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
"who would rather try to outrun death than roll, like her unassuming and practical brunette counterpart, out of its way! "
In fairness, they were both running in line with the falling spaceship. The practical brunette didn't roll until she fell.
I guess it's because there's no drama/tension if they both just take 10 steps sideways and wait for it to crash.
They both fell!
"I guess it' because there's no drama/tension if they both just take 10 steps sideways and wait for it to crash."
This is absolutely true, but I do think there are telling character qualities in the fates of Vickers and Shaw in this scene. Hubris is a theme that folks have pointed out runs through Prometheus. Vickers is proud, sheltered, privileged. Of course she thinks she can outrun the thing - until she falls, crawling on the ground staring at death helplessly as it comes for her. Boom.
Shaw is more practical, humble, a survivalist. She knows that shit will squish her. She rolls sideways, realizing she's outmatched, not daring to face down the thing on its terms. She thinks outside the box out of sheer instinct, and survives.
I agree with you on their character traits. But Vickers fell when the ship was REALLY close to squishing her. And when the ship starts falling in a perpendicular direction, Shaw does the same thing Vickers does and just backs up rather than rolling again, presumably because the ship is too close to roll out of the way. Either way, neither should have started running in the direction of the fall, but instead should have run perpendicular to the direction of the fall.
It's the same action that motivates characters to flee on foot from a car by running down the middle of the road.
"Hubris is a theme that folks have pointed out runs through Prometheus."
Not only is Shaw "more practical, humble, a survivalist" but she's the only believer on the ship. Her belief is the reason why Weyland wanted her on the ship (I definitely think Vickers was referring to her and not Holloway). And perhaps that's why when Shaw falls another time and backs up like Vickers does in the face of death, she's backs up to some rocks that rescue her. This parallel between Vickers and Shaw is necessary to depict how in the face of death, Shaw's got her rock-solid beliefs to back up to unlike Vickers (and everybody else).
Despite all the pandemondium that has been going on, Shaw still believes - something David notes when she takes back her cross - while everybody else lets these new discoveries write over everything else. Proof of this is the scene where Holloway, who bears a cross tattoo on his right arm, tells Shaw that she doesn't need to wear her father's cross anymore, and she fires back asking, "who created the engineers?"
It's incredibly hard to prove a thesis - and David points out to Holloway with his snarky comment reminding Holloway that his "Engineer" ideas are simply a thesis - and you do not prove/disprove it in a day. How is it not hubris to assume all your findings and research are true based on DNA pre-dating...on one day? You let (to quote the obnoxious biologist) "three thousand years of Darwinism" and other beliefs down the drain in one day?
I guess I'm trying to draw a line between Shaw's rock-solid foundation of faith and how easily other characters let these findings rock their world, destroying whatever belief they had...and this scene is perfect for that.
"You let (to quote the obnoxious biologist) "three thousand years of Darwinism" and other beliefs down the drain in one day?"
I think you mean three hundred years; Darwin is from the 19th century.
One of the biggest issues I had was with how the black goo acted.
In the prologue, an Engineer is shown drinking some and he pretty much immediately started disintegrating. When Holloway drinks some later in the movie, he manages to last at least until the next day. Granted, Holloway ingested a much smaller amount, but not so much so that he would last nearly a thousand times longer than the Engineer.
And that's just in regards to ingestion of the black goo.
Presumably the alien snake penis things evolved from the worms (that looked remarkably like Earth earthworms) that the camera took painstaking care to linger on. The black goo seems to take on characteristics of its host as it evolves to the next form. So it goes from earthworm to alien snake penis thing. Fine. But then it attacks Fifield and Millburn. It burrows into Millburn. And then just stays there until the crew comes the next day to investigate what happened. It doesn't evolve or lay eggs or whatever. And for whatever reason, it kills Millburn and its acid kills Fifield, but then Fifeld is zombified and becomes a weird human spider thing.
But on the ship, that same black goo exhibits none of that behavior and is inconsistent even on the ship. Holloway ingests it, doesn't immediately disintegrate and somehow passes it on to Shaw. Fine. But why doesn't it evolve inside of Holloway? It evolves inside of Shaw, and somehow skips from black goo that doesn't disintegrate the host and becomes a thing with four appendages that she surgically removes from herself. And then it proceeds to grow to a size bigger than the Engineer.
So why does the black goo sometimes disintegrate Engineers REALLY quickly, sometimes disintegrate humans MUCH more slowly, sometimes evolve into random forms, and sometimes take attributes from its host?
Yep.
In the prologue the engineer drinks something different than the black goo that seems to be created from the alien's blood. It is seemingly a religious experience for them which goes with the underlying theme throughout the film of needing to destroy life to create it (also David referring to parents needing to die later in the film fits this). The black goo that comes out of the vases is more like a liquid containing dormant parasite eggs that then 'activate' when they find a host. The geologist was killed by the acid burning his helmet suffocating him and at the same time he gets infected when he falls into the black goo, leaving a braindead host for the parasite to control, somewhat aimlessly, to find another to impregnate. Where as Holloway has a functioning brain to control, which leads him to arousal and to seek his partner out for impregnating. There are many real world archetype parasites that do exactly that. Back to the biologist, who had the snake enter his mouth. It was not able to impregnate him because it was cut and proceeded to melt him from the inside out destroying any possibility of implanting. Many things make more sense the more you pay attention. Also, I saw it twice.
Oh, and Vickers was running from an exploding crashing ship, not quite knowing where it was going to fall and/or explode. Hysterical people do nonsensical things. Shaw luckily fell early enough to see it and roll out of the way.
Calling B.S. The viewer is not supposed to make up/spackle over the plot holes, as you have by assigning what the goo does and why. Maybe you're totally right, working from something other than just watching the movie twice. Maybe you're wrong, but in a movie like this, it shouldn't be up to you to make up the script. That would be like the Obi-Wan not explain in the Force in "A New Hope," but you see telepathic choking and mind tricks, and then assuming, "it's a mystical energy field that..."
I thought the Engineer in the prologue drank the same thing. Later in the movie when David opens the vase, inside the vase is a container that looks remarkably like the container the Engineer drank from in the prologue.
Also, I thought David was referring to children wanting their parents to die, not that parents need to die.
You say, "The black goo that comes out of the vases is more like a liquid containing dormant parasite eggs that then 'activate' when they find a host." so why didn't the eggs activate when the black goo was inside of him?
You say, "Where as Holloway has a functioning brain to control, which leads him to arousal and to seek his partner out for impregnating." Shaw had a functioning brain to control too, but the goo didn't take control of her.
Shaw was impregnated not infected with the goo. Also I am not inferring anything. It's as simple as what it shows. Some stuff melts things ala alien blood. Other stuff is just goo. The black goo would have melted through everything like the snakes blood did, like the stuff the engineer drank did in the container and in his body, but it didn't. It didn't melt David's finger or the rocks, or holloway's teeth, or anything else it touched. They are completely different things. It's obvious.
Plus, the black goo did activate in Holloway, just like it did in the geologist, and how it did in the engineer that was decapitated by the door. That's how they are being controlled by the parasite. Then the parasite finds another host to impregnate. There are real multistage parasites that need a second host to continue the process of life. Again, I'm not inferring this, nor am I looking to fight about it. I am just trying to share some insight.
@Madlove:
But you don't address how even though the Engineer and Holloway drink the same thing, they have vastly different reactions to it. The Engineer disintegrates almost instantly, Holloway takes a day to do it.
And the stuff that melted things a la alien blood was the alien's blood. Not the goo. The only thing that I remember actually being melted was Fifield's helmet and that was because the cut alien snake penis thing's blood was spraying everywhere. The black goo itself never melted anything, as far as I can remember.
It actually does evolve inside Holloway. She says herself that she'd had intercourse only 10 hours before and was already showing to be 3 months pregnant - it had grown that much in that few hours.
Holloway was Shaw's husband. Shaw was impregnated, Holloway was the only one that showed symptoms similar to the Engineer in the prologue.
My entire point is that the black goo is not the stuff that melts things. Holloway is infected with the black goo. The engineer drinks something else completely. Like I've said every time.
Based on what? From what we see in the prologue and from when David takes the container out of the vase thing, the Engineer and Holloway are infected from the same type of container.
As others have pointed out, nobody seemed to tell the others what happened to them.
What I don't understand is that there didn't seem to be any communication systems aboard the ship. When they were on the planet, they all had audio and visual communication systems. And hovering orbs. But on the ship, nothing. No phones, no communication panels, no cameras, nothing.
Also yep.
And not least, didn't Janek and the crew on the ship see what was happening with Fifield and Millburn? They waited until the next day to go look for them and didn't know what was happening, but we see that Janek can see Fifield and Millburn's camera feeds when he talks with them prior to them being attacked, don't we?
Great Visual effects...way too many unanswered questions.....yep that's about it...
I go see movies to be entertained, I pretend to be ten years old so I may be wowed and amazed and taken in by what transpires on the screen before me. This experience serves to take me away from real every day matters i.e. bills, relationships, health issues, inept governmental decisions etc... To wonder why things happen onscreen and attempt to dissect decisions made by "actors" onscreen moves me back into the very reason I attempt to escape briefly from aforementioned matters. Chill out people, be wowed and amazed...
I'm a clinical counselor and deal with real problems of clients .
If everyone took that approach, film would be solely entertainment and not art. For many people, part of enjoying a good film is understanding it so that it can have a greater meaning beyond sheer spectacle. I can see where you're coming from, but not everyone chooses to leave their brain at the door when watching a movie.
Great attitude, Jeff. That's why Battleship gets made, because, really, who gives a shit, right? Chill out people, accept ineptitude. If Jeff doesn't give a crap neither should you. Enjoy your Justin Bieber, it's catchy! Don't bother with Mad Men, it's too pretentious!
Thanks Jeff. Glad to see you've got your priorities in line (besides the fact that you're telling people to get a life while commenting on a story you obviously could care less about).
I love how Mad Men is some arbiter of good taste or intelligence. It is pretentious garbage. It's unbelievably over-rated. It's a poor copy of Peyton Place for gods sake. Also, Prometheus is not actually a serious film. You get that right? You do understand it was made for precisely the same reasons as Battleship and Rock of Ages? This is not a heartfelt auteur film. Its a gigantic boom box with some silly mistakes and high school philosophy in it. Erich von Daniken!
There is no common passion in the crews agenda. There is a glaringly obvious and uncomfortable disconnect between the characters.
Example: 2 are there to find out the meaning of their existence, one character is there to destroy it's "parent" ( human kind). Another is there just to study some rocks, the financer of the mission to find eternal life, his daughter to "protect" him and make sure his 'silly" idea goes perfectly, even though she's passionately against it and apparantly has huge "daddy" issues.
There is a mad rush to expose the many personal motivations, each of which has no depth, no character development. Anyone of these concepts, had it come together with a main goal amongst the crew with a well developed depth and inner vision, would have drawn the audience in, so that they could have become "passingers"on this journey. It wouldThis would have also required sound, plausible reasoning for the events that happened (you or a different level script). Example, who goes up to penis- snake aliens forms to pet them and declare their harmless and cute?
Who sees tiny worms crawling out of their eyeballs and not only doesn't mention it, but makes like they are "fine"motor and goes about their day?
Who decides they are only there to work on rocks and flippantly walks away to amble around this alien planet trying to return to the ship? After dedicating a large part of his life getting to this planet!
Who sees a morphed monster like bloated head inside a space helmet crawling towards you in your buddies old space suite and you open the pod door and GREET the creepy figure?
Oh my, I could go on and on (Charlize, your so brilliant yet you can't ROLL out of the way?!)
There is a "I want to connect and love this movie so much" yearning amongst the viewers. But it is impossible. The script is schizophrenic and needs a rewrite. No amount of visual effects, which were stunning, can compensate for its lack of character development and cohesive deep plot development.
a word to the wise: Beware of adoring liturgies posing as scientific prose kissed by scientific "truth".
Due consider:
"Reality" is a construct.
"Truth" is an agreed upon lie.
"A hierarchy of values constitutes the existence of "reality"
"Reality" is "Life"
"Life" is the projection of "reality" upon on an empty screen of imagination.
"The 'value' of value is self creation."
"The 'value' of self creation is to know the self and penetrate the void.'
The "value" of penetrating the void is to understand the self.
The "value" of understanding the understanding of the "value" of the self is primarily to discover the "we"-and that the "you" and the "I", are therefore the perceived void.
The "value" of perceiving the void is to learn not to fear it.©
****
For the "I" of the eye is finally understanding 'the void' is our collective and individual attempt to escape the naked loneliness of being alone.
"We" are the void you and I: alone in our loneliness while pretending we are not alone, fearfully feeling endlessly unworthy of value.
For humankind, nothing is more loathsome than to be lost in the void, alone and thus unworthy of being valued.
Psychically, "we" are all- trapped as it were spiritually in the imagined void. Humankind experiences itself en toto and consciously, as indeed, alienated, alone and trapped .
Our salvation lies not in Jesus or Buddha, Capitalism/Communism or Ridley Scott but within our capacity to "value value"-to discover meaning within emptiness and evolve to a higher self within a civilized but, alienated society. It also is to begin the ultimate quest for value and meaningfulness in a meaningless universe. It is a quest to discover "value" in "meaning" and to escape the void of emptiness so characteristic of modern civilization.
To do so, is to penetrate the void, to stand alone with the unloved self, and begin the journey. a process, that if lived well, will begin "the value of values", culminating in the fusion with others. All of this is of course to finally discover Love as a manifest beckoning dream: the expression of eternal beauty, living and flourishing behind the self imposed and imagined void.
Ridley Scott with his technological juju, black goo and cabalistic snakeheads will never define you nor set you free © __Jackamo
Holy crap! I just put this together, (and apologies if someone else did this, I didn't read through all the comments) but Prometheus is essentially Star Trek 5.
Think about it:
Crazy old man takes spaceship to the farthest reaches of the universe in search of God.
Some crew members become taken with idea, while others rebel against it.
Ship lands on rocky, seemingly desolate planet where God lives.
"God" turns out to be not what they think, and winds up an enemy trying to destroy them.
Diminished returns on the fifth outing of a "franchise" picture, while tenuously holding on the hopes that fans will turn out no matter what.(Which they do, although with much grumbling as the weekend progresses).
$20 says the director's cut has Rapace and Fassbender singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" as they go off in search of the albino bodybuilders planet.
Maybe you read this article a couple days ago? http://www.scificongress.com/prometheus-is-basically-star-trek-v-heres-the-proof/
And Star Trek V actually made more sense.
The film has its flaws. Lots of gaffes and logic holes. Most films do, good ones and not so good ones. But, this obsessive search for the "big answer" by a lot of critics and cinephiles alike is what's most disturbing, but likely a function of "newer" film culture.
All art, if we allow "Prometheus" a bit of indulgence on that value, is here to ask questions, not give answers. If "Prometheus" falls short at anything, it's not that it doesn't give us the answer, it's that it needs to make the questions DEEPER.
What do you want Rapace to do? Land somewhere and there it is: a man in a white beard and a glow about him with a twisted sense of humor.
For goodness sakes, human civilization has debated the BIGGEST existential question for over 10,000 years with a rich philosophical, literary, and scientific body of work to support it. No answer is valid or invalid. Now, we expect a movie to finally solve this?
Go watch Jennifer Aniston movies. Spoiler alert: she ALWAYS finds that true 'lovey dovey' feeling.
Or go see "Tiny Furniture." Spolier alert: bored, post-grad girl of privilege in an existential malaise because she has NO problems so whines about getting laid and then does. Real tough issues there. Even made it to the Criterion Collection. (roll eyes)
Yes. Because there's only two options. Finding a guy in a white beard who created you or a film that just posits the same old questions as ever, but does it with terrible characters and a non-senical plot. You NAILED it. There is no chance that the movie could ask lots of questions and answer a couple.
Wait, do you think people are looking for real life spiritual/metaphysical type answers in this film? Man, you are naive.
When we say we are looking for answers, we mean, This movie makes no friggin sense and we want answers so the plot makes sense and to make everything in this film fit properly into the Alien legacy. That is all the answers anyone is seeking here.
No, I'm not naive. yes, the discussion centers on plot gaffes and mistakes. There is quite a trail of them, I agree. But, incoherent plot points eventually undermine what any movie is trying to say. Every movie is trying to say "something," even if it's banal or cliched or downright stupid.
The original Alien and Scott's other sci-fi masterwork Blade Runner dared to get into character ethical quandaries and ask the bigger questions about "wtf are we as humans meddling with?"
Prometheus - because it's a prequel - has to go dig deeper than Alien to keep the 2 films as a nice complete story.
It's problem is that it tries to explain too much in some areas and just drops out other ones, so it can't decide whether it's trying to be Alien or Blade Runner or Aliens or all 3. That's why all the holes.....It's trying to be several movies at once and sacrifices making sense on a story level a lot as a result....
That's on the writers. One of them wrote and co-created "Lost." You see the TV shortcuts in the feature film; that's my conclusion.
How about how the Captain and other members of the crew simply decide, on the spur of the moment, to destroy themselves along with the ship based on the unfounded speculation by Rapace's character that the engineer's ship is on its way to destroy the planet earth.
Captain figured out the instillation was military before she did, based on his experience and observations.
Totally agree.
...with importanttopics(!)
I thought David told Shaw that the ship was headed to Earth. And with the way the goo was killing them all, the Engineers' ship had thousands of jars of goo onboard, and the Engineer killing everyone, it was fairly reasonable for Shaw to assume that the ship filled with goo piloted by the Engineer heading towards Earth was not a good thing.
Yes, but the captain only had Shaw's word on this... Over the phone. Keep in mind she had just performed self-surgery and injected herself with pain medication multiple times. Would that be enough for you to destroy your ship, yourself and anyone else on board?
But Janek didn't know that Shaw had just performed surgery on herself. (That's one of the problems addressed further up, that the crew members don't seem to communicate with each other.)
And he did see the aftermath of Fifield and Millburn's deaths.
Janek didn't have an overwhelming spate of evidence, I will agree with you on that. But if he trusted Shaw, which he apparently did, she did have an overwhelming spate of evidence.
The more I think about LV-223 being a reference to Leviticus 22:3 :
"In all future generations, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean when he approaches the sacred offerings that the people of Israel consecrate to the LORD, he must be cut off from my presence. I am the LORD."
- the more I'm convinced that the cave painting at the beginning is a reference to Genesis 3.
There are a cluster of 5 "stars" with the figure pointing at the central star / planet - no matter how you count it, he is pointing at the 3rd object, and the cave painting is about our genesis.
Genesis 3 being about The Fall Of Man :
"You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die."
- the star / planet is in the middle of the cluster. There is certainly a Serpent present.
Genesis 1 - 5 are all very pertinent to the themes explored in the film, though there may simply have been 5 objects so that its obviously the 3rd one that is singled out.
Or I may be reading waaaay to much in to it.
It would certainly make a lot of sense of the cave painting, if they are saying "You can go anywhere you please, but do not go here (You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.)".
That would be in line with the original Alien, where what appears to be a distress beacon is actually a warning.
Besides the unanswered questions, I'm baffled by the scene structure. The puzzle isn't properly pieced together. A few more transitional scenes, including experiencing the decision making process of the characters, would have greatly improved the story.
David's mystery is justified. Great character!
So many flaws, yet I really want to go back to this fantastic world.
Holy crap! I just saw the greatest sf flick ever by the director of 2 of the greatest movies of all time (Alien and Gladiator) and all I read are crybaby comments about 1)how I didn't understand everything in the film and 2) how all my questions weren't answered, etc. Too friggin' bad. I suppose you HATED Inception, then. I know, go see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. ((Pseudo-intellectual bores)).
Yeah, everyone else is dumb and one of your favorite movies is Gladiator. Make sense.
Much like latent homosexuals who go out of their way to criticize gay people, people who complain about pseudo-intellectuals are often secretly worried they're not that smart. I'm not saying that's you, but just because you choose to ignore obvious flaws in a movie doesn't make everyone else dumb.
My biggest question lies in the desire of the Engineers to destroy humankind. That doesn't square with the killing-of -your-parents theory; if anything that explains David's complicity in aiding in our demise. The closest I can come is in the Grecian backstory of Prometheus itself, a God who was punished for his quest to elevate humans to god-like status. Possibly once mankind was technologically able to reach the point of origin of our creation we were too close to that god-like stature and needed to be reduced? Thus the aliens bringing down the Engineers are akin to the birds perpetually feeding on the deposed titular deity.
But that's my idle speculation, and I think that is actually a positive result of the film. Many forms of higher art leave room for interpretation by the patron. Apart from the common-sense departures listed above (to which I could add the blatant advances in technology compared to the ALIEN franchise, despite existing in a time that predates those realms) the gulfs in the plot are not an automatic demerit here. Think of many of the sci-fi films we get treated to: how many can make us marvel at the technological wizardy and then lapse into a theistic debate? Few can, and I love this effort for that reason.
How about this? It's a badly-told story. It has one intriguing character, and a collection of horror/sci-fi tropes. We, the fans of Alien and Ridley Scott, wanted more, and we didn't get it. We don't know why the laser probe things indicated a "life-form," but apparently ignored all the worms on the floor. We can speculate that maybe they were only calibrated to pick up things over a certain weight, or that were sentient, or that were almost human, or that the worms weren't really "alive" or whatever, but the simplest answer is lazy storytelling. That's the simplest answer for all of Jen's questions above.
After thinking about it, I got the impression it only detected things of a certain height above the ground. Therefore, it wouldn't detect the worms, yet it did detect the cobra snake when it lifted up off the floor, perhaps.
About that time, I recall the snake goes back down, in the black goo. That could be when the probe couldn't detect it anymore. That's what led me to think it had to do with height above the ground.
Does that not make it a pretty cruddy life form detector? You can put a crew on another planet looking for alien life, and you only care about it if it's tall enough?
Anyway, this question was only an example. Another would be, "what about the engineers on the other ships buried on the planet?" Another is, "did everyone not meet when they first got on the ship? Why are they acting like they're meeting for the first time after they wake up?"
The main problem is that this movie does not stand on its own. Its like Matrix Reloaded or something, there should have been a "to be continued" at the end.
Most questions should be answered in Prometheus 2, because this was not the planet from Alien 1 and the fallen ship was not the ship from Alien 1, therefore there is more to the story. (If you didn't realize this, the ship in Alien 1 had the dead Engineer sitting in the pilot seat of the craft with his chest burst open. That is not how Prometheus ended.)
Thats not an excuse for the poor script however, there were far too many plotholes, lack of character development (I didn't care what happened to a single character), and poor dialog in spots. As it is, I can't watch Prometheus again until Prometheus 2 comes out because the movie just doesn't stand on its own.
Also doesn't this seem a lot like Holloway's/Shaw's thesis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism
I think the whole thing may be a goofy gnostic allegory. That's all the rage these days in the pseudo-intellectual crowd. And perhaps the guy who seeded us at the beginning was supposed to be a renegade space god, a friendlier demiurge. What I felt was a wasted opportunity was that the story-tellers did choose to make the space-gods so humanoid. They should have made them and their world truly alien, no pun intended. Giger's original ship design, all asymmetrical and disconcerting, was totally different than the very pedestrian cylinders and humanoid faces found inside for this film. For all the praise heaped on the visuals in this movie, I felt they lacked any visionary strangeness.
LOL --that Tom Hardy-looking guy. I thought he looked like Tom Hardy, too! In fact, I kept wondering if it was T.H., but he has better teeth.
Janek was speculating about the intent of the engineers and their payload, just because he assumed the urns filled with black liquid were 'weapons of mass destruction' doesn't mean that's what they actually were.
Milburn foolishly engaging the snake creature was really no more of a lapse in common sense than that displayed by John Hurt's Kane character in the original Alien - he too decided to forgo common sense when confronted with an alien life form. Ridley seems to like characters who play dumb when the plot needs them to.
As for David speaking to the engineer, he was speaking on Weyland's behalf, and Weyland wanted to know if/how he could extend his life - chances are, that's what David was inquiring about. Perhaps the fact that humans had developed their own eternal life already - David - was what pissed him off (?) - the engineer seemed to be momentarily intrigued by the android before he realized what he was seeing (and the implications of it's existence) and reacted as he did.
As for the black liquid, my guess would be that it was an attempt by the engineers to recreate the life form that was shown in the mural Holloway was looking at (the one that looked sorta like the original creature from 1979). The creature born at the end of the film looks exactly like the one in the mural. Just a theory.
Judging by the holograms the crew witnessed, as well as the pile of dead bodies found by the biologist and geologist, it would seem as though the black liquid infected the engineers and possibly may have given rise to some kind of creature outbreak (*notice the engineer sleep chambers had 'chestburster' holes in them with the exception of the one that was still occupied, as did the corpses found in a pile by the door). The 'Art of Prometheus' book shows and explains how the early concept for the effect of the black liquid on humans was to mutate/morph them into a sort of human/alien hybrid, with the end result being full metamorphosis into the creature shown at the end of the movie. The geologist was supposed to look much different when he mutated (there are some nice pictures of him with a much more familiar looking alien face), but for some reason that was changed to what was shown in the film.
If the black liquid was meant to create the mural/end of film creature, then taking it to Earth would make sense - it would essentially be an entire planet of ready hosts. Humans would see this as the apocalypse, the Engineers would see it as nothing more than the final stage of their experiment. What we would see as the end of humanity may in fact have been the engineers master plan/end game for us all along?
My hope is that the inevitable 'extended cut' replaces some of the material that was left in the editing room, it seems quite clear when watching the film as it stands now that there are parts missing, especially in the third act. A commentary and a behind the scenes will likely (inadvertently) fill in some gaps as well.
"Janek was speculating about the intent of the engineers and their payload, just because he assumed the urns filled with black liquid were 'weapons of mass destruction' doesn't mean that's what they actually were."
I think he assumed that because there didn't seem to be any reason to have thousands of them in one area of the ship (along with multiple other ships in that small area of the planet), unless they were meant for deployment. If they were meant for small scale experimentation, there didn't seem to be any storage and/or laboratory settings. And once they discovered the ship had a course plotted for Earth and the Engineer started killing all the humans, Janek's speculations seemed pretty spot on.
You're spot on about Millburn. Absolute idiocy on his part.
I'm not so sure about the black goo being the Engineers' attempt to create the life form from the mural. I say that because why would it take them so long? There was no way they knew that the humans would come to to the planet AND bring along an android that would manipulate events so that in the end one of them would be infected by a creature that had come out of a human host that had been impregnated by an infected host.
The part where all the Engineers are running towards the urns don't make sense. If they are running from something that went awry with a black goo infected thing, why run towards more black goo?
I hope an extended/director's cut answers some of these questions as well. I am fine with a movie wanting to pose (and not answer) existential questions, but plot holes do need to be addressed.
And why do they have a big idol of one of their faces? They are space-engineers and yet reconcile this scientism with their shrine of Easter Island-style giant heads? And what on earth does "the same DNA" mean? They are clearly not the same species. How is their DNA going to bar-graph right up to ours on her little ipad?
I guess everyone must have gotten tired of cell phones and texting in this future offshoot of our very own reality where they also have Lawrence Of Arabia preserved.
I just knew David Lean was descended from Alien space-gods.
At least the Nostromo was a mining ship not prepared for the aliens... Prometheus was a scientific mission and these people were acting like a bunch of toddlers! Next time they should bring someone along to remind them not to chew on things they find laying around.
I am fine with unanswered questions, but I am insulted by these completely unbelievable characters. Shaw and David were the only ones even close to being believable. The effects and a few scenes were good enough to make it compelling, and that is saying something.
I did not read all the comments so I apologize if this was mentioned. I have watched the film twice and one thing I have not seen mentioned is that the black goo is not the same thing David gives to Holloway. In the chamber the murals change and the vases start "sweating" the goo, almost like a security measure to keep people out of the contents of the vase itself. David flash-freeze/decontaminates the one base and then keepsmitnin cold storage on the ship. He then opens it, and it's not sweating and you see the vials inside. The black stuff in there is not the same goo. It, I believe, is the raw building block DNA stuff. Fifield mutates in the goo, Holloway exhibits similar symptoms as the Engineer at the beginning. The snake-penis thing doesnt "have" to impregnate anyone, it doesn't have anything to do with xenomorph strain. The film clearly shows you that black goo mutates and the DNA stuff creates life. DNA+human=squidgina; squidgina+engineer=protoxenomorph. Also notice the different sizes of the vases. Each one could contain a different engineered strain of DNA stuff that interacts differently. Or that room might have specifically been the xenomorph DNA room.
How did those 2 guys get lost? seriously? They just mapped the entire inside of the ship, which is basically just a U shape,and they can't find their way out again.? Give me a break. The falling spaceship scene, come on. They both look up and see the direction the ship is falling, yes so they both decide to run in the same direction as the falling ship?What i found irritating about this movie,was that if the "crëw" were even halfway competent, none of the calamity would have happened,and I think we all realise this which is what frustrates most ppl. One of the aims of any movie maker should be to make it all plausible enough for us to swallow,and they just didn't pull it off in this movie.Nevertheless I won't say it wasn't an enjoyable movie,just needed a bit more originality
and not so many cliche\dumb decisions by the crew.
Yeah, if you are going to spend billions of dollars to send people millions of miles from Earth in search of alien life, it might be a good idea to find some people who aren't going to flake out the first time they see some (perfectly harmless) alien bodies. Then later one of those same people decides to pet a living alien creature of unknown motives/abilities? This is only one example of completely unbelievable character motivation in this movie that really took me out of it. That being said, I still enjoyed the movie for its visual effects alone. Hopefully the next one will be better since it is keeping the two best characters.
Oh and another thing, the main character finds out the engineers wanna kill us all,so she decides to go to their home planet and advertise the fact that not only are we still alive and kicking,but we were able to commendeer one of their own ships and are quite the threat. If that doesn't make the engineers wanna wipe us out with everything they got then I dunno. brainless thinking in this movie.
Is there anyone here can borrow me 100 bucks to pay off my lost bet for saying "the movie is not for kids to comment too much?"
I've cracked it!
In an attempt to be certain I had correctly understood a couple of esoteric moments in the film (I've only seen it once so far) I Downloaded what turned out to be Jon Spaihts first draft script.
Whilst it didn't offer any insight in to the issues I was investigating, it did make it clear in no uncertain terms, that none of Prometheus's mysteries were intentional, or even thought out at all by Spaihts.
It's very clear that Damon Lindelof has been forced to keep certain "key" visual, and action elements of Spaihts draft, and to imbue them with a sense of purpose - but without explanation - creating an artificial sense of mystery that is entirely reverse engineered, and retro-fitted.
The clue / final nail in the coffin, is in the references to Lawrence of Arabia - a man who once said
"All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!"
Wonderfully subversive, yet brazen of Mr Lindelof, who really did manage to polish a turd in to a largely enjoyable, yet unavoidably frustrating movie.
If only they'd let him start from scratch...
Damon, is that you?
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