Prometheus Review - SPOLIERS ONLY

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 5:04 pm

If you haven't seen the movie, don't continue to read any of this. Come back and discuss after watching the movie.

Excellent movie. Excellent 3D as FP mentioned. And FP was correct about the ending, the last 1/4 of the movie.

I don't understand when they revived that humanoid, why he wanted to kill everyone and take off? I'm still trying to figure that out. The android asked him something in apparently his language, then the humanoid takes his head off and continues to kill the remaining crew.

Did they leave it open for a sequel as the ship heads off to another world?

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:16 pm

Supposedly, this is the first of 3 movies from what I've heard. I have no clue why he ripped the android's head off.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:53 am

ACTUALLY, I totally get the scene where the founder ripped the android's head off. It was an homage to Bladerunner (another Ridley Scott film). It's a takeoff of the scene where Rutger Hauer first pats his creator on his head lovingly, and then crushes his skull. That scene actually made it for me.

ANYWAY, here's my rant:

- First off, as far as I'm concerned, they contradict a major element of the original Alien move: In Prometheus, the "Founders" are essentially humanoids which happen to be a bit larger than we are, and we are supposed to believe that what made the dead pilot in the control chair in the original Alien film look so big and alien is that he was wearing an armored space suit.

The trouble is that, in the first film, it was quite apparent that this was NOT the case. When they examined the alien in the first film, it was a dessicated corpse, and they clearly showed his MUCH larger than human ribs protruding from his exploded chest. Those rib bones were as big around as a normal human forearm. Heck even the scale seemed wrong. I'd have to watch the original again, but I'd say that the pilot was MUCH bigger than the space suited ones in Prometheus.
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EDIT

Here, I found a photo. As you can see they took a LOT of liberties with the size of the founders in Prometheus:

and in this photo it's obvious we aren't looking at a space suit:

- WTF was with the two guys who inexplicably stayed behind inside the building when the storm hit (despite the fact that they had a huge head start on everyone else, wanted the hell out of there badly, and had a detailed 3D map so I can't see how they got lost)? If they were so terrified, WHY THE HELL would they camp out in the room with the scary big alien bust sculpture, the oozing alien cylinders, and the decapitated founder at the door? I could have found a hundred better places to camp out for the night.

- There was ABSOLUTELY no valid plot purpose for the scientist who was incinerated to come back to life and kill everyone in the hangar deck. Other than scare factor, that whole scene had ZERO purpose. He had apparently already served his purpose by impregnating his girl friend. As far as I was concerned it was 12 wasted minutes that could have been better used to make the rest of the movie less disjointed. Even worse, that scene was COMPLETELY IGNORED afterwards, so what's the point?

It's almost as if it was added as an afterthought. No one else ever refers to it again. The Captain just finished watching 4 of his crew get torn apart by that thing, and then he goes back to the bridge to play his squeeze box and stare at Charlize Theron's ass. No one else in the crew seems particularly concerned that they just scraped up 4 crew members off the decks. No water-cooler talk about how screwed up that was?

- Along those lines, all the characters seemed completely oblivious to other things happening on the ship. The impregnated scientist knocks out two people who apparently never raise an alarm or go look for her, or even care that she's running loose. When she does turn up, no one is particularly concerned or surprised that she's no longer pregnant and that she's covered in blood and has 40 staples across her tummy.

You would THINK that, looking the way she did, covered in blood, and possibly infected, that NO ONE would want to let her anywhere near Mr. Weyland who looks like he would drop dead from infection if you sneezed on him.

There are several scenes like that, where something major happens, and everyone else is oblivious.

- We are expected to believe that Charlize Theron, being thoroughly paranoid to the point of having a cabin that can be a life-boat, and a sophisticated auto-doc in said cabin, just happens to leave her cabin unlocked so that the impregnated scientist can conveniently use her auto-doc and leave an alien inside of it.

- For God-like aliens, these "founders" were pretty reckless. We're to believe they built hundreds of ships to exterminate humanity (and maybe other species they founded?) but none of them seems to have been able to get off the ground (until one of us is stupid enough to wake up a founder pilot from cryo-sleep anyway). They apparently DID get as far as launching one in the original Aliens movie, but the stupid pilot got himself killed and let it crash land.

- Now granted, this may get explained in a sequel, but WHY would these Founders go through all the trouble of developing these very sophisticated bio-weapons to exterminate us? If all it took to populate the Earth with humans was for ONE alien to contaminate the ocean with his dissolved body, then surely they had the tech to destroy all life on Earth without cluster-bombing it with thousands of those alien spawning canisters, which apparently needed to go through several breeding cycles in order to ultimately make an alien that would kill us all?

To possibly answer my own question, it's possible there was a grander scheme. Maybe seeding the Earth was phase one and phase two all along was to use humans as a medium to breed these acid blooded aliens? But if so, it seems absurd. If so, why go to the trouble of starting religions on Earth?

- Why was the very first ship they discovered conveniently targeted at Earth? Were they ALL targeted at Earth (Did they REALLY need that many bio weapons to exterminate humanity)?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:55 pm

HOLY CRAP! READ THIS:

Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

There's a lot of valid points in there. I'm not totally convinced on all he suggests, but there's a LOT to think about. It explains a lot - especially the actions of the alien pilot at the end, and I definitely see the references to sacrifice and even the Christ analogy.

However I NEVER got the impression the goo the "Engineer" drank on Earth to seed the planet was the same as the goo stockpiled in the Engineer base. Anyone else pick up on that?

I need to watch the movie again with the points from the blog post in mind...

BTW, someone replying to that blog post mentioned a movie I have been looking for FOREVER. I remember seeing it as a child, and when I saw the original Alien film for the first time, it struck me that Alien was nearly a ripoff of this movie. It's called Planet of the Vampires and Netflix and Amazon both have it available for streaming: http://tinyurl.com/7nh3zwa

Gonna watch it tonight. I haven't seen it in over 30 years.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 7:52 am

And another perspective here:

Prometheus Explained: Unraveling The Unanswered Questions
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Promethe ... 31317.html

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:36 am

FlyingPenguin wrote:And another perspective here:

Prometheus Explained: Unraveling The Unanswered Questions
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Promethe ... 31317.html

Great perspective.

Why did the Engineers suddenly decide to destroy the Earth?
When the Engineer is awoken from his cryo-stasis, he embarks on an intense mission to board the nearest ship and take off. His destination? Our planet, which has been targeted for destruction. Hence, Shaw (Rapace) convincing Elba to ram the exiting spaceship to stop him from ever reaching our planet.
Our Theory: “Suddenly” might be the wrong word. It’s basically implied that the Engineers have been angry with us for some time, they being the “parents” who once created us. Scott has said there were sequences in the film that were going to explain why we’d angered the “gods” known as the Engineers. In one instance, it was going to be posited that Jesus was an emissary of the Engineers, sent to see how we were doing. And what did we do? We crucified him. So the Engineers have been upset with us for some time. But something happened while they were creating the aliens to force the Engineers into hibernation. This, also, falls under the category of “Things probably better explained in a potential sequel,” which is disappointing for Prometheus, but there you have it.

What did David say to the “Space Jockey” to make him so angry?
As the Space Jockey emerges from this cryo-stasis pod, Weyland (Guy Pearce) orders his android, David (Fassbender) to “tell him what I told you to tell him,” to paraphrase the quote. David says something to the Engineer in his native, alien language. And he gets his head knocked off in response.
Our Theory: It doesn’t matter what David said. And by that, we mean Michael Fassbender actually talked to us about this very question, and he said he knows the line, because they had translators come in an break the line down for him. But that’s not the point of the scene. The point of the scene is to show how angry the Engineer is that he’s being woken up out of cryo-stasis by these insignificant beings, and all he wants is for this android to stop talking. So he tears his head off, like you would the wings of an insect, an insignificant fly.

I knew there was going to be a sequel when I saw that ship fly away with the android and Shaw. After thinking about this film again, they sure left a lot of stuff unexplained. Like you said FP, it sets scenes up and just leaves them there and your going WTF?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 2:07 pm

The screenwriter (same guy who wrote Lost BTW, which explains A LOT) mentions in an interview at the end of this video that they purposely forked the plot into two stories at the end. One is the story about the xenomorph and the other is the one about the scientist and alien who go off to find the Engineer home world:

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Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:15 am

Secrets of Prometheus Explained on Reddit

http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/reddit-e ... rometheus/

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:29 pm

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

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Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:43 pm

What did Michael Fassbender say at the end of 'Prometheus'? Language consultant reveals all:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/06/21/p ... ?hpt=hp_t3

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 2:38 pm

Yeah, there was a frustrating complete lack of common sense or procedure in the movie.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Wed Jun 27, 2012 2:31 am

LOL, a captain's log of the movie:
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/ ... tains-log/