greater political point (normally 'this guy is such a jerk').
To return to your Steve Irwin example, if we saw him backing away from seeing a dead body we'd say 'that's not like Steve Irwin at all, he's normally noted as being very brave, almost foolhardy'. You claim that people would think 'oh people are irrational and that means for reasons we can invent on the spot we should be willing to expect wild changes in characteristics from moment to moment'.
There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?
The characterisations aren't one of them.
Okay, cool, we've gotten somewhere. That's something, I guess. Now we can just get over your ego admitting you were wrong on the characterisation, and I reckon we'll be well on our way to a sensible conversation.
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.
There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.
There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?
The characterisations aren't one of them.
What, the same squid thing that has a pregnancy cycle of a few hours, implying it probably matures pretty quickly. That was the thing you had a problem with?
Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?
But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.
Kaldor wrote:
Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?
But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.
This has reached the level of farce, I shall now just laugh at you and your mantra.
Kaldor wrote:What claims? My only claim is that you're wrong. The characters motivations make total sense, no 'fanwank' required.
People don't act like the biologist acted. This is not a debatable point, it's just a statement of basic fething reality.
People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
Name one instance where a biologist, after seeing a video of a bunch of guys that would make prowrestlers look like babies running from something, then seeing lots of thoe guys now dead, then being lost, then seeing some creepy ass snake thing appear which reacts just like a threatened cobra would, then think "hey no problem, lets see if it likes its neck rubbed."
In the words of the immortal bard: "sucker please."
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LordofHats wrote:
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.
Further, he got lost because he freaked out and bailed after seeing all the alien bodies. His operational mode was not "to boldly go where no man has gone before" but more "wo I'm outta here."
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Kaldor wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.
You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.
An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.
I don't understand how people can't wrap their heads around the idea that a character under extreme duress might do something stupid.
I mean, just read the Darwin Awards for some examples of people that do stupid gak. It happens all the time.
Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.
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There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?
Now this is an issue. In Alien the creautre was able to grow so quickly because in the script/book it got into the food lockers and went to town.
Squid boy on the other hand was still locked in the medical room. No munchies to grow on. Unless it feeds on rather sterile air or eats plasteel its not physically possible. Cool, but not possible.
Ok it wasn't cool. I thought that whole portion was incredibly stupid.
*Why did the surviving engineer take after her? He wasn't looking for a ship, as there were others.
*Why did the surviving engineer not have a ray gun? Its like GW scripted their HTH combat techniques. "Mmmf he's big, he doesn't even need a sword."
*How did the engineer make it to the pod. If they are human(like) he would have been susceptible to the atmosphere and died too.
OT but am I correct in that the snake thingies had acid for blood?
OT but is this Alien 1.0 life cycle?
***Engineers bomb planet with goo.
***peoples get all infecty and do the disco boogie.
***squid boy appears.
***squid boy injects other peoples
***alien 1.0 appears (looked like sharkman to me).
Kaldor wrote: Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?
But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.
In the original ALIEN the Xenomorph reaches complete maturity without any sustenance, ergo... vis a vis... concordantly it's not that hard to imagine that this Proto-Facehugger can too.
Thinking the actions of the needlessly aggressive and cowardly geologist and the non event other scientist playing with the space phallus serpent wasn't a completely fethed in the head idea is mental. We have two guys that want to run away at the first site of dead humanoid aliens but want to interact with something that looks like a rape cobra.
The other thing I didn't understand about the scene in which the leave the ship while trying to outrun the storm is that the big covered rover vehicle is missing, yet nobody had left yet... unless there were other pleb scientists off screen that had left beforehand? This really perplexed me, although if they had been in the rover the scene wouldn't have been as tense... so... hmmm...
alarmingrick wrote:
Corpsesarefun wrote:
Medium of Death wrote:The Only problem with that is that the SJ in ALIEN is fossilised so has to be well in excess of 2000 years old.
We don't know it's fossilised, we just know it had an outer layer with a mineral-esque composition which is easily explained by it being armour.
That, and the environments are different. They could be from the same time, but due to different exposures of different air, chemicals, etc...could have a vastly different appearance. As far as I know noone in the Aliens universe went back to the first ship and did any carbon dating or any other form of age measurement.
I could potentially agree on the fossilisation thing if it wasn't for the the fact Dallas clearly states that it is 'Fossilised'. He might be wrong as he isn't a paleontologist, but without any other evidence on the contrary why should we think he is wrong or try and explain it as something else? We now know they have been about long enough for fossilisation to occur, so it's still plausible but completely rules out an LV426 Prometheus connection.
Another thing I have noticed is that the SJ in ALIEN looks substantially bigger than the ones in Prometheus. Either this shows another type of SJ/Engineer or that perhaps their size was suitably scaled back to make it easier for them to interact with Humans.
I'm not sure what you guys made of the carved skull in the rock face near the Engineer facility. I had to double take, and wondered what it was all about. I couldn't understand why an advanced race would carve a giant skull into the surrounding sandstone.
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Frazzled wrote: OT but am I correct in that the snake thingies had acid for blood? OT but is this Alien 1.0 life cycle? ***Engineers bomb planet with goo. ***peoples get all infecty and do the disco boogie. ***squid boy appears. ***squid boy injects other peoples ***alien 1.0 appears (looked like sharkman to me).
That seems a bit...complicated.
They did have acid for blood, suggesting that the goo passes on Xenomorph traits. I was also thinking that is what they would do with the goo, but seems far too convoluted to be true. The only thing I guess could be wrong is that the black goo transforms people into xenomorphs or at least a proto-xenomorph on it's own. The Proto Facehugger thing is perhaps an unintended by product. We never get to see a full transformation as both infected individuals are destroyed before the infection can take complete hold of them, although we did see needlessly aggressive ginger scientist start to do a crab walk like pose, somewhat similar to this. I'd imagine that it's somewhat like that scrapped ALIEN 3 script in which the Humans transform into hybrid Xenomorphs through being infected with Xeno-DNA. I'm very surprised that the Proto-Xeno-Hybrid thing didn't look more human, as Giger has always wanted to make something more human.
Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.
Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.
Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh
AM I the only one who remembers the claymation spoofs of Steve Irwin? 100% win!
Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.
Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh
What would you expect from someone who's life is ruled by Weiners?
Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.
Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh
What would you expect from someone who's life is ruled by Weiners?
All tremble before the awesome might of BADGER Dogs!
Medium of Death wrote:The Only problem with that is that the SJ in ALIEN is fossilised so has to be well in excess of 2000 years old.
We don't know it's fossilised, we just know it had an outer layer with a mineral-esque composition which is easily explained by it being armour.
That, and the environments are different. They could be from the same time, but due to different exposures of different air, chemicals, etc...could have a
vastly different appearance. As far as I know noone in the Aliens universe went back to the first ship and did any carbon dating or any other form of age
measurement.
I could potentially agree on the fossilisation thing if it wasn't for the the fact Dallas clearly states that it is 'Fossilised'. He might be wrong as he isn't a paleontologist, but without any other evidence on the contrary why should we think he is wrong or try and explain it as something else? We now know they have been about long enough for fossilisation to occur, so it's still plausible but completely rules out an LV426 Prometheus connection.
Another thing I have noticed is that the SJ in ALIEN looks substantially bigger than the ones in Prometheus. Either this shows another type of SJ/Engineer or that perhaps their size was suitably scaled back to make it easier for them to interact with Humans.
I'm not sure what you guys made of the carved skull in the rock face near the Engineer facility. I had to double take, and wondered what it was all about. I couldn't understand why an advanced race would carve a giant skull into the surrounding sandstone.
Being exposed to different climates, as mentioned already, could be the reason for the body to seem fossilized. It's not like Dallas is an expert, as you mentioned.
I think the difference of the head/helmets of the SJ/Engineers is a bigger problem for me. It could be that they are different creatures or species.
There was an article in a cinefex in which some of the people involved were interviewed and some of the early production designs are was shown. In it there was a bit more explanation of things, such as a bit more on the goo.
The drink at the beginning is not the same as the stuff in the jars. They do actually look slightly different as well. The stuff in the jars is, for all intents and purposes, weaponized xenomorph. It turned worms into xenomorph worms, and in the pre-production art the guy infected by the snake looked more like a hybrid of a human and a xeno at that point. Holloway also was supposed to exibit some signs of transforming into one as well but of course gets torched. Why they didn't stick to that, because it looked much cooler than the crab walk, I don't know. I haven't found they better hybrid pictures online atm but I will try and find them again.
Spoiler:
There were also more Engineers in the opening scene:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Full disclosure, I haven't read the whole article as I do not have that issue of Cinefex, but going by what someone who did read it said. It is an interesting look at some of the earlier ideas in the film that disappeared as the production went on.
Interesting stuff, thanks for posting those pics! Reading that article snippet, I always find it amazing how much work goes into even a single scene - you can definitely understand how some of these films end up costing this much.
I believe that Scott's original cut of the film, before it was reduced for the theatre version, was an extra 35 minutes in length or so. I would hazard a guess that those sequences above might well be in the full director's cut of the movie.
Cheers for posting that Ahtman, was pretty cool to see.
I'm glad the final cut decided to take stuff like that out, but keep in the completely superfluous scenes like Captain wants to sex Vickers and I'm barren *sob*sob*sob*.
If David had told her that she was Pregnant during the scan, they could have had that whole 'I can't get pregnant because i'm barren' conversation. Instead we get it shoehorned into the scene and get the impression that Shaw has some mental defect.
The more I think about this film, the more I begin to rage.
The reason is that they're supposed to be people. People don't run away scared from something that isn't actually dangerous, and then go up and pet a snake a few minutes later. Those kinds of wild behaviour swings exist in whacky comedies and some of the more dreadful Victorian stuff, and in every case it was done to make some greater political point (normally 'this guy is such a jerk').
To return to your Steve Irwin example, if we saw him backing away from seeing a dead body we'd say 'that's not like Steve Irwin at all, he's normally noted as being very brave, almost foolhardy'. You claim that people would think 'oh people are irrational and that means for reasons we can invent on the spot we should be willing to expect wild changes in characteristics from moment to moment'.
Well, Steve Irwin (for example) might be totally unafraid of animals but scared of a haunted house. That's not too far-fetched, and may be the kind of thing Kaldor was thinking of.
I could certainly believe in a character who has different responses to different potentially scary things. For example, someone who has pet spiders might be very comfortable around tarantulas and happy to have them walking on him, but have a normal fear response to other stimuli. I could absolutely see a biologist as potentially being comfortable around a scary-looking animal while being scared of something else (like the alien structure and the general situation). And that's how I initially rationalized the scene with the "cobra" xenomorph.
But the problem is that for an animal biologist to really be comfortable around a creepy-looking thing he'd have to be familiar with it or see it exhibiting behavior consonant with safe/non-aggressive animals it resembles. If the thing had acted like a calm, happy cobra (for example), maybe him not finding its appearance frightening would make sense. But instead it assumed a "confront possible threat and rear to strike" posture, which should have set off alarm bells for a biologist even louder than for you and me. If he had been staying carefully outside strike range, based on its body length, then his curious and interested attitude might make sense; he might not find its appearance creepy, so if his knowledge gave him a reasonable expectation of safely, he might not be freaked out at all by how weird it looked. But sadly that's not what the scene was; it was more a standard horror movie scene where someone stupidly puts themselves directly into harm's way despite clear danger signs. Which was disappointing.
If, OTOH, he had taken some kind of obvious precaution (like staying carefully outside its strike range based on body length/height it had reared to), but then been surprised by a) another one circling behind them, or b) the thing leaping through the air in a way no snake can, then it would look more like a scene where a smart guy gets complacent, rather than a scene were a guy who should have some sense of self-preservation takes no precautions.
The whole situation also creates an expectation of greater caution, as well. If you're x trillion miles from Earth, have only a small support crew, limited medical facilities, and a hostile atmosphere, you're not going to be as cavalier about handling an unfamiliar critter as you might be on nice comfortable Earth, where you can be helivaced to a first class trauma center with antitoxins in stock on short notice.
Mannahnin wrote:If, OTOH, he had taken some kind of obvious precaution (like staying carefully outside its strike range based on body length/height it had reared to), but then been surprised by a) another one circling behind them, or b) the thing leaping through the air in a way no snake can, then it would look more like a scene where a smart guy gets complacent, rather than a scene were a guy who should have some sense of self-preservation takes no precautions.
The whole situation also creates an expectation of greater caution, as well. If you're x trillion miles from Earth, have only a small support crew, limited medical facilities, and a hostile atmosphere, you're not going to be as cavalier about handling an unfamiliar critter as you might be on nice comfortable Earth, where you can be helivaced to a first class trauma center with antitoxins in stock on short notice.
Absolutely, it's what made that scene so annoying. We all know, and go into the film accepting and expecting, that the minor characters will get dispatched one by one, and we know that in places those deaths will be a little contrived, with people getting split off from the main crew, heading out to repair things by themselves, all that stuff. We lower our expectations for behaviour to get to the next 'minor character gets killed bit', but even within those lowered expectations the deaths were so contrived, as you say there were dozens of better ways to handle the snake attack, and I'm sure anyone here can think of at least five better explanations for why those two might have been split off from the rest of the party.
As you said earlier, it's likely they chose the set up they did because they were trying to make a greater point about humanity. The fear on discovering the body and decision to return to the ship was chosen by the writers as it made some kind of comment, and the reckless behaviour towards the snake some other comment. It's just that in each case they pushed too far, and the events ended up feeling silly and contrived.
One thing I forgot for a bit after the movie was that the lost geologist was stoned, or an equivalent drugged state. They never explicitly state what he is inhaling, he just implies that it is a drug of some sort.
True; which is a ready-made excuse for him getting sloppy and careless, once he was already scared and stranded by the storm and using it to calm down. But pretty much all oh his dumb behavior comes BEFORE that.
This has been mentioned before, but them getting lost was terrible. Fifield carries in and activates the mapping robots; refers to them as his "pups", and he doesn't have so much as an iphone-equivalent to display the map on, so they can navigate out?
I think it was only the Ginger Geologist that was 'stoned' though wasn't it?
I really have no idea why they insisted on taking on a crew of civilians on a mission to discover Alien life. I can understand the presence of Holloway and Shaw, but what is the point of the other Scientists? Surely Wayland corp. could have easily hired specialists in the field, or employed their own staff to go on the mission. It seems like they took an awfully big risk considering how much Vickers stressed the mission cost. They didn't even have that many 'company' men to secure the continuation of the mission/safety of the ship.
Prometheus would have been better served on a larger research vessel in which things start going to hell. A vessel in which the company is more prevalent and the 'specialists' seem to be out numbered/kept in the dark amongst a teeming crew that at least has an idea of what is happening. The Scottish scientist really pissed me off because she sounded like a dole warrior from the east end, barely capable of speaking English. The Ginger guy just seemed like a thug and had no air of 'Specialist in his field' to him. The Biologist wasn't needed at all. In fact those three characters could have been replaced with nameless 'company redshirts'.
Mannahnin wrote:True; which is a ready-made excuse for him getting sloppy and careless, once he was already scared and stranded by the storm and using it to calm down. But pretty much all oh his dumb behavior comes BEFORE that.
This has been mentioned before, but them getting lost was terrible. Fifield carries in and activates the mapping robots; refers to them as his "pups", and he doesn't have so much as an iphone-equivalent to display the map on, so they can navigate out?
I wasn't trying to justify it, just recalling that it occurred. It did so with such great force and emphasis that it made no impact, and still doesn't really explain why he, the cave mapper, would get lost even stoned. It seems such an odd thing to just flippantly toss out there. To often it feels like there were two similar, but different, scripts that were working in opposition with each other. In the original script the characters are going right and carrying a gps and in the next scene they are walking left and sipping tea. I can't help but feel the train went off the rails when Lindeloff (last screenwriter, guy behind all of Lost's deadend mysteries) was brought in. If you read articles of early pre-production such as the one I posted above there is a much more clear vision for the story. I'm sure studios probably wanted some changes as well, especially the parts that were historical fiction that involved religion.
While some may not have liked it, the original concept that Jesus (among others) was an emissary sent by the Engineers to try and get humanity to get it's gak together and stop being a bunch of jerks at least would have unified the story. Humans killed him and so the Engineers decided that we were to unruly and to wipe out their creation. It would have been about as controversial as Da Vinci Code, though not as controversial as the Last Temptation of Christ. This route created a cohesive narrative that tied together Greek, Sumerian, and Christian myths (using the word in the sense of sacred stories, not lies) while giving a back story of the Engineers' role in trying to shape humanity as well as create it. It would still leave a mystery as to why they created humans, if they were the doing so alone or at the behest of others, their culture, and what exactly happened on that ship. It would explain why pre-Christian civilizations had recorded the Engineers and worshiped them. It would explain why the Engineer had a melancholy expression/attitude initially after being woke up. It would also explain why Shaw was the main survivor: as a Christian it meant, in essence she was only one (shown) faithful to the message of the Engineers in trying to get humans to be good to one another.
The same is true of initially having the people infected have more xenomorph features, at least to the point of the audience seeing the connection. We don't know why they weaponized the xenomorph or their attitude toward the creature, but those are fine mysteries. It just seems another instance of changing mid-stream. Early on they were going to go this route, and even have props made, but then went against that idea but left enough parts of it in the script that the idea still feels present.
I guess it just seems like to much of the movie is changes based on second guessing their initial instincts, and it comes across in the final product. I enjoyed the movie partially for the cinematography and production values, and partially for what it was trying to achieve, even if it failed to do so.
Well weaponized zenomorph, or bio bombing a planet with facehuggers, goes back to the original Alien. This type opf "xenomorphing everything" seems like a much more advanced option.
It still doesn't fit with FACEHUGGER 1.0 squid thing though. In alien the original lifecycle was facehugger...alien...facehugger (deleted scenes with crewmen being transmogrified into the egg cacoons, kid of gross actually). That would fit as a weaponized bug where the idea comes from.
But you are correct, it feels like the director lost control of "that vision thing." This seems not uncommon of Ridley Scott. Kingdom of Heaven and the Robin Hood movie seem to meander with a lot of that. Now some will say that the Director's Cut will clear it up. But frankly, if you can't make a tight movie in the time alotted, thats means you fail as a Director. PLus, as we have had the advent of very successful three hour movies (LOTR series) thats not nearly as much f an excuse as it used to be.
Medium of Death wrote:
I really have no idea why they insisted on taking on a crew of civilians on a mission to discover Alien life. I can understand the presence of Holloway and Shaw, but what is the point of the other Scientists? Surely Wayland corp. could have easily hired specialists in the field, or employed their own staff to go on the mission. It seems like they took an awfully big risk considering how much Vickers stressed the mission cost. They didn't even have that many 'company' men to secure the continuation of the mission/safety of the ship.
That's the problem, these people WERE specialists in their respective fields.
Darn someone posted the Redlettermedia video. Love those guys!
Its written by Damon 'Lost' Lindelof, remember my stomach lurching when i read the name after the very cool opening credits. By talking about it in such depth you are having him laugh in your face.
Corpsesarefun wrote:That's the problem, these people WERE specialists in their respective fields.
Vickers was in charge of hiring and she had no faith in the project at all, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out she didn't go for the best and brightest the fields had to offer.
They took civilians because it was a civilian project. This wasn't a scientific mission for discovery like the space station or a government funded mission exploratory mission such as going to the moon. On the surface it was a corporate venture, and under the surface it was one rich mans personal mission to find immortality.
They weren't focused on, but there were quite a few people there for security: when crab boy goes on a rampage he kills a few, and then Weyland has at least two guards. Guys with guns (they show flamethrowers, pistols, and some kind of carbines in the film) make up about a third of the people on the voyage.
It still doesn't fit with FACEHUGGER 1.0 squid thing though. In alien the original lifecycle was facehugger...alien...facehugger (deleted scenes with crewmen being transmogrified into the egg cacoons, kid of gross actually). That would fit as a weaponized bug where the idea comes from.
Just saw that recently. I'm not sure they were implanted. They almost looked like they were being digested to me. And that seen was clearly seen by Cameron. It was a scene that I think he (RS) should have left in, IMHO.
Well i'm back from seeing it a second time (Father wanted to see it).
Going in a second time and remembering that the drink at the start and the black goo are different helps to a degree. The drink at the start does have a kind of yellowish glow to it but its not obvious enough as we all know.
I enjoyed it more the second time around as I didn't have the soul crushing disappointment at the end. I think a sequel could be good, just need to get rid of that script writer. I agree that the film feels like there are two separate scripts running parallel with each other and a fair few things get left in the background or completely ignored that should be the main focus of the movie.
I think they may still try to get the Christian/Space Jesus theme in. The Alien mural has the xenomorph like creature depicted in a crucified pose.
Spoiler:
Then again it could be referencing the Vitruvian Man, seeing as the Black Goo is weaponised Xenomorph DNA. Because of the surface texture of the mural the amount of limbs depicted and their position is not immediately clear.
I'm not convinced that the goo is different - perhaps just that it has a different impact depending on its use. Think, in both cases it 'makes life' - we see the DNA strands forming at the start of the movie, and then the xenomorph being born from both Shaw and the Engineer (and even the dead crew members being re-animated). Perhaps it can be 'weaponised', where if it comes into contact with an already advanced life-form it changes into something that destroys it?
The Black Goo seems to make engineers heads explode as we can see from the corpses stacked against the door (they say that it's exploded from the inside out) and the engineers head in the Prometheus. When I first saw the corpses and the holes in there head I was like 'Ah, Xenomorph!', but now that's obviously not the case...
It's getting to the point where untangling the story of this film is becoming ridiculous.
The goo at the beginning, which has a bit of a different look, almost instantly breaks the creature down to it's component parts and then starts multiplying its DNA.
The goo in the temple slowly, compared to the speed of the other liquid, transforms life forms into another creature. Worms become alien snakes, humans become alien hybrids, and altered DNA humans apparently can pass the mutation along through their sperm. The thing in Shaw's stomach is some sort of species that is not from transformation, but has a 'natural' life cycle from altered and standard DNA.
Corpsesarefun wrote:Not really instant, it looked kinda painful really...
The process of him dieing may have not been instant (a whole 45-60 seconds, so long!*), but the speed at which the goo began its chemical reaction was fairly instantaneous.
Considering that it is essentially magic I'm not sure how we can know that they could do it less painful. Of course knowing nothing of their culture it may be important to them for the sacrifice to be painful, as ritualistic as it is presented.
*Admittedly that was probably an excruciating 45-60 seconds. Of course the trade of is you get to be a daddy to a whole planet.
Back from seeing it... Enjoyable, but terribly forgettable would be my vote.
The myth aspect was interesting but it could have been given better treatment.
To summarise : we see an Engineer (ritually ?) giving birth to life, or a branch thereof, on Earth.
Archaeologists discover millenia old hints of the existence of quasi-divine precursors who may be our creators.
An expedition is launched to investigate.
Expedition arrives and discovers alien facilities.
For some reason, the facility seems to react to their presence and a black goo starts oozing from jars and everything goes to hell.
They could have played the "investigation" card a bit more... Say, expedition starts looking for explanations about what happened there or about the nature of the place and of the Engineers. They discover stylised murals that echo the patterns discovered on Earth, and crypted or damaged logs that may contain some answers ; David is tasked with deciphering them back on board while the crew can only make conjectures. During their exploration, they accidentally "awake" or let loose the mutagen while bringing some back to the Prometheus to study it. They experiment on lab animals, which doesn't end well, and they begin to seriously wonder what the hell is going on. Someone gets unknowingly infected. David makes discoveries but keeps part of it to himself, telling half-truths to the crew (and the viewer) to manipulate them so he can learn more at their possible detriment. They go back to the facility for more answers, and things start going downhill fast.
I am by no stretch of the imagination a good writer, and this is just provided as an illustration ; that's more the kind of thing I was expecting from the movie. Mystery thickening, suspense unfolding, then maybe aliens hissing. Instead, my general impression was "maybe our creators, alien facilities, then WHAM! black goo of doom in yo face". And then, seemingly out of nowhere, someone seems to have figured out the facility was a bio-WMD production plant, probably because he hadn't had much significant screen time yet. And then the myth surfaces back with a vengeance : for some reason they hate us and want to destroy humanity.
The underlying theme is very interesting, but I don't get the form.
Mind you, this may be due to my annoyance at the apparent inconsistency of said mutagen. It changes worms into xenocobras, people into zombies, and it allows one to impregnate others with squid-like facehuggers. Ehm... Oookay, I guess ? There's also the fact I didn't make the distinction between it and what the Engineer ingests at the beginning. Doesn't help.
About plotholes, I like to think the medics Shaw assaulted actually went to check on the med pod, only to serve as food for the squid. Hey, it was in its period of growth, it needed all the nutrients it could get !
Speaking of which... Mother of god, the scene with the Engineer and the giant squid. We see the Engineer resist with all his superhuman might, only for the facehugger to take the time to show us each layer of nastiness it has in stock and end with a brutal facerape. And the unholy embrace, when it crawls and covers the Engineer's body with its writhing mass... *shudder* That was not pleasant. They really had a field day with Giger's concepts, it struck me much more than in the Alien movies.
sebster wrote:I've certainly spent enough time with people to know that 'people are stupid' is a ridiculous piece of reduction, that is almost always used to explain away complex motivations, and normally does little more than demonstrate the failings of the person who said it.
This is so sadly true.
The Prometheus crew just acts as slasher movie fodder. They don't strike me as realistic at all. If you think they are because in reality people are hopelessly stupid, you might be a tad misanthropic. I don't exactly have an unlimited faith in humanity myself, but come on.
In fact, I think Kaldor has a tendency to argue about things he does not believe himself, probably to hone his argumentation skills. Poe's law in full force.
As a related side note, am I the only one a little sad that Prometheus invalidated all the Xenomorph lore (not mind you that Xenomorph lore in the EU was all that consistent to begin with), which by token of coincidence also invalidated some of the lore for the Hish, aka, the Predators?
Some of that stuff was pretty good... When it wasn't being bad.
Am I the only one who got the whole 'exploding head' to be completely unrelated to the goo, or even the rest of the story?
I thought it was only to show that even decapitated, an Engineer would still live (albeit only for a few seconds) if there was still bioelectricity in him (the ear prod)? Some sort of indication of their 'immortality' of 'godhood'.
LordofHats wrote:As a related side note, am I the only one a little sad that Prometheus invalidated all the Xenomorph lore (not mind you that Xenomorph lore in the EU was all that consistent to begin with), which by token of coincidence also invalidated some of the lore for the Hish, aka, the Predators?
How so ?
Kovnik Obama : seems to me that the head did show symptoms of the goo doing its thing. It didn't explode spontaneously, now did it ?
The film makes the Xenomorph much younger than it is in the EU, and a lot of Predator stuff was written with the Xenomorphs in tow. If the Xenomorphs are a much younger species, created in 2093, then a lot of the material about them and the Hish, and even the limited stuff for the Jockey's becomes kind of moot.
Not that is necessarily a great loss. Some of it was really good, but the lore has been retconned so many times I've lost count. EDIT: So actually this isn't even all that surprising in retrospect...
LordofHats wrote:As a related side note, am I the only one a little sad that Prometheus invalidated all the Xenomorph lore (not mind you that Xenomorph lore in the EU was all that consistent to begin with), which by token of coincidence also invalidated some of the lore for the Hish, aka, the Predators?
How so ?
Kovnik Obama : seems to me that the head did show symptoms of the goo doing its thing. It didn't explode spontaneously, now did it ?
No, but dissolving and exploding are two very different effects. The Engineer's head came back to life once it was prodded and energised, had a few seconds where he looked cogent and aware, and then showed signs of something and then it's cranium went into expansion mode. That didn't look at all like the process at the beginning of the film.
I thought it was supposed to show that Engineers are pretty much immortal if nothing happens to them... and even then, that they could survive a crapload of injury?
LordofHats wrote:If the Xenomorphs are a much younger species, created in 2093
The 2000+ year old mural of a xenomorph didn't give the impression that they existed before the arrival of the Prometheus? The creature at the end is a new form of Xeno, but it is not the first by any stretch.
Also, anything that crosses xenomorphs and Predators isn't really canon to the films (Alien, Aliens, Alien3, and Alien Resurrection), except unto themselves.
Kovnik Obama wrote:No, but dissolving and exploding are two very different effects. The Engineer's head came back to life once it was prodded and energised, had a few seconds where he looked cogent and aware, and then showed signs of something and then it's cranium went into expansion mode. That didn't look at all like the process at the beginning of the film.
I thought it was supposed to show that Engineers are pretty much immortal if nothing happens to them... and even then, that they could survive a crapload of injury?
That is directly addressed in the Cinefex page I posted earlier. The 'helmet' was keeping the head healthy and the infection in check. Once they removed the helmet the infection was free to run it's course, and zapping it just accelerated the process. Apparently it was originally supposed to be the cause of the spread of alien infection in the ship, the way it is worded in the article.
Kovnik Obama wrote:No, but dissolving and exploding are two very different effects. The Engineer's head came back to life once it was prodded and energised, had a few seconds where he looked cogent and aware, and then showed signs of something and then it's cranium went into expansion mode. That didn't look at all like the process at the beginning of the film.
I thought it was supposed to show that Engineers are pretty much immortal if nothing happens to them... and even then, that they could survive a crapload of injury?
That is directly addressed in the Cinefex page I posted earlier. The 'helmet' was keeping the head healthy and the infection in check. Once they removed the helmet the infection was free to run it's course, and zapping it just accelerated the process. Apparently it was originally supposed to be the cause of the spread of alien infection in the ship, the way it is worded in the article.
Ah, thanks! Really didn't get that from the movie...
Ahtman wrote:While some may not have liked it, the original concept that Jesus (among others) was an emissary sent by the Engineers to try and get humanity to get it's gak together and stop being a bunch of jerks at least would have unified the story. Humans killed him and so the Engineers decided that we were to unruly and to wipe out their creation. It would have been about as controversial as Da Vinci Code, though not as controversial as the Last Temptation of Christ. This route created a cohesive narrative that tied together Greek, Sumerian, and Christian myths (using the word in the sense of sacred stories, not lies) while giving a back story of the Engineers' role in trying to shape humanity as well as create it. It would still leave a mystery as to why they created humans, if they were the doing so alone or at the behest of others, their culture, and what exactly happened on that ship. It would explain why pre-Christian civilizations had recorded the Engineers and worshiped them. It would explain why the Engineer had a melancholy expression/attitude initially after being woke up. It would also explain why Shaw was the main survivor: as a Christian it meant, in essence she was only one (shown) faithful to the message of the Engineers in trying to get humans to be good to one another.
I actually like that they put the idea of "Jesus was an Engineer and they're pissed we killed him" into the background. I think having it as an explicit part of the story would just be too much. Better to have it in the background, as a hinted at answer to the question 'why would our creators decide to destroy us'.
The problem is that I think you can leave a question like that unanswered, provided it is the one unanswered piece of the story. But there's so much other unanswered, or just plain incoherent parts of the setting that it all builds up into a giant mess.
I guess it just seems like to much of the movie is changes based on second guessing their initial instincts, and it comes across in the final product. I enjoyed the movie partially for the cinematography and production values, and partially for what it was trying to achieve, even if it failed to do so.
Yeah, same here.
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Frazzled wrote:But you are correct, it feels like the director lost control of "that vision thing." This seems not uncommon of Ridley Scott. Kingdom of Heaven and the Robin Hood movie seem to meander with a lot of that. Now some will say that the Director's Cut will clear it up. But frankly, if you can't make a tight movie in the time alotted, thats means you fail as a Director. PLus, as we have had the advent of very successful three hour movies (LOTR series) thats not nearly as much f an excuse as it used to be.
Agree completely. It seems like he's trying for some very ambitious projects, and just despite his immense technical skills (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood and Prometheus all look amazing), he just cannot get the story right. Too much stuff happening without enough of it hanging together in any of those movies.
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Manchu wrote:Fire can heat a cave. Fire can power a nation.
The Black Liquid is Promethean Fire, a symbol of technology in a symbolist story.
What you suggest sounds great on the surface, and clearly was part of what the script intended, at least at one stage in its development. But when they start talking about goo as a weapons project intended to destroy Earth, they're no longer talking about it as symbol for technology. If it were they would have shown humans manipulating it for postive as well as negative. As it was, it really just ended up a blackbox technology used as a macguffin in a sci-fi slasher movie.
sebster wrote:I actually like that they put the idea of "Jesus was an Engineer and they're pissed we killed him" into the background. I think having it as an explicit part of the story would just be too much. Better to have it in the background, as a hinted at answer to the question 'why would our creators decide to destroy us'.
The problem is that I think you can leave a question like that unanswered, provided it is the one unanswered piece of the story. But there's so much other unanswered, or just plain incoherent parts of the setting that it all builds up into a giant mess.
I agree that it shouldn't be explicitly stated, but as they did it, it felt like they set up the framework to hint at it, but then abandoned the idea. Whether it was ADD or studios wanting them to avoid the subject I don't know, but the result was the same.
Ahtman wrote:I agree that it shouldn't be explicitly stated, but as they did it, it felt like they set up the framework to hint at it, but then abandoned the idea. Whether it was ADD or studios wanting them to avoid the subject I don't know, but the result was the same.
Yeah, I honestly don't know, and agree that in the end it doesn't really matter what caused it, what matters is the negative impact it had on the final film we saw.
Interesting article. I do remember hearing before Robin Hood released that it was actually going to be about the Sheriff of Nottingham, not Robin Hood and I was a little surprised later when the trailers started hitting theaters and TV commercials.
R Scott is a lot like George Lucas (maybe). Some of his earliest work (Alien duh EDIT: Bladerunner probably should be at the top of the list ) is pretty good, but then it all went to his head. I can think of several films that he's directed since Gladiator that are kind of sloppy in certain ways. I suppose though we can at least be happy that Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator 2: Maximus Rides Again, and Prometheus, are all better films than the Star Wars Prequels!
Agree completely. It seems like he's trying for some very ambitious projects, and just despite his immense technical skills (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood and Prometheus all look amazing), he just cannot get the story right. Too much stuff happening without enough of it hanging together in any of those movies.
I've said this before. I have the Director's cuts for Alien and Gladiator. I once watched them back to back with the commentary once (I love director/writer commentaries even for bad movies). The difference between Scott's commentary for each was striking. In the Alien commentary he was clear, concise, sharp. In Gladiator he rambled a lot and his literal manner of speaking was more blurred.
Manchu wrote:Fire can heat a cave. Fire can power a nation.
The Black Liquid is Promethean Fire, a symbol of technology in a symbolist story.
What you suggest sounds great on the surface, and clearly was part of what the script intended, at least at one stage in its development. But when they start talking about goo as a weapons project intended to destroy Earth, they're no longer talking about it as symbol for technology. If it were they would have shown humans manipulating it for postive as well as negative. As it was, it really just ended up a blackbox technology used as a macguffin in a sci-fi slasher movie.
If fire can power a nation, then surely it can destroy it. The movie did not need to show the Black Liquid being used by humans to further their goals -- in fact, that would have been rather contrary to the themes of the picture, which seemed to insist (again and again and again) that technology is a mirror. It's not good or evil; it just reflects us. And so if we see it as good or evil, that reflects something about ourselves. (Remember the scene where David looks into the drop of Black Liquid on his synthetic finger tip? We see a reflection of the lights in the room but no reflection of David -- a mirror pointed at a mirror.) This is similar to Promethean Fire of Greek myth, which is the symbolic "light of truth" in which humans can evaluate the natural world. Anyone who insists on reading this film like a user's manual on fictional technology will end up disappointed. (I'm genuinely surprised by how many people totally believe LV223 is a weapons stockpile simply because Janek suggests that's the case, for example.) The Black Liquid really, really is not "a technology" but rather is a symbol for technology. Those are different things even if modern people have a lot of trouble remembering it.
Wow. Some people either: 1) Got a lot more out of this movie, or 2) think too much.
I didn't get any of this "deep stuff." The movie didn't really make me 'think," (other than spotting links to Alien). It started to, but once they ran into worm snakes it just fell apart with too many plot holes, confusion, and frankly did not appear better to me than your standard B movie sci fi film with a better budget.
The more I think about it, the more I did not like this film. Its definitely not one I'd buy or see again. I was hoping for so much more.
Manchu wrote: The Black Liquid really, really is not "a technology" but rather is a symbol for technology. Those are different things even if modern people have a lot of trouble remembering it.
It's always been suggested (by R Scott since Alien) that the Space Jockey's are masters of bioengineering who regularly employ genocidal bio-weapons. The goo can be technology itself and a symbol for technology in general at the same time.
1) Why was Charlize Theron's character even in this movie? She is completely pointless
2) Why did they pretend the old man was dead? Who cares if he had a slightly different reason for being there?
3) What the hell is up with David? One minute he's saving peoples lives, the next he poisons the one guy for no apparent reason, then insists Shaw keep "the baby". Afterwards he forgets she is even pregnant to begin with. Was David planning this elaborate ruse to get Shaw pregnant? If so, WHY? He was just there to help the old man and apparently out of his own quest for more knowledge, at one point he's obviously amazed at the alien technology and the next moment he questions why they are even there
4) So Shaw gets "pregnant" and then performs surgery on herself in 5 minutes to remove it.....why does nobody notice she has a giant hole in her stomach and is covered head to toe in alien goo? Why does David see this and now not care? Why doesn't she tell people there's an alien on the ship? Why does she then HELP DAVID?
5) The scene with the captain and Charlize Theron's character about getting laid, WHY? The interaction didn't make sense "You trying to get laid? "Hell no", "Are you a robot" "Okay lets feth"
6) The guy whose job it is to map stuff GETS LOST. They have a GPS and cameras on their head and NOBODY NOTICES?
7) One minute the two knuckleheads are are gaking their pants at every little sound, the next minute an alien snake penis hisses at them and he things its a good idea to try and pet the damn thing, mind you they're in a ship full of corpses piled to the ceiling, they even see holograms of them running from something
8) This "planet" was just a backwater moon used to develop weapons far away from their home, WHY is THIS the place that the human cave drawings symbolize? These drawings are supposed to be from the earliest man, far before our actual records show, WHY would that place have any significance?
9) David takes one of the vases back to the ship for no fething reason, and then just puts it somewhere and we never hear/see from it again
10) I've never seen three people so easily convinced that they should sacrifice themselves to kill something they haven't seen, to stop some event they don't even know is happening beyond what one woman yells at them for about 15 seconds
11) The scene where the really long narrow alien ship is falling, my god that happens in movies all the time and it's never ever even remotely plausible, not to mention Shaw FALLS, rolls about four feet in one direction, somehow avoiding the big narrow ship, stands up and is about 50 yards from it. Any remotely intelligent individual would obviously just run perpendicular to the ship that's about 10 times longer than it is wide.
Easily the worst written movie I've ever seen. Absolute garbage. Gorgeous cinema though, the special effects were fantastic.
1) Why was Charlize Theron's character even in this movie? She is completely pointless
2) Why did they pretend the old man was dead? Who cares if he had a slightly different reason for being there?
3) What the hell is up with David? One minute he's saving peoples lives, the next he poisons the one guy for no apparent reason, then insists Shaw keep "the baby". Afterwards he forgets she is even pregnant to begin with. Was David planning this elaborate ruse to get Shaw pregnant? If so, WHY? He was just there to help the old man and apparently out of his own quest for more knowledge, at one point he's obviously amazed at the alien technology and the next moment he questions why they are even there
4) So Shaw gets "pregnant" and then performs surgery on herself in 5 minutes to remove it.....why does nobody notice she has a giant hole in her stomach and is covered head to toe in alien goo? Why does David see this and now not care? Why doesn't she tell people there's an alien on the ship? Why does she then HELP DAVID?
5) The scene with the captain and Charlize Theron's character about getting laid, WHY? The interaction didn't make sense "You trying to get laid? "Hell no", "Are you a robot" "Okay lets feth"
6) The guy whose job it is to map stuff GETS LOST. They have a GPS and cameras on their head and NOBODY NOTICES?
7) One minute the two knuckleheads are are gaking their pants at every little sound, the next minute an alien snake penis hisses at them and he things its a good idea to try and pet the damn thing, mind you they're in a ship full of corpses piled to the ceiling, they even see holograms of them running from something
8) This "planet" was just a backwater moon used to develop weapons far away from their home, WHY is THIS the place that the human cave drawings symbolize? These drawings are supposed to be from the earliest man, far before our actual records show, WHY would that place have any significance?
9) David takes one of the vases back to the ship for no fething reason, and then just puts it somewhere and we never hear/see from it again
10) I've never seen three people so easily convinced that they should sacrifice themselves to kill something they haven't seen, to stop some event they don't even know is happening beyond what one woman yells at them for about 15 seconds
11) The scene where the really long narrow alien ship is falling, my god that happens in movies all the time and it's never ever even remotely plausible, not to mention Shaw FALLS, rolls about four feet in one direction, somehow avoiding the big narrow ship, stands up and is about 50 yards from it. Any remotely intelligent individual would obviously just run perpendicular to the ship that's about 10 times longer than it is wide.
Easily the worst written movie I've ever seen. Absolute garbage. Gorgeous cinema though, the special effects were fantastic.
It's clearly just the audiences fault for not appreciating the mythological relevance of the film.
It is problematic, but that seems a bit melodramatic. Some of the questions you ask certainly are troublesome, but some of them also make me think you weren't paying that much attention.
Griever wrote:Easily the worst written movie I've ever seen. Absolute garbage.
This makes me think you've only watched, three, maybe four, movies in your life.
Definitely not the worst film ever written. You youngins. So innocent. So sweet. Its like watching angels before the fall.
Go forth and see Howard the Duck, Fried Green Tomatoes, He Man, or Tales of the YaYa Sisterhood, then return and give us your opinion.
It is problematic, but that seems a bit melodramatic. Some of the questions you ask certainly are troublesome, but some of them also make me think you weren't paying that much attention.
Griever wrote:Easily the worst written movie I've ever seen. Absolute garbage.
This makes me think you've only watched, three, maybe four, movies in your life.
1) I saw the movie a week ago, details may be fuzzy
2) This makes me think you make things up without knowing what you're talking about
I watch 2, maybe 3 movies in theaters a year. I won't go unless I actually think a movie can be good. Typically movie reviews are unreliable, lots of movies I like get bad movies (almost all movies do), lots of movies you couldn't pay me to watch get good reviews. So a lot of it is based on my gut feeling, and my expectations
Normally I can go into a movie and expect "yeah there's not going to be substance to this one but it'll still be fun". This movie was supposed to be so much more than that, it tried, and failed, utterly. I don't ever recall watching a movie where I spent the entire time trying to figure out how it was possible it could be that stupid. Before I could even wrap my head around one stupid scene, the movie would stumble into another.
Corpsesarefun wrote:Prometheus was a badly written film, no doubt about that, but if it's the WORST film you've ever seen then you've been very lucky in film choices.
Or very discerning and skeptical.
The next closest was the newest Terminator movie. But at least the interactions of the characters were somewhat logical with just a bad plot and a rushed, lazy ending.
Like I said, I don't watch bad movies. I know tons of people who will go once a week and watch everything they see a commercial about. I'm not one of those people.
LordofHats wrote:The goo can be technology itself and a symbol for technology in general at the same time.
I agree. But it is alien technology. We are very comfortable in our own viewpoint. We tend to think that if anyone happened upon a hammer, they'd be able to figure out what it was for. Even if that was true (it's not), could anyone who happened upon a particle accelerator figure out what that does? Near the end of the nineteenth century, the Chinese thought that they could incorporate useful Western technology without incorporating disruptive Western culture. As it turns out, there is a whole culture and history behind the machine gun and the steam engine that can't be sloughed off. But it wasn't a lesson well-learned, obviously. The reaction to this movie shows that people still don't think technology had anything to do with culture. If the goo does something, we should be able to figure it out and use it ourselves for whatever purpose we have. That is not the Promethean sense of fire (a.k.a., technology), however. The Black Liquid does different things at different times because we don't understand it and, without knowing a whole lot more about the Engineers, we will never understand it much less be able to apply it to obtain predictable results.
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Frazzled wrote:I didn't get any of this "deep stuff." The movie didn't really make me 'think," (other than spotting links to Alien). It started to, but once they ran into worm snakes it just fell apart [...]
Yeah, that scene is really a breaking point. It's really important, too, because it's the scene where the ominous atmosphere turns into immediate threat. But as sebster and others have pointed out, we just have no reason to believe that Milburn and Fifield would act as they do in that scene. I think what comes after that is good (and notice the cobra worms never appear again, either) but that scene is definitely a major stumbling block. If it turned you off to the rest of the film, you did end up missing a lot that was good about Prometheus.
It turned me off, but it was just the start of when the movie went bad. before that most everything was coherent (if David getting weird and slipping the scientist the mickey occurred after that, I'm getting confused mayhaps).
As noted. We then have a merry go round of people just acting like they are on drugs. *zombie boy appears. What er ok. At first I thought it was the other guy *all the David nonsense (when David goes from cool to acting stupidly) *Squid baby-surgery-ok lets go back to the ship what? (oh and how did she actually know they were trying to kill humanity again? Didn't only David see the planet thing) Up to that point didn't they really just have 'we're on an alien world and weird %&%& is happening like might occur on an alien world' were does the bomber link in really kick? Its like a constant barrage of bloopers. First the charatcter is running, next scene the character is eating choco crunchberries, next scene monkeys fly out of crewman #4's butt, next scene Hillary Clinton gives a speech, next scene the Red Baron engages Snoopy.
The more I think about it, the more its like someone took the wrong reel and sent it out. The took the "raw shoots" real and not the "final edit send this one Bob" reel.
Frazzled wrote:It turned me off, but it was just the start of when the movie went bad. before that most everything was coherent (if David getting weird and slipping the scientist the mickey occurred after that, I'm getting confused mayhaps).
As noted. We then have a merry go round of people just acting like they are on drugs.
*zombie boy appears. What er ok. At first I thought it was the other guy
*all the David nonsense (when David goes from cool to acting stupidly)
*Squid baby-surgery-ok lets go back to the ship what?
(oh and how did she actually know they were trying to kill humanity again? Didn't only David see the planet thing)
Up to that point didn't they really just have 'we're on an alien world and weird %&%& is happening like might occur on an alien world' were does the bomber link in really kick?
Its like a constant barrage of bloopers. First the charatcter is running, next scene the character is eating choco crunchberries, next scene monkeys fly out of crewman #4's butt, next scene Hillary Clinton gives a speech, next scene the Red Baron engages Snoopy.
The more I think about it, the more its like someone took the wrong reel and sent it out. The took the "raw shoots" real and not the "final edit send this one Bob" reel.
I'm actually getting angry about this.
Exactly, the more and more I try to piece it together, the most pissed off I get that the people who wrote this movie make way more money that I ever will, and they suck at their jobs.
Anger seems like a bizarre reaction. I can understand critical disappointment but what was on the line in this film that was important enough to piss anyone off? I suspect the word "pretension" will figure into the answer.
Manchu wrote:Anger seems like a bizarre reaction. I can understand critical disappointment but what was on the line in this film that was important enough to piss anyone off? I suspect the word "pretension" will figure into the answer.
Maybe because I waited two freaking years to see it, spent $40 on it, I can see where it could have been so much better.
Manchu wrote: The Black Liquid does different things at different times because we don't understand it and, without knowing a whole lot more about the Engineers, we will never understand it much less be able to apply it to obtain predictable results.
While I agree with most of what you said, I do disagree with this. The goo has some wonky effects that make it extremely confusing. I think that has nothing to do with symbol and more to do with the original script not being the final one. The goo originally had a specific purpose and some of that stayed in the movie even as the script changed, which makes the goo kind of discombobulated as a plot device. Something being mysterious can be good, but I feel the goo wasn't mysterious just confusing.
The assumption that the Black Liquid had or should have had a specific on-screen "definition" is unfounded. Rather than speculate as to what plot devices should have been used for (in one's own armchair directing fantasy), I find it more meaningful to ask what the plot device actually accomplished in the film.
Captain BA Black Guy gave us a reason for the goo, and from the film we have no reason to doubt his claim. Everything in the film supports it being a bio-weapon. That's what the goo did in the film. It killed people except for the one guy it didn't kill but then he killed like, four or five guys, so maybe the Jockey's felt like going the indirect route XD
Manchu wrote:The assumption that the Black Liquid had or should have had a specific on-screen "definition" is unfounded. Rather than speculate as to what plot devices should have been used for (in one's own armchair directing fantasy), I find it more meaningful to ask what the plot device actually accomplished in the film.
Absolute confusion?
Some people dissolved.
Some people turned into zombies with anger management issues
Some people made squid babies
some people turned into big snakes who don't like being messed with.
Why were the aliens running again? Why were some running to the chamber with the statue? Why were they piled against the door? What was chasing them?
What about all the other ships? Why are they there? Why did the engineers give a map to humanity to their launching base?
Are the engineers supposedly 3 billion years old? Didn't they have something better to do?
Why did they bring the helmet noto the ship in a non quaratine condition?
Why did David get all weird and then suddenly not weird?
why does David go exploring on his own and then tell no one but daddy?
Why did Weyland try to get all secrety? Thats particularly stupid. I have this whole mission to see aliens. I've decided to tag along to see if they can cure me of this bum body but hey I'm going to tell the crew I'm dead even though my daughter is here and knows (why again is she there?) as do several other people. Er ok...
The more you think about it the more stupid it gets.
Why did the engineers give a map to humanity to their launching base?
I actually can agree I find that the most confusing thing. The Jockey's had to come back and tell us for us to know about it, which makes we wonder what else might have been on the plant. DId it have cities at one point or what? It is really weird for them to come by just to say "We're gonna destroy you and since you won't have space flight for a few thousand years, here where we're doing it from."
LordofHats wrote:Captain BA Black Guy gave us a reason for the goo, and from the film we have no reason to doubt his claim. Everything in the film supports it being a bio-weapon. That's what the goo did in the film. It killed people except for the one guy it didn't kill but then he killed like, four or five guys, so maybe the Jockey's felt like going the indirect route XD
Wow. Lots of wrong here.
(1) Why would we believe that the ship's pilot is an expert of alien tech and culture? Hint: this is the script playing with a long-held fan explanation (ask Frazzled just how long), not a conclusive explanation of the Engineers.
(2) Other things in the film don't support the Black Liquid being a bio-weapon. Things like the opening scene.
(3) Only one being is killed by the Black Liquid -- the Engineer in the opening scene. Milburn is killed by the cobra. Holloway is killed by Vickers. Fifield is killed by the crew. Weyland, Ford, and the merc are killed by Engineer. Janek, Chance, and Ravel kill themselves by crashing into the Engineer's ship. Vickers is killed via being crushed by the ship. Shaw doesn't die.
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Frazzled wrote:Some people dissolved. Some people turned into zombies with anger management issues Some people made squid babies some people turned into big snakes who don't like being messed with.
In other words, the Black Liquid changes things. Not surprisingly, the alien technology does things that we don't predict.
Frazzled wrote:Why ...? [a bunch of times]
You must have fething hated Alien. It didn't explain anything at all.
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LordofHats wrote:
Why did the engineers give a map to humanity to their launching base?
I actually can agree I find that the most confusing thing.
So does Shaw.
"What did we do? Why do you hate us?" "Why did they change their minds?"
Manchu wrote:(1) Why would we believe that the ship's pilot is an expert of alien tech and culture? Hint: this is the script playing with a long-held fan explanation (ask Frazzled just how long), not a conclusive explanation of the Engineers.
Its a fan held explanation because its the one R Scott gave back in 1979. Space Jockey's like bioweapons. Not surprising that one would shows up in a movie about the Space Jockeys (though I agree that the ships captain probably had a really dubious thought process to jump to that conclusion).
(2) Other things in the film don't support the Black Liquid being a bio-weapon. Things like the opening scene.
Ahtman point out an article that talked about that, which really supports what I said about script alterations making the goo confusing.
(3) Only one being is killed by the Black Liquid -- the Engineer in the opening scene.
I suppose all those other engineers (who also had blown up heads) just had really bad heart attacks.
You must have fething hated Alien. It didn't explain anything at all.
I wouldn't say that. Alien managed to be mysterious without being confusing. Prometheus managed to do both, and the confusion soils the mystery cause now everyone's caught up trying to make sense of the events of the movie itself.
So does Shaw.
"What did we do? Why do you hate us?"
"Why did they change their minds?"
Now I just question your reading ability cause that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Shaw never sat down and thought "If they want to destroy us, why did they tell us where they were?" No one ever asked that question.
No its not. The only thing never answered in Alien was how the derelict got where it was and what the purpose of its cargo for the pilot would be. That's it. Alien has a very simple (almost slasher fiction simple EDIT: hell, not even almost) plot. Prometheus went for something more ambitious.
LordofHats wrote:Ahtman point out an article that talked about that, which really supports what I said about script alterations making the goo confusing.
Ahtman posted some pictures. Looking at the Prometheus artbook, I can tell that they had different ideas at different times. There's no hint that this meant the ideas were muddled up in production. Just more extra-textual speculation on your part, there.
LordofHats wrote:Now I just question your reading ability cause that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Shaw never sat down and thought "If they want to destroy us, why did they tell us where they were?" No one ever asked that question.
Pictures from an article that he then talked about...
LordofHats wrote:That's how the movie ended, actually.
Maybe I just don't remember it, though its still a question that probably should have come up sooner. Prometheus actually in some ways reminds me of Predators in that both movies build up all slow, and nice like, then it hits a plot point and just seems to blow through everything so fast in the last forty odd minutes.
Manchu wrote:If you want answers to the types of questions Frazzled posed, Alien would be a totally confusing and frustrating movie.
Really? Like NO.
Really. Like YES.
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LordofHats wrote:That's how the movie ended, actually.
Maybe I just don't remember it, though its still a question that probably should have come up sooner.
It did come up. As soon as Shaw had the chance to talk to an Engineer, she started screaming the questions "why why why?" And then at the end, instead of going home, she says that she deserves an answer.
LordofHats wrote:No its not. The only thing never answered in Alien was how the derelict got where it was and what the purpose of its cargo for the pilot would be. That's it. Alien has a very simple (almost slasher fiction simple EDIT: hell, not even almost) plot. Prometheus went for something more ambitious.
You forgot the most sinister questions!
How did the Company know the derelict was there? Who sent them to it?
It seems like to me that whoever was giving Ash his orders knew what they
were going after. As a matter of fact, it seems like they knew ALOT about it
based on Ash's comments("It's perfection.... You can't stop it.....").
alarmingrick wrote:How did the Company know the derelict was there?
Well there was this signal thingie going on.
It seems like to me that whoever was giving Ash his orders knew what they
were going after.
I forgot about that. The orders did say 'organism' which is rather specific (though, maybe the Prometheus trilogy will answer that question in later films).
And we have a ton of questions about the xenomorph biology that are not touched at all. And the space jockey -- who is a total mystery in all respects. Not to mention the relationship between them (where's the one that burst from its chest?). We're demanding a lot from Prometheus because we haven't thought about it and its sequels for 30 years.
alarmingrick wrote:How did the Company know the derelict was there?
Well there was this signal thingie going on.
But a signal ( that was a warning not a S.O.S.) told no details about jack. Not even what kind of signal it was.
I don't think the Co. knew it was a badass alien lifeform going off of that.
Manchu wrote:Also, how much did Dallas know? and for how long?
There's no sign in the film that Dallas knew any more than the rest of the crew. The whole thing was seemingly orchestrated entirely by Ash at the behest of the Company (was Weyland-Yutani even named in Alien?).
And we have a ton of questions about the xenomorph biology that are not touched at all.
... We really don't need answers for why a movie monster is the way it is. Consistency is more important. The Xenomorph never confused anyone as to how it went about its business. The goo meanwhile is a muddled substance that has confusing inconsistencies within the plot of the film. EDIT: Hell, it would have worked better for your idea about the goo had the captain walked in on Shaw and said "I don't know what the goo is, maybe we're not meant to know" or something along those lines. Instead, he spontaneously declares it a weapon and the film takes that and runs.
The question is, was it a distress signal, a warning, or did it even exist (an "illusion" created by W-Y)?
I see no reason to doubt its existence (ignoring that R Scott answers that in commentary for the movie).
And the space jockey -- who is a total mystery in all respects. Not to mention the relationship between them (where's the one that burst from its chest?).
Presumably dead, or elsewhere on the ship at the time.
We're demanding a lot from Prometheus because we haven't thought about it and its sequels for 30 years.
No. We're demanding a lot from Prometheus because it holds its hand out temptingly and ultimately provides no answers. EDIT: Alien didn't hold its hand out, it just dropped some things and let the lay where they fell. It never invited us to ask questions about Jockey or the Xenomorph, which is something Prometheus does constantly.
Manchu wrote:If you want answers to the types of questions Frazzled posed, Alien would be a totally confusing and frustrating movie.
Really? Like NO.
Really. Like YES.
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LordofHats wrote:That's how the movie ended, actually.
Maybe I just don't remember it, though its still a question that probably should have come up sooner.
It did come up. As soon as Shaw had the chance to talk to an Engineer, she started screaming the questions "why why why?" And then at the end, instead of going home, she says that she deserves an answer.
UNless you're thinking too much Alien is this
1. Company hears signal and think's something there but wants to be sneaky/not spend money.
2. Reroutes freighter in area with android to check it out.
3. freighter discovers alien ship. Alian ship has space herpes. Gives space herpes to crew member (and didn't even call later)
4. Space herpes causes unsightly rash to entire crew except one member who uses ointment to deal with it.
The end.
Its not all mystical. You'r reading a lot into what is in essence a college kid's philosophy paper that, like a college kid's philosophy paper is want to to, is only half baked.
Visuals were excellent. Fassbender was excellent. the viral campaign was way better than the movie.
I don't think Dallas knew much, if anything more than he let on.
But, he did spend a long time with "Mother" before he came out
to the dining hall and briefed them on the signal. Easy enough to plant
the seed of doubt though.
Frazzled wrote:Its not all mystical. You'r reading a lot into what is in essence a college kid's philosophy paper that, like a college kid's philosophy paper is want to to, is only half baked.
That's brilliant. Can I quote you on that
Exactly correct. We also don't need to know how the Black Liquid works.
...
That's what I said. I also said it should be consistent, which black liquid is not.
Manchu wrote:Okay, when you call me reading the text of the film "reading into things" then we have reached the end of productive conversation.
We reached the end of productive conversation when you create contrived explanations for a very convoluted film and refuse to admit your reading into things.
He at least knew at that point that the crew was expendable. And he seemed okay with that. Makes me think he had already thought about it.
And that isn't reading into things? I just watched the movie yesterday. Dallas doesn't do anything to suggest that he knows anything. He's part of the crew. I doubt he'd like to think of himself as expendable.
kronk wrote:That was one of the more stunning visual displays I've seen in a long time.
Agreed, that was the first moment in any film that I've ever seen where I've just sat there with my jaw hanging open.
The one thing about the film that actually irked me wasn't any of the bad decisions (apart from possibly ignoring the assault on the doctors) but how the proto-facehugger managed to grow from a small 4 tentacled squid thing about a foot long, to a giant many tentacled mini-kraken capable of overpowering the engineer, when there were no sources of food or nutrition in the med-room.
LordofHats wrote:No. Really No. There's only about two real questions that go unanswered in Alien. Prometheus has at least a dozen moments of confusing ambiguity.
And they re cool questions that advance the storyline.
Why do Space Jockeys have a bunch of alien eggs? Even that is not a big deal. Could be a bomber, could be cargo, could have been infested at some point.
Who are the Space Jockeys? While cool answer this question is not essential to the story.
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LordofHats wrote:
alarmingrick wrote:How did the Company know the derelict was there?
Well there was this signal thingie going on.
It seems like to me that whoever was giving Ash his orders knew what they
were going after.
I forgot about that. The orders did say 'organism' which is rather specific (though, maybe the Prometheus trilogy will answer that question in later films).
You forgot the most sinister questions!
How did the Company know the derelict was there? Who sent them to it?
***Answered in the movie and a central plot point. It was sending out a warning. The company sent them.
It seems like to me that whoever was giving Ash his orders knew what they
were going after. As a matter of fact, it seems like they knew ALOT about it
based on Ash's comments("It's perfection.... You can't stop it.....").
****We don’t know how much information was in the warning. Ash also didn’t know any of that until they ran into it and studied the facehugger and the Alien’s actions.
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alarmingrick wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
alarmingrick wrote:How did the Company know the derelict was there?
Well there was this signal thingie going on.
But a signal ( that was a warning not a S.O.S.) told no details about jack. Not even what kind of signal it was.
I don't think the Co. knew it was a badass alien lifeform going off of that.
We don't know that. Ripley only surmises its some kind of warning. She doesn't know the details.
It could have said "warning, LV 243 is now infected with Space Herpes. Be sure you are vaccinated before appropaching."
Wondering about the biology of the Alien itself is light years different than "er why did David just infect that guy? Why is this guy trying to French kiss a snake? What the? Where did the Red Baron come from???"
LordofHats wrote: And that isn't reading into things? I just watched the movie yesterday. Dallas doesn't do anything to suggest that he knows anything. He's part of the crew. I doubt he'd like to think of himself as expendable.
Indeed, the only thing Dallas knows is expendable at that point is their bonus shares if they break the law/contract and not check out a potential distress call. We know Ash (because he directly tells us) is there to get the Alien. We don't know why David does pretty much anything he does after he rescues them in the storm. WHY DOES HE GIVE THE SCIENTIST THAT SPECIAL FRUITY DRINK? WHY DOES HE GET WEIRD WITH SHAW?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Interestingly now that you think about it, the goo stuff reaction would be similar to if it were some sort of industrial goo for the engineer.
Engineer freighter 1135 "the Donald" full of highly toxic dihydrogen monoxide prepares to make the LV223 / Earth colony run (for the 18th freaking time that month, gosh the crew is SO bored) when there's a spill elsewhere at the port. Crew rushes to the safety of the rec room but gets trapped and dies from chemical poisoning. I mean the stuff is so toxic is causes mutations, insanity, and even death. Pilot jumps into his hyper pod as he knows it wil protect him until help arrives.
But the leak is so bad everyone in the area gets wacked and the pilot is trapped for a really long time. When relief shows up they turn out to BE BUG EYED DWARF ALIENS!!!! AHHHH!
Frazzled wrote: Some people dissolved. Some people turned into zombies with anger management issues Some people made squid babies some people turned into big snakes who don't like being messed with.
1 person was infected with Penis Snake blood. (Goo + worm DNA) 1 person was impregnated by someone directly consuming the Goo. (Goo + human DNA) 1 person was directly infected through ingestion. (just good old Goo, no additives) Doesn't suprise me that there are diferent "reactions" at all. Went about like I would have guessed it would given the different variables.
Thanks Red! Now the question is do we get the directors cut soon, or in 25 years?!
Dr Biltoo is just reading things into the movie ...
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LordofHats wrote:
Manchu wrote:He at least knew at that point that the crew was expendable. And he seemed okay with that. Makes me think he had already thought about it.
And that isn't reading into things? I just watched the movie yesterday. Dallas doesn't do anything to suggest that he knows anything. He's part of the crew. I doubt he'd like to think of himself as expendable.
I guess you never wondered why Dallas didn't say anything to anyone about the crew being expendable, huh? And I suppose him knowing about that didn't make you think about why he wanted to bypass the lawful quarantine procedure either? There's quite a lot of ambiguity there.
Things are only boring if you insist on having all the answers without ever asking questions.
I think it's rather obvious David did the things he did because Weyland told him. My question is if David has ulterior motivations (aside from doing what Weyland told him to do), cause I got the sense from the film that he did, but it wasn't ever touched on so I don't really know.
With the promise of both a director's cut AND an audio commentary on the upcoming home release, fans will hopefully not have too much longer to wait until more of Prometheus' many secrets are revealed.
Translation: Scott smelled $$$ and decided to cash in.
Shocker. It's almost like Hollywood is only in the film business for, dare I say it, the profits?
I guess you never wondered why Dallas didn't say anything to anyone about the crew being expendable, huh?
Dallas didn't say anything because he didn't know... I have no idea where you get the idea he did. The order to Ash was only readable by Ash without an override. Dallas states he trusts Ash, so he's obviously not as concerned as Ripley with what that order entails.
And I suppose him knowing about that didn't make you think about why he wanted to bypass the lawful quarantine procedure either?
By that logic everyone but Ripley knew about the order. Dallas wasn't the only one who wanted to bring Kane back to the ship. So did Lambert. We all know why Ash opened the door.
There's quite a lot of ambiguity there.
No its really not. You've created the ambiguity on the false premise that Dallas knew something that the film never even implies he knew.
Things are only boring when a piece consistently begs you to ask questions and then provides no answers to any of them because they want to make a sequel.
Fix'd.
There's nothing wrong with asking questions. But when questions are the only thing a plot achieves, then the plot has failed because anyone with half a brain stops wasting their time with the dribble and moves on with life. Lost did nothing but ask questions, and Lost sucked because of it. I have no incentive to continue to care about something that only asks me questions. I don't demand that it answer all my questions, or that the answers even be complete, but I do demand that if your going to spend two hours asking me questions, give me something for my time.
LordofHats wrote:I think it's rather obvious David did the things he did because Weyland told him. My question is if David has ulterior motivations (aside from doing what Weyland told him to do), cause I got the sense from the film that he did, but it wasn't ever touched on so I don't really know.
With the promise of both a director's cut AND an audio commentary on the upcoming home release, fans will hopefully not have too much longer to wait until more of Prometheus' many secrets are revealed.
Translation: Scott smelled $$$ and decided to cash in.
Shocker. It's almost like Hollywood is only in the film business for, dare I say it, the profits?
I don't think anything David did was obvious. He saves Shaw just to experiment on later.
He stalks her stasis. And directly infects Halloway. I think it's easier to assume he said what he
was ordered to, but I won't be surprised if he told the Engineer he was with Immigration and he
needed his papers.....
LordofHats wrote:I have no incentive to continue to care about something that only asks me questions.
And yet here you still are, arguing about how bad this movie is.
I have lots of free time (obviously, I'm on a 40k forum ) and would have liked actually talking about what's in the movie, but you continue to insist on posting contrived whimsy over the actual piece and my attempts to suggest otherwise are continually in vain.
P.S. I mentioned no more than a page ago I didn't think the film was bad. But given your habit of forming baseless opinion on this film I guess I shouldn't be shocked that you just assume any criticism directed at the movie must mean that person thinks its absolutely horrible.
So why did David feed the scientist the mickey? What were the spacejockeys running from? Why did they run there? How can I get one of those medipods? Is the medipod an early version of the scanner etc. gear found in both the Nostromo and later the Sulaco's lifepod? Just why are there aother space jockey ships?
Frazzled wrote:So why did David feed the scientist the mickey?
Weyland programmed him to figure out how to make Weyland live longer. In a way, David asks for Holloway's consent to experiment on him.
Frazzled wrote:What were the spacejockeys running from?
The result of a contamination. Maybe cobra-things. They had holes in their bodies.
Frazzled wrote:Why did they run there?
They ran "that way" rather than "there" (no bodies in the Big Head chamber), which might have been "toward the ship." (Makes sense: Milburn and Fifield find the bodies on their way toward the ship and then turn around.)
Frazzled wrote:Just why are there other space jockey ships?
We could only speculate. It doesn't really matter. If there was only one, would you ask "just why is there only one?"
Frazzled wrote:So why did David feed the scientist the mickey?
Time was running out and Weyland told him to 'try harder' to get some results. He didn't have months to analyze it. So essentially he was under orders, on a time limit, and had to be covert.
Frazzled wrote:What were the spacejockeys running from?
Why did they run there?
What indeed? Infection? Xenomorphs? Something else? Hard to say. The video was 2000 years old and may have been degraded/faulty as well. As for why that room, again, hard to say. May have been a religious room, maybe they thought they could seppuku on black goo, or maybe they were panicked and just running anywhere.
Frazzled wrote:How can I get one of those medipods?
Freeze yourself for 90 years I guess. I imagine one the websites that makes money of 'geek chic' will have an ironic plush version of it any day now.
Frazzled wrote:Is the medipod an early version of the scanner etc. gear found in both the Nostromo and later the Sulaco's lifepod?
I think it is a more advanced version as far as Alien, and certainly a precursor to the Saluco's.
Frazzled wrote:Just why are there aother space jockey ships?
So why did David feed the scientist the mickey?
What were the spacejockeys running from?
Why did they run there?
How can I get one of those medipods?
Is the medipod an early version of the scanner etc. gear found in both the Nostromo and later the Sulaco's lifepod?
Just why are there aother space jockey ships?
I'm going to assume you're just showing us a list of questions you're forming to send to Sir Ridley, right?
I saw the same movie you did. If there was an answer to those, I didn't gleen it. The director's cut will hopefuly
shed some light on the answers, or the next 2 movies.
Frazzled wrote:Just why are there aother space jockey ships?
I've never seen an airport with just one plane.
I get that, but this airport's been closed for two thousand years. Why agains are there other ships?
Well we already know their technology lasts far longer than ours, so imagine if our aircraft wouldn't fall apart over time and everyone just suddenly keeled over from a disease (or alien attack). The aircraft would just sit in the hangers waiting for someone to find them. We know the Engineers, well most of them, died in that area, so the more interesting question is why did the other Engineers never come back to the planet? I imagine their view of time is quite different then ours, but 2000 years is quite some time.
Frazzled wrote:Just why are there aother space jockey ships?
I've never seen an airport with just one plane.
I get that, but this airport's been closed for two thousand years. Why agains are there other ships?
Well we already know their technology lasts far longer than ours, so imagine if our aircraft wouldn't fall apart over time and everyone just suddenly keeled over from a disease (or alien attack). The aircraft would just sit in the hangers waiting for someone to find them. We know the Engineers, well most of them, died in that area, so the more interesting question is why did the other Engineers never come back to the planet? I imagine their view of time is quite different then ours, but 2000 years is quite some time.
Exaclty Ahtman. Why was this place abandoned with live jockeys laying around? Was this guy the only one that surived the toxic waste spill?
I do think that several of the questions posed in this thread do have answers one can reasonably guess at, and others are meant to be left unanswered to maintain mystery and a sense of a larger world. Like wondering how much The Company and Ash knew about the SJ ship & the xeno in Alien.
Manchu wrote:The assumption that the Black Liquid had or should have had a specific on-screen "definition" is unfounded. Rather than speculate as to what plot devices should have been used for (in one's own armchair directing fantasy), I find it more meaningful to ask what the plot device actually accomplished in the film.
Absolute confusion?
Some people dissolved.
Some people turned into zombies with anger management issues
Some people made squid babies
some people turned into big snakes who don't like being messed with.
I concur with earlier posters that a) we're actually dealing with multiple types of black goo which are not immediately and easily distinguishable to the ignorant (ie: humans, ie; the audience) by visual appearance. We get the suspense of waiting and seeing the results. It looks to be like some kind of biological nanotechnology; it may have a certain level of programming/"intelligence" that tells it to do different things TO different things.
1. Only the Engineer dissolved, and we honestly have no real reason to think the cocktail he took at the dawn of time on Earth was the exact same stuff on the planet.
2. Fifield looked to have been killed by a snake-thing first. Maybe the goo can be used to mutate/zombify dead people.
3. Shaw was impregnated by someone who was infected; maybe the goo specifically makes use of an existing womb/reproductive system to make a squid-thing if introduced there.
4. When? Looked to me (as someone else pointed out) that worms actually got turned into r-cobras, not people.
Frazzled wrote: Why were the aliens running again?
a) Because it's like in a movie when you find a recording or evidence of some horrible thing that happened here before, building anticipation for something to happen to the new visitors. Like reading Balin's diary in Fellowship of the Ring. "Drums, drums in the deep".
B) Probably because part of the bio-weapon got loose/activated. Maybe they were running from xenomorphs. Maybe r-cobras; as Manchu noted, at least some of them had holes in their bodies.
Frazzled wrote: Why were some running to the chamber with the statue?
I think Manchu's right that they may not have been; they may have just been running to the ship, and got caught at that point. Maybe one of them tried to get in there as a refuge, since it had a big heavy door, and he got his head severed. Or maybe he was just trying to seal it off to protect it, as it was valuable.
Frazzled wrote: Why were they piled against the door?
Got cornered by killer aliens and killed in a huddle.
Frazzled wrote: What was chasing them?
As above.
Frazzled wrote: What about all the other ships? Why are they there?
As others discussed, they had multiple bases and multiple ships on the planet.
Frazzled wrote: - Why did the engineers give a map to humanity to their launching base?
That's definitely a good question, and one of my biggest ones. I do think that's meant to be left open, for Shaw to investigate.
Frazzled wrote: Are the engineers supposedly 3 billion years old? Didn't they have something better to do?
If you were three billion years old, making life and fething with it might be one of your main hobbies.
Frazzled wrote: Why did they bring the helmet noto the ship in a non quaratine condition?
Good question. They were sloppy about quarantine and possible contamination all through the movie though, going back to taking off their helmets in the alien base.
Frazzled wrote: Why did David get all weird and then suddenly not weird?
He's weird the whole time. It's just a question of how subtle he's being about it. Sometimes he doesn't feel the person is paying a lot of attention and he doesn't need to be subtle.
Frazzled wrote: why does David go exploring on his own and then tell no one but daddy?
Because Weyland told him to try harder. David's like Ash; he has more information than the human crew right from the start, and is used by his owner (owners, for Ash) to carry out their orders regardless of risk to the others.
Frazzled wrote: Why did Weyland try to get all secrety? Thats particularly stupid. I have this whole mission to see aliens. I've decided to tag along to see if they can cure me of this bum body but hey I'm going to tell the crew I'm dead...
Probably because he's a crochety old man and wants them to stay off his lawn. He doesn't actually have to deal with any of these young whippersnappers and directly lead the expedition if they think he's dead. But being there in secret gives him the flexibilty to react to current events, through David at first, or by revealing himself and directly commandeering the team if he needs to.
Frazzled wrote: even though my daughter is here and knows (why again is she there?)
Because she doesn't like or support his plan, and lacks the power or authority (within the company) to stop him from going through with it, but has the power and authority (within the company) to add herself onto the mission so she can exert at least SOME control and again react to unexpected developments as events warrant. She tries to manipulate the activities of the crew and tell them that she's actually in charge, as she's the ranking company officer present. She knows that's not really true, but Weyland can't contradict it unless he feels like abandoning his secrecy. Which he can do, of course, but meanwhile she's got some steerage on the mission. She's there probably mostly because Weyland is there, and she wants to take over from him. Knowing what happens to him is part of taking control of the company.
I've been thinking on why the Engineers would leave a road map to the planet. Why? No idea, but I was.
Time, I think, is the key. If I recall correctly, all the carvings pre-date the Engineers deciding to EXTERMINATE* humanity. At that point in time the planet may have been the outpost to Earth. The Engineers probably use planets the way we use islands. In the past they told us that, one day, we'll come to Camp Tigondaroga and make s'mores and hang out, but then we told them we didn't like making lanyards so they turned it into a military outpost and were planning on tp'ing our cabin. Should I go on with the summer camp analogy?
*ducks flying vegetables being thrown at an alarming speed*
Relating to the fact that the black liquid Seemed to have different effects each time it was used, here are some things I realised/theorised:
1. The black liquid that splashes on fifield's face and that holloway swallows are from different sources, and so could have different effects, David opens one of the vases and removes those four stinger shaped glass things, from which he gets the black liquid that he infects holloway with.
2. The black liquid that fifield gets on his face is the stuff that leaked from the vases, which has different effects to that in the stingers (mutagenic rather than parasitic), and so caused him to turn into the weird rage monster thing.
3. The eel things that came out of the black liquid were , apart from killing the biologist and causing fifield to transform, supposed to demonstrate that the black liquid was mutagenic, hence the focus on the insects being covered in the liquid, which we can assume became the aforementioned eels.
4. The black liquid from the stingers was parasitic, causing anyone "infected" to host those small worm things (that came out of holloway's eye) until a female host can be found to "birth" one (presumably resulting in the female dying), which will then grow, attack a new host and start the proto-alien life cycle.
Corpsesarefun wrote:I know, Hlaine was saying there wasn't a biologist for some reason.
no, my brother says that for some reason
Well you need to inform him that he missed it. It was stated at the beginning of the film when they were introducing the crew.
Goliath, yes I think you are right - I think the black goo was obviously meant to act as some kind of mutagen/catalyst to whichever life it comes into contact with. You can imagine how tremendously effective as a WMD it would be if such things were dropped on the earth.
When one of the characters says that 'the atmosphere is changing' when they walked into the chamber with all of the vases, the goo must be reacting to the presence of life forms coming into the room.
The real question is of course is if the goo is somehow attuned to the psychology of the people it comes into contact with, and mirrors their thoughts and desires. In essence, it might be seen as the ultimate restorer of balance and altruism - the Engineer, at the start of the movie, swallows the goo and because of his state of mind simply dies and gives birth to the new life. His robes and the almost ritualistic nature of how he behaves might indicate that. But, the already advanced life-form (that displays a more self-serving attitude) provokes an entirely different result from it.
That might also be the explanation as to why something went wrong with the Engineers plans and they killed by the goo - perhaps some of them were not emotionally or psychologically in balance, by the very act of preparing to destroy a species, and so the goo turned on them!
Pacific wrote:The real question is of course is if the goo is somehow attuned to the psychology of the people it comes into contact with, and mirrors their thoughts and desires. In essence, it might be seen as the ultimate restorer of balance and altruism - the Engineer, at the start of the movie, swallows the goo and because of his state of mind simply dies and gives birth to the new life. His robes and the almost ritualistic nature of how he behaves might indicate that. But, the already advanced life-form (that displays a more self-serving attitude) provokes an entirely different result from it.
When the engineer at the start drinks from the cup, it is from a cup though, and not the vase. In the trailers, in the room with the head, rather than having that large green crystal on the podium in front of the image of the xenomorph, there was a small ceremonial bowl similar to that drunk from by the engineer, meaning that all three varieties of black liquid have been seen at some pint in the same room, so I would pose that engineer technology seems to revolve around "black liquids" but that the liquids, whilst superficially similar, have greatly different functions.
The liquid in the bowl causes the person who drinks/comes into contact with it to break down at a microscopic level in order to seed a planet with life.
The liquid oozing from the vases and forming the puddles on the floor of the room with the head causes whatever comes into contact with it to mutate into a more resilient and aggressive form of itself (fifield becomes super-strong, able to withstand being shot multiple times and incredibly angry. The worm/centipede things on the floor of the vase room become much larger, develop the ability to regenerate themselves, and incredibly aggressive, to the point of attacking and killing the biologist)
The liquid in the glass ampoules within the vases is the ultimate bio-weapon, the weapon that results in the xenomorphs being created, it causes a body to host those worm things that you see in Holloway's eye, which can be transmitted from person to person by intimate contact, until they find a host suitable to develop in and birth from (read: female), the small 4 tentacled squid will then presumably go all chestburster on them, and will then grow to the massive size seen at the end of the film, at which point it will overpower a victim, implant eggs a la facehugger, and a proto-xenomorph will be born, starting the xenomorph life cycle.
I liked it-it was a good Sci-Fi, just not greatly awesome. Worth 8 bucks I guess. I didn't really see any plot holes or characters that really needed more development-it wasn't THAT hard to figure everyone out. I had David pegged as a robot/synthoid about 2 seconds after he showed up, and it was pretty easy to see he had ulterior motives. The daughter was another obvious thing-it was easy to tell for the characters who mattered.
Manchu wrote:If fire can power a nation, then surely it can destroy it. The movie did not need to show the Black Liquid being used by humans to further their goals -- in fact, that would have been rather contrary to the themes of the picture, which seemed to insist (again and again and again) that technology is a mirror. It's not good or evil; it just reflects us. And so if we see it as good or evil, that reflects something about ourselves. (Remember the scene where David looks into the drop of Black Liquid on his synthetic finger tip? We see a reflection of the lights in the room but no reflection of David -- a mirror pointed at a mirror.) This is similar to Promethean Fire of Greek myth, which is the symbolic "light of truth" in which humans can evaluate the natural world.
But none of that is reflected in the movie. A movie in which they're talking about technology as Promethean fire should have events which capture those themes, it should have technology and black goo being used in simultaneously constructive & destructive events. But the film doesn't have those events. It has some visual elements that can be interpreted as being about those events, but nothing more.
I have no doubt they were aiming for something much like you describe. Unfortunately the final film failed to capture that idea at all.
(I'm genuinely surprised by how many people totally believe LV223 is a weapons stockpile simply because Janek suggests that's the case, for example.)
Problem is that once we stop accepting the out of nowhere declarations characters make throughout Prometheus, then we have absolutely nothing to go on at all.
The Black Liquid really, really is not "a technology" but rather is a symbol for technology.
Then it should have been used for all facets of technology, rather than goop that touches you and makes body horror stuff happen.
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Manchu wrote:I agree. But it is alien technology. We are very comfortable in our own viewpoint. We tend to think that if anyone happened upon a hammer, they'd be able to figure out what it was for. Even if that was true (it's not), could anyone who happened upon a particle accelerator figure out what that does? Near the end of the nineteenth century, the Chinese thought that they could incorporate useful Western technology without incorporating disruptive Western culture. As it turns out, there is a whole culture and history behind the machine gun and the steam engine that can't be sloughed off. But it wasn't a lesson well-learned, obviously. The reaction to this movie shows that people still don't think technology had anything to do with culture. If the goo does something, we should be able to figure it out and use it ourselves for whatever purpose we have. That is not the Promethean sense of fire (a.k.a., technology), however. The Black Liquid does different things at different times because we don't understand it and, without knowing a whole lot more about the Engineers, we will never understand it much less be able to apply it to obtain predictable results.
The fairly mediocre Michael Crichton book Sphere actually examined technology in this context. Upon finding the eponymous Sphere and seeing realising its power they assume it is a gift from a higher species. When they realise its danger they assume it is a booby trap, or a test to see if a species has evolved enough to use a technology. Then on further conversation they consider that if bacteria were to stumble into one of our satellites and fry themselves on the battery, they might assume it was a boobytrap device, because they were advanced enough to conceive of a satellite.
Now, all of that was a bit literal in Sphere because, well, Sphere wasn't very good either. But it was actual exploration of technology through the characters and events of the book. Prometheus simply didn't have any of that. I think it wanted to, but ultimately just ended up failing to deliver on its ambition.
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Manchu wrote:(1) Why would we believe that the ship's pilot is an expert of alien tech and culture? Hint: this is the script playing with a long-held fan explanation (ask Frazzled just how long), not a conclusive explanation of the Engineers.
Because the film gives us no reason to believe some statements by some characters, and not by any others. Nor does it give us any reason to doubt that statement, or any other. If we start picking and choosing which statements we choose to believe, we end up ignoring everything stated in the movie and just making up a movie we prefer in our own heads.
You must have fething hated Alien. It didn't explain anything at all.
It explained everything it had to, and left only background detail open. We didn't need to know who the space jockeys were, only what happened to Kane. We didn't need to know if the alien was bio-engineered or not, only that it was a direct threat.
Prometheus, on the other hand, had questions that needed answering. And I don't mean 'why did they start hating us', which is an excellent question to leave unanswered. I mean questions like 'is the black goo purely destructive - can it be used to create, or merely to destroy?'
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Frazzled wrote:So why did David feed the scientist the mickey?
To find out what it did. Basically David just screwed around experimenting with stuff he didn't understand, if he wasn't under direct orders from Weyland to do stuff. He did ask him if he would do anything to discover what the aliens were.
What were the spacejockeys running from?
We were left to conclude the black goo somehow got out, and one of its mysterious functions had mysteriously done something mysterious that killed them.
The stomach of one Engineer was ripped out, and I think someone said it looked like it was torn out from the inside, giving one of the shout outs to Alien that the film kind of built towards and then just stopped doing.
Why did they run there?
Because having all those bodies piled up there looked ominous.
How can I get one of those medipods?
More to the point, why would a medipod be single gender only?
sebster wrote:More to the point, why would a medipod be single gender only?
My guess is that, knowing there are only 10 in existence, that they are made for specific purposes, or more accurately, specific people. This was most likely Weyland's personal machine.
I'm just happy everyone thinks my theory on why the Engineers left clues to their location is good enough to not disagree with, or even mention.
timetowaste85 wrote:I liked it-it was a good Sci-Fi, just not greatly awesome. Worth 8 bucks I guess. I didn't really see any plot holes or characters that really needed more development-it wasn't THAT hard to figure everyone out. I had David pegged as a robot/synthoid about 2 seconds after he showed up, and it was pretty easy to see he had ulterior motives.
I don't think David as an android was meant to be any kind of mystery.
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Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:no, my brother says that for some reason
More to the point, why would a medipod be single gender only?
Because the film tried and failed at foreshadowing?
Why the hell are we foreshadowing an event that anyone with half a brain should have seen coming? I mean, its horribly obvious its gonna be Weyland in that pod David's talking to, and Vickers interest kinds of points her out too! EDIT: Cut that moment out and the pod being male only might have actually been quite brilliant.
Ahtman wrote:My guess is that, knowing there are only 10 in existence, that they are made for specific purposes, or more accurately, specific people. This was most likely Weyland's personal machine.
I'm just happy everyone thinks my theory on why the Engineers left clues to their location is good enough to not disagree with, or even mention.
Oh yeah, from a story telling POV that's why it was male only. It's just from a nitpicking POV it's a little silly to develop a machine with the capability to perform surgery but then stop at only one gender. It'd be like teaching medical school having a vasectomy class and a caeseran class, and saying you could only attend one of the two.
That said, given the nature of this thread I should point out the above is only a silly nitpick, and doesn't diminish the movie in any way. My actual problems with the movie are, well, everything we've discussed before.
Goliath wrote:The one thing about the film that actually irked me wasn't any of the bad decisions (apart from possibly ignoring the assault on the doctors) but how the proto-facehugger managed to grow from a small 4 tentacled squid thing about a foot long, to a giant many tentacled mini-kraken capable of overpowering the engineer, when there were no sources of food or nutrition in the med-room.
I said it, the two are linked !
1- Shaw has cesarean
2- doctors wake up, see she's gone
3- doctors hear she was in a mess after her surgery, go check on the pod
4- squid is still there
Spoiler:
5- om nom nom nom nom
That, or the unexplained (unless I'm mistaken) tendency of xenomorphs to grow from chestburster to adult with seemingly no need for nutrients in a matter of hours.
Manchu wrote:If fire can power a nation, then surely it can destroy it. The movie did not need to show the Black Liquid being used by humans to further their goals -- in fact, that would have been rather contrary to the themes of the picture, which seemed to insist (again and again and again) that technology is a mirror. It's not good or evil; it just reflects us. And so if we see it as good or evil, that reflects something about ourselves. (Remember the scene where David looks into the drop of Black Liquid on his synthetic finger tip? We see a reflection of the lights in the room but no reflection of David -- a mirror pointed at a mirror.) This is similar to Promethean Fire of Greek myth, which is the symbolic "light of truth" in which humans can evaluate the natural world.
But none of that is reflected in the movie. A movie in which they're talking about technology as Promethean fire should have events which capture those themes, it should have technology and black goo being used in simultaneously constructive & destructive events. But the film doesn't have those events. It has some visual elements that can be interpreted as being about those events, but nothing more.
The constructive event is the opening scene, as used by the Engineers originally to seed Earth, and the destructive events are everything that happened when we messed around with it. I think the theme's there.
sebster wrote:
(I'm genuinely surprised by how many people totally believe LV223 is a weapons stockpile simply because Janek suggests that's the case, for example.)
Problem is that once we stop accepting the out of nowhere declarations characters make throughout Prometheus, then we have absolutely nothing to go on at all.
Manchu wrote:(1) Why would we believe that the ship's pilot is an expert of alien tech and culture? Hint: this is the script playing with a long-held fan explanation (ask Frazzled just how long), not a conclusive explanation of the Engineers.
Because the film gives us no reason to believe some statements by some characters, and not by any others. Nor does it give us any reason to doubt that statement, or any other. If we start picking and choosing which statements we choose to believe, we end up ignoring everything stated in the movie and just making up a movie we prefer in our own heads.
I think that's going a bit far. I agree it could be developed better, but we could evaluate statements made by the characters based on what we know of them. I do think there are problems with it, like the co-pilots betting their lives on that theory. The ending has a lot of issues, which may have had to do with re-writes to put in a more climactic ending.
sebster wrote:
You must have fething hated Alien. It didn't explain anything at all.
Prometheus, on the other hand, had questions that needed answering. And I don't mean 'why did they start hating us', which is an excellent question to leave unanswered. I mean questions like 'is the black goo purely destructive - can it be used to create, or merely to destroy?'
You mean other than the opening scene? I do also think the "at least three different substances shown" theory's a reasonable one.
Actually, we don't know it creates anything. the scene just has him swallowing something and dissolving. It could have been ritual suicide. We're assuming its not, but thats all the scene really shows.
Mannahnin wrote:Really? You don't think it was reasonably clear that they were seeding life on Earth?
I thought so as well, but then Ridley is on TV doing interviews saying it is just some random planet, that it doesn't have to be Earth. He may not be the best shot in the world, but he finds a way to hit his foot every single time.
Why should anyone 'hate' anything for hells sake? Are there not other things in the world worth getting your knickers twisted about over?
I really can't understand it - what is it about some of these films (and I remember a similar situation with both the Matrix and Avatar) where people don't just dislike the film. It has to be a gloves off, snarling actual hatred of the films? Perhaps just something to do with sci-fi, and people's imaginings of the future or a particular situation not matching their own?
Mannahnin wrote:The constructive event is the opening scene, as used by the Engineers originally to seed Earth, and the destructive events are everything that happened when we messed around with it. I think the theme's there.
But that's some alien using it. I mean to capture the potential and danger of technology to humans, you have to show humans benefitting from, and suffering from that technology. And I mean both actual technology and the black goo, so there could have been a crewman or two killed by a malfunction in the ship before landing, and then both positives and eventually loads of negatives from the goo itself.
I agree with you that the goo as technology is the theme they were aiming for (otherwise why call it Prometheus?), but I don't think they did enough to show us that technology, or it's symbol in the black goo, is a two edged sword. With actual technology they gave us no hint of its danger, and with the goo they give us no hint of its possible benefit.
I think that's going a bit far. I agree it could be developed better, but we could evaluate statements made by the characters based on what we know of them. I do think there are problems with it, like the co-pilots betting their lives on that theory. The ending has a lot of issues, which may have had to do with re-writes to put in a more climactic ending.
I think that's probably a fair summary. I agree that I overstated my case in saying we had no reason to believe some statements and not others, which I think I made just because of the 'where the hell did that came from' feeling I got when Shaw declares the jockey is going to Earth to kill us all at the end - something she couldn't possibly know for certain but something we were apparently supposed to just accept.
You mean other than the opening scene? I do also think the "at least three different substances shown" theory's a reasonable one.
I meant 'purely destructive in our hands'. It does nothing but make weird organisms that try and kill us. One of the interviews with the scriptwriter I read talked about how it reflected our souls or something, so that because we are base creatures then the goo reflects that.
And yeah, I agree that the idea that there was different kinds of goo is reasonable (I didn't see any difference in goo types myself, but I'm happy to believe I missed some visual clue). I'm not sure that makes for a better movie, though.
More than anything, I'm just left wondering why they didn't have people experiment with the goo, find some good benefits, and ignore some obvious risks. Then it gets out of hand and some people die. It just seems so much cleaner, and to actually explore the theme so much more strongly.
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Mannahnin wrote:Really? You don't think it was reasonably clear that they were seeding life on Earth?
I thought they were seeding human life on Earth, not all life. That's why humans, and only humans, share our DNA with them.
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Pacific wrote:Why should anyone 'hate' anything for hells sake? Are there not other things in the world worth getting your knickers twisted about over?
I really can't understand it - what is it about some of these films (and I remember a similar situation with both the Matrix and Avatar) where people don't just dislike the film. It has to be a gloves off, snarling actual hatred of the films? Perhaps just something to do with sci-fi, and people's imaginings of the future or a particular situation not matching their own?
Because if you don't like something and someone else thinks it was pretty good, then it isn't enough to simply leave to their thing, you have to tell them there thing was the worst in the world.
There's also an internet attention whore thing going on - who's going to listen to the guy who says 'this movie was okay in places but had some downsides'? People are going to get drawn to the guy who says a movie is the worst thing ever, even if it's just to tell him it's wrong it's more attention than the other guy is getting.
And as I type that... yes I am fully aware I've held some pretty strong negative opinions about films, and I don't pretend the above didn't play some part in me forming those opinions
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Ahtman wrote:I thought so as well, but then Ridley is on TV doing interviews saying it is just some random planet, that it doesn't have to be Earth. He may not be the best shot in the world, but he finds a way to hit his foot every single time.
It's stuff like that where I'm glad I can say 'the author is dead' and just ignore any silly stuff he claims about Earth. Because making that about the formation of some other species makes the whole thing pointless.
Pacific wrote:Why should anyone 'hate' anything for hells sake? Are there not other things in the world worth getting your knickers twisted about over?
I really can't understand it - what is it about some of these films (and I remember a similar situation with both the Matrix and Avatar) where people don't just dislike the film. It has to be a gloves off, snarling actual hatred of the films? Perhaps just something to do with sci-fi, and people's imaginings of the future or a particular situation not matching their own?
Because if in a few cases when you try to talk about a few of the downsides you get assaulted by zealots who loved the film and those zealots are bloody annoying...
Mannahnin wrote:The constructive event is the opening scene, as used by the Engineers originally to seed Earth, and the destructive events are everything that happened when we messed around with it. I think the theme's there.
But that's some alien using it. I mean to capture the potential and danger of technology to humans, you have to show humans benefitting from, and suffering from that technology. And I mean both actual technology and the black goo, so there could have been a crewman or two killed by a malfunction in the ship before landing, and then both positives and eventually loads of negatives from the goo itself.
I agree with you that the goo as technology is the theme they were aiming for (otherwise why call it Prometheus?), but I don't think they did enough to show us that technology, or it's symbol in the black goo, is a two edged sword. With actual technology they gave us no hint of its danger, and with the goo they give us no hint of its possible benefit.
They did enough with just the opening scene, IMO. We (the audience) know that biotech has the potential for amazing benefits. We just need one piece of evidence that there can be a constructive use to the Engineers' tech, and the theme is established. As long as we know it's not ONLY weapons, it's there.
If you were to encounter fire for the first time with no clue about its properties or proper precautions for handling it, you're probably going to experience it as a purely destructive force. "Hey, what's this amazing thing?" "Oh gak, that's hot!" "Hey, I let it out of its container and now it's burning the gak out of everything!"
Sebster wrote:
You mean other than the opening scene? I do also think the "at least three different substances shown" theory's a reasonable one.
I meant 'purely destructive in our hands'. It does nothing but make weird organisms that try and kill us. One of the interviews with the scriptwriter I read talked about how it reflected our souls or something, so that because we are base creatures then the goo reflects that.
And yeah, I agree that the idea that there was different kinds of goo is reasonable (I didn't see any difference in goo types myself, but I'm happy to believe I missed some visual clue). I'm not sure that makes for a better movie, though.
More than anything, I'm just left wondering why they didn't have people experiment with the goo, find some good benefits, and ignore some obvious risks. Then it gets out of hand and some people die. It just seems so much cleaner, and to actually explore the theme so much more strongly.
Well, I think because it's an Alien movie, and horror and bad things are supposed to dominate, thematically. A taste or promise of a possible benefit is about as good as it gets. The movie starts out a lot more optimistic and exploratory than the others as it is. And I don't think we really needed a visual clue (beyond the differing effects of each) that the goos are different. We haven't clue 1 about how they work, so we can't really expect to understand anything about them.
Sebster wrote:
Mannahnin wrote:Really? You don't think it was reasonably clear that they were seeding life on Earth?
I thought they were seeding human life on Earth, not all life. That's why humans, and only humans, share our DNA with them.
That might make more sense. But then why are we genetically-similar to Chimps? Why do our eyes work just like other species' eyes? That theory doesn't work with evolution either. If they had thought to shoot those opening scenes without grasses they'd probably be okay. As it is, I guess I can see why Ridley's resorting to saying it's some other planet.
Mannahnin wrote:I think it has to do with high expectations being disappointed.
This.
I'm all for popcorn films, but this was hyped as something more and then failed to be either. Fans have been waiting at least 10 years (as the video I posted above mentions that Ridley makes a comment in the original DVD quadrilogy about another Alien film) for this film, 30 if you count ALIEN.
I wanted to love Prometheus, I've seen it twice, and I can't. I'm really not sure what the major problems were and I don't really care. Scott and the Writers get paid a fair bit of money to make a coherent film and can't even accomplish that. There is no good reason for this film to be terrible or difficult to follow.
To think that we might be getting a prequel triology for Alien fills me with dread, and if Prometheus is anything to go by we are on target for an exact repeat of the Star Wars abominations.
Yea but Cameron has betrayed us too, denoting 3 avatar films in the works, and Michael Bay making another Transofrmers film (seriously, how could he have made Baysplosions boring???)
Frazzled wrote:Yea but Cameron has betrayed us too, denoting 3 avatar films in the works, and Michael Bay making another Transofrmers film (seriously, how could he have made Baysplosions boring???)
We need some new blood.
Maybe the next Avatars will be told from the point of view of the colonial marines kicking the hell out of those Schtroumphs? Or seeding the planet with Xenomorph Queens?
Medium of Death wrote:Help us James Cameron, you're our only hope...
It's a long time since Aliens and Terminator, though.
I think maybe our best chance might be with an unknown director who's hungry enough to spend the time making sure his script is sound... or lacks the influence to dick around with a script everyone previously liked.
What was the last really smart, good, big-budget sci fi movie? Children of Men, maybe?
You know what might be awesome? If Aronofsky tried it. Pi is great, and that's shoestring budget. He's managed to keep making good movies even with bigger, too.
Mannahnin wrote:They did enough with just the opening scene, IMO. We (the audience) know that biotech has the potential for amazing benefits. We just need one piece of evidence that there can be a constructive use to the Engineers' tech, and the theme is established. As long as we know it's not ONLY weapons, it's there.
In order to literally do the bare minimum to qualify as a theme for an essay talkign about the film, sure. But in order to get the audience to actually feel that, and take it away as a message that changes how they think about things, I just don't think it works at all.
To make it really work, to really carry the film, we needed to see technology doing amazing things and horrible things, and then we needed to see the same with the black goo.
And yeah, if we were to come across fire for the first time we would probably burn ourselves, and see it only as a threat. But 'how it actually works' isn't how things work
Well, I think because it's an Alien movie, and horror and bad things are supposed to dominate, thematically. A taste or promise of a possible benefit is about as good as it gets. The movie starts out a lot more optimistic and exploratory than the others as it is. And I don't think we really needed a visual clue (beyond the differing effects of each) that the goos are different. We haven't clue 1 about how they work, so we can't really expect to understand anything about them.
Sure, but all four movies had some discussion about trying to use the alien for a human purpose. Even if it was obviously doomed to failure and an incredibly boneheaded idea, at least it was mentioned. But here, in the movie that's apparently about goo as a symbol for technology, they don't even mention the possibility that humans might use the goo for good.
That might make more sense. But then why are we genetically-similar to Chimps? Why do our eyes work just like other species' eyes? That theory doesn't work with evolution either.
Pretty much, yeah. But that's the point where I'm happy to say 'eh, it's just a movie'. I'm happier to have some kind of mythic relevance, even if it doesn't fit with our scientific understanding of the world, than to have the opening be a fairly pointless muddle of 'and lo, the forebearer did sacrifice himself and give life to a species that isn't mankind because it was another planet, and so answer the question of where did some other species on some other planet come from'.
LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't consider Children of Men to be sci-fi.
Really? What would you consider it then? I mean, it's post-apocalyptic sci-fi and not sci-fi like Alien or Prometheus or something, but it's still sci-fi.
Seb, the audience has it shown to us that the Engineers' technology can create life. The team goes out looking for our origins; we know from the start that the Engineers are a vastly older society with vastly more advanced technology. You don't need to show a bunch of examples of how that technology could possibly be helpful. That's implicit. We all know how technological advances can make things better. Heck, it just being a sci-fi movie shows that. Look- cool spaceship; interstellar travel; robot surgical pod which can save you if you're impregnated with an alien squid. The surface purpose of the mission is to discover our origins and hopefully benefit from a superior technology. Of course Weyland's real purpose is to extend his life, and that's made clear for most of the movie. The promise of extended (indefinitely? life is the biggest and most obvious prize of all.
For my money, the possible upside of advanced technology is known and understood and assumed in just about any sci-fi pic. The dangerous side of discovery is the part of the Prometheus myth that people don't focus on- IME when people refer to Prometheus it's mostly positive- stealing fire from the gods for the benefit of humanity- almost an endorsement of ambition, and of a "he who dares, achieves" attitude. But the flip side is of course that he was punished for his presumptuousness. And the Alien franchise is one which lends itself to themes of death and people getting punished for arrogance. Just like Weyland does, as he wants to steal the secret of life from those who gave it to us, but of course his selfishness, arrogance and disregard for the people of his crew lead to the natural comeuppance.
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Hordini wrote:
LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't consider Children of Men to be sci-fi.
Really? What would you consider it then? I mean, it's post-apocalyptic sci-fi and not sci-fi like Alien or Prometheus or something, but it's still sci-fi.
It's sci-fi/speculative fiction. It deals with the future, it explores the consequences of a future development (in this case infertility, rather than a technical advance) and how society reacts to that development. Both socially and technologically.
Hordini wrote:Really? What would you consider it then?
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia. Is there some technology angle I'm unaware of? I haven't seen the movie since its release, but I don't remember it being about science or human advancement, or having any of the typical sci-fi set pieces.
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible (or at least non-supernatural) content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".[1]
Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures.[2] It is similar to, but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation).
The settings for science fiction are often contrary to known reality, but most science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief, which is facilitated in the reader's mind by potential scientific explanations or solutions to various fictional elements. Science fiction elements include:
A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record.
A spatial setting or scenes in outer space (e.g., spaceflight), on other worlds, or on subterranean earth.[3]
Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots.
Technology that is futuristic (e.g., ray guns, teleportation machines, humanoid computers).[4]
Scientific principles that are new or that contradict known laws of nature, for example time travel, wormholes, or faster-than-light travel.
New and different political or social systems (e.g. dystopia, post-scarcity, or a post-apocalyptic situation where organized society has collapsed).[5]
Paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation.
Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.
Hordini wrote:Really? What would you consider it then?
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia. Is there some technology angle I'm unaware of? I haven't seen the movie since its release, but I don't remember it being about science or human advancement, or having any of the typical sci-fi set pieces.
It is post-apocalyptic dystopia, but that's a sci-fi subgenre. Sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to deal specifically with technology. The film isn't hard sci-fi, but like Mannahin said, it still falls under the relatively broad umbrella of sci-fi/speculative fiction.
Hordini wrote:It is post-apocalyptic dystopia, but that's a sci-fi subgenre.
No its not. Its a sub-genre if speculative fiction, which sci-fi is also a sub of (YMMV).
Sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to deal specifically with technology.
Yes it does. Science is there in the name for a reason. It's called that because science is used as a theme or a medium for the theme. Taking place in the future is not enough to qualify as science-fiction.
The film isn't hard sci-fi, but like Mannahin said, it still falls under the relatively broad umbrella of sci-fi/speculative fiction.
The inherent flaw in that statement being that speculative fiction and science fiction are nowhere near the same thing (also being that this is the area of nuance in which Wikipedia ceases to be useful, hell most people can't even get theme and genre straight, and Wikipedia reflects it). Hell the first clue is that Wikipedia lists Sci-fi as having " imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature" which is pretty damn wrong. Most sci-fi science isn't possible in the slightest.
Hordini wrote:It is post-apocalyptic dystopia, but that's a sci-fi subgenre.
No its not. Its a sub-genre if speculative fiction, which sci-fi is also a sub of (YMMV).
Sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to deal specifically with technology.
Yes it does. Science is there in the name for a reason. It's called that because science is used as a theme or a medium for the theme. Taking place in the future is not enough to qualify as science-fiction.
The film isn't hard sci-fi, but like Mannahin said, it still falls under the relatively broad umbrella of sci-fi/speculative fiction.
The inherent flaw in that statement being that speculative fiction and science fiction are nowhere near the same thing (also being that this is the area of nuance in which Wikipedia ceases to be useful, hell most people can't even get theme and genre straight, and Wikipedia reflects it). Hell the first clue is that Wikipedia lists Sci-fi as having " imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature" which is pretty damn wrong. Most sci-fi science isn't possible in the slightest.
I get what you're saying and understand the differences you're pointing out, but most sci-fi publishers would disagree with you. What you're describing is closer to hard sci-fi, but again there is a pretty large umbrella of sci-fi/speculative fiction that includes hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, sci-fi fantasy, slipstream, and a bazillion other sci-fi subgenres.
Such things are defined two ways academically and popularly. Publishers (and most authors for that matter) only care about the popular definitions ignoring that they are inaccurate or inadequate.
And no actually. Star Wars is a fantasy story in theme, tone, and style. It just has a bunch of sci-fi set pieces. Of course the term Space Opera or Science Fantasy was coined to describe such a hodgepodge.
Mannahnin wrote:What was the last really smart, good, big-budget sci fi movie? Children of Men, maybe?
You know what might be awesome? If Aronofsky tried it. Pi is great, and that's shoestring budget. He's managed to keep making good movies even with bigger, too.
Yeah, Children of Men would be the last great, smart sci-fi movie. It received a great response among critics and fans, but didn't make its budget back at the box office.
I think District 9 might be the way forward for sci-fi. Not because it was that smart (a half hour of interesting commentary followed by sixty minutes of gun battles is not a smart movie), but because it looked great and only cost $30 million to make. Because of that I think you're right on the money with Aronofsky, even his bigger films featuring major names are still cut price movies. That means he gets freedom, and that'd mean he'd get to say something interesting.
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LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't consider Children of Men to be sci-fi.
"Consider a near future in which humanity can no longer breed, and society slowly comes apart as it just waits to die" is an absolutely brilliant sci-fi question.
sebster wrote:"Consider a near future in which humanity can no longer breed, and society slowly comes apart as it just waits to die" is an absolutely brilliant speculative question.
My preferred way of saying that. If being set in the future is enough to be sci-fi, then we might as well just stop using the term, cause a lot of random stuff suddenly becomes scifi and the term becomes useless.
Mannahnin wrote:Seb, the audience has it shown to us that the Engineers' technology can create life. The team goes out looking for our origins; we know from the start that the Engineers are a vastly older society with vastly more advanced technology. You don't need to show a bunch of examples of how that technology could possibly be helpful. That's implicit.
You don't just imply a thing and expect people to go off and puzzle it out and reach your conclusion about what symbolises what. You make people feel it. Actually have a character drawn to the danger because of the benefits, and then you start to actually show the myth in the movie.
For my money, the possible upside of advanced technology is known and understood and assumed in just about any sci-fi pic.
Yeah, I said that earlier, and the film has rocket ships and cool maps and space suits and all that stuff. We have all the upside of actual technology. And we have the downside of black goo. But nowhere does one come to mirror the other - something that would have been achieved by showing the actual downside of technology, and showing that by having the goo give humans both upside and downside.
The result is that the theme is lost as something that can impact the audience emotionally during the movie.
The dangerous side of discovery is the part of the Prometheus myth that people don't focus on- IME when people refer to Prometheus it's mostly positive- stealing fire from the gods for the benefit of humanity- almost an endorsement of ambition, and of a "he who dares, achieves" attitude. But the flip side is of course that he was punished for his presumptuousness.
I think most people focus on what was gained and what was lost equally. I don't think there's another way of looking at that myth that isn't missing the point entirely. It's has to be about the good and the bad, or else it's pointless. Showing the good and the bad equally brings in ideas of sacrifice, or over-reaching.
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LordofHats wrote:My preferred way of saying that. If being set in the future is enough to be sci-fi, then we might as well just stop using the term, cause a lot of random stuff suddenly becomes scifi and the term becomes useless.
So you'd argue that it has to be about a specific technology, then? I don't know, I guess I'm not much of a tech nut, but the actual specific piece of technology itself never seemed to be the important thing to me. Neuromancer is great because of the society it portrays and how that society interacts with technology, not because of the technologies themselves.
I mean, most all sci-fi gets the tech totally wrong anyway, so if it was just about that it'd be a pretty pointless genre.
Medium of Death wrote:Help us James Cameron, you're our only hope...
It's a long time since Aliens and Terminator, though.
I think maybe our best chance might be with an unknown director who's hungry enough to spend the time making sure his script is sound... or lacks the influence to dick around with a script everyone previously liked.
Mannahnin wrote:What was the last really smart, good, big-budget sci fi movie? Children of Men, maybe?
You know what might be awesome? If Aronofsky tried it. Pi is great, and that's shoestring budget. He's managed to keep making good movies even with bigger, too.
Neill Blomkamp maybe?
He is working on his own big budget sci-fi film at the moment. So I guess we will see how well he does with this new venture.
It's strange to class District 9 as a low budget film considering it still cost $30 million to make, but I'd say that is my most enjoyed Sci-fi film of the last few years if not all time.
As for James being too old, I enjoyed Avatar so I think he's still good to go.
Mannahnin wrote:What was the last really smart, good, big-budget sci fi movie? Children of Men, maybe?
You know what might be awesome? If Aronofsky tried it. Pi is great, and that's shoestring budget. He's managed to keep making good movies even with bigger, too.
Off the top of my head: -Star Trek -Serenity -Tree of Life sci fi? -Predators -Battle for LA -The Avengers EDIT: with the new expanded definition: -Zombieland -Walking Dead -Tru Blood
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LordofHats wrote:
Hordini wrote:Really? What would you consider it then?
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia. Is there some technology angle I'm unaware of? I haven't seen the movie since its release, but I don't remember it being about science or human advancement, or having any of the typical sci-fi set pieces.
Agreed. There's nothing sci fi about it, even if I did like it.
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Hordini wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
Hordini wrote:Really? What would you consider it then?
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia. Is there some technology angle I'm unaware of? I haven't seen the movie since its release, but I don't remember it being about science or human advancement, or having any of the typical sci-fi set pieces.
It is post-apocalyptic dystopia, but that's a sci-fi subgenre. Sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to deal specifically with technology. The film isn't hard sci-fi, but like Mannahin said, it still falls under the relatively broad umbrella of sci-fi/speculative fiction.
If thats the case my Walking Dead and Tru Blood fall into it. In that case I watch a good bit of sci fi. Just recieved season 4 of Tru Blood for Father's Day. Now I can drink rum and celebrate sci fi!
sebster wrote:So you'd argue that it has to be about a specific technology, then? I don't know, I guess I'm not much of a tech nut, but the actual specific piece of technology itself never seemed to be the important thing to me. Neuromancer is great because of the society it portrays and how that society interacts with technology, not because of the technologies themselves.
I mean, most all sci-fi gets the tech totally wrong anyway, so if it was just about that it'd be a pretty pointless genre.
I would agree. The specifics of the distinction I'm making is that I don't think science fiction can exist without some 'science' serving as a theme, a medium, a premise, or a driving factor. Science doesn't have to be the point of the story (I.E. Soft Scifi, which is more about characters than technology) but I feel it needs to have a core role in whatever is going on. Children of Men, assuming I remember the film correctly, doesn't really have anything to do with science. It's a story about hope, which of course is what most post-apocalyptic stories end up being about (good movie btw not basing it or anything). EDIT: This of course factoring in that most people lump genre's together like there's no tomorrow, obscuring the already blurry lines that exist between them.
