Prometheus [Spoilers]

[Nellisir]

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?

Because he's on cryosleep and 9/10ths dead. The worm/leechs are clearly in the chamber with the big head and the jars of ooze, not a mile away behind a locked door that only David can open. And the two dopes went away from the probe detecting life signs, not towards it.

 

[Droogie]

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.



???

My rationalization: the goo is some sort of super-advanced mutagen (retro-viruses, nanobots, whatever) that gives the engineers complete control over organic life. It does whatever the engineers require it to do: destroy life, alter life, or create it out of whole cloth. In the hands of the beings that designed it, it can do some remarkable things, but when used without guidance, the results are...random. If Shaw were impregnated with the stuff a second time, maybe she'd give birth to a roach-like thing, instead of a squid. Or maybe she would just die outright. Anyway, I tend to think she gave birth to a prehistoric face hugger out of chance, not by specific design.

It's frustrating that a film that most people find "meh" is making me think about it so much.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Sometimes viewers are just DENSE. Sometimes FILMAKERS are just dense. Shortly after my first post in this thread I realized that the Engineer on primordial Earth WAS supposed to be Prometheus - or close enough as makes no difference if you're going to approach half of your movie as undefined mysticism and the other half as Stupid People On Parade. One - just one - of my complaints about this movie I can drop. That is, that it makes no sense to populate the Earth with life and then come back later to wipe it all out without explanation. The explanation is that Prometheus was found to have been a bad boy and the other Engineers considered his life-seeding to be a no-no, and THEIR intent was to undo all that he had done. Just so happens they were going to do that with their Black Koolaid.

HOWEVER...

Who was coming back to Earth repeatedly, to be in a position to have multiple cultures seperated by time and place paint the "map" on the wall? And why then did the map point to the alien WMD factory/storehouse and NOT to somewhere that Prometheus would WANT Mankind to visit? If it was Engineers who thought Prometheus erred why did they not drop the dime on him THEN? And so on and so forth and such like. It creates more writing and plotting problems than it solves.

I can handle unexplained mysticism in a movie but not when it's MASQUERADING as horror/action/scifi drama and thus failing to be ANY of those things effectively. Directors comments like, "It might be Earth - but it doesn't matter," and, "There was a specific plot point about the timing of past events but it's not actually IN the film..." don't sound like fascinating seeds of deep discussion to me - they strike me as inexcusably poor filmmaking. If you want to use your movie to say something to people about your philosophy of life and theories of existence then do it. If you want people to just fill-in-the-blanks in your movie with their own theories and guesswork you can actually do that too. I don't see that you can do BOTH at the same time and have a worthwhile film. Films that are INTENDED to require library research and post doctorate degrees in "Making Schtuff Up So Other Schtuff Makes Sense," should not come with popcorn and a soda but a STUDY GUIDE.

And it STILL doesn't excuse all the idiotic character actions, bad plotting, etc. This movie is a badly executed, pretentious MESS, with enough bright spots that only serve to highlight the dark recesses of its abysmal lows. Scott's credibility in MY eyes at least has dropped to the level of "Has hit a few out of the park in the past, but is no longer to be trusted." That puts him just slightly above George Lucas. (I'll let that one speak volumes for itself.)

 

[greyhaze]

Well said.

 

[Janx]

after reading the wikipedia entry, here's an additional observation.

Scott had a guy write a script. it turns out that script WAS a more direct lead-up to Alien. Then Lindelhof was asked to review the script. He made a lot of changes.

I'm going to bet Lindelhof is responsible for making the script more obscure and having the characters do stupid things to add more mystery to the film.

Just a theory, but its based on the track record of Lindelhof's work inducing the bone curdling cry from the audience of "it doesn't make sense! Why?!"

 

[Starman]

after reading the wikipedia entry, here's an additional observation.

Scott had a guy write a script. it turns out that script WAS a more direct lead-up to Alien. Then Lindelhof was asked to review the script. He made a lot of changes.

I'm going to bet Lindelhof is responsible for making the script more obscure and having the characters do stupid things to add more mystery to the film.

Just a theory, but its based on the track record of Lindelhof's work inducing the bone curdling cry from the audience of "it doesn't make sense! Why?!"

That's what I think happened, too. It's frustrating because I think Lindelof does have some really good ideas. He just seems to fail in the execution of those ideas.

 

[Janx]

That's what I think happened, too. It's frustrating because I think Lindelof does have some really good ideas. He just seems to fail in the execution of those ideas.

I think the process of obscuring the theme and embedding symbolic references was overdone, making the movie harder to relate to. It's like they attempted to make the movie "deep" and only suceeded in making it muddled.

Contrast this to 2001. I saw it when I was like 10. I understood what the basic premise of the film was, that some alien entity prodded our advancement until we could get to Jupiter, where they could then prod us to the next step. Not exactly rocket surgery, and there's no elements that contradict that or distract from it.

In Prometheus, it's the same initial premise, somebody seeded our planet. But from there, it's muddled by horror movie ideas like having the idiots in the party get killed so they can be zombies later, and sci-fi action movie ideas like having the aliens plan to destroy earth if we don't stop it in time.

Wasn't this movie supposed to be about where the beginnings of life came from and the challenge that revelation makes to faith if you take it as a literal contradiction? And what happened to these creators. Why did they leave a clue? Why did they stop coming back?

This movie smacks of Lost-like pattern of revealing little and creating more questions than answers. For a movie, I don't think that's a good model to follow.

 

[Joker]

From the linked wiki article:

Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"

Can I get a citation up in here? Did NASA say this?

 

[Janx]

From the linked wiki article:

Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"

Can I get a citation up in here? Did NASA say this?

Doesn't the Wiki have a bunch of citations, and shouldn't one of them be that which you seek? Otherwise, flag it in wikipedia as an uncredited/referenced source. On the other hand, it may be correctly referencing that Ridley said that, but that doesn't mean NASA or the Vatican said what he said they said.

 

[Nellisir]

Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"

:facepalm: