Prometheus [Spoilers]

[Mark CMG]

Custom made alien costume, it's on a dummy currently.

And I spent too much on it.

It's totaly cool and I am very jealous but I have news for you, depending on how much you spent it might always be on a dummy.



(And if I had the chance, I might have been that dummy too!)

 

[Chairman7w]

Ergo, Shaw can't do a abortion or caesarian; she has to undergo abdominal surgery to remove a foreign object.

And boy did she! That was awesome. One of the cooler scenes of the movie. Not in the least bit realistic, but way cool.

 

[greyhaze]

I hated the movie for pretty much everything that has been mentioned through this thread and other things... however, it has grown on me.

I thought the opening scene was of a rebel engineer killing himself to stop the military engineers from laying waste to their "children"... hence the outbreak that killed this particular batch of evil engineers.

The engineers did not match the scale of the engineers in Alien, that did not sit well with me.

Magical goo ticks me off. Pick something, anything, and make it do that. Genetic restructuring - ok, fine, but creating new life as well - no.

Maybe the snakes were bio-weapon guardians, like watchdogs, and they had nothing to do with the goo other than similar engineering.

The engineer surviving the crash and finding Vickors Shaw was silly, as was Charlize's role and her death (assuming she died). I laughed as I pictured the ship rolling around them like a big horse shoe type coin being dropped.

David spiking the scientist was silly. David being able to see Vickor Shaw's dreams, but not abort a "baby" was silly. Him saying she was 3 months pregnant was - silly.

Waking the old man up and putting him in front of the aliens for first contact was seriously lack of foresight.

Playing with the equivalence of a cobra and calling it cute = stupid. How did those two get lost? WTF. Why did Fiefield convert to a zombie? Why didn't the snake impregnate the biologist? The acid killing the biologist makes sense, the zombie thing - not so much.

Why the F did they open the door for Fiefield, or why didn't they even check any of their camera footage???

The captain is smart enough to figure out the purpose and spill it all out for us - but, man, it's wasted on stupid people.

So many poor choices.

 

[SkidAce]

Magical goo ticks me off. Pick something, anything, and make it do that. Genetic restructuring - ok, fine, but creating new life as well - no.

Maybe the snakes were bio-weapon guardians, like watchdogs, and they had nothing to do with the goo other than similar engineering.

I think the snakes were "genetic restructured" as you say....worms that were already there and the goo spilled on them.

There was a camera shot of one of the crew walking and worms moving away from their feet.

So...it appears the goo;

A. changes you into an egg planting squid/worm/facehugger thingy depending on your original form.

B. Egg gets planted, thingy dies....new form bursts out of hosts chest.

C. How we get from new form to self sustaining egg layer like the queen I don't know. (although the one from Shaw was a "squid face hugger" that implanted an engineer, so maybe the xenomorpth was a queen type.



???

 

[greyhaze]

I think the snakes were "genetic restructured" as you say....worms that were already there and the goo spilled on them.

That's fair, but odd. I do remember the scene with the boot print. Why were the worms there? Were they reactivated when air broke in to the room. Why only 2 infected worms with all of that goo spilling out. I dunno, they don't seem related, plus they came from another part of the ship "there's something alive down there about 1 mile away" - so I don't believe they originated from the room with the worms.

A. changes you into an egg planting squid/worm/facehugger thingy depending on your original form.

B. Egg gets planted, thingy dies....new form bursts out of hosts chest.

I would disagree with this. The facehugger type entity, I believe, only originated from Vickors.

C. How we get from new form to self sustaining egg layer like the queen I don't know. (although the one from Shaw was a "squid face hugger" that implanted an engineer, so maybe the xenomorpth was a queen type.

I came to the same conclusion.

Also "captain touchy" David really got to me quick. I would've been "outta there" as soon as he did it the 2nd time, which in most horror movies would've been 2.5 moves too late.

 

[Nellisir]

I would disagree with this. The facehugger type entity, I believe, only originated from Vickors.

Vickers was never infected. She got squished by the Great Space Wheel.

The worm/leech things (and I don't understand what you mean about them coming from a different part of the ship - they were in the room with the canopic jars and the Great Big Space Head) never had a phase two, so we don't know what they turn into.

The squidhugger inside Shaw got big and planted it's "egg" inside the Engineer. That egg burst out into an immature Alien/xenomorph.

The "something alive" was the Engineer in cryosleep, not the worms/leechs.

 

[Janx]

One extra idea my movie buff friend had is that David really hates humans.

As such, his actions might make a little more sense.

Holloway talks down to him (at one point even calling him "boy"). Sure, David could hit the lab and do some research on the goo, or he could just cut to the chase and run experiments on the meat bags directly. Plus, as the only one who can read the texts on the wall, he may actually know this stuff can work via ingestion.

the same is true for waking up Grampa (why couldn't they get Lance Henrikson, he's old?). David hates him too. So wake him up and then tick off the sleeping giant so he whacks grampa. Slight miscalculation on getting his head ripped off, but mission accomplished.

And then, of course, the Engineer is going to set course for earth. Notice how David didn't volunteer any of that information. David knew this ship was going to head for earth, and it was a free ride to see the destruction of his creators.

the short of it is, David saw a chance to kill his human creators and he took it.

heck, he still has a chance now that he's traveling with Shaw to find the Engineers. No doubt he'll swindle a way to redirect the ship back to earth or leak the information. He was keen on trading information in exchange for help, showing an interest in his own preservation.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Full disclosure, I've seen approximately 5 minutes of the entire Aliens franchise of films, and won't be seeing Prometheus, either. The xenomorphs scare the bejeezus out of me. Case-in-point, I allowed myself to be cajoled into riding the Aliens ride at Universal Studios with some friends while on a high school trip. I had my eyes closed the entire time. But I do find the Aliens films interesting - bleak sci-fi is attractive to my strange sensibilities, so I've read a lot about the movies, even if I've never watched them.

So, that being out of the way, I've been following along with this thread, and I read the livejournal posting that Water Bob linked to. I find deep, over-wrought symbolism to be fascinating, so this interpretation of the film intrigues me to no end.

And then I saw Water Bob's comment below:

Or, in other words, the flick may well be deep with symbolisim and meaning, but if the viewers don't catch it--or worse, don't care when they do catch it--the film fails as a piece of entertainment.

Wasn't Damon Lindelof heavily involved with this film? I was a devoted LOST fan, and as convoluted as that show became, honestly, 90% of the show's references and symbolism required some serious dedication to track down and analyze. My wife and I watched VERY different versions of that show. I was trying to find the answers to all the weird crap that came up on that show by reading the fan sites, solving the official puzzles, etc. My wife was watching a really weird supernatural sci-fi-ish show and listening to me rant and rave about stuff. And I didn't think for one second that LOST was failing as entertainment because I had to seek out explanations and interpretations in other sources and mediums - it made the show that much more rewarding for me.

And Lindelof was 1/2 of the creative team behind LOST.

If he had even a partial hand in Prometheus, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if you needed some crazy analysis to actually understand the movie. Not at all.

Now, I concede that asking your audience to go seeking out additional information is a far less risky proposition when you know that your audience will likely get a little bit more info in the next episode which is only a few days away than in the sequel which may be years away, but that doesn't necessarily disqualify the piece in question as being successful art.

 

[greyhaze]

Vickers was never infected. She got squished by the Great Space Wheel.

Sorry Shaw, not Vickers, got them mixed up.

The "something alive" was the Engineer in cryosleep, not the worms/leechs.

I see what you're saying about the life form being the sleeping engineer, but why would that fade in and out, would that not just be a constant - the alternative being creatures that move in and out of the goo?

 

[Janx]

So, that being out of the way, I've been following along with this thread, and I read the livejournal posting that Water Bob linked to. I find deep, over-wrought symbolism to be fascinating, so this interpretation of the film intrigues me to no end.

And then I saw Water Bob's comment below:



Wasn't Damon Lindelof heavily involved with this film? I was a devoted LOST fan, and as convoluted as that show became, honestly, 90% of the show's references and symbolism required some serious dedication to track down and analyze. My wife and I watched VERY different versions of that show. I was trying to find the answers to all the weird crap that came up on that show by reading the fan sites, solving the official puzzles, etc. My wife was watching a really weird supernatural sci-fi-ish show and listening to me rant and rave about stuff. And I didn't think for one second that LOST was failing as entertainment because I had to seek out explanations and interpretations in other sources and mediums - it made the show that much more rewarding for me.

And Lindelof was 1/2 of the creative team behind LOST.

If he had even a partial hand in Prometheus, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if you needed some crazy analysis to actually understand the movie. Not at all.

Now, I concede that asking your audience to go seeking out additional information is a far less risky proposition when you know that your audience will likely get a little bit more info in the next episode which is only a few days away than in the sequel which may be years away, but that doesn't necessarily disqualify the piece in question as being successful art.

I think there's a threshold for each viewer of a movie for when it is too obscure, or intellectually embedded with hidden meaning.

There's a number of factors at play with symbolism:
does the viewer even get the symbolism reference?
did the author intend that meaning or did he just put some symbols in there to make people run around in circles?
Do the proposed interpretations even match up to what the author intended as the message?
Is the author ever going to actually tell us what he meant?
Does the story make sense if you don't get all the symbolism and references?

I think it can come across as intellectual wankery, making stuff up and bullcrap to the average viewer when it takes a masters degree in English Lit to break down the story and explain it all as if it was absolutely the author's intent. It's even more annoying when there's no word from the author as to what he meant.