Saw it last night with the girlfriend. Was thoroughly entertained.
Saw it last night with the girlfriend. Was thoroughly entertained.
In one of the interviews Ridley mentioned it could be another planet as well.Kit Rae said:
Dialogue: Sir Ridley Scott Explains 'Prometheus,' Explores Our Past, and Teases Future 'Alien' Stories | Movie News | Movies.com
"Movies.com: That is our planet, right?
RS: No, it doesnt have to be. That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All hes doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself."
Sci-fi.benhs1898 said:
They're flying in a space ship to other worlds to encounter aliens.
... is erosion really a stretch in that context?
Suspension of disbelief?
And he is not contracting himself either, as it does not really matter what planet it is. As far as a story element, it is just saying, this is what the Engineers do, or did, on these planetsVivek said:
I don't think that was clear or necessarily true. When I saw them, I saw a military installation - a series of bunkers. The remote nature of them led me to think immediately, oh - ammo storage bunkers.Kit Rae said:
Anyone with military background knows you keep the heavy ordnance secluded from your personnel, in bunkers where they're going to be least harmful if there's an incident. Partially or completely buried, or enclosed in an armory that will prevent harm to your own forces.
Look at major air installations: MCAS Miramar, NAS North Island, Hickman AFB - the ordnance bunkers are neatly arranged in rows just like this, on some remote part of the installation, away from everything else, just in case. At any ordnance bunker, you're going to find posted signs warning of the specific types of danger. Hence, your handy pictograms on the walls. Those were present in the original ALIEN movie. Doesn't equate to items of worship. We really don't know the purpose of the giant head. Could have been a bomb casing itself, for all we know.
So this crew just happens to find the valley with the ammo bunkers, airfields, and hangar bays. Who's to say if they'd flown a bit farther and done a more complete survey of the planet, they may not have found other installations?
Back to worship.
In most examples of worship, there are steps or stages involved in ritual. Whether it involves steps of purification, cleansing, confession, adoration, sanctification, thanksgiving, supplication, sacrifice... usually there are multiple steps involved in ritual. You'd expect to see different buildings with different chambers with different purposes, not a series of identical buildings. That sort of building array is not consistent with any form of worship edifices I've ever studied in over a decade of post graduate theological research. The closest would be the Eqyptian pyramids, and those are all different sizes, in unidentical configurations, with apparently similar purposes but not a uniform construction pattern.
Back to another's point, this is an alien culture - so their form of worship wouldn't necessarily look anything like what we understand. It could be a series of temples of worship, or catacombs, or part of a cultural death ritual, or ... ? So yes - they could be worship temples, but given that this movie is written for humans with a certain human understanding of worship with lots of symbolism inherent, I tend to think the military outpost perspective is more accurate than the remote monastic worship center perspective.
Geezos cripes. He really is in love with himself and everyone he works with.Kit Rae said:
Agreed. Those few silos or bunkers were just a small part of the whole moon. Maybe they just touched down on the wrong side of the moon and that's why the space jockey got mad, 'cause why the hell were those stupid creations trespassing on their weapon's depot instead of going to the visitor's welcome center 42 kilometers west of there.JediG60racer said:
Keep in mind the Engineers had been watching humanity develop and knew exactly how they worshipped in all cultures. This "military installation" had a giant icon of the creators head in a central room with a painting on the ceiling like something out of a cathedral, relief sculptures on the wall of xenomorphs, and canisters of the black substance arranged around the head. There was also a bowl sitting on top what looked like an altar. All that stuff was there for a reason.JediG60racer said:
Or they are not even on the right moon as Lindeloff alluded to.Too Much Garlic said:
Speaking of which, as the Prometheus was flying in, the fry-guy said that 'nature doesn't make straight lines' or something like that pointing to the road. Well. It had to be a road to somewhere. It's not like they'd build a road out of the only installation to no point in particular. And when we saw the road, my first thought is that they looked similar to Nazca Lines and the Prometheus should pull up and take a higher look at the road system to see where everything goes.Too Much Garlic said:
Also, a big emerald in the center of a table? They paused on it a pretty long time on camera, you'd think it'd have been important somehow. Probably was in one of the other many versions of scripts this movie clearly went through.Kit Rae said:
Note the dots. Didn't want to quote everything Lindelof said.Kit Rae said:
Erosion is random. Building spaceships is designed, piloting a space ship is willful, intending to meet aliens is ... intentional.JediG60racer said:
I actually think Ridley said it could be Earth or not, that it didn't matter. I think it's clearly Earth and thought that was an odd thing to say, but it's in one of the interviews we have linked previously.Kit Rae said:
Not sure what your point was then? The "interview" was two guys emailing back and forth, having fun. Apparently you missed the jokesJeyl said:
Its interesting how we try to force the aliens thinking/plans into something we can comprehend or find a simile for here on earth. Wouldn't it be great, if for once a movie showed something truly alien. So alien that it was outside of our comprehension and had no comparison to what we humans do. But, with that being said: Why not have a temple loaded with the implements of death and the ships to carry them? The Mayan temples were all about death. Similarly the Pyramids were full of the dead sacrificed bodies of not so willing victims.
Can a movie let Aliens be truly alien and just present them as such? If only!
Considering they have the same DNA, they are not so alien in that repspect. They may have even guided mankind culturally, or attempted to do so, since they created life on earth and were apparently monitoring it and visiting the people throughout history. If the premise was that they expected humans to come to that moon eventually, and set it up for that purpose, it is not so alien to assign human interpretations to what they find there, because it was intended for them. If it was not for that purpose, and perhaps the humans did not even go to the correct place or even misinterpreted the "invitation", then there are other reasons for what they find, and it may be truly too alien for them to understand.
Damon Lindelof. He took the alien out of ALIEN.Kit Rae said:
I don't think Damon Lindelof knows anything about DNA anyway. It's practically magic to him based on his writing.Jeyl said:
What if mankind was just another weapon created by the space jockeys? Eventually we grow too powerful and beyond the control of the space jockeys and the only course of action is to destroy them.
Out of curiosity, why does everyone blame only Lindelhof for the flaws of the film? Ridley directed it, he made most of the major story decisions. John Spaihts wrote the first draft of the screenplay, Lindelhof didn't throw all that out.. most of what's in the film was there long before Lindelhof came on board. I'd wager it's a lot of the stuff that everyone's complaining about, too.
Excellent read, and a lot the discussion after it, to be honest, is more interesting that what we have been discussing here.alienscollection.com said:
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