gotta admit this looks totaly awsome. cant wait!!!!
post by quintessence.nli at Mar 18,2012 11:37pm
One good thing about all the hi-tech cgi nowadays is the ability to make awesome sci fi stuff. More good movies like this need to come out. (time will tell if its actually good) but it looks entertaining at least which is better than 95% of any big movies today.
i go into any new movies these days with low expectations. i suggest everyone else do the same.
I have yet to watch this trailer, but it will be hard for me to have low expectations for this considering the buzz its getting. If this, The Dark Knight Rises, and the Avengers all suck, burn Hollywood to the fucking ground.
post by arilliusbm at Mar 19,2012 1:31pm edited Mar 19,2012 1:31pm
going to smoke weed in heaven with a barbarian friend under a sparkling weeping willow whilst watching an angel battle a demon way in the background instead of paying $35 for imax bullshit
going to smoke weed in heaven with a barbarian friend under a sparkling weeping willow whilst watching an angel battle a demon way in the background instead of paying $35 for imax bullshit
post by chernobyl at Jun 9,2012 5:38am edited Jun 9,2012 5:42am
This movie was mindblowing. Dont listen to the negative reviews, they went into the movie expecting character development and blah blah. The series has never really been about that. Its always been about MYSTERY and SUSPENSE in a dark atmosphere.
The movie is mysterious and suspenseful not to mention pulls ideas for you to use your imagination...it can be a little confusing but overall if you are fan of Alien(s) HOW could you not like this movie is beyond me.
The movie is a perfect sci-fi horror story. The way it was filmed in 20 years it will still look like a brand new movie in the same way Alien and The Thing do on Blu Ray. Minor Spoiler : They could have easily made a cheap prequel with facehugers and Xenomorphes I'm glad they took it in a totally different direction so when you do see the Alien queen at the end it's nerd boner city.
I assume you're talking about the one who kills himself because the weapons (Alien virus) got loose. All the Engeniers were evacuating and running for their lives. Same reason the one in the begining got his head cut off by the door.
so when you do see the Alien queen at the end it's nerd boner city.
Got into a huge debate over this with my friend after we walked out of the theater. I told him I thought the engineer birthed a queen because its appearance when spawned looked totally different from the way it came out of Kane in Alien. In Alien it looked more fetal, pale, and coiled. However, Ripley was about to birth a queen in A3 and it looked like the same one that came out of Kane. Maybe in Prometheus that particular xenomorph birthed the way it did because of the engineers biological make-up? For example, Xenomorph's always take on a grotesquely mocked form of it's host, as seen in A3 when the morph spawns from the dog. In the directors cut when it birthed out of the cattle, it should have resembled more bullish-like features, like that action figure which came out years ago when I was a kid.
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 10:50am
Also, the ending sequence is one of my biggest gripes with this film. I don't know how I feel about that potentially being the origin of the xenomorph species. And the creature Shaw birthed was what? The ultimate primordial facehugger?
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 10:52am
My friend was totally pissed off that the once supposed exo-skeleton of the space jockey turns out to just be a suit? I'm sort of with him on that but I can also go the other way, too.
Yeah I took it as the xenomorphs are in a constant evolutionary process constantly evolving into their enviroment (hence why they're the perfect game for predators). So Shaws dna mixed with the weapons to form facehugger stage 1. The enginer then birthed Alien Queen Stage one who made the eggs for facehugger stage 2 that was in Alien.
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 11:06am
Also, the role of Mr. Weyland not being portrayed by Lance Henrickson = fail.
Explain to me this. Now, I hate Alien vs. Predator but Charles Bishop Weyland, who also provided the exterior appearance for the android bishop, apparently goes on some Antarctic expedition and there is a Queen xenomorph locked in an ancient birthing chamber. The film was set in 2004! Prometheus arrives on LV-223 in the year 2093. Now FUCK Paul Anderson but if AvP is acknowledged within the Alien universe, as this prequel is as well, then the ending sequence of Prometheus is certainly not the origin over our very hostile, giger drawn friends.
Alien Vs. Predator is an alternate uviverse created by Dark Horse comics. It doesn't really count.
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 11:20am
I know what you mean, but the film wasn't marketed as an alternate universe within the Alien film franchise. That's all the fans were given since Alien Resurrection, so it's hard not to include it into the overall arc, even if I hate it.
Did Dan Obannon or Ronald Shusett have anything to do with the writing of Prometheus? I could argue that Scott's "prequel" can also be viewed as a separate universe in the Alien legacy as well.
This is already ruining my life in such a good way.
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 11:23am
Speaking of which, one of the writers for Prometheus was behind the show "Lost", correct?
post by arilliusbm at Jun 9,2012 11:28am edited Jun 9,2012 11:30am
All right, here goes:
To start, I'll just say that I enjoyed the concept and approach a lot. 10/10 on that part. I love movies that venture into the area that this movie did. It's not every day that these kind of movies come out. The special effects and art were mind-blowing. How can one not appreciate the movie from and artistic point of view? I really love the way they made the Engineers look. They were human, yet alien at the same time. They were everything I would imagine what our species will look like with thousands and thousands of years of evolution. They were creepy, yet struck at home because of their similarity to us.
I think the only real negative things I can pull from the movie more or less have to do with the film-making aspect of it. Ridley Scott has done better. There were a number of scenes which were downright cliched, namely the scene when Milburn and Fifield (bong-smoking redhead) encountered the premature worm creature. It was a scene that was easily predictable, and cheesy at the same time. In fact, I think both of those characters were lackluster. After the suspenseful buildup, that scene kind of ruined it.
I'm really hoping there's a number of deleted scenes on the dvd/bluray release, because some of the movie seemed quite rushed. Dr. Holloway's character was killed off way too soon, IMHO. The development of his "sickness" had no real substance behind it. I understand that David (STOLE THE SHOW, BY THE WAY), caused that, but yet, a character of his stature should have held a better role as the movie went along.
The atmosphere in this movie was astounding. The ideas and creativity is all there. Ridley Scott never fails to amaze me on a lot of levels, yet to say that this is a 10/10 or his best movie is hard for me to do. There was also some bad dialogue in the movie; and some scenes which were, at times, laughable. Vickers' demise and death was as predictable as they come, yet left me shaking my head. It was a horrible way to go, yet memorable, but I think that was somewhat of a joke. Also, why did Weyland look like old Biff from Back to the Future? I was hoping his cane would have a fist on the top.
As Mike said above, the Xenomorph at the end of the movie was differeent than the one that came out of Kane. I viewed that particular Alien as a "super Alien" because of the advanced evolved state of the Engineer in which it came out of. In regards to the movie as being the origin of the xenomorph, I don't think it was. I think it SHOWED us what created them, but obviously, wasn't the origin. The mural on the wall depicted a full-grown adult Xenomorph alien, which led me to believe that they already knew for years, what they turned into. There must have been a freak accident on LV-223 which led to their demise on that station. They carbon-dated the death of the original Engineer and she said it had died roughly 2000 years ago. So yea, the xenomorphs had been around for longer than we thought.
Too much typing. Movie would be a great discussion over a beer.
I'll up my review to 8/10.
All in all, I definitely loved the movie but it had its flaws. I would love to see it again, and am anticipating the sequel.
Dan Obannon died either last year or the year before so I don't think he had anything to do with the writing process. Since all the sequels take place after this and Ridley Scott is the director of the original I consider this more a true sequel-prequel to Alien than even Aliens.
And if it wasn't the origin of the Alien queen why even bother going back to it at the end? If it was just an extra gross out scene it would have ended up on the cutting room floor.
The mural on the wall depicted a full-grown adult Xenomorph alien,
This.
I pointed that out to my friend and he was all "nah, I didn't make that connection at all."
It was way too obvious to miss.
And ok, so we'll argue that the final scene was not the origin of the xenomorphs. Yet, as depicted in the film; we can view it as a reenactment of what occurred thousands of years ago when engineering an aggressive weapon-like life form? Only now inflicted upon the Prometheus crew after their discoveries? So the space jockey's have just been running around the entire universe terraforming other planets/moons and, let's say they got something right (or horribly wrong) when they either first perfected the xenomorph's or the parasite facehugger species? Ugh, the age old what came first? The chicken or the egg? So, what took place on LV-426 can be viewed as perhaps maybe the ultimate achievement of these above mentioned hostile alien species? Rather than some gigantic primordial facehugger in Prometheus, they evolved the facehuggers down into smaller, arachnid-like creatures, gestating in pods?
You know what? Fuck it. I never even liked the idea of another species engineering the xenomorph's. I liked entertaining the possibility that they spawned from their own natural evolutionary processes, not unlike the cockroach, only a cockroach on the ultimate bath salts.
Dan Obannon died either last year or the year before so I don't think he had anything to do with the writing process. Since all the sequels take place after this and Ridley Scott is the director of the original I consider this more a true sequel-prequel to Alien than even Aliens.
Hah, yeah I was just making my nerd point. Dan died in 2009 even though writing for Prometheus began in the early 2000's. Would have been interesting to see what he could have added to the films storyline.
But when Ripleys team arrive on the planet searching for the crew of the Prometheus they end up searching the ship not the hive correct? Been a few years since I watched Alien?
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 11:51am
I want to say that is correct, because that's where they come across what was once believed to be the exo-skeleton of the space jockey, in his control seat.
That would leave me to believe Alien Queen from Engenier. The mural on the wall I just thought was Gigers style which the queen also happens to be.
post by MikeOv at Jun 9,2012 12:00pm
The only change to what you said earlier Kev is that the Nostromo received an unknown distress signal from the derelict alien space craft, not from the Prometheus crew. I know Shaw and David took off in one of their ships but the ship that the Nostromo crew investigates contains a dead space jockey, with evidence of chestbursting
I don't think they receive Shaw's message in Alien as far as I know, and I know they just say it's a distress signal. I actually liked the 3D, rather than having gimmicky bullshit like My Bloody Valentine it added a lot of depth to the scenes. I also didn't think of that chestburster at the end as the queen, but that makes perfect sense because it could've found another ship (since there were multiple) and laid its eggs, so when an Engineer came out of stasis (which I assume there were more in the other ships), it would be walking around and be impregnated, so when it tried to leave it'd pop during takeoff and bam, there's your Alien ship. It also wouldn't surprise me if LV223 is just a made up name by Weyland (or if the name was changed from LV223 to LV426) because nobody in Alien has any clue of anything happening, but Ash has specific instructions to get a specimen back to Earth. Fuck, this thing isn't going to let me think straight for the next few days. Putting Alien on ASAP.
Engineers are a race so advanced, they can create organic nano-technology to reprogram DNA.
In the beginning sequence, the liquid is used by an Engineer being left behind by a ship to deconstruct his own DNA, which he then dove into the water. From water came life, from life came the evolution of man. They were seeding our (or any other) planet with life, created in their own image.
The xenomorph is a biologically engineered weapon, capable of wiping out an entire planet of human life.
As evident by the cave paintings on earth, throughout history the Engineers have visited us to check on our progress and guide us.
Shaw was desperate to know: What happened? Why did the engineers change their minds about us? This is important: start thinking about the dates.
Xenomorph was the black goo. Instead of being programmed to transform whatever DNA into us, human life, this time it was programmed to turn US into xenomorphs. Basically the black goo turns anything it contacts into an acid spitting, aggressive, killing machine.
One thing, to control xenomorphs, they have NO REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. They simply transform, kill everything, and die.
So from the logs that David observes, we see two events: First, we see that something goes wrong, and Engineers are fleeing madly while doors are being sealed. Second, (which is actually FIRST), we see Engineers target Earth for execution via xenomorph and plotting a course.
So at some point after targeting earth and before actually launching the ship, the xenomorph fluid production went wrong. Somehow, in the same way Shaw was impregnated, an Engineer got infected with the liquid. Since their DNA is identical, they're susceptible. Once infected the cycle began, xenos and facehuggers infected the crew and became able to reproduce, tearing through all the engineers, as we see in the other log David plays back.
So the xeno's got loose, Infected and killed the engineers, who fled. The doors were sealed, (decapitating one), and the surviving Engineers managed to contain and eradicate the Xeno infestation. The sole remaining Engineer stacked up the bodies of his deceased comrades (the pile of dead, chest bursted Engineers), and puts himself into stasis until the Engineers can rescue him from his post on this base/moon.
So questions:
1 - Why did the Engineer, when awakened, go apeshit and try and kill everyone?
2 - Why did the Engineers decide to wipe out the human race?
3 - What is the ship that Ripley and crew discover in the Alien movie, filled with eggs - which must be laid by a queen, which as we know come out of FEMALE humans.
1 - The Engineer realized very quickly that if there were humans on the ship, that the chance of re-infection or outbreak was great. We don't know what David says. For example, since he knowingly infected Holloway with the xeno-fluid he may have thought he was doing the Engineer's bidding and said he had infected the humans. The engineer immediately tried to kill them all before another outbreak could kill him.
2 - The outbreak on the ship, and the plotting course for Earth to infect us with the xeno "virus", occurred around 2000 years ago, according to the carbon date of the dead Engineer. Since the film takes place around 2090, that would be right around ...
So if the Engineers came to check up on us periodically, and at some point the visiting engineer found us so hostile that despite his "godly" power we decided to nail him to a stick, and kill him for all to see. That might piss the Engineers off a bit. Enough, maybe, to call off the whole Human experiment and wipe us all out of creation, before we could grow any more and wipe them out like we did their ambassador.
3 - What is the ship found by Ripley in the first movie? The ship contains EGGS, not liquid like this ship did. What lays eggs? Queens. Where do queens come from? Human females. What human female got infected? SHAW. But she gave birth to the giant facesucker, right? Shaw, after removing the mass, continued having massive stomache pains.
Shaw had twins. She was not only impregnated with the facehugger, but also a queen. Remember, she c-sectioned, that creature had not come to full term. The queen, at that point, was missed. That's why her stomach still hurt.
Shaw steals alien ship. Shaw shows, as she leaves, that she is fond of leaving distress signals. In this case, it's a recorded warning to stay away. Shaw is still infected, and alone with David on the alien ship. Gives birth to queen, manages to eek out a recording as she dies and the ship crashes on LV223's nearby neighbor LV426.
So where's David? Where did the Engineer with the chest burst come from in Alien? If there were other ships on LV223, there might have been other Engineers in stasis on those ships. When the xeno queen has killed Shaw and laid it's eggs, it is left to starve and die. David in this time manages to repair himself, and awakens another Engineer in hopes of having him pilot him away. However once the human/Engineer DNA is present, an Egg hatches and impregnates the Engineer. Engineer dies, the new xeno also starves, and 30 years later the first Alien movie takes place. Remember, while it seems like the Space Jockey was ancient and petrified in Alien, we learn in Prometheus this is just a sealed bone-like space suit, not fossil like they assumed. It's actually only been there 30 years.
Who put the remaining eggs in Stasis as they are later found ? David, using the same weird blue light technology he first notices in the Engineer ship in Promethius. Where'd he go afterwards? PROMETHEUS 2.
3 - What is the ship found by Ripley in the first movie? The ship contains EGGS, not liquid like this ship did. What lays eggs? Queens. Where do queens come from? Human females. What human female got infected? SHAW. But she gave birth to the giant facesucker, right? Shaw, after removing the mass, continued having massive stomache pains.
Shaw had twins. She was not only impregnated with the facehugger, but also a queen. Remember, she c-sectioned, that creature had not come to full term. The queen, at that point, was missed. That's why her stomach still hurt.
Shaw steals alien ship. Shaw shows, as she leaves, that she is fond of leaving distress signals. In this case, it's a recorded warning to stay away. Shaw is still infected, and alone with David on the alien ship. Gives birth to queen, manages to eek out a recording as she dies and the ship crashes on LV223's nearby neighbor LV426.
"What lays eggs? Queens. Where do queens come from? Human females."
It might be erroneous to suggest that queens exclusively come from bursting out of females. For example, in Alien Resurrection, when Ripley tells Larry Purvis, the unwitting test subject, that he had a chestburster inside of him, she ominously states "It's a nasty one". Aren't most drone/warriors all "nasty"? She could be implying that it was a queen.
I'm not saying it's a queen, but it's a queen
"Shaw, after removing the mass, continued having massive stomache pains. "
In my opinion, her pain stems from post-op complications due to an impromptu cesarean section. Little time was taken to prep herself for the procedure and she was forced to rush it, in order to get the primordial facehugger out of her body. Immediately after, she was stapled right up. Women require recuperation after c-section; rest, pain meds, etc. Shaw troops right through it and then has to go directly back into survival mode. She couldn't afford to find a bed to simply rest in.
"Shaw had twins. She was not only impregnated with the facehugger, but also a queen. Remember, she c-sectioned, that creature had not come to full term. The queen, at that point, was missed. That's why her stomach still hurt."
??? If there was proof that she birthed a queen or even a drone xenomorph ON TOP of the facehugger, I completely missed that and I was paying as much attention to detail as I possibly could.
Let's not forget that Shaw was also infertile, so if she could give birth to not one but two mutinous creatures, then she really hit the jackpot of biological miracles (or rather nightmares).
It might be erroneous to suggest that queens exclusively come from bursting out of females. For example, in Alien Resurrection, when Ripley tells Larry Purvis, the unwitting test subject, that he had a chestburster inside of him, she ominously states "It's a nasty one". Aren't most drone/warriors all "nasty"? She could be implying that it was a queen.
Didn't he have that really humanoid looking alien in him, or am I remembering that incorrectly?
It was directed at whoever made the suggestion that a queen couldn't come out of the engineer at the end. I'm too lazy to look up who said it.
I didn't say it couldn't - I said EVERY QUEEN we've seen in the franchise came out of a HUMAN FEMALE.
However, Engineers MUST have the female DNA or have females hidden away to create a queen, since there were chest bursted engineers. The black liquid turns shit into a xenomorph. It takes a facehugger to implant one in a manner that it bursts out of a chest. Clearly there was a queen here already which caused the earlier outbreak.
Also, she c-sectioned the mass in her stomach. Queens are birthed through the chest. Did she take any time to check her chest in the medi-pod? Nope. Did she keep doubling over in pain much like the infected guy with the glasses kept doing in Resurrection before he birthed a xenomorph. Yup.
^ My first assumption upon seeing that was that it was an alien that they had managed to contain, but then everything in that chamber started melting and I threw that idea out. Since that chamber gives off the vibe of being a quasi-religious area (what with the huge head and whatnot), maybe this is a mural of the antithesis of whatever the head represents?
Now that I say that, it could just be the depiction of the end product of that black liquid, but then it starts to look like the engineers are combining their science and religion.
It might be erroneous to suggest that queens exclusively come from bursting out of females. For example, in Alien Resurrection, when Ripley tells Larry Purvis, the unwitting test subject, that he had a chestburster inside of him, she ominously states "It's a nasty one". Aren't most drone/warriors all "nasty"? She could be implying that it was a queen.
Didn't he have that really humanoid looking alien in him, or am I remembering that incorrectly?
Incorrect. Larry Purvis was infected with a xeno warrior. The queen in Ressurection was grown inside Ripley's clone and surgically removed from her. The humanoid xeno came out of the queen.
I didn't say it couldn't - I said EVERY QUEEN we've seen in the franchise came out of a HUMAN FEMALE.
However, Engineers MUST have the female DNA or have females hidden away to create a queen, since there were chest bursted engineers. The black liquid turns shit into a xenomorph. It takes a facehugger to implant one in a manner that it bursts out of a chest. Clearly there was a queen here already which caused the earlier outbreak.
Also, she c-sectioned the mass in her stomach. Queens are birthed through the chest. Did she take any time to check her chest in the medi-pod? Nope. Did she keep doubling over in pain much like the infected guy with the glasses kept doing in Resurrection before he birthed a xenomorph. Yup.
Still, the reproductive system isn't directly connected to the digestive system, which is how the chestburster gets implanted, so I don't buy that she had a queen within herself. What if, by virtue of Shaw being a female, the uber-facehugger had the necessary DNA inside of itself to implant a queen, at which point the host's gender wouldn't matter? That would explain a queen being born from the engineer at the end of the film.
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 1:07pm
Joey, religious ties in to this film pretty heavily.
It would appear that much of our world's religions were based upon the Engineers, and either what they taught us or programmed into us.
For example, it could be argued that Christ was an Engineer, and our murdering him was the tipping point that caused the Engineers to target us for extinction via Xenomorph.
It would also be sensible that our other forms of worship, including effigies, were taken from them.
Why, however, assume the giant head in the chamber was an Engineer? If we were created in the image of the giant engineers, maybe the Engineers were created in the image of giant ...
Still, the reproductive system isn't directly connected to the digestive system, which is how the chestburster gets implanted, so I don't buy that she had a queen within herself. What if, by virtue of Shaw being a female, the uber-facehugger had the necessary DNA inside of itself to implant a queen, at which point the host's gender wouldn't matter?
That's why gender matters. In preceding films, we see Queens only come out of female hosts. What if either the facehugger fetus implanted a xeno before being removed, or like the others in the film the exposure to the black toxin turns Shaw herself into a xeno? With SHAW being female, there's the chance it's a queen. Facehuggers just implant xeno embryos. I think the determination of queen/warrior is by the host.
Also, I do not believe the creature at the end is necessarily a queen. I think the big deal was that there was a face hugger big enough to impregnate an Engineer, creating a new type of Alien we haven't seen before - the same type that wiped out the Engineer crew and the original "Space Jockey". It could be a queen, but I don't think that detail is as important as "look - bigger badder xenos for the next movie!"
This doesn't look that much like a Alien queen when you look at it outside of the movie.
Why would there be a picture of a QUEEN in the "xeno warrior transformation juice" holding area? Not saying it is or isn't (that does look like a second set of arms a little).
People are bent on the Queen>facehugger>Xenomorph thing, are are missing that the initial black liquid is not meant to work that way. It changes it's host INTO a xeno warrior - note the worms start spitting acid, and the ginger-geologist starts bending, climbing, and jumping like a xeno after getting a faceful of black liquid.
The queens, eggs, and facehuggers are all an accidental and unplanned combination of the Xeno and the human female reproductive system (I'm assuming, we don't know yet). It would appear Queens scare Engineers as badly as they do humans.
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 1:35pm
Anyone notice the alien in the mural has a human thumb on it's right hand?
Joey, religious ties in to this film pretty heavily.
It would appear that much of our world's religions were based upon the Engineers, and either what they taught us or programmed into us.
For example, it could be argued that Christ was an Engineer, and our murdering him was the tipping point that caused the Engineers to target us for extinction via Xenomorph.
It would also be sensible that our other forms of worship, including effigies, were taken from them.
Why, however, assume the giant head in the chamber was an Engineer? If we were created in the image of the giant engineers, maybe the Engineers were created in the image of giant ...
No argument from me here, that all makes sense. My only question is if the giant head is in fact the "deity" that the engineers were created by, what's the significance of it being in the same room with the black liquid containers and the mural of the xenomorph? I don't get why they would store their weaponry in what I'm assuming to be a worship chamber (unless my assumption about the room is entirely wrong, and for all I know it could be).
That's why gender matters. In preceding films, we see Queens only come out of female hosts. What if either the facehugger fetus implanted a xeno before being removed, or like the others in the film the exposure to the black toxin turns Shaw herself into a xeno? With SHAW being female, there's the chance it's a queen. Facehuggers just implant xeno embryos. I think the determination of queen/warrior is by the host.
Also, I do not believe the creature at the end is necessarily a queen. I think the big deal was that there was a face hugger big enough to impregnate an Engineer, creating a new type of Alien we haven't seen before - the same type that wiped out the Engineer crew and the original "Space Jockey". It could be a queen, but I don't think that detail is as important as "look - bigger badder xenos for the next movie!"
I'm against the "facehugger planting a xeno" theory because it was still all cocooned in its amniotic sac with Shaw had it removed; I'm assuming immaturity of the fetus (and if that fetus also received genetic information from Shaw and Holloway, then it'd be taking cues from human DNA and that would make a little more sense). Shaw becoming a xeno makes sense because she wasn't directly in contact with the black liquid (that I can remember), but having the fetus grow inside of her might mean she's still contaminated, but it's progressing more slowly. That would offer another explanation for her continual pains aside from the aforementioned "just got out of surgery, no rest and recuperation, etc."
The final xenomorph bit could also be true, Scott and Lindelof both said that they left plenty of loose ends to tie up if there was ever a sequel (but tied up enough that the film could stand on its own).
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 2:12pm
Note we saw no equipment to MAKE the viral liquid.
That may be a "worship chamber", but if they can create prune juice that turns you into an alien monster, then perhaps it's not too far fetched to guess that they create that juice through some type of worship/ceremony, rather than in a lab? The canisters were lined up in front of the alter. Maybe that's how they get filled? Or perhaps it's a test chamber where Engineers were sacrificed to the fluid to test it? Or even further, perhaps it was a "birthing chamber" for creatures infected with the xeno liquid, and the giant statue and murals were all part of trying to subjugate the creatures to the Engineers? If they wanted US to think they're gods, maybe they wanted the xenos to think so too?
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 2:29pm
Earlier someone noted the xenomorph mural might have been the antithesis of the giant head:
Hmm. Here we are on earth, with a religion that says we were created by got, but we each have an evil demon or satan inside us, with the meaning of life being us transcending past this inner evil to become perfect.
And here it turns out we were created by Engineers, in their own image. But yet each and every one of us, inside our DNA, contains a demon Xenomorph.
So what's next? Well the bible speaks of apocalypse, where the gods and angels descend from heaven to destroy the demons among us.
PROMETHEUS 2 - BATTLE FOR EARTH. Engineers vs Engineer-Super-xenos on earth.
post by MikeofDecrepitude at Jun 10,2012 2:46pm edited Jun 10,2012 2:47pm
Also, she c-sectioned the mass in her stomach. Queens are birthed through the chest. Did she take any time to check her chest in the medi-pod? Nope.
Let us also remember that queens and warriors are both conceived when a facehugger attaches itself to a host's face and inserts a tube down its throat to plant its embryo inside the chest area. Shaw was never violated by a facehugger. The only being that was, in the entire movie, was an engineer and look at what resulted. A xenomorph birthed and quite possibly a queen, at that.
It's worth noting that Millburn got face violated as well, but that was a hammerpede, which, while probably a relative to the creature that came out of Shaw; doesn't seem to produce the same results (i.e. implanting xenomorph embryo's into a host).
Also, she c-sectioned the mass in her stomach. Queens are birthed through the chest. Did she take any time to check her chest in the medi-pod? Nope.
Let us also remember that queens and warriors are both conceived when a facehugger attaches itself to a host's face and inserts a tube down its throat to plant its embryo inside the chest area. Shaw was never violated by a facehugger. The only being that was, in the entire movie, was an engineer and look at what resulted. A xenomorph birthed and quite possibly a queen, at that.
It's worth noting that Millburn got face violated as well, but that was a hammerpede, which, while probably a relative to the creature that came out of Shaw; doesn't seem to produce the same results (i.e. implanting xenomorph embryo's into a host).
You're just not getting it - the black liquid has nothing to do with the way we're used to seeing xenomorphs produced. Was the thing that came out of Shaw the facehuggers we all know?
The black liquid transforms human DNA into a xenomorph. That's why ginger-geologist-hookah guy was walking like a crab, jumping 20 feet in the air, and crawling on the walls. It's what started happening to Holloway. While the xenomorphs do not have a reproductive system, holloway fucked as his DNA was transforming. This created the giant facehugger, the reproductive parasitic form of a xenomorph.
All that is well and good, and explains the giant face hugger reproducing inside the Engineer, and creating an alien. Also explains the very root of how the xenomorphs got out of control - they over-rided their biologically set limits and mutated using their human hosts DNA against them. The whole idea is viral warfare - xenomorph was meant to be an infection that wiped us out. Instead, it turned against it's Engineer masters. Facehuggers were not intended. Queens were not intended.
So removing the accidental pregnancy, Shaw has still been exposed to the black liquid, in some small amount. We don't know the effects, everyone infected has been killed too quickly. For all we know it might cause a queen to grow out of her rectum. Stop going back to the facehugger-xenomorph cycle each time. It's irrelevant here. Facehuggers don't typically come out of vaginas, they're laid by a queen and hatched. Maybe SHAW IS THE QUEEN.
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 3:17pm
Ooh, shit, I admit - that JUST dawned on me
SHAW IS THE QUEEN
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 3:19pm
Yes, it all makes sense now. She "laid" a facesucker. It was birthed from HER egg.
PROMETHEUS 2 will have another crew finding a crashed ship and fighting off aliens, only to find the queen at the end and realize it's none other than a grossly mutated and fucked up SHAW, onboard her stolen Engineer ship.
Again, with the slow nature of her possible infection, that would make sense. Everybody else directly exposed to black liquid was killed off within 24 hours. Her in a different ship would explain a cargo bay full of eggs and an infected Engineer (who could've come out of stasis to discover the eggs, get impregnated, and then try to fire off a distress signal, during which his chestburster popped out). That's bypassing a sequel and running right into Alien, however, so I'm sure we're missing a piece of the puzzle.
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 10,2012 4:06pm
I'm guessing if there's more ships, there's more black liquid. If the small facehugger eggs were laid by Shaw, where is the black liquid cargo of the ship? Where is David? Who woke the Jockey? How was he infected?
That's the piece we're missing. The eggs in Alien spawn puny little face-huggers. Great to infect humans, but an Engineer? No way one of those things created a xeno that could rip through an Engineer and it's suit.
So we're left with a double question - if the small eggs in Alien are assumed to be a product of a mutated Shaw's reproductive system,
-What infected all those dead giant Engineers 2000 years ago? Did they kill off all their women to stop the outbreak, and that's why they're all males? Again, each queen in the franchise came out of a human female. Engineers share our DNA, shouldn't they have males and females? We can assume there's no women around because the Engineers are soldiers on a military base, but what if that's not why? Maybe they keep women off the base to avoid outbreak and creating a queen?
-What infected the dead Space Jockey, as again it is much to large to have been infected by those face-sucker eggs onboard his ship?
That's our next movie. How we get from her leaving in the ship to giant aliens hatching out of Engineers, and little aliens hatching out of humans. How the Engineers were infected. Where their females are. Where the black fluid in the cargo of the crashed Engineer ship from Alien 1 went, and what other kind of monstrous shit it may have created. Remember, at this point we're 30 years from Alien.
I don't think the next movie is going to have much, at all, to do with the crashed ship or what happens to Shaw. For that to work we need a whole crew full of new victims, and there were no human corpses around when Ripley finds the Derelict. Instead, I'm betting we'll find David, or Shaw's log entry, or similar which will fill in the gaps regarding the mutated smaller facehugger cargo and what happened to the derelict ship. Maybe a crew further in the future is sent by Weyland Industries to complete Shaw's mission to find the Engineers? After all, she left a distress signal saying she was headed there - once we realize Weyland is aware of the planet we can assume that within the next 30 years they'd have picked up that distress warning she left there. So we'll get a new crew, on a new mission, that encounter the big bad Engineer-Xenos, and perhaps in the process find David or logs filling in the gaps of what happened to Shaw.
In addition we've got earthly questions: Weyland KNEW about this moon, they sent the mission. Weyland still exists into the future. So in the 30 years between Prometheus and Alien, I'm sure at some point they send out a mission to find what happened to their mission to that moon. It can also be assumed that mission also never returned, or there would be a lot more answers by the time Ripley's crew encountered the Derelict. That mission, I'm speculating, will be the next movie. NOT Shaw.
Movie was OK. Plot felt rushed and character developement was borderline non-existent. Great visuals. I didnt find it anywhere near as profound or suspenseful as I expected it to be.
Movie was OK. Plot felt rushed and character developement was borderline non-existent. Great visuals. I didnt find it anywhere near as profound or suspenseful as I expected it to be.
Oh, you're one of THOSE...
I don't feel like they were trying develop the characters too much..
Movie was OK. Plot felt rushed and character developement was borderline non-existent. Great visuals. I didnt find it anywhere near as profound or suspenseful as I expected it to be.
asian guy was useless, charlize theron was useless, red head was totally unconvincing, and the 24 year old GQ model they casted as a scientist who DISCOVERS ALIEN LIFE and is so unimpressed simply because it's no longer alive that he just goes and gets drunk and is basically like 'fuck it lets go home' was ridiculously unconvincing. I liked the android and the main character was well-developed, albeit a bit generic.
Also, what made them think the cave drawings were an invitation? There was essentially NO backstory or explanation as to what made them think they would find their creators there, other than an overused plot device of a dream sequence in which the protagonist says 'I don't know but I choose to believe.'
Either way it was a good movie and I'm looking forward to the second one, I just hope they do a better job with the casting and plot pace and development.
Also, the 'suspenseful' parts where they tried to build up to death sequences/etc were way too predictable. Like who didn't see from a mile away that the worm was going to attack that guy? Why even bother with the build up when everyone in the audience already knows what's going to happen?
Oh and having them run in the same direction as the rolling space ship instead of just off to the sides where they wouldn't be hit was basically akin to having the big-breasted woman pursued by slow-walking-knife-wielder tripping on nothing so knife-wielder has a chance to catch up and kill her.
Oh and having them run in the same direction as the rolling space ship instead of just off to the sides where they wouldn't be hit was basically akin to having the big-breasted woman pursued by slow-walking-knife-wielder tripping on nothing so knife-wielder has a chance to catch up and kill her.
This. I was thinking if Shaw was able to roll out of the way, why the fuck were they running in the direction the shit was rolling. I enjoyed the movie though. Also was disappointed that there was no obnoxious siren sound. =(
This. I was thinking if Shaw was able to roll out of the way, why the fuck were they running in the direction the shit was rolling.
Having been in a theater with huge subwoofers, I did not miss the shrapnel raining down and exploding on either side of the crashing ship like you two did.
I saw the shrapnel, but I'm 99% sure I'd rather face possible death by shrapnel than certain death by rolling spaceship.
Do wish I saw the imax 3D one though :C
post by Movie Theater Police at Jun 11,2012 1:38am
Movie was kind of dumb but very pretty, in the end I was glad that I shelled out for the 3D. The c-section scene was pretty boss and the setting looked great. I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about how it ties into Alien because that's going to fall apart right away.
Weyland and his nerdy geologist reminded me of Hammond and Malcolm from Jurassic Park
post by MASTERS OF HORROR at Jun 11,2012 10:31am
MOVIE SUCKED. ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. OVERHYPED.
post by MikeOv at Jun 11,2012 10:54am
I liked the movie, saw it twice in fact. There's always going to be shit to bitch and nitpick about, but overall I was entertained and it's fun being able to discuss the different possibilities and meanings behind certain things in the film.
I'm convinced that the engineer at the beginning was not expecting that outcome after he drank the liquid. Was he a religious sacrifice? A prisoner? He was clearly being watched in the distance by that ship. I love the movie for this scene alone. Maybe it's just me but the opening sequence made me feel as if I was watching a Tool video.
I'm convinced that the engineer at the beginning was not expecting that outcome after he drank the liquid. Was he a religious sacrifice? A prisoner?
From all that I have read and gathered of what Ridley Scott read, he was 100% aware of what he was doing, he was sacrificing himself to create life. There is an underlying theme of self-sacrifice for others to live VS sacrifice-others so you can live (see: Prometheus myth, Prometheus the life-giver sacrifices himself so that humanity can exist.) I read that the black goo reacts differently based on intentions/etc; that is, when the Engineers use it, coming from the pure place they come from and willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, it creates life, but when the goo reaches the imperfect human beings, it takes their selfishness and mutates in a negative way.
edit: basically, he intentionally sacrifices himself, breaking himself into dna, the building blocks of life, and doing so into water, the source of all life. HE IS THE WELLSPRING FROM WHICH WE FLOW
I didn't word that very well, but you get the point.
post by Lvl 36 Wizard at Jun 11,2012 11:39am
I NEED TOPAZ
post by MikeOv at Jun 11,2012 11:44am
Ross, do you have a source for that? I only ask because I want to read what Scott says about it, I'm not saying you're wrong. The only interview I've found and read that touched upon the opening scene is that it may not be taking place on Earth. When I first saw Prometheus on Friday night, I thought the same thing you wrote above.
When my friend and I went back and saw it on Sunday, going into it after smoking this good pot, my outlook and thought process radically shifted, and I saw things in a more sinister light.
It felt too obvious that he would be the messianic sacrifice. The engineers/space jockeys/call them what you will, seem to have an agenda we couldn't even begin to imagine. As seen in the film, they're very ruthless and cruel. There might be valid reasons for their general dispostions.
My friend and both think that something else was going on in that scene. He seemed refreshed after gulping it down, a reaction one wouldn't have, knowing their body is about to disintegrate, even if he was prepared to sacrifice himself. When he starts convulsing, he appears shocked to me. The craft in the distance disappears ominously into the mist above.
Man, such a killer scene.
Shaw screams "Why do you hate us?"
If you were an engineer, wouldn't you hate us as well? Our planet is fucked.
The engineers/space jockeys/call them what you will, seem to have an agenda we couldn't even begin to imagine. As seen in the film, they're very ruthless and cruel. There might be valid reasons for their general dispostions.
Keep in mind, in the opening scene the ship is DIFFERENT than the later Engineer ships. If this is Earth, then between the opening scene and the rest of the film many thousands or even millions of years have passed.
It is not so strange to think the intentions and manner of the Engineers may have changed in that span of time.
Note the Alien is left behind, and dressed differently than the other Engineers we've seen. Despite coming from a space ship, he seems very simply dressed - perhaps the trepidation and surprise is due to him being a slave, forced to do this task?
Ross, do you have a source for that? I only ask because I want to read what Scott says about it, I'm not saying you're wrong. The only interview I've found and read that touched upon the opening scene is that it may not be taking place on Earth. When I first saw Prometheus on Friday night, I thought the same thing you wrote above.
When my friend and I went back and saw it on Sunday, going into it after smoking this good pot, my outlook and thought process radically shifted, and I saw things in a more sinister light.
It felt too obvious that he would be the messianic sacrifice. The engineers/space jockeys/call them what you will, seem to have an agenda we couldn't even begin to imagine. As seen in the film, they're very ruthless and cruel. There might be valid reasons for their general dispostions.
My friend and both think that something else was going on in that scene. He seemed refreshed after gulping it down, a reaction one wouldn't have, knowing their body is about to disintegrate, even if he was prepared to sacrifice himself. When he starts convulsing, he appears shocked to me. The craft in the distance disappears ominously into the mist above.
Man, such a killer scene.
Shaw screams "Why do you hate us?"
If you were an engineer, wouldn't you hate us as well? Our planet is fucked.
I think the engineer at the beginning was sacrificing himself as ross said earlier...the way he drinks from that cup seems like he knew what to do.
I'm so gay. Two days later, I just got the "Prometheus" reference: The black ooze is supposed to be the fire stolen from the gods?
I think that's reading too much into it. Prometheus is a reference to the creator of human beings, the black ooze is just a biological weapon. Fire was a GIFT from Prometheus to humanity, not a weapon to destroy them.
post by Ripley Scott at Jun 11,2012 1:04pm
Something I do NOT have any theories about:
What was the deal with the exploding re-animated Engineer head?
This post goes way in depth to Prometheus and explains some of the deeper themes of the film as well as some stuff I completely overlooked while watching the film.
NOTE: I did NOT write this post, I just found it on the web.
Prometheus contains such a huge amount of mythic resonance that it effectively obscures a more conventional plot. I'd like to draw your attention to the use of motifs and callbacks in the film that not only enrich it, but offer possible hints as to what was going on in otherwise confusing scenes.
Let's begin with the eponymous titan himself, Prometheus. He was a wise and benevolent entity who created mankind in the first place, forming the first humans from clay. The Gods were more or less okay with that, until Prometheus gave them fire. This was a big no-no, as fire was supposed to be the exclusive property of the Gods. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver ripped out and eaten every day by an eagle. (His liver magically grew back, in case you were wondering.)
Fix that image in your mind, please: the giver of life, with his abdomen torn open. We'll be coming back to it many times in the course of this article.
The ethos of the titan Prometheus is one of willing and necessary sacrifice for life's sake. That's a pattern we see replicated throughout the ancient world. J G Frazer wrote his lengthy anthropological study, The Golden Bough, around the idea of the Dying God - a lifegiver who voluntarily dies for the sake of the people. It was incumbent upon the King to die at the right and proper time, because that was what heaven demanded, and fertility would not ensue if he did not do his royal duty of dying.
Now, consider the opening sequence of Prometheus. We fly over a spectacular vista, which may or may not be primordial Earth. According to Ridley Scott, it doesn't matter. A lone Engineer at the top of a waterfall goes through a strange ritual, drinking from a cup of black goo that causes his body to disintegrate into the building blocks of life. We see the fragments of his body falling into the river, twirling and spiralling into DNA helices.
Ridley Scott has this to say about the scene: 'That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself. If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.'
Can we find a God in human history who creates plant life through his own death, and who is associated with a river? It's not difficult to find several, but the most obvious candidate is Osiris, the epitome of all the Frazerian 'Dying Gods'.
And we wouldn't be amiss in seeing the first of the movie's many Christian allegories in this scene, either. The Engineer removes his cloak before the ceremony, and hesitates before drinking the cupful of genetic solvent; he may well have been thinking 'If it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me.'
So, we know something about the Engineers, a founding principle laid down in the very first scene: acceptance of death, up to and including self-sacrifice, is right and proper in the creation of life. Prometheus, Osiris, John Barleycorn, and of course the Jesus of Christianity are all supposed to embody this same principle. It is held up as one of the most enduring human concepts of what it means to be 'good'.
Seen in this light, the perplexing obscurity of the rest of the film yields to an examination of the interwoven themes of sacrifice, creation, and preservation of life. We also discover, through hints, exactly what the nature of the clash between the Engineers and humanity entailed.
The crew of the Prometheus discover an ancient chamber, presided over by a brooding solemn face, in which urns of the same black substance are kept. A mural on the wall presents an image which, if you did as I asked earlier on, you will recognise instantly: the lifegiver with his abdomen torn open. Go and look at it here to refresh your memory. Note the serenity on the Engineer's face here.
And there's another mural there, one which shows a familiar xenomorph-like figure. This is the Destroyer who mirrors the Creator, I think - the avatar of supremely selfish life, devouring and destroying others purely to preserve itself. As Ash puts it: 'a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.'
Through Shaw and Holloway's investigations, we learn that the Engineers not only created human life, they supervised our development. (How else are we to explain the numerous images of Engineers in primitive art, complete with star diagram showing us the way to find them?) We have to assume, then, that for a good few hundred thousand years, they were pretty happy with us. They could have destroyed us at any time, but instead, they effectively invited us over; the big pointy finger seems to be saying 'Hey, guys, when you're grown up enough to develop space travel, come see us.' Until something changed, something which not only messed up our relationship with them but caused their installation on LV-223 to be almost entirely wiped out.
From the Engineers' perspective, so long as humans retained that notion of self-sacrifice as central, we weren't entirely beyond redemption. But we went and screwed it all up, and the film hints at when, if not why: the Engineers at the base died two thousand years ago. That suggests that the event that turned them against us and led to the huge piles of dead Engineers lying about was one and the same event. We did something very, very bad, and somehow the consequences of that dreadful act accompanied the Engineers back to LV-223 and massacred them.
If you have uneasy suspicions about what 'a bad thing approximately 2,000 years ago' might be, then let me reassure you that you are right. An astonishing excerpt from the Movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:
Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?
Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.
Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him. Reader, that's not me pulling wild ideas out of my arse. That's RIDLEY SCOTT.
So, imagine poor crucified Jesus, a fresh spear wound in his side. Oh, hey, there's the 'lifegiver with his abdomen torn open' motif again. That's three times now: Prometheus, Engineer mural, Jesus Christ. And I don't think I have to mention the 'sacrifice in the interest of giving life' bit again, do I? Everyone on the same page? Good.
So how did our (in the context of the film) terrible murderous act of crucifixion end up wiping out all but one of the Engineers back on LV-223? Presumably through the black slime, which evidently models its behaviour on the user's mental state. Create unselfishly, accepting self-destruction as the cost, and the black stuff engenders fertile life. But expose the potent black slimy stuff to the thoughts and emotions of flawed humanity, and 'the sleep of reason produces monsters'. We never see the threat that the Engineers were fleeing from, we never see them killed other than accidentally (decapitation by door), and we see no remaining trace of whatever killed them. Either it left a long time ago, or it reverted to inert black slime, waiting for a human mind to reactivate it.
The black slime reacts to the nature and intent of the being that wields it, and the humans in the film didn't even know that they WERE wielding it. That's why it remained completely inert in David's presence, and why he needed a human proxy in order to use the stuff to create anything. The black goo could read no emotion or intent from him, because he was an android.
Shaw's comment when the urn chamber is entered - 'we've changed the atmosphere in the room' - is deceptively informative. The psychic atmosphere has changed, because humans - tainted, Space Jesus-killing humans - are present. The slime begins to engender new life, drawing not from a self-sacrificing Engineer but from human hunger for knowledge, for more life, for more everything. Little wonder, then, that it takes serpent-like form. The symbolism of a corrupting serpent, turning men into beasts, is pretty unmistakeable.
Refusal to accept death is anathema to the Engineers. Right from the first scene, we learned their code of willing self-sacrifice in accord with a greater purpose. When the severed Engineer head is temporarily brought back to life, its expression registers horror and disgust. Cinemagoers are confused when the head explodes, because it's not clear why it should have done so. Perhaps the Engineer wanted to die again, to undo the tainted human agenda of new life without sacrifice.
But some humans do act in ways the Engineers might have grudgingly admired. Take Holloway, Shaw's lover, who impregnates her barren womb with his black slime riddled semen before realising he is being transformed into something Other. Unlike the hapless geologist and botanist left behind in the chamber, who only want to stay alive, Holloway willingly embraces death. He all but invites Meredith Vickers to kill him, and it's surely significant that she does so using fire, the other gift Prometheus gave to man besides his life.
The 'Caesarean' scene is central to the film's themes of creation, sacrifice, and giving life. Shaw has discovered she's pregnant with something non-human and sets the autodoc to slice it out of her. She lies there screaming, a gaping wound in her stomach, while her tentacled alien child thrashes and squeals in the clamp above her and OH HEY IT'S THE LIFEGIVER WITH HER ABDOMEN TORN OPEN. How many times has that image come up now? Four, I make it. (We're not done yet.)
And she doesn't kill it. And she calls the procedure a 'caesarean' instead of an 'abortion'.
(I'm not even going to begin to explore the pro-choice versus forced birth implications of that scene. I don't think they're clear, and I'm not entirely comfortable doing so. Let's just say that her unwanted offspring turning out to be her salvation is possibly problematic from a feminist standpoint and leave it there for now.)
Here's where the Christian allegories really come through. The day of this strange birth just happens to be Christmas Day. And this is a 'virgin birth' of sorts, although a dark and twisted one, because Shaw couldn't possibly be pregnant. And Shaw's the crucifix-wearing Christian of the crew. We may well ask, echoing Yeats: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards LV-223 to be born?
Consider the scene where David tells Shaw that she's pregnant, and tell me that's not a riff on the Annunciation. The calm, graciously angelic android delivering the news, the pious mother who insists she can't possibly be pregnant, the wry declaration that it's no ordinary child... yeah, we've seen this before.
'And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.'
A barren woman called Elizabeth, made pregnant by 'God'? Subtle, Ridley.
Anyway. If it weren't already clear enough that the central theme of the film is 'I suffer and die so that others may live' versus 'you suffer and die so that I may live' writ extremely large, Meredith Vickers helpfully spells it out:
'A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.'
Vickers is not just speaking out of personal frustration here, though that's obviously one level of it. She wants her father out of the way, so she can finally come in to her inheritance. It's insult enough that Weyland describes the android David as 'the closest thing I have to a son', as if only a male heir was of any worth; his obstinate refusal to accept death is a slap in her face.
Weyland, preserved by his wealth and the technology it can buy, has lived far, far longer than his rightful time. A ghoulish, wizened creature who looks neither old nor young, he reminds me of Slough Feg, the decaying tyrant from the Slaine series in British comic 2000AD. In Slaine, an ancient (and by now familiar to you, dear reader, or so I would hope) Celtic law decrees that the King has to be ritually and willingly sacrificed at the end of his appointed time, for the good of the land and the people. Slough Feg refused to die, and became a rotting horror, the embodiment of evil.
The image of the sorcerer who refuses to accept rightful death is fundamental: it even forms a part of some occult philosophy. In Crowley's system, the magician who refuses to accept the bitter cup of Babalon and undergo dissolution of his individual ego in the Great Sea (remember that opening scene?) becomes an ossified, corrupted entity called a 'Black Brother' who can create no new life, and lives on as a sterile, emasculated husk.
With all this in mind, we can better understand the climactic scene in which the withered Weyland confronts the last surviving Engineer. See it from the Engineer's perspective. Two thousand years ago, humanity not only murdered the Engineers' emissary, it infected the Engineers' life-creating fluid with its own tainted selfish nature, creating monsters. And now, after so long, here humanity is, presumptuously accepting a long-overdue invitation, and even reawakening (and corrupting all over again) the life fluid.
And who has humanity chosen to represent them? A self-centred, self-satisfied narcissist who revels in his own artificially extended life, who speaks through the medium of a merely mechanical offspring. Humanity couldn't have chosen a worse ambassador.
It's hardly surprising that the Engineer reacts with contempt and disgust, ripping David's head off and battering Weyland to death with it. The subtext is bitter and ironic: you caused us to die at the hands of our own creation, so I am going to kill you with YOUR own creation, albeit in a crude and bludgeoning way.
The only way to save humanity is through self-sacrifice, and this is exactly what the captain (and his two oddly complacent co-pilots) opt to do. They crash the Prometheus into the Engineer's ship, giving up their lives in order to save others. Their willing self-sacrifice stands alongside Holloway's and the Engineer's from the opening sequence; by now, the film has racked up no less than five self-sacrificing gestures (six if we consider the exploding Engineer head).
Meredith Vickers, of course, has no interest in self-sacrifice. Like her father, she wants to keep herself alive, and so she ejects and lands on the planet's surface. With the surviving cast now down to Vickers and Shaw, we witness Vickers's rather silly death as the Engineer ship rolls over and crushes her, due to a sudden inability on her part to run sideways. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps the film is saying her view is blinkered, and ultimately that kills her. But I doubt it. Sometimes a daft death is just a daft death.
Finally, in the squidgy ending scenes of the film, the wrathful Engineer conveniently meets its death at the tentacles of Shaw's alien child, now somehow grown huge. But it's not just a death; there's obscene life being created here, too. The (in the Engineers' eyes) horrific human impulse to sacrifice others in order to survive has taken on flesh. The Engineer's body bursts open - blah blah lifegiver blah blah abdomen ripped apart hey we're up to five now - and the proto-Alien that emerges is the very image of the creature from the mural.
On the face of it, it seems absurd to suggest that the genesis of the Alien xenomorph ultimately lies in the grotesque human act of crucifying the Space Jockeys' emissary to Israel in four B.C., but that's what Ridley Scott proposes. It seems equally insane to propose that Prometheus is fundamentally about the clash between acceptance of death as a condition of creating/sustaining life versus clinging on to life at the expense of others, but the repeated, insistent use of motifs and themes bears this out.
As a closing point, let me draw your attention to a very different strand of symbolism that runs through Prometheus: the British science fiction show Doctor Who. In the 1970s episode 'The Daemons', an ancient mound is opened up, leading to an encounter with a gigantic being who proves to be an alien responsible for having guided mankind's development, and who now views mankind as a failed experiment that must be destroyed. The Engineers are seen tootling on flutes, in exactly the same way that the second Doctor does. The Third Doctor had an companion whose name was Liz Shaw, the same name as the protagonist of Prometheus. As with anything else in the film, it could all be coincidental; but knowing Ridley Scott, it doesn't seem very likely.
So assuming we buy all that (and it makes enough sense that I've got no problems with it), how does our killing the engineers' emissary on Earth translate to their black liquid coming under our influence and wreaking the havoc that it does on their base?
post by MikeOv at Jun 12,2012 10:21am
The engineer acting as a savior figure in our distant past was not included in this film. Unless it is included in the sequel, it's really difficult to rely upon that as the reason the engineers are so hostile towards us. The impression I got from Ridley's interview was that he thought such a plot device would be far too cliche, "on the nose" as he put it.
We'll just have to wait for a sequel to find out more answers. I'm enjoying the speculations though.
Frankly I think everyone is trying to hard to interpret some relatively simple concepts and scenes. Ridley himself has said that he didn't think EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the movie through as much as everyone seems to think, and the things he did are not necessarily supposed to be open to all kinds of interpretations, some things were just there because that's the way they fit into the movie, and not everything that happens has to do with the Alien franchise.
i still haven't seen this, but movies like this tend to be overanalyzed to a point way beyond the creators thought -- Damon Lindelof was already guilty of this in LOST. it's like trying to pick apart a david lynch movie, some things are meant to be interpreted a number of ways or not at all.
Exactly. I'm not trying to shoot anyone down, just saying. I could sit here and talk for hours about the underlying class-warfare themes in "Hard Target" but I'd rather just enjoy it for what it is: a good action flick.
The engineer acting as a savior figure in our distant past was not included in this film. Unless it is included in the sequel, it's really difficult to rely upon that as the reason the engineers are so hostile towards us. The impression I got from Ridley's interview was that he thought such a plot device would be far too cliche, "on the nose" as he put it.
We'll just have to wait for a sequel to find out more answers. I'm enjoying the speculations though.
Right right, the idea was just way too tempting to latch on to.
I really hope we get a sequel. My brain's been very happy with the amount of engagement it's been getting, even if a full 98% of it is overanalysis.
i still haven't seen this, but movies like this tend to be overanalyzed to a point way beyond the creators thought -- Damon Lindelof was already guilty of this in LOST. it's like trying to pick apart a david lynch movie, some things are meant to be interpreted a number of ways or not at all.
That's why Lynch is one of my favorite writers/directors. To use Lost Highway as a perfect example, that film was panned for what critics felt was an aimless plot with no real meaning behind it. I enjoy being able to interpret Lost Highway in my own personal way. Lynch is intentionally vague and hits his audience with a barrage of irrational imagery that is loosely connected. He leaves it up to the viewer to solve the puzzle however they choose. Having said that, Lynch is a true auteur and he never gives too much away, if anything at all. Prometheus wasn't meant to be as surreal or puzzling as a Lynch film, but I think it still left a lot to be debated and that's part of the fun of cinema, for me at least.
I don't own any but BluRay is a great format. If Scott wants to collect all the shit on the cutting room floor and put it on a disc then that's fucking awesome. The theater format, on the other hand, is lame because the producers are really limited to around 2 hours and need to cut certain things to make it through the MPAA and to the market.
I have the ultra Blade Runner DVD suitcase that I still haven't plowed through.
got the 4 disc blu ray. I found everything pretty clear after the first view and nothing was really left uncovered however, I dug the deleted scene when they have dialogue with the engineer who was awakened. anyone got a 3d tv I can watch this on?
This doesn't look that much like a Alien queen when you look at it outside of the movie. 
