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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?

I've never seen an airport with just one plane.

Frazzled wrote:How long until the Hobbit?

December this year I believe.

Frazzled wrote:Back to the movie

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.

Ahtman wrote:[

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?

Frazzled wrote:

Ahtman wrote:[

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.

Ahtman wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Ahtman wrote:[

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?

We can't know one way or the other.

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.

Frazzled wrote:

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.

Well according to my brother who saw the film there is no biologist and it's never mentioned

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:Well according to my brother who saw the film there is no biologist and it's never mentioned

Well according to everyone in this thread that has seen the film, there IS a biologist...

Corpsesarefun wrote:

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:Well according to my brother who saw the film there is no biologist and it's never mentioned

Well according to everyone in this thread that has seen the film, there IS a biologist...

The biologist is the nerdy dude who dies with the mohawk geologist.

I know, Hlaine was saying there wasn't a biologist for some reason.

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*


*

Corpsesarefun wrote:I know, Hlaine was saying there wasn't a biologist for some reason.

no, my brother says that for some reason

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.

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

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.

Good stuff, Goliath.

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.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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?'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:no, my brother says that for some reason

Well, tell him he's wrong.

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


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.

Also, lol space herpes.

sebster wrote:

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.

Really? You don't think it was reasonably clear that they were seeding life on Earth?

Mannahnin wrote:Really? You don't think it was reasonably clear that they were seeding life on Earth?

I didn't get that actually.