Prometheus SPOILERS FROM POST 1538

WatchWolf · 04-06-2012 10:47PM

"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts".

Could someone explain the significance of this quote?

The Sparrow · 04-06-2012 10:48PM

MrStuffins wrote: »

See this bullsh*t?

I hate this! I've just paid €10 to see your f*cking movie, don't be stringing me along, give me the self-contained movie I was promised!

I imagine that you are only saying that because you didn't like it. Which is fair enough.

In any series of books and movies there are always some things left unexplained to keep the interest in the follow up. It's basic storytelling!

jcf · 04-06-2012 10:53PM

The Sparrow wrote: »

I imagine that you are only saying that because you didn't like it. Which is fair enough.

In any series of books and movies there are always some things left unexplained to keep the interest in the follow up. It's basic storytelling!

He has a point it should be reasonably standalone , look at Alien and Aliens , sure not everything was explained but for sure a sufficient amount was - and both had sequels.

Prometheus left most stuff in the air and unanswered and probably never will be as I doubt this will get a sequel - I still have some hope for the directors cut tho, could improve the film.

MrStuffins · 04-06-2012 10:56PM

The Sparrow wrote: »

In any series of books and movies there are always some things left unexplained to keep the interest in the follow up. It's basic storytelling!

This is simply not true of most self contained books or movies. Not to the extent of Prometheus.

And in the cases where there are, I don't mind a bit of mystery. But Prometeus felt like the writers, if they just weren't being lazy f*cks, were just sitting around and saying "Well, let's just ignore the glaring holes and we can clean it up when we write Prometheus 2"

jcf · 04-06-2012 10:59PM

Another thing , was that the prototype facehugger that shaw gave birth to ?

Sand · 04-06-2012 11:00PM

The Sparrow wrote: »

So did most ppl not really like it then? I thought it was pretty good!

I just assumed that stuff they left open (like why David poisoned Holloway) would be addressed in a sequel. There could be any number of reasons but my theory is that David developed some emotions and developed a thing for Shaw during the journey there so he wanted to get Holloway out of the way. That would also explain how he acted when he found out she had sex with Holloway and was infected too so he abandoned her in jealousy.

Overall, I thought it was really intriguing and it kept me interested for the duration.

I generally speaking liked it. Visually it was amazing. On the rest it was average. The script was poor.

I get ambiguity and I like it. But its giving far too much credit to the script to presume its supposed to be full of holes, bad dialogue and themes which are introduced and dropped just as quickly. That its actually mysterious and deep. By that logic, Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" is a work of genius, with all the questions due to be resolved in the long awaited sequel.

jcf · 04-06-2012 11:19PM

Sand wrote: »

I generally speaking liked it. Visually it was amazing. On the rest it was average. The script was poor.

I get ambiguity and I like it. But its giving far too much credit to the script to presume its supposed to be full of holes, bad dialogue and themes which are introduced and dropped just as quickly. That its actually mysterious and deep. By that logic, Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" is a work of genius, with all the questions due to be resolved in the long awaited sequel.

Agreed , although I was very disappointed with the ending and in a way it ruined a film for me that I was enjoying for 80% of the time , above is true - score was fantastic and was a visual treat.

Fassbender was amazing too.

as said before I still have some hope for the directors cut , could change the film completely - look at Alien3, directors cut of that is a different and far superior film.

Problem is whatever happens I doubt a sequel will be made , so we will never get the answers for the Swiss cheese plot of a film...

i57dwun4yb1pt8 · 04-06-2012 11:27PM

i am going to put it out there that the ALIEN 1 ship was a ship that escaped whatever killed the prometheus massacre on lv 223 ( before promethues arrived )

but the jockey ( and or jockeys ) had an alien inside him , and crashed on the nearby lv426

the alien survived and laid the eggs ( maybe other jockeys provided hosts )
for ALIEN 1

else

Shaw returns to lv 223 and meets the alien that was created at the end of prometheus , leaves and crashes on lv 426 and either her or a new jockey from her trip is the jockey in the chair in ALIEN 1 .

daenerysstormborn3 · 04-06-2012 11:29PM

I did like the film but was just so disappointed in it after the wait.

A directors cut would be great but sure that's what I thought I was going to see on Saturday night :P

johnny_ultimate · 04-06-2012 11:45PM

Film would potentially benefit from a shorter cut if anything, truth be told. Cut out some of the superfluous characters and the unnecessary epilogue and badabing badaboom, you have a mysterious but self-contained little sci-fi (if still flawed). Perhaps a few extra lines of dialogues to easily explain away some of the more obvious plot 'holes' (although, being honest, I think at this point a lot of people have their claws dug in so far they're accusing things that aren't actually plot holes of being plot holes - far more fundamental problems than some that are being mentioned here).

And fix the ****ing jingly soundtrack while you're at it, Scott.

opinion guy · 05-06-2012 12:50AM

MrStuffins wrote: »

See this bullsh*t?

I hate this! I've just paid €10 to see your f*cking movie, don't be stringing me along, give me the self-contained movie I was promised!

Well now - who promised you that ?

MrStuffins · 05-06-2012 01:08AM

opinion guy wrote: »

Well now - who promised you that ?

I was saying in general. Not specifically about this movie.

PhiloCypher · 05-06-2012 01:15AM

Saw this last night and given the pedigree of the man behind the camera I was expecting a hell of a lot better , for me it's up their Jockeying with Phantom Menace as one of the biggest letdowns ever .

In the following spoiler filled tl;dr I'll attempt to break down why I think the movie failed.

The prologue

We witness a flying saucer drop off one of the engineers (the titular Prometheus perhaps) on what we are to assume is prehistoric earth . He produces I guess what amounts to a thermos of the black goo(Promethean fire stolen from the gods) from his cloak and downs it before disintegrating into the waterfall. Assuming this is meant to be hundreds of million years ago the conclusions we are to draw from this I guess is that it kicks off some sort of genesis effect with the dinosaurs ,sabretooth cats and woolly Mammoths all being stepping stones on the way to what we are today much like the various Aliens we see in this film are stepping stones on the way to the gigeresque Aliens we know and love. So far so good , here's the rub tho for me with this sequence if we are to draw the obvious analogy that this was a rebel promethean Engineer going against his fellow God's would it not have been wiser to have him land or crash land in a one man craft/escape pod rather then to leave us with the impression he had been simply dropped off.

The crew

Has there ever been a more poorly selected crew ? did Weyland screen these people at all for his trillion dollar mission ? they run the gamut from incompetent to downright stupid . We have a mohican sporting geologist only in it for the money(obv meant to be an analogue of the blue collar Brett and parker) and a Biologist who upon the discovery of a very obviously dead engineer decides he wants to go back to the ship rather then help examine it yet when faced with an actual living and aggressive alien he gets touchy feely ??? An alien lets remember they came upon when traveling west to avoid the possible life sign reading to their east. Which brings me to them being lost in the first place , upon entering the temple Geologist guy launches his mapping probes and then later we see him, when prompted for directions look at his wrist where presumably he is wearing the prometheus equivalent of a pip boy and points in the direction they should go . How then do these two brain trusts get lost ? even if geologist guy wasn't getting a live feed from his probes they could surely just call the ship and ask them to direct them out , but then who is to say there was even anybody on the bridge monitoring their progress anyways . The gross stupidity of Shaw and Holloway whether its with the removing of the helmets or failure to mention the squid baby in the med lab has been well documented so I'll spare you my ramblings on that front but suffice to say it's retarded.

The Engineers

I'd imagine I wasn't the only one disappointed that these guys turned out to be essentially 12 foot tall versions of Watchmens Dr Manhattan and not the Iconic Elephantine creatures we always imagined but that's essentially what this film was like for me , just one rug pulled out from under me after another.
In the engineers we have a species literally hundreds of millions of years old yet their grand plan to wipe out humanity and undo the rebel(promethean) engineers handy work is ridiculously convoluted, rather then simply nuking us from orbit(It's the only way to be sure afterall) they decide to make repeat visits over the course of millennia to lay the groundwork for the sort of overly elaborate trap favored by bond villians. Their plan one assumes was that when we reached spacefaring age we would follow their bread crumbs to their bioweapons lab, they would capture the crew infect them and send them back to earth , but something goes wrong there is an outbreak(caused by other rebel Engineers?) and they are wiped out before we even arrive scuppering their entire plan , a plan that was 50,000 years in the making. Moving onto their technology, here we have a race of aliens space faring for hundreds of millions of years yet Weylands holographic technology ****s all over theirs and their ship ignition sequence is started by an engineer playing the ocinara of time tune.

The movie was neither scary nor profound in the way i think they were aiming for from the way they marketed it. The aliens various forms were not scary in the least which would be fine if they had nailed the profound angle, but they didn't . The alien lifecycle in the originals was convoluted enough in this it is damn near incomprehensible from what i can gather its either

Goo infects human>human has squid baby> squid baby infects human/engineer> giger xenomorph .

or

Goo infects human and he becomes a yoga expert on steroids(geologist guy)

God I hate the goo it reminded me of the needless complication that was the black oil in the x-files mythology why couldn't he just keep it your simple generic grey aliens.

While I wasn't surprised to see questions left unanswered at the end or left up in the air for a sequel, this is Damon " it was never about the mythology" Lindeloff afterall, I was surprised at how emotionally flat this film was for me, say what you will about how Lindeloff and co screwed us on the mythological aspects of lost but it was always an emotional rollercoaster . Where were those Cathartic lostesque moments in this film, moments that may have made up for at least some of the films many flaws.

Sorry for the tl:dr lol

Gbear · 05-06-2012 01:16AM

Technically it was brilliant (although I don't see what the point of 3D was - thought it added nothing. All it did was hurt my eyes.). Everything looked nice, awesome, gruesome, scary, oozy, or whatever it needed to look like.

The actual boring filmy parts like plot, script and so on seemed to be left by the wayside. And jaysus, bludgeoned over the head constantly with the religious craic.

Distinctly meh.

One might say Pro-meh-theus.

Eh? Eh?

No?

I'll leave then.

stevenmu · 05-06-2012 08:38AM

Saw this last night and enjoyed it. It's an amazing spectacle, and I really enjoyed the 3D and thought it was definitely worthwhile. And it's an enjoyable watch. But I can't help thinking that it's also a missed opportunity to make something truly amazing.

It does seem like a lot of important bits might have been cut. One thing I just didn't get was when they said that the engineers had decided to destroy mankind, but then changed their mind, when all the evidence seemed to be that they were still going to.

There were some hints at stuff that could have made it much more interesting, I don't know if they dumbed it down, left stuff out for a sequel, or if I was just searching for depth where there wasn't any. But I'm looking forward to the inevitable directors cut and I hope it makes a much more complete movie.

edit: one theory I have is that the engineers (or some of them at least) view us much the same way that we view the xenomorphs, and perhaps when the engineer came out of stasis he freaked out at being surrounded by a swarm of nasty vicious humans and was just fleeing for his life. Possibly this could also mean that there's an engineer civil war going on, with one side creating humans, either as a weapon or just because they can, and the other side trying to create the ultimate anti-human weapon, which then turns on them.

Duggy747 · 05-06-2012 09:34AM

Saw it again yesterday since the GF wanted to see it. She loved it though she didn't think it was scary at all, and the slightest bit of mood in a movie terrifies her. I got to analyse the flaws better but I still enjoyed this movie. Probably because my expectations had been lowered greatly.

One thing I thought I noticed the first time but I definitely picked up on the 2nd is that a number of the crew went missing. Just completely vanished.

About 4 or 5 died from Fifield's attack but the rest in that hanger (like the guys in the vehicle that drove over Fifield) and who were helping Weyland afterwards were never seen again. An example being 1 guy who was standing outside Weyland's room as they suited him up, that was the last you ever saw of him.

Only 1 of these guys went to the ship with Weyland and co. to wake the Jockey and the rest weren't seen on the Prometheus (I'm presuming since nobody jumped on an escape pod)

Mickeroo · 05-06-2012 10:21AM

PhiloCypher wrote: »

The prologue

We witness a flying saucer drop off one of the engineers (the titular Prometheus perhaps) on what we are to assume is prehistoric earth . He produces I guess what amounts to a thermos of the black goo(Promethean fire stolen from the gods) from his cloak and downs it before disintegrating into the waterfall. Assuming this is meant to be hundreds of million years ago the conclusions we are to draw from this I guess is that it kicks off some sort of genesis effect with the dinosaurs ,sabretooth cats and woolly Mammoths all being stepping stones on the way to what we are today much like the various Aliens we see in this film are stepping stones on the way to the gigeresque Aliens we know and love. So far so good , here's the rub tho for me with this sequence if we are to draw the obvious analogy that this was a rebel promethean Engineer going against his fellow God's would it not have been wiser to have him land or crash land in a one man craft/escape pod rather then to leave us with the impression he had been simply dropped off.

He was dropped off, they deliberately started life here imo, the titular Prometheus is the ship the humans are on.

I guess since Prometheus was a titan, half god himself you could take it to be he was meant to be the engineer but I didn't see anything in the film to give the impression the engineer at the start was some sort of renegade. I think the fire of the gods in this case is scientific endevour hence the ship being called Prometheus and the crew being punished through their suffering.

It also fits in with this tidbit from wiki:

In the classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. In particular, he was regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy

Going by that I would say by the end of the film Shaw herself is the Prometheus of this story.

Duggy747 · 05-06-2012 10:24AM

If anything from those cave drawings which resulted in the space travel then it's assumed the Jockeys came to earth quite a fair bit and interacted with people.

marco_polo · 05-06-2012 10:45AM

stevenmu wrote: »

..
It does seem like a lot of important bits might have been cut. One thing I just didn't get was when they said that the engineers had decided to destroy mankind, but then changed their mind, when all the evidence seemed to be that they were still going to.

....

Was the 'change their minds' question that Shaw becomes obsessed with not in referrence to why they left starmaps 30-35,000 odd years ago, but then sometime within the last few thousand years, created a plan to annihlate us instead?

Presuming of course that LV-223 wasn't a military base when the starmaps were created, otherwise why not destroy humanity there and then?.

stevenmu · 05-06-2012 11:06AM

marco_polo wrote: »

Was the 'change their minds' question that Shaw becomes obsessed with not in referrence to why they left starmaps 30-35,000 odd years ago, but then sometime within the last few thousand years, created a plan to annihlate us instead?

You could be right, that would certainly make more sense. I may have misheard or misunderstood what she said at the end.

Chris_Heilong · 05-06-2012 11:12AM

the Christmas tree, it being Christmas day, noomi was a Christian and they wanted to destroy us 2000 years ago during the time of Jesus. Im just saying...

LittleBook · 05-06-2012 11:17AM

krudler wrote: »

Theron was kinda wasted in this, she was more Ripley than Rapace was, had the ice queen thing down and not letting them bring Holloway back on the ship etc. also there was nothing between Vickers and Shaw after that, she burnt her partner alive and there's zero character confrontation afterwards? even in Alien they show Lambert laying into Ripley after she refuses to let them back on the ship. its obviously mirroring that scene but has no follow up.

Did I imagine it or did Vickers and Janek get jiggy?

Janek - Let's have sex
Vickers - No way
Janek - Pfft, what are you? A robot??
Vickers - My room, 10 minutes.

Really?

Mance Rayder · 05-06-2012 11:36AM

A common theme running through many of the Alien story's (Books and movies) is that there is a hidden motive and a secret mission that everyone bar one or two people are oblivious to. The usual theme Is that an 'agent', usually an android, infects one of the crew members deliberately and secretly. The aim is to get them into stasis with the alien life form incubating and get them back to some corporation for use in military bio-weapon research.

David clearly has his own agenda, and I am assuming he was programmed to pursue it. He conducts his own separate research, infects another crew member, and then refuses to remove the specimen, insisting that she instead goes into cryo-stasis. This also explains the sheer amount of idiots on board, they were not selected for anything more than fodder, potential vessels for the bio-weapon.

So how then do we explain Weyland showing up like Mr burns at the end with his own unique secret motive for the whole excursion? Well, Vickers has her own agenda, she is indulging her father, but she and David are there for another reason. They already know about the aliens and this is not the first time this company has been involved with this planet.
It also explains her absolute indifference towards the crew and her lack of regard for they're well being. It adds merit to the fact that the success of Dr Elizabeth Shaw's mission is of little interest to her at all. Again she just wants some idiots to go stick they're heads in the black goo and get infected, and Shaw's curiosity makes her and fellow dreamer, Charlie Holloway, Ideal guinea pig candidates. This also explains why she got the Captain offside whilst dumb and dumber were trapped over night in bio-weapon storage facility.

Now am I just picking this theory from the sky?? No, The reason why I am suggesting all this is that it's been done before, these story's are common in the Alien franchise, and as I was watching it, it rang a few bells from some of the Aliens story's I have read.

Wait and see but I am quite sure that's where this sequel is heading. In keeping with traditional story's and themes. Otherwise, the whole story just doesn't make any sense!

Mickeroo · 05-06-2012 11:49AM

^^ I don't think so, this movie is the companies first contact with the engineer's bio weapons and such imo, the owner of the company wouldn't be tagging along expecting to receive eternal life if the only point of the mission was to effectively get everyone on board killed/impregnated.

His alterior motives are all to do with getting Weyland his eternal life or whatever. I think thats why he infects Holloway after he's told to try harder, to see if the black goo would make holloway stronger rather than kill him. I get the impression David turns on Weyland at the end though, pretty sure he didn't say to the engineer what weyland asked him to.

Ray Palmer · 05-06-2012 11:57AM

marco_polo wrote: »

Was the 'change their minds' question that Shaw becomes obsessed with not in referrence to why they left starmaps 30-35,000 odd years ago, but then sometime within the last few thousand years, created a plan to annihlate us instead?

Presuming of course that LV-223 wasn't a military base when the starmaps were created, otherwise why not destroy humanity there and then?.

she claims they planned to destroy us and changed their mind. Strangely two things she doesn't know. Massive story hole.
Why she is Christian and doesn't worry about how these guys radicly effect that belief system. A team of creators is massively different and eliminates Christ but she just passes that off so easily.
The engineers are apparently human. Not just common roots but actually human. They don't appear as human but we are told they are an exeact match.
Small alien grows without any food. Not just a little bit but enough to overpower a giant. it was also premature.
Kind of messes up the whole predator alien story too. AVP while bad is in the past but they already have aliens yet now they don't exist to the future?
The two guys getting lost and one of them made the maps.
Deeply flawed story director's cut can't fix it all. They had time to write a script and stick to the limitations established very disappointed

opinion guy · 05-06-2012 11:57AM

Out of interest - what do we think Holloway was turning into ?

To me it looked like he might be turning into an Engineer

norrie rugger · 05-06-2012 12:01PM

Agree with all the flaws

going out with minimal bio/chem protection
taking helmets off
biologist running away
geologist getting lost
biologist wanting to touch unknown like form
bringing the head back and not putting it in basic quarantine
using only surgical masks when examining the head AND taking even these off
Shaw not telling anyone about the slug baby
there are loads more!!

OK now for some silly comments.
Anyone think that Prometheus looks like the ship Serenity from Whedon's Firefly/Serenity show?

Also there was a Weyland Corp "Building better worlds", just like the Operative in "Serenity" saying "We're making a better world. All of them better worlds."

There has been a lot of nods to Alien in Firefly, as Joss wrote a screenplay to Resurrection and also the logo is in the AA gun in the show's pilot but I really think that there was a nod back, with the engine and construction layout, of the Prometheus

Image of AA gun, see the Weyland-Yuntai logo (Very Anglo-Sino type of Corporation Alliance there huh?)

Image of Prometheus

Image of Serenity

Mance Rayder · 05-06-2012 12:02PM

Mickeroo wrote: »

^^ I don't think so, this movie is the companies first contact with the engineer's bio weapons and such imo, the owner of the company wouldn't be tagging along expecting to receive eternal life if the only point of the mission was to effectively get everyone on board killed/impregnated.

His alterior motives are all to do with getting Weyland his eternal life or whatever. I think thats why he infects Holloway after he's told to try harder, to see if the black goo would make holloway stronger rather than kill him. I get the impression David turns on Weyland at the end though, pretty sure he didn't say to the engineer what weyland asked him to.

Before you dismiss my theory completely, consider this:

In this universe there are two company's controlling the human race, Yutani and Weyland.

In the Aliens movie Weyland has merged with Yutani. So this movie has to set that up. I believe she wants her father to die, and is indulging his whim. Maybe she managed to convince him to fund this mission by appealing to his instinct to survive. After he dies Yutani Merges with Weyland as it was in the Alien movies. Clearly she will have to have something to do with this merger as she is the heir to Weyland corporation.
This suggests she has an ulterior motive and has more than just her fathers interests at heart.

Mickeroo · 05-06-2012 12:14PM

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Before you dismiss my theory completely, consider this:

In this universe there are two company's controlling the human race, Yutani and Weyland.

In the Aliens movie Weyland has merged with Yutani. So this movie has to set that up. I believe she wants her father to die, and is indulging his whim. Maybe she managed to convince him to fund this mission by appealing to his instinct to survive. After he dies Yutani Merges with Weyland as it was in the Alien movies. Clearly she will have to have something to do with this merger as she is the heir to Weyland corporation.
This suggests she has an ulterior motive and has more than just her fathers interests at heart.

Yeah I know about the Wyland Yutani merger and all that, read a few of the books too. Its just I don't think a military alterior motive really adds up in this case, this film is set a reasonable amount of time before the other films, Vickers is dead at the end of this movie too so wouldn't have anything to do with the merger and I seriously doubt she would have put herself on that ship if she knew what was in store for them when they get there. It doesn't make sense to make a prequel/spin-off like this if this isn't actually the first contact the weyland corporation had with the engineers/xenos either.

Mance Rayder · 05-06-2012 12:17PM

Mickeroo wrote: »

Yeah I know about the Wyland Yutani merger and all that, read a few of the books too. Its just I don't think a military alterior motive really adds up in this case, this film is set a reasonable amount of time before the other films, Vickers is dead at the end of this movie too so wouldn't have anything to do with the merger and I seriously doubt she would have put herself on that ship if she knew what was in store for them when they get there. It doesn't make sense to make a prequel/spin-off like this if this isn't actually the first contact the weyland corporation had with the engineers/xenos either.

If what you say is true then honestly, this movie makes no sense!

Prometheus *SPOILERS FROM POST 1538*

Comments

Prometheus SPOILERS FROM POST 1538