[QuickTidal]

Garak, on 09 June 2012 - 06:32 PM, said:

To each his own. You make valid points and I guess what truly upset me was that the crew was so uninteresting and genre blind. It felt like it was just David, Shaw and a bunch of redshirts when it really shouldn't have. There was much potential there and I felt the movie fell flat.

Indeed, fair point, a lot of the other crew were extraneous...and certainly not as cohesive as the NOSTROMO crew. I can see that definitely.

The only point I'd like to clarify is that the DNA at the beginning unravels yes...but the camera goes through the black oozy smoke and then new DNA forms and snaps together. It was a quick shot, but it was there.

Some stuff to think about indeed. At the very least it's engendering discussion. the best polarizing movies do that, so I appreciate these types of debate.

[Garak]

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and then new DNA forms and snaps together

I missed that.

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Some stuff to think about indeed. At the very least it's engendering discussion. the best polarizing movies do that, so I appreciate these types of debate

Yes the debates can be fun. They do tend to became nasty if someone begins insulting people but I've rarely seen that on this forum so no worries of that happening.

You know when Vickers ran for the escape pod so she could survive in her module, I turned to the friend next to me and reminded him what was in the module and he facepalmed in horror since he'd forgotten about it. I was honestly expecting Shaw do be killed the crashing ship, ditto the Engineer and only Vickers would survive. Until she entered the module and got face raped by the squid - and having a member of the Wayland family die via chestbuster would be fitting karma I think. Or Shaw to be alive but marooned. Kinda like in zombie movies where even if they escaped whatever hell hole they were in, they were still stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and doomed to die sooner or later.

This post has been edited by Garak: 09 June 2012 - 06:52 PM

[QuickTidal]

Garak, on 09 June 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

You know when Vickers ran for the escape pod so she could survive in her module, I turned to the friend next to me and reminded him what was in the module and he facepalmed in horror since he'd forgotten about it. I was honestly expecting Shaw do be killed the crashing ship, ditto the Engineer and only Vickers would survive. Until she entered the module and got face raped by the squid - and having a member of the Wayland family die via chestbuster would be fitting karma I think. Or Shaw to be alive but marooned. Kinda like in zombie movies where even if they escaped whatever hell hole they were in, they were still stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and doomed to die sooner or later.

Indeed. I also thought everyone would bite it. My thought was when David said he could fly the other ships...I half expected Shaw to just stomp his head into mush and leave herself to her fate so nothing got off that world again.

[McLovin]

Just saw it.

It ALMOST works, except a) most of characters are unlikable twats so you basically cheer them on to die, and David's slipping of the black goo to Holloway is never really explained. Doesn't seem like Weyland would have ordered him to do it, so the motivations are unclear. Unless he thought they were all twats too, which I can understand.

Oh, and c) how does the final xenomorph get to LV-426 from LV-223? Unless we're just implying it happened here, so it could have happened there too.

Fassbender was awesome though.

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 09 June 2012 - 10:23 PM, said:

Oh, and c) how does the final xenomorph get to LV-426 from LV-223? Unless we're just implying it happened here, so it could have happened there too.

It's another of the installation ships from that world...possibility, the one that David and Shaw take off in...just later on after the events of them going to the Engineers home world.

[Toraneko]

Watched it today, it was fun as a standalone but leaves a few holes in the series as a whole. Loooooooved the Prometheus ship design. Fassbender was appropriately creepy.

[Avatar]

I saw that H. R. Giger designed stuff in the movie. I read that he also did that for Alien, Dune and a 1992 video game, Dark Seed, (among many other works.)

This post has been edited by Avatar: 10 June 2012 - 11:34 AM

[Werthead]

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Oh, and c) how does the final xenomorph get to LV-426 from LV-223? Unless we're just implying it happened here, so it could have happened there too.

There will be three PROMETHEUS movies in total, and the third will tie in more directly with the start of ALIEN, apparently. Also, the 'final xenomorph' is likely a prototype for the 'real' aliens from the later films, and there's still some connections that have to be made between the two stages.

[A Demon Llama!]

Where did you hear that there are supposed to be two more movies? I figure that an appropriate sequel to this would be with the xenomorph at the end of the movie getting on Shaw's and Davids ship and terrorizing them. Obviously there would be more to it as it cant be a repeat of Alien. It could answer a few questions from the previous one but still be relatively simple. I would like to see the different permutation of the various alien stages, maybe in some sort of laboratory or something. Maybe Shaw would have to wake up an Engineer ot two for help.

[Garak]

Didn't Shaw's ship already take off by the time the xenomorph shows up? Which pretty much means the poor bugger is going to starve to death all alone on that planet.

[Aptorian]

There are more ships on the planet. The android knows where they are.

[QuickTidal]

Aptorius, on 10 June 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

There are more ships on the planet. The android knows where they are.

How did you miss the ship David and Shaw took blasting off at the end? They already left the planet, Shaw's final narration is as the ship heads into the atmosphere.

[A Demon Llama!]

Thats right, the final scene was of the xenomorph not the ship's takeoff. Even so, theres nothing that actually limits the time of birth to after their takeoff, even though it was the last scene. It can work.

[Mezla PigDog]

From a pure science point of view, I thought the plot held together for the most part (I'm claiming intellectual superiority on this subject on the proviso that the movie starts with DNA doing shit and I'm a molecular biologist!).

There is a respectable theory that life on this planet was seeded from space - comets and meteorites apparently contain a lot of amino acids and the process of coming through the atmosphere makes the formation of some of the compounds more likely than if they were expected to spontaneously arise on primative earth. There's another theory that DNA was not the starting point of life. Instead life started with proteins and RNA which are much more volatile and reactive and then life evolved to use DNA as a long term storer of genetic information as it is more stable. So basically the theory goes: amino acids from space --> precursor of all life on earth.

I read an interview with Ridly Scott where he seemed to really get into the idea that the origin of the molecules from space was an evolved life form rather than some chemicals formed by a rock blasting through the primordial atmosphere. He's taken that on to say the alien came down, disintegrated itself down to component genetic parts and that either seeded life on earth or combined with pre-existing life to be engineered or whatever. So far so suspension of disbelief. This molecular biologist can run with that.

Then we get to the planet and the black ooze. Fine, it's hyper evolving primordial slime that responds to whatever biological stuff it's exposed to. Different people/events/environment factors mean that it produces something different each time - geologist with a melted face = psycho spider walking killer, a drop in some champagne followed by sex with barren women = worm in eyeball/octo-embryo. Giant octopus biomass issues aside, I'm chosing to believe that the xenomorph prototype that bursts free at the end will then undergo more hyper-evolution once it is exposed to humans/humanoids to become the apex human killer in the universe. If you notice in Alien 3, the alien that gestates inside the dog is actually a bit different from the previous aliens and I read somewhere Alien 3 related that it was intentionally that way.

So I'm down with the science. My beef is with the fricking scientists. If there was ever a need for a safe-sex-in-space awareness campaign, look no further!

EDIT - another thing that really bugged me is why the hell did Charlize Theron kill Daniel with a bloody flame thrower?!?! Considering he was happy to to be euthanised, you'd think one of them might have said "Hang on a minute, let's not burn him to death, we can shoot him in head instead!"

This post has been edited by Mezla PigDog: 11 June 2012 - 12:28 PM

[Morgoth]

There's a huge gap between characters acting stupid for believable reasons and characters acting stupid because it is necesitated for the right plot development. The first is how stories are told, the second is bad writing. Prometheus falls squarely within the second category in my opinion.

A good contrast can be found in Pulp Fiction (a movie I assume we've all seen). Bruce Willis returning for his watch is a major turning point for the plot, and while incredibly stupid it is also the only choice he could make. There was no way he would leave his fathers watch behind and so all the following events felt natural rather than forced.

Compare that to the biologist so scared of a sensor that might have detected life he walks in the completely oposite direction only to camp in the very epicenter of what they fled in the first place. Then let his fear suddenly turn into an insane lack of care as he not only approaches but actively prods -ignoring one assumes all his training- an alien life form the size and shape of a snake. It's so forced, so artificial it completely ruins immersion. It reminds you that you know exactly how this is going to play out.

Prometheus was filled with those sorts of moments. It made the whole experience a lot less enjoyable than it could have been, and turned what was spouted as Ridley Scotts masterpiece into just another cheap sci fi horror.

[McLovin]

It's sad because I loved all the Engineer backstory and how it was kind of left open to interpretation. And I tried to roll with all the ridiculousness of things like C-sections being externally stapled shut without internal sutures. But the crew's behavior is so moronic and inexplicable, I was just left cold.

[QuickTidal]

Question: Does everyone complaining about the scientists actions really think that all scientists behave perfectly, and make all the right decisions 24/7? I thought the point was that they don't in fact, and when pressed humans (yes even scientists) can make super dumbass decisions. I believed, for example, the geologist walking away because when confronted with something wholly fucked up he chickened out and ran away. I can actually see people making that decision from a sheerly human reaction motivation. Just because he's a geologist doesn't mean he's immune to behaving like an idiot. That's the way I saw all the stupid crew choices, as ridiculously stupid...but these people are humans being confronted with something messed right up...so to me that's believable. Just curious as to how that took others out of the film is all.

Oh, and as to Shaw stapling her stomach shut and being able to run about...I simply thought it was that the alien ooze was preparing her body to host the organism and thus makes her strong than she should be and able to endure the pain. It seemed to me that if the Engineer's could construct primordial ooze that would do ths things it does, then why not make it enforce her body against the trauma? That's how I read it.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 11 June 2012 - 01:32 PM

[Morgoth]

McLovin, on 11 June 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

It's sad because I loved all the Engineer backstory and how it was kind of left open to interpretation. And I tried to roll with all the ridiculousness of things like C-sections being externally stapled shut without internal sutures. But the crew's behavior is so moronic and inexplicable, I was just left cold.

Yeah, I agree. I quite enjoyed the ambiguity of it all, but script was just so.. poor.

When Shaw beat the other two unconscious, fled into that medical thing, had the C-section, got stapled back up and staggered through the seemingly abandonned ship. At no point did anyone even raise an eye? Make a comment. I see you've got a big cut across your abdomen and you beat up two of our friends. What's all that about?

[Morgoth]

QuickTidal, on 11 June 2012 - 01:30 PM, said:

Question: Does everyone complaining about the scientists actions really think that all scientists behave perfectly, and make all the right decisions 24/7? I thought the point was that they don't in fact, and when pressed humans (yes even scientists) can make super dumbass decisions. I believed, for example, the geologist walking away because when confronted with something wholly fucked up he chickened out and ran away. I can actually see people making that decision from a sheerly human reaction motivation. Just because he's a geologist doesn't mean he's immune to behaving like an idiot. That's the way I saw all the stupid crew choices, as ridiculously stupid...but these people are humans being confronted with something messed right up...so to me that's believable. Just curious as to how that took others out of the film is all.

That would be a silly argument to make I agree. Which is why I am glad no one made that argument.

As for the geologist and the biologist running away when they initially discovered the dead Engineer. That I can fully sympathise with. I can't say I would have acted much different had I been in their shoes.

[QuickTidal]

Morgoth, on 11 June 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

When Shaw beat the other two unconscious, fled into that medical thing, had the C-section, got stapled back up and staggered through the seemingly abandonned ship. At no point did anyone even raise an eye? Make a comment. I see you've got a big cut across your abdomen and you beat up two of our friends. What's all that about?

They MAY have had other things on their minds. Just sayin'

Though I'll concede no one really mentions it after when they decide to go back out to the pyramid...but in that defense she's going outside with David (who knows what she did), and Vickers (who could probably give a flying shit what happens to everyone but herself), and the captain (who had a conversation with her just beforehand where they kind of ambiguously danced around it)...but yeah, I could agree it should have been more concentrated on.