What's the Biggest Unanswered Question Raised By Ridley Scott's Prometheus?
Ridley Scott's Prometheus opens stateside today, which means no more tiptoeing around spoilers for those who've seen it. (Obviously, spoilers will follow. You've been warned.) The number one complaint among folks who have now seen the highly anticipated Alien kinda-prequel? So. Many. Unanswered. Questions. So let's jump right into the spoiler goo and get to deciding (and, hopefully, answering) the biggest question prompted by Scott's gorgeous, murky space opus that is left yet unanswered.
I'll start:
WHY?
Why does pretty much anyone in Prometheus make any of the decisions they make? Like...
- Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) with the helmet-taking off. Really, is sniffing (and contaminating) the alien world atmosphere on the planet you just landed on and know nothing about such a good idea?
- Vickers (Charlize Theron), running in the one direction that will lead her to being squashed by a giant falling spaceship?
- Millburn the dumb biologist (Rafe Spall), who just wants to reach out and make friends -- even with the squishy alien penis-snakes?
- Space crew guy, walking straight up to his recently deceased, re-animated fellow shipmate who has spider-crawled his way across a space desert to space-murder everyone?
Most of these aren't necessarily unanswered questions, just incredibly stupid decisions that inform and support the characters in facepalm-worthy strokes. Holloway is a risk-taker! Vickers is a sheltered, prideful ice queen with probably little field experience who would rather try to outrun death than roll, like her unassuming and practical brunette counterpart, out of its way! Crew guy is, well, a redshirt, for lack of a better term. Yes, yes. There are reasons to be found here, if not particularly great ones.
The bigger questions have to do with two still-opaque entities: The Engineers and David, the increasingly creepy mayhem bot, Lawrence of Robotica.
In the prologue we see one Engineer take a dose of black space goo and tumble, dead and transmorphing, into the water -- thus presumably starting human life on Earth. So what is the goo? Prometheus builds a tech-driven world filled with great flying ships and alien holograms and C-section machines but is more concerned with ideas: Of creators and creation, of life and death cycling endlessly across the universe between humans and aliens, parents and offspring, scientists and their inventions. All children want to see their parents dead, according to David, who seems to be counting himself in that equation.
What is the goo, then? Is it the proto-material of a xenomorph? How does it work, exactly? Why would anyone feed it to the cute Tom Hardy-looking guy? And who created the Engineers, anyway? Does it even matter when the real question is asking why we create, and in the process, destroy?
The brilliance of Prometheus's stubborn insistence on not feeding us the answers is that they're not really important in the grand scheme of things, unless you require your movies to make sense. You know what else refuses to share vital information, instead choosing to provoke and see what happens? David. David, who has spent years in space flight amassing the breadth of human knowledge and yet cannot feel (or can he?), who has the answers -- or, at least, the instructions the Engineers have written in their mystery language on the sides of their sweaty weapons of mass destruction like how-to manuals -- and yet can't understand why it is that Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw MUST understand.
David, played marvelously by Michael Fassbender, remains the biggest mystery. He's tasked with one directive: Help Weyland find a way to live forever. You could build a strong case that everything David does is indeed in service of this goal. Weyland's mistake is in trusting a machine that doesn't think in human terms, but in practical ones; if there's no alien magic out there to Benjamin Button old man Weyland back into handsome, young Guy Pearce, David finds another way to help his master live forever: Through his legacy, by altering the course of human history (gladly, it seems) via one or two devious deceptions.
Consider the legacy of the man at the center of David's favorite film, as seen in Prometheus's sublime opening sequence. T.E. Lawrence was born in 1888, helped upset order in the Arab world in 1916, was immortalized on celluloid in 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, and then, years later in the world of Prometheus, inspired an android to not only imitate his blond coif but instigate the beginnings of the Alien universe in 2093. Lawrence is really the key to understanding David; in helping Weyland achieve his immortality by way of launching the destruction of humanity, David is immortalizing himself, and a part of me thinks that a part of him yearns to express this measure of often foolhardy human emotion. Or maybe he's just designed to be a close, but not close enough, imitation of the humans who built him?
The more I think of David as a stand-in for Prometheus the movie at large, the less I care that Idris Elba figured out in five minutes what the Engineers were up to on this rinky dink planet, or that we'll never know what David whispered to the last remaining Engineer, a la ScarJo and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. Those quibbles seem minor given the vast provocations the film leaves behind.
To an aggravatingly obvious extent, the gaping abyss of understanding that Prometheus leaves puts us, the viewer, in the position of Shaw -- still searching, desperately, for answers, with only a soulless computer brain as her guide. We are Shaw, and maybe the internet is our David, offering knowledge and spoilers at our fingertips but, unless Ridley Scott and writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof hop on a Reddit AMA session, no ready answers and plenty to be wary of. Big things come in small packages, and that goes for space goo, blond robots, and universe-expanding ideas.
So, all that said, what unsolved mysteries irked you the most in Prometheus? Sound off in the spoiler-friendly comments below and let's figure this sucker out.
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Our colleagues at (PMC-owned) Beyond the Trailer pose a relevant question: "Is Prometheus an intellectual sci-fi thriller, or a pseudo-intellectual sci-fi thriller?" See what other real folks say in their impromptu exit poll.
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Comments
The Biggest question gotta be for how much money is Fox going to milk this
A most valid question that has more of an answer: As much as they can.
I REALLY like your take on David here. He really is representative of the larger mysteries at the heart of the film. I think Prometheus has a problem in that there are enough plot holes and bizarre character actions that it can be confusing whether something is a "mystery" and whether it's just poor scripting. But I think by focusing on David and Shaw's relationship to him we can get a greater sense of the true mysteries of the film, and those are ones that are good enough left unanswered for audience interpretation. Why are the engineers trying to create and destroy life? (My theory is that they're tryin. To create the "perfect organism" through experiments in evolution and mutation, ie. the xenomorph.) These kinds of questions are fun to ponder.
I like that theory re: what the Engineers are attempting to do. Humans are a failed attempt at perfection? Sounds about right.
Not only a failed attempt, but in destroying them with another mutation they're just cotinuing the experiment of trying to perfect a weaponized alien.
This theory really does make sense because in "Alien," the android Ash explains that the xenomorph is the perfect killing machine. Human beings, while quite proficient at destruction still possess empathy and emotions, something that the xenomorph lacks, as Ash also points out.
Incidentally, I actually really liked the film.
I think the biggest question has got to be....how do I get abs like the engineer!?
THIS. Answers, please.
I'm mostly confused. The prologue suggests that we came from a failed experiment and so now after thousands of years the Engineers just wanted to clean out the petri dish and replace it with xenomorphs? They couldn't see that by seeking "perfection" in a new lifeform (especially one that is vicious and destructive) would eventually lead to their own destruction as the new alien species will eventually replace what came before.
I'm sure someone would say the gods/Engineers are just as human and fallible as we are, seeing as we come from them. Or something. So, yeah. The universe's scientists eradicate one experiment with another, I suppose. I buy that.
I know that this has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but what if the planet in the beginning of the original alien is the planet in which shaw is going to at the end of Prometheus? It makes some sense, considering that she was flying a ship filled with bioweapons. The bioweapons clearly had some unpredictable effects, such as the creation of the giant face hugger-like creature. Whose to say that if they ran wild, a new race could be created?Perhaps that's what the bioweapons are: tools to help create the perfect race.
That can't be true, though, because the crew of the Nostromo finds an Engineer in the pilot's chair on that planet in "Alien."
Crap. New theory then. I'm going to assume that:
the engineers are the supreme beings of the universe. The xenomorphs are weapons created by the engineers.
And the engineers created humans.
The humanity is the engineer's lab rat. The black goo in the pods is an experiment. The engineer leaving for earth wants to carry out said experiment on humans. We've already seen that a possible effect of the goo is increased strength and durability, and that a possible effect of the goo, when combined with human DNA and incubated in a engineer creates a xenomorph like creature. Coupled with the sculpture of the xenomorph in the catacombs, this would lead me to believe that the engineers created the xenomorph using humans as a base template.
My biggest question: How come NOBODY seems to pointing out the obvious and bizarre pacing issues that render consequences to scenes (aforementiond spider man, the surgery scene) completely irrelevant?
Also, does this mean that there is a director's cut that we'll be treated to in a years time? (Or in the case of Scott, 17 director's cuts?)
I'd like to see a version where Holloway doesn't seem to get such short shrift. I was guessing/hoping the flamethrower wouldn't be the end of him... because how lame is that?
Also: I'm still waiting to see a scene in which, after being impregnated and cutting an ALIEN FETUS out of her own womb AND THEN stumbling upon Wrinkly Guy Pearce, Shaw finds a good time to fill, I don't know, EVERYONE ELSE ON THE SHIP in on what's just happened to her. Frustrating.
I'm still scratching my head after Holloway, after discovering his Engineers are kaput, starts drinking straight from the bottle like a total rummy, which I doubt the average scientist would do upon being disappointed about his pet project (I'm guessing it's booze, although why a spaceship, with every ounce of equipment measured to ensure enough fuel to take its passengers there and back again, would stock a liquor cabinet is beyond me). On the other hand, the original crew in ALIEN seemed to have plenty of cigarettes. Guess they lightened up on contraband in the future.
Nobody on this ship told anyone else anything, they seemed to keep all their experiences to themselves.
Or why the last remaining engineer went to sleep for 2000 years in his cryogenic chamber instead of jetting directly to earth to unload the xenomorph contagion?
I really quite liked that we, the audience, went in to the movie much like the character Elizabeth Shaw : believing we were embarking on a journey that would answer many of the important questions we had been asking (in our case, regarding the original Alien and the Space Jockeys) - only to find ourselves bombarded by a never ending stream of new questions, notions, observations and often conflicting hypothesis.
Not an answer in sight.
I thought it was quite interesting that David made several, barely concealed references to his namesake in A.I. as well as Fassbender at times playing him as HAL in the guise of his other namesake Dave Bowman, to the point that when one character inevitably asked him "What are you doing David?" I wasn't sure whether to laugh or punch the person next to me in the arm.
If it is Earth that the "Engineer" in the Prologue sacrifices himself on, taking the black goop to use his DNA as the basis of all life on the planet, that would surely mean that all life on the planet shares the "Engineers" DNA, not just Human life forms as is mentioned in the film - so why do we get the physical resemblance and not cats for example?
As Idris Elba's character points out, it's a weapon factory, which is why it's in the middle of nowhere. Are we to infer that the Human race was also designed as a weapon?
If Humans were designed as a weapon, then why the hell leave a bunch of maps or "invitations" to the site of another weapons factory - why not give directions to the location of your enemy (unless of course it was a trick - we were designed by someone else entirely, and sent to unwittingly destroy that facility)?
If Humans were a cherished creation, then why the hell leave a bunch of maps or "invitations" to the site of a weapons factory, and certain death?
When David observes that the vessels of black goop are "sweating" is he inferring that they are like sticks of dynamite, sweating nitroglycerine (this might be in keeping with Scott's "technology" theme) and that the next technological breakthrough is to stabilise this weapon in a way akin to Nobel? Or was he simply pointing out it was "alive"?
The black sculpted plaque depicting the original Alien, and the mural on the ceiling both seemed to imply the original Alien lifecycle to an extent, coupled with the giant face statue creating a sort of holy temple, would seem to imbue the vessels of black goop with a religious significance - so is the goop naturally occurring rather than manufactured?
We are led to believe, through conjecture on the part of the characters, that the holographic security camera shows the Space Jockey's fleeing from an outbreak.
Why are they fleeing towards the source of danger? - perhaps this is a parallel whereby the goop is the Space Jockey's salvation through faith in technology, that has unintentionally turned against them, with David representing the same threat for us?
The vessels of black goop are all sealed, and it is only after they are tampered with, and the humans have contaminated the rooms atmosphere, that the goop starts to leak and pool up in the dedicated channels carved in to the floor - so where the hell did the bio-mass / DNA source to create the snake-like, fingerless proto-Facehugger come from?
If you're going to get an attack of the heebie-jeebies, and decide to head back to the Prometheus because a dead alien, a bunch spooky vessels, and a giant head are creeping you out : why, when you get lost and are informed that a life form keeps popping up every hour, would you then decide to go and bed down in the very room that had freaked you out in the first place, especially when the black goop is now leaking everywhere?
Having decided to hang out in said creepy temple, why would you decide "I know what will help me stay focused, and not make me feel at all paranoid in this situation - I'll get shit-faced on weed!" - and then having already fled from possible lifeforms, regardless of how high you are, try to giving a bloody space cobra a hug?
Did the "flute" actually serve a function, or was it a case of David misinterpreting a nik-nak that had personal totemistic value (as per Stephen Stills' accordion to Idirs Elba's character) as something more utilitarian?
Why have one well rounded character when you can split them in two to create a double act? (see how many examples of this you can find here...)
Talking of which, the two man Engineering crew of the Prometheus mainly seem to be there as a foil to the "Engineers".
The Space Jockey's "Engineers" create and destroy life, our Engineers preserve life.
I did really enjoy the movie, and even though a few of the characters choices left me wondering if the writers were taking the piss, I think they were well aware that it would be extremely tough for this movie to stand up to Alien in pure shock value and horror terms. But by making it so deliberately enigmatic, they have cleverly guaranteed it's longevity on completely separate terms from Alien.
This is how you make a prequel!
Throw up all new questions, not try to answer questions that are best left ambiguous (especially if the answers you come up with are total, disappointing, unnecessary crap - The Thing 2011 I'm looking in your direction, and that's the only way you'll ever be mentioned in the same sentence as Prometheus!).
"As Idris Elba's character points out, it's a weapon factory, which is why it's in the middle of nowhere. Are we to infer that the Human race was also designed as a weapon?"
I thought he said it was a military installation? I don't think we were supposed to infer that humans were designed as weapons.
"I'll get shit-faced on weed!" - and then having already fled from possible lifeforms, regardless of how high you are, try to giving a bloody space cobra a hug?"
The guy who was smoking the weed was not the guy trying to make friends with the alien penis snake.
That said, you bring up fantastic points/questions!
"The guy who was smoking the weed was not the guy trying to make friends with the alien penis snake."
Yeah, I just got the impression that they had been sharing during the cut (peoples visors kept fogging up randomly - sometimes a technical / filmmaking artefact, sometimes intentional).
The change in Rafe Spall's manor, when we returned to the scene, implied that he was high, rather than nervous.
They had already established earlier in the film that he was in the habit of trying to befriend hostile people, but reaching out to make friends with the proto-Facehugger seemed a bit of a stretch, given his previous jitters at the mention of lifeforms.
Thankfully somebody has pointed out that the proto-Facehugger / penis snake would have derived from the worms, which I had forgotten about somehow.
"I thought he said it was a military installation?"
I think you might be right. In any respect, I was simply raising the conundrum that if we were a weapon, why guide us to that facility (unless it was misdirection from a rival / enemy faction of the "Engineers")? And if we were a cherished creation, why guide us to certain doom.
In fact, even more than my later post, drawing parallels with Blade Runner, I think it's easier to understand if you look at the "Holy" trinity of Peter Weyland, Vickers and David.
Weyland = God.
Vickers = The "Engineers".
David = Us.
Weyland, all powerful as a businessman, is the father of Vickers, and the creator of David - but obviously had a father, grandfather etc etc.
Vickers (possibly named after the weapons engineering company), may have been more directly involved in manufacture / management of David, but has been passed over by him in her fathers affections.
David (despite sharing many character concerns with his namesake in A.I. is most probably named after Michelangelo's sculpture), being "male" is seen as Weyland's "son" and more accurately in the image of his maker.
Look at the relationship between Vickers and David - she is not at all happy taking second place to the artificial son, and is seen to be hostile and violent towards him - it seems unlikely (though perhaps not impossible and arguably even more relevant) that she would react this way if she were and android herself.
In spite of David's apparent malevolence, he is always broadly acting within Asimov's laws of robotics - protecting life in all its forms - and sticking to "Company" policy established in Alien "Bring back life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded".
David is made to look and behave like us, to make us feel more comfortable around him.
Look at the giant head in the temple - We look more like that God than the "Engineers" do.
They see us as an abomination, and an affront to their relationship with their God - they are jealous that we look more like him than they do, and will have his favour over them, just as Vickers feels in her relationship with her father and David.
Extending the "Holy" trinity further outwards, it seems reasonable to assume that the giant head sculpture in the temple, is based on a being, which must have had a father and a grandfather etc etc.
This would appear to be seen / worshipped as a deity.
The temple features a fresco painting, which whilst bearing a strong resemblance to Christian Griepenkerl paintings on the Promethean myth, would seem to suggest a parallel with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco.
That image is famous for the depiction of God bringing Adam to life with the touch of a finger.
So in another Michelangelo reference, we have David evaluating Holloway's commitment to his ideals with his finger at the ready, to bring new life in to being.
He has moved up the chain, becoming the creator.
And as David himself says "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"
So the notion of a trinity continues in a generational loop, much in the same way that the quest for answers is a continual loop (Shaw starts and ends the movie setting off on a never ending quest, to meet the maker and answer the ultimate questions - when she arrives at her next destination, it will only lead to more of the same questions).
We are all existing in an Escher print...
Although I do hope it isn't simply a case that Ridley Scott has been immersing himself in "Industrial" music :
http://www.prometheus-burning.com/?page_id=12
That's just a bit too on the nose to be comfortable...
I'm thinking the "engineers" are nothing more than slaves of an even older and smarter intelligence. Maybe the engineers themselves were created to be nothing more than incubators for humanoid species on various worlds for their masters (like David, maybe they are only slaves). I don't the original Engineer at the beginning of PROMETHEUS was particularly happy experiencing an excruciating death just to create life elsewhere. And are there female engineers? I only saw male ones. Perhaps the engineers are jealous that the human race they created can perpetuate their species, while the engineers are created on an "as needed basis" by their masters only for the purpose of creating the original breed. Could it be the alien goo is the engineers way of destroying their creators pride and joy - a perpetuating human species? Maybe the engineers are waging their own war against heaven, which plays into PROMETHEUS subplot of religion and science.
Why did the star maps lead humans to the weapon factory and not to a more peaceful place to meet their maker? My guess is that once we gathered the resources to put the puzzle together (as the Engineers programmed or instructed our ancestors to leave behind the fragments), our arrival at the weapons factory would trigger the destruction of our species. It's a failsafe. The Engineers are not preoccupied with creating the perfect organism. Look at their technology! Surely they are proud enough of this that when anyone gets close to achieving what they have (and if you went on the viral website for Weyland, you would see how far the human race has supposedly come in the film in terms of technology and intelligence), they will do what it takes to reduce them (with the xenomorphing primordial muck). And surely if they lead us with the star maps to their home, they would risk extinction for all they know.
What I want to know is the backstory of what the Engineers were running from in the hallway. Was the dome a research/testing facility, sacrificing Engineers to improve the grade of the weapons? And what was that spiral column discovered by the spectagraphs above the head chamber? And why does Holloway assume that the chamber is a tomb, especially when the Engineers are running toward it? And why is the Alien on the wall of the chamber when it hasn't even been xenomorphed yet?
GAAAAASSSPPPP. Out of breath.
"And why is the Alien on the wall of the chamber when it hasn't even been xenomorphed yet?"
Because it wasn't the very first one, obviously.
It's actually the smaller unanswered questions that bothers me more - the sort that you raised at the beginning of the article. I'd be much more prepared to accept the "bigger questions" that you've extracted and call as "intellectual sci-fi" if due diligence has been done on the smaller stuff. It was so sloppy on the depiction human behaviour that I can't not call it pseudo-intellectual sci-fi - just a bunch of people throwing random ideas at the screen and hoping the audience swallows it.
having said that it was still a cool movie and i definitely got my money's worth of entertainment
This is Prometheus's biggest problem: All the smaller questionable character moves are so distracting, it's hard for folks to see the forest through the trees. And it's such an intriguing forest...
For great filmmakers like Ridley Scott, it is all about raising questions that the audience must ask/search for themselves. It involves the viewer. Adds a realism to the fantastical, by engaging the audience by investing their own ideas and emotions brought on by the questions raised.
I left the theater putting the puzzle pieces in their logical order - and the awkward pieces left me with a feeling of excitement and awe, that beckons for another Ridley adventure!
With the new Ripley, the strong female lead, by way of Elizabeth Shaw.
BTW, This 'bone-ship' cannot be the one seen in ALIEN. The "Jocky" with the hole in its chest was not seated in the pilot's chair. Which means, I think, that Shaw does reach another planet - and something transpires... justly eliminating the 'engineers'. Purposefully? Shaw's revenge?
My biggest complaint with this movie is with the reviews I read of it afterwards. It seems that in reviewing a movie about the unanswered questions asked perpetually by humankind, and the difficulty and perhaps futility involved in this, all anyone can whine about is all the unanswered questions.
Really? I wonder how many of these reviewers have complained of over-exposition and rote obviousness in movies? This is a question I CAN answer: All of them.
Prometheus gives, hints at, or alludes to more answers than we could ever expect in real life. It's strange to me that a piece of art that obviously inspires so much thought could leave those same thinkers thinking "I didn't like this".
sidenote: A scientist, on the verge of the most significant discovery in human history, after recording a breathable atmosphere with advanced technology, wants to experience it without a bubble surrounding his face? A panicked woman in a constricting spacesuit can't outrun an enormous disc rotating on it's edge on an uneven plain? A weirdo biologist is too interested in biology for his own good? Man does not run away screaming from his sick friend? Such unanswerable conundrums!
Did anyone notice that the original 'ALIEN' was picked up on LV426 (?) whilst this planet/Moon was LV 24? something? This indicates that the ship Shaw boarded at the end of the film with David was the exact ship involved in 'ALIEN' because a space jockey was in the pilot seat, unlike the ship that crashed on LV-24?. Also,in 'ALIEN', the position of the resting Alien wreck was different to that of the orginal Alien movie. This probably means that the ship Shaw was on was the one that crashed on LV426, not the ship that was involved in most of Prometheus.
There have been some lofty suggestions about the beginning of mankind, and whether the 'engineers' were responsible and their reasons for doing so. My big question is - "Did the Captain bonk Charlize Theron's character?". I think he did because he went quite happily to his death which most males would...
Alien was LV-426. This moon was LV-223. They were not the same planet/moon, and not the same ships.
My big unanswered question: Why would Fox and Scott want to make a partial Alien prequel instead of going the whole way? It's so obvious from the story beats that the black goo was originally the alien eggs and the various weird creature threats were facehuggers and chestbusters in the first draft. Did they think the 1979 creature was too familiar these days? Was it more fun to reveal it at the end instead of the start of the second act?
Also, as mentioned above, the biology mechanics are really overly complicated here. Why not make a situation where the engineers stay immortal through facehuggers? Like a phoenix, the creature that bursts out is just a younger, stronger version of themselves. But when humans try the same thing it results in an Alien.
The most frustrating thing about Prometheus is that if you change a few special effects and cut a few New Age mumbo jumbo scenes, you have a pretty damn good movie.
"My big unanswered question: Why would Fox and Scott want to make a partial Alien prequel instead of going the whole way?"
More. Sequels.
Remember when Scott was still insisting this wasn't an Alien prequel? Yeah.
Yeah, there was a great movie there, but it just seemed like a "lost" episode. More questions than answers, flawed judgment (which I guess is understandable) and a weak climax. Wasn't it obvious that the engineer was just going to kill all of them?
I still feel like Scott was really trying to bridge the gap, and unify Blade Runner and Alien with this movie.
Stylistically it has more in common with the "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner than Alien, and the notion of the creation journeying through space to meet it's creator in a bid for extended life, echoes Blade Runner precisely.
We are the Replicants...
Much as Roy Batty and his fellow Replicants knew where they were manufactured, and understood that they would be hunted down with extreme prejudice if they set foot back on Earth, the "Engineers" let us know where we had come from - we just failed to recognise that it was nothing more than a manufacturers mark (akin to David's "Weyland" fingerprints) and not an invitation to meet the relatives.
Instead of getting on with our natural job of "terraforming" Earth, we embark on this Roy Batty quest.
The Hive is the Tyrell Corporation, we are the Replicants (David says to the "Engineer" on behalf of Peter Weyland "I want more life, fucker!" and this time, the "Engineer" turns the tables by ripping his head off) and the Engineer goes all Rick Deckard, killing any Replicant that has dared set foot on the planet...
What did you expect when one of the writers comes from that giant cock tease (and disappointment) of a show LOST?
I knew it was written by one of the guys from lost and when the internet message boards started working on overdrive the first day, I figured it would be one of those types of movies. The larger question; Does every movie that’s made in this era have to be made for the internet fan boys and girls to argue over for days? Could Alien be made today or would people think it’s just a star trek episode?
My biggest question: why would the engineers point humanity to a military site in all of the cave drawings? There is no plausible answer.
What is interesting to me is that we shouldn't assume that the engineers that we've seen are all working from the same motivations or are even politically allied. We see even within the crew of the Prometheus that the characters were driven to participate in the endeavor for reasons ranging from a quest for knowledge to a desire for personal profit. As has been mentioned, much of the Engineer facility appears to have features that may have religious significance to them. In our own society, science and religion often conflict. So the Engineer we see in the opening bringing new life to some planet, maybe Earth, may belong to a faction who believes in creation for creations sake or simply because they can. While on the other side, the engineer at the facility belongs to a faction that opposes such creation, and aims to destroy it. The violent reaction to the presence of the humans by the Engineer may not be universal to his race.
Good point! Even the ships were different. Now that I think about it, the way the surviving 'engineer' seemed hellbent on killing everybody reminded me of a religious zealot.
This is a very interesting theory that (I think) requires too much speculation on our part. At a certain point what gaps we the audience fill in must be seeded by what's in the film itself, I think.
Too many ppl are going outside the text for "answers." The conversation b/w David and Holloway about the sheep is all you need. For whatever reason, the engineers made us, they did it partially because they could. We, as evinced by the hand ringing here, want there desperately to be a reason why. But there is none that really concerns us. Maybe they're making weapons. Maybe they're after perfection. But do their reasons really affect us? We exist regardless. It is our own hubris that makes "why" so important. But our pride, or perhaps our faith, a need to "know" God, like Shaw and Weyland, keep us going.
Unf. I cannot wait to see this movie next weekend--even more so after this review and all the comments.
I sense a nod made by the writing/direction/editing team toward other successful sci-fi works and their devices, like the "black oil" in Chris Carter's X-Files, or the disassembling killfiles in William Gibson's Idoru, or nonfiction's "grey goo" nanites--molecular assemblers posited by K. Eric Drexler in Engines of Creation.
Do these unanswered questions make this film worth a second or third viewing, as did the unanswered questions in Christopher Nolan's Inception did for me? I guess I'll find the answer to this question in a week.
Hey Femme - really interested to hear your thoughts, once you see it. Will be on the lookout.
Did you catch this post by Julian Sanchez?
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2012/06/11/whats-wrong-with-prometheus-a-partial-list/
It's a whine-fest, but interesting nonetheless. One person's unanswered question is another person's perceived flaw -- and in Sanchez' case, I have a suspicion at least one item deemed a flaw may be based on an equally flawed assumption.
Still counting down 'til I see flick on Sunday.
I finally got to see Prometheus today, in IMAX 3D.
Excuse my profanity in advance.
It was FUCKING STUPENDOUS! I haven't had a mind fuck like that in a long time. Maybe 30+ years.
IMO, there are no holes. The biggest unanswered question--intentionally unanswered--remains the one which separates earth-bound humans from their android progeny as well as their progenitors: Why?
Are there flaws? Yeah, like the C-section. I'm testifying to the unlikely ability of an earthling woman being able to maneuver and locomote like Shaw immediately following stomach surgery. But the writers drove by it deliberately, in order to make key points. They opted to use the possible even if not plausible or probable. Let's call it artistic license, and call Shaw a super-woman.
Hold that last point. I'm working on writing something up from the copious notes I took during the movie. I'll come back and leave a link when I'm done.
Austrian movielover here. We don't have the film here yet, but to tell you the truth - after reading all your very interesting comments, I am afraid of going to see "Prometheus" ... I have a nervous stomach only from reading about all your frustrations and impressions, questions and suggestions, and I can feel clearly that I would be so pissed after watching the film, that I probably won't recover for a while. I would have picked up all that you guys have picked up. And I am a writer-director, too. So ... maybe I'll watch the film when just a bit tipsy! I love Fassbender but not so much the movies he has been in. ("Shame" wasn't that great, neither was "Jane Eyre".) And now I am afraid he might spoil my memory of the Android from "Aliens" ...
Hi Brieftaube - IMO Fassbender comes off fantastically, no matter what quibbles you may or may not have with the story. So I say don't worry there. He's fascinating.
Much Like Tom Skeritt assuming the deceased engineer in ALIEN was 'fossilized' (*and how would he know? He's essentially a space trucker, not a scientist), Elba's Captain Janek was speculating about the true nature of the establishment on LV-223. He was merely making an educated guess based on everything he'd witnessed, nothing more. I suppose it's up to the audience whether or not they want to take what he said as fact.
The black liquid - I think the engineers were attempting to recreate the creature Holloway looks at in the mural behind the giant head statue. The creature at the end of the movie is exactly the same as the one in the mural from the head sculpture room - skeletal body, long limbs and a large, pointed head with an almost featureless face.
Perhaps it was a species or life form the engineers themselves worshipped?
All the characters at the end (Janek, Shaw, Vickers) were no more aware of what the true meaning of the engineers ultimate plan was than the audience is while watching - they're guessing, and so are we. Shaw assumes the engineers want to destroy humanity, based on what she's experienced and seen, who could blame her? Doesn't mean she's right though. IF the engineers were in fact trying to recreate the being from the mural, perhaps they were on their way to earth to complete the experiment - they'd already have an entire planet of 'hosts' ready to go when they arrive - an event any human would see as an extinction level event, but to the engineers, it would just be execution of their master plan for us. Just a theory 🙂
As for some of the seemingly unintelligent choices made by the characters...well, yeah, Vickers' death was silly. Milburn? Yeah, trying to touch the snake was stupid, but no more so than John Hurt's Kane sticking his face right into an alien life form he'd never encountered and had no prior knowledge of in ALIEN. Milburn and Kane, it would seem, were cut from the same cloth.
I honestly hope there isn't a sequel to this film - having too many answers would likely ruin the mystery 🙂
Prometheus took place on LV-223. How did the derelict ship in Alien get to LV-426? What about the Space Jockey in the pilot seat in Alien?
Why could David actually speak to the Engineers in Prometheus, but in Alien (set in Prometheus' future) with far more advanced computers they could not figure out the meaning of the Engineers broadcast which lead them to LV-426 in the first place?
These are the most unanswered factual questions of them all. I'm guessing we get answers in Prometheus 2.
The events in Prometheus, set on LV-223 are in no way related to the events in Alien, set on LV-426.
This movie just fleshes out the "universe" of the Space Jockey's, and implies some of the context in which the original "derelict" ship in Alien existed.
Here's why :
The cargo of the original ship / ark / whatever in Alien was eggs / pods / spores containing Facehuggers.
The pilot was a Space Jockey.
It seems highly unlikely that the ship Elisabeth Shaw and David set off in would have such a radically different cargo, or that they could get a Space Jockey to pilot the ship for them, rather than kill them.
If there is a direct line of continuity between the stories, it would have to happen with a third ship after Elizabeth and David arrive at their destination, which would have to be an entirely new planet - not LV-426.
There's really no need for a Prometheus 2, as it is a continual loop :
Elisabeth Shaw sets off to a new planet, on a quest to find answers and meet the maker. At the end, she again sets off on the same mission. When she arrives at the new destination it will only throw up new questions, and set her off on another course to another planet - there will always be new questions, and no definitive answers - that's the point.
"Prometheus took place on LV-223. How did the derelict ship in Alien get to LV-426? What about the Space Jockey in the pilot seat in Alien?"
- Not the same ship, nor the same planet, as in Alien. The reason for this is because Prometheus is *not* a prequel to Alien (*so says Ridley - Leading up to the film, I thought he was just attempting to misdirect but depending on which interview you see or read he's still claiming that now that the film is released...in all honesty, I think Prometheus is a re-boot, it's just that nobody wants to come out and say so).
I had read that (according to Ridley and Damon) that even if there is a sequel to Prometheus, it won't end with a direct lead in to Alien, further cementing the "it's not a prequel" claim that both continually were repeating in the press.
"Why could David actually speak to the Engineers in Prometheus, but in Alien (set in Prometheus' future) with far more advanced computers they could not figure out the meaning of the Engineers broadcast which lead them to LV-426 in the first place?"
- In Alien, they weren't on a state of the art science vessel, it would seem logical that they were not expecting to have to decipher something of that nature and therefore were not equipped for it. In Prometheus, David had been studying every possible language known in hope that one of them will enable contact and communication with the engineers. Once they've arrived on LV-223 and he's assessed their technology and language (*which he was able to read), it can be assumed that he knew which spoken language corresponded to the hieroglyphic language of the engineers. Still, it would have been nice to know exactly what he said to the engineer....but if it is indeed not a prequel, that negates the question entirely, right? 😉
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