[LadyMTL]

A Demon Llama!, on 18 June 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

One question that I have is that since there are other ships on that planet, are there more Engineers hibernating in them? Or did the humans just get lucky in finding that guy in the first ship they looked at? We find a whole pile of dead Engineers gathered in an area, so maybe they were using that one ship to get away from the xenomorphs, with all of the others being already overrun.

I just saw this last night and my brother asked the exact same question; there looked to be other "forts" (for lack of a better word) on the planet so I sort of assumed that each one held a ship. If that is the case, though, I find it very strange that only one Engineer would have survived, unless they made a last stand type of thing at the "fort" that the crew explored and he / it was the only one who wasn't killed?

As for the rest of it, I didn't love the movie - I wanted more xenomorphs, dammit! - but I didn't hate it either. I'm just sort of...indifferent, although I thought Fassbender was great as David. He was the highlight of the whole thing, IMHO. Well, that and the last shot of the alien emerging from the dead Engineer, that had me grinning like a moron.

[Illuyankas]

http://blogs.indiewi...etheus-20120614

(spoilers)

[cerveza_fiesta]

Something interesting I thought of after ADL's comment RE the one engineer. He must have been left for some good reason. And the others were all dead from something, but it didn't seem to be from a direct physical attack. The holograms were running in fear of something and they expired in a group before they could get through some kind of blast door (save the one guy who got his head chopped).

Why would the engineer just out and out attack them? There was no apparent motivation for it on the surface, but considering the multiple visits to earth in the past, maybe the engineer recognized that they were from earth. In his thinking, he was just like "oh shit, our targets just found the installation" and started killing them to contain the security breach. I mean, for all the engineer knows, there might be an earth fleet in orbit ready to nuke the place or capture some ships for their own devices.

I think the idea that there were multiple groups of 5 stars on multiple cave/wall paintings from multiple cultures says something about the engineers. They were checking on their creations. The black goo is a genetic alteration device of some sort and assuming the engineers have some means of controlling the outcome of its use, their multiple visits to earth could have been to influence on the natural evolutionary process, possibly in an effort to guide natural evolution to the production of a species very similar (if not identical) to their own. Evolutionary guidance like this on such a grand temporal and spatial scale (as evidenced by the multiple planets in the star map and the choice of evolution as a creation medium) would be a terrific method of increasing your population, despite the length of time required. Another possible explanation is cloning. Clones are identical (as are the engineers) and lack genetic diversity. Accumulation of duplication errors in cloning means that eventually the process breaks down, defects become common and healthy clones are no longer a possibility. Using a single clone as a "seed" on primordial earth, and guiding that seed's evolution over a few billion years would ensure re-diversification of the species and survival.

We also know the oldest "cave paintings" are thousands of years old, and that the engineer ships have been inactive for roughly the same amount of time. I think 2000 years was mentioned in the film somewhere....but I can't remember exactly. So obviously something happened that stopped the engineers' visits to earth, which stopped "guided evolution" of our species. We turned out similar, but not quite identical to them. It explains partly why their target was earth and why the engineer was so aggressive. The engineer wakes up and sees a naturally-evolved abomination trying to talk to him. He flips out, and re-initiates his mission to earth in an effort to correct the mistake.

As for what killed the engineers, maybe it was something unrelated to the goo...an atomospheric processor malfunction or zombie apocalypse...who knows. When you think about it, it doesn't have to be black goo related at all. Everybody is assuming that their "weapon" got away from them, but maybe it was just a tool that has horrible consequences when used in an uncontrolled way. .

@QT

A decidedly optimistic take on the film in your link. I like it. It doesn't address the technical shortcomings and plot holes directly, but I like the author's take on the story as a whole.

@Apt

For the record, I loved the transformers movies too, and Chronicles of Riddick, and I have always loved Waterworld....so everybody can go to hell with their stupid opinions, most of all me!

[Mezla PigDog]

cerveza_fiesta, on 19 June 2012 - 04:25 PM, said:

Something interesting I thought of after ADL's comment RE the one engineer. He must have been left for some good reason. And the others were all dead from something, but it didn't seem to be from a direct physical attack. The holograms were running in fear of something and they expired in a group before they could get through some kind of blast door (save the one guy who got his head chopped).

I have a theory for what killed the pile of engineers and the headless dude - containment! The engineers created the black goo, the black goo (or some derivative of it) turned on the engineers, emergency containment measures were activated, the engineers were running to escape before the containment lock down but they didn't make it and their atmosphere was vented or some uber disinfectant released. The engineers realised they couldn't control their creation and abandoned the facility. Cue David being tormented by the humans, he turns on his creators by infecting them with black goo and thus created the xenomorphs that threaten the existance of humanity. Ba-da-bing.

My theory falls down with why didn't the engineers nuke the site from orbit (as we all know; it's the only way to be sure) and why weren't there preserved remains of whatever the engineers were trying to contain (black goo can't really run after you)?

Doesn't explain why the last engineer killed Weyland et al either.

Oh well.

I'm on a Biosafety course this week and I'm thinking if I was building a black goo genetic engineering facility, I'd have similar emergency containment measures (and staff with woeful union Health and Safety representation). The current equivalent is a formaldehyde bomb that you set off in a sealed cabinet or room. Current practise is to let your staff out before you set it off though..... The original engineer who disintegrated himself on earth either had poor representation or was very commited to his role to go through what looked a painful process. Maybe that's not what was supposed to happen and humans were a mistake?

[McLovin]

cerveza_fiesta, on 19 June 2012 - 04:25 PM, said:

Something interesting I thought of after ADL's comment RE the one engineer. He must have been left for some good reason.

I think he wasn't so much "left" as he managed to get into the hypersleep chamber before getting killed.

Quote

And the others were all dead from something, but it didn't seem to be from a direct physical attack. The holograms were running in fear of something and they expired in a group before they could get through some kind of blast door (save the one guy who got his head chopped).

You're conflating two locations there - the blast door with the pile of dead Engineers wasn't the same as the one with the decapitated Engineer.

But yeah, no apparent sign of attack on those guys, so that is weird.

Quote

Why would the engineer just out and out attack them? There was no apparent motivation for it on the surface...

Remember, when he goes to sleep, the installation is under attack. Then he wakes up, no subjective time elapsed, and sees unfamiliar beings that for all he knows are instruments of said attack. I think his reaction makes sense.

Quote

As for what killed the engineers, maybe it was something unrelated to the goo...

Yeah, maybe. That would explain the lack of physical signs of damage in the pile of Engineers. Maybe this goes back to my two-faction theory. Maybe the Engineers were attacked by other Engineers trying to liberate the goo. Maybe with gas or radiation? Maybe the goo wasn't actually dangerous, that's what turned it dangerous. Interesting...

[Aptorian]

McLovin, on 19 June 2012 - 05:52 PM, said:

Remember, when he goes to sleep, the installation is under attack. Then he wakes up, no subjective time elapsed, and sees unfamiliar beings that for all he knows are instruments of said attack. I think his reaction makes sense.

I took it more as an example of a very aggressive alien being waking from a nap and finding a bunch of retarded monkeys have entered his house and eaten his porridge and slept in his bed. So he destroyes them the same way you would stomp on a lab mouse that got out of its cage.

[Malaclypse]

Mezla PigDog, on 19 June 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

cerveza_fiesta, on 19 June 2012 - 04:25 PM, said:

Something interesting I thought of after ADL's comment RE the one engineer. He must have been left for some good reason. And the others were all dead from something, but it didn't seem to be from a direct physical attack. The holograms were running in fear of something and they expired in a group before they could get through some kind of blast door (save the one guy who got his head chopped).

I have a theory for what killed the pile of engineers and the headless dude - containment! The engineers created the black goo, the black goo (or some derivative of it) turned on the engineers, emergency containment measures were activated, the engineers were running to escape before the containment lock down but they didn't make it and their atmosphere was vented or some uber disinfectant released. The engineers realised they couldn't control their creation and abandoned the facility. Cue David being tormented by the humans, he turns on his creators by infecting them with black goo and thus created the xenomorphs that threaten the existance of humanity. Ba-da-bing.

My theory falls down with why didn't the engineers nuke the site from orbit (as we all know; it's the only way to be sure) and why weren't there preserved remains of whatever the engineers were trying to contain (black goo can't really run after you)?

Doesn't explain why the last engineer killed Weyland et al either.

Oh well.

I'm on a Biosafety course this week and I'm thinking if I was building a black goo genetic engineering facility, I'd have similar emergency containment measures (and staff with woeful union Health and Safety representation). The current equivalent is a formaldehyde bomb that you set off in a sealed cabinet or room. Current practise is to let your staff out before you set it off though..... The original engineer who disintegrated himself on earth either had poor representation or was very commited to his role to go through what looked a painful process. Maybe that's not what was supposed to happen and humans were a mistake?

still, the best theory I've heard to explain it. Ridley Scott himself half-assed admitted that the catastrophe that happened two thousand years prior to their arrival might have well been due to the crucifixion of Christ, which is eleven sorts of lame.

[A Demon Llama!]

I think most people just assume that the aliens were the ones that wiped out the engineers since its a common theme throughout all of the movies. Someone tries to control/ use the aliens in some way and ends up getting inevitable and horribly proven wrong. Yeah, I forgot that there were no physical trauma on their bodies, or at least not on their suits. Frankly I think we are other people are putting WAY more thought into this than the people that made the movie.

[masan's saddle]

I have just read Illy's link and It's very interesting indeed. Funnily enough someone upthread a while back mentioned something about why they would want to wipe us out after 2000 years and I was jokingly going to post " because we killed Jesus !" and thought better of it.

If it is actually the case that Scott is heading in that direction then I can sort of see it. Two sets of warring angels/engineers (a la Milton), one side peaceful and following the giant godhead thingie's plan of creation (via sacrifice in the opening scene), the other nasty and violent and trying to undo his work (messing with and weaponising his goo........ewww). It might explain why all those holo engineers were running away, the surviving engineer is on the other team and was killing them all in pursuit of undoing the godhead's work. It would also explain why he dispatches Weyland and co, they were part of Godhead's plan. Fallen angels are supposed to be prideful in their own perfection, what better way to corrupt life than to "weaponize" the building blocks and create xenomorphs or "perfect killing machines".

Meh it's a pretty wacky theory that made more sense in my head.

As a side note I was thinking that some of David's behaviours could be explained by the fact that he has possibly been watching David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" every day for the 4 year duration of the flight, if not probably prior to that also. He affects a lot of Peter O'Toole's mannerisms (constantly smoothing his hair, vocal ticks etc) he also repeats a bit of dialogue over and over, I can't remember what it was though ! If you know anything about Lawrence (or O'Toole's performance), David's ego, increasing megalomania and superiority towards Shaw's boyfriend (culminating in David exposing him to the goo) can be seen in a different light.

[Obdigore]

A Demon Llama!, on 19 June 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

I think most people just assume that the aliens were the ones that wiped out the engineers since its a common theme throughout all of the movies. Someone tries to control/ use the aliens in some way and ends up getting inevitable and horribly proven wrong. Yeah, I forgot that there were no physical trauma on their bodies, or at least not on their suits. Frankly I think we are other people are putting WAY more thought into this than the people that made the movie.

There was though, a couple of the engineers in the pile appeared to have had their chests burst open.

Also, I like the theory that the green thing the stupid archeologist found in the chamber where the Geologist and... whatever the other guy was bites it was some sort of Antidote, and the couple surviving engineers were trying to get to the antidote since they were clearly infected. My guess is that the couple of Engineers who made it to the control room were the ones that made it to the antidote, then returned to the bridge, and shut and locked the door and meant to go to sleep for a couple years until all the xenomorphs died, at which point they would continue on their mission to destroy earth. Maybe their alarm clock broke? I dont know, there are some huge holes in the story for all of the suggestions I have heard.

I also think the exposure of the goo towards stupid-archeologist-boy was intentional and ordered by Evil Corporate Man. Remember that David seemed to have been programmed to obey all his orders and do what was best for him, so...

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 20 June 2012 - 03:06 AM

[McLovin]

Obdigore, on 20 June 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

I also think the exposure of the goo towards stupid-archeologist-boy was intentional and ordered by Evil Corporate Man. Remember that David seemed to have been programmed to obey all his orders and do what was best for him, so...

I think that is intended to be the interpretation, but the timing makes no sense. Wouldn't you want to wait until the crew's testing and exploration were finished? Otherwise, you get...pissed-off Engineer caving in your skull and Octopus of Rape living in your escape pod.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Mezla PigDog, on 19 June 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

My theory falls down with why didn't the engineers nuke the site from orbit (as we all know; it's the only way to be sure) and why weren't there preserved remains of whatever the engineers were trying to contain (black goo can't really run after you)?

Doesn't explain why the last engineer killed Weyland et al either.

Oh well.

RE first point, it's entirely possible given the tenacity of creatures of black-goo origin (as we saw in alien quadrilogy) that some goo made its way back to the engineer homeworld on an escaping ship, unbeknownst to its crew. I mean, we don't know for certain that all the other ships didn't take off. Maybe 2 of them took off and one crashed on LV426 after suffering a massive xenomorph attack a-la original Alien movie, while the other one made it all the way home and destroyed the homeworld. Hell, maybe only one took off and the homeworld *is* LV 426, and the events of Alien occur in a conveniently uninhabited region with no ruined structures to give indication of a vanished civilization. Basically your "containment" theory, but an interplanetary breech rather than just a facility-wide breech. Destruction of the engineer civilization is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there was no "nuke from orbit".

The thought of a sweaty bra-less greasy-haired engineer version of Sigourney Weaver duking it out with a alt-universe version of the xenomorph is gross...or maybe hot. I have mixed feelings on that.

RE the second point, I just kind of took it as "our creations running amok on our ship, must destroy" or the more likely McLovin "no time has passed and the engineer is still in fight or flight mode" version of events. It's not super important either way.

You guys think they'll go all "time travel" and somehow make it so that David is Jesus and somehow he and Noomi cause the containment breech to happen 2000 years in the past? Kinda lame, but as long as it involves a cute Sweedish brunette running around in gauze, I'm all for it!

[McLovin]

cerveza_fiesta, on 20 June 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

The thought of a sweaty bra-less greasy-haired engineer version of Sigourney Weaver duking it out with a alt-universe version of the xenomorph is gross...or maybe hot. I have mixed feelings on that.

I wouldn't have figured you for the East German Olympic athlete type, but duly noted.

Quote

You guys think they'll go all "time travel" and somehow make it so that David is Jesus and somehow he and Noomi cause the containment breech to happen 2000 years in the past? Kinda lame, but as long as it involves a cute Sweedish brunette running around in gauze, I'm all for it!

And seriously, is there an underwear shortage in 2093? Why bandages?

[cerveza_fiesta]

Quote

Quote

You guys think they'll go all "time travel" and somehow make it so that David is Jesus and somehow he and Noomi cause the containment breech to happen 2000 years in the past? Kinda lame, but as long as it involves a cute Sweedish brunette running around in gauze, I'm all for it!

And seriously, is there an underwear shortage in 2093? Why bandages?

The textile industry strike of 2085. Global production of cotton fabric is frozen for for nearly 10 years due to labor disputes. Spacefarers desperate for comfortablke undergarments turn to the next-softest cotton-based fabric - fortunately manufactured by a separate industry group with fewer labour problems.

I don't know how you missed that part. It was clearly explained during the engineer vs. David fight scene.

[Mrs Savagely Wishy Washy]

I really enjoyed the first 3 minutes- the landscape shots were amazing, so beautiful. Whatever came afterwards, I thought was super boring and a bog standard storyline with the usual suspect crew, usual suspect plot, usual suspect action, no surprises and there wasn't even the slightest sense ofhumour- that was probably the worst thing about the whole movie. And even though they were standard characters, they were badly scripted, and the dialogue sucked totally.

My personal penny worth of over-arching theory without taking delicate details and gaping holes into account:
The engineers create humanity because they can, butthen realise they don't like how "we" turn out so they decide to destroy "us"-no biggie, they know how to make more of us and improve their creations each time. Instead ofcoming down and destroying all of us themselves, they create something else,because it's great fun to do so, and will subsequently send that off to do the dirty job for them. Only problem is, that thing is vicious- and the rest is history. *Die Geister, die ich rief" - the spirits that I awoke.
Alternative theory: The Alien is what the engineers really aim for and they create humans as host because it may just be that the pretty reptile thing in the black organic juice is a larval stage that needs to pass through a developmental stage in a suitable host to develop to full maturity. But, so what?
Still leaving loads of questions open and doesn't even add much to the previous discussion, I agree.

Further, there are apparently many ships on this moon, so it's possible that Earth wasn't the only planet where the engineers created life forms which needed dispatching afterwards- all of which we'll find out in the next instalment of the Prometheus saga.


Edit: typos.
Plus: The organic black juice could quite possibly be the engineers own growth medium for life, much like the prehistoric mud life crawled out so long ago on planet Earth.
And more plus: the more I think about Prometheus, the more the story starts annoying me because: it's all about humans. Who made us, why did they make us, and because they made us they can give us eternal life; but really, we are hardly the only form of life on Earth. So who made the plants, animals, bacteria, parasites, fungi and everything else? Did they come about through evolution, and the engineers simply added the humans to the already existing and thriving biosphere on Earth? Or did they create all life on Earth? I find that just as interesting because if you accept that something made us you have to accept by extension that something made all the rest that is around us.
Don't know why, but this point is just something which I personally have a big issue with- hybris, I suppose.

This post has been edited by Miss Savage: 21 June 2012 - 09:14 AM

[Aptorian]

[A Demon Llama!]

Doesn't look like there will be a Directors Cut for Prometheus. There's an extra 15 minutes of extra scenes, but i don't know if that's gonna be included in the movie or just as an extra.

http://collider.com/...177495/?_r=true

[QuickTidal]

A Demon Llama!, on 08 July 2012 - 08:18 PM, said:

Doesn't look like there will be a Directors Cut for Prometheus. There's an extra 15 minutes of extra scenes, but i don't know if that's gonna be included in the movie or just as an extra.

http://collider.com/...177495/?_r=true

Like most Ridley Scott stuff he needs time to make a Directors Cut, Even the 9 minutes-extra Directors Cut of ROBIN HOOD wasn't released until about 5 months after the theatrical cut hit DVD. KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Directors Cut took closer to a year. Ridley actually has to do Post on whatever rough footage he's cut originally, including special effects, editing ect., and this takes time.

And Fox is quite frankly happy to allow him the time to do so, this way they will release the theatrical cut first and the Directors Cut down the line for another hit on the wallet.

I'm trying to think of a film of Ridley's that DOESN'T have a directors cut....and I can;t thin of one off hand. I think even A GOOD YEAR has a cut that is different from the theatrical.

[A Demon Llama!]

Hmm, makes sense. I was thinking about buying the whole Blu-ray set, but now that you said that i might wait for the directors cut, if one comes out. Whats the difference between this set and the Alien Anthology that was released not too long ago? It it the same thing with added features and the Prometheus film, or is it completely different? When a new set comes out do they include everything that was in the previous sets is what im trying to ask.

[QuickTidal]

A Demon Llama!, on 09 July 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

Hmm, makes sense. I was thinking about buying the whole Blu-ray set, but now that you said that i might wait for the directors cut, if one comes out. Whats the difference between this set and the Alien Anthology that was released not too long ago? It it the same thing with added features and the Prometheus film, or is it completely different? When a new set comes out do they include everything that was in the previous sets is what im trying to ask.

Hard to tell, check out the features here :

http://www.prometheu...ie.com/news/264

and compare with the existing anthology.