Prometheus (Post-release)

Nwerke said:

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My expectations going in were so low that they could not fail to be exceeded - to steal your food analogy I expected to be given a piece of stale mouldy cheese and received a fresh, hot Big Mac instead. Not sure if that helps explain my pass mark for the film overall, but it may have something to do with it.

heh -an excellent way to approach life in general

Nwerke said:

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What did you think of my medical nutrients idea...does that seem feasible?

It's possible but between imagining a scenario where the facehugger is whistling away while casually checking cupboards for any grub and occams razor I'm inclined to see it as needing little suspension of belief in itself that this proto facehugger is a self-contained organism capable of adapting to an optimum form using only it's own genetic tools.
Facehuggers only ever exhibit an unswerving instinct to 'seed' the nearest viable organism -there doesn't seem to be any other kind of intelligence shown which is why I'm not so sure about it looking for and consuming medical supplies.
It's curious also whether there was a particular effect from whatever chemical Shaw 'sanitised' the freshly removed facehugger with.

I think we may be thinking this through far more than was intended, but there's a number of problems I've read that people have that are either explained on-screen or require no more closer scrutiny than any other well respected sci-fi movie, imo.

These are bio-mechanical creations... discussing it only from a biological standpoint doesn't seem to cut it. There's really no telling what the jockeys has spliced into the building blocks of these things.

THEORY # Four-hundred-and-Eight . . . I know another one ... but wait:

What if the Alien Engineers who left the message - created Man - and left the world in their flying saucer were killed off during a civil war? The victors of that war HATE mankind. Now there is a new order. ...

History of the Eternal War:

The engineers were a great race that explored the building blocks of life itself. They went searching amoung the star for answers, yet found the answers in the secret of the double helix that were within themselves all along. They learned the secret of life lay in secret of the DNA coding. Science gave them their answer. They had gained the knowledge of the gods. They could create or alter life itself. Like any sentient race - they have their own politics, beliefs, and religion. What if the Engineers split into two factions. Scientists vs Religious Zealots. Long ago the Scientists reached out across the universe and spread their SEED amoung compatible worlds. The sceintist so believed their prupose was to create life in the universe, they would turn their own bodies into the "spark of life" on virgin worlds. Their sacrifice become the SEED of an entire planet. They created MAN in their own image against the word of GOD. The religious Zealots would seek organic perfection and belief that GOD gave the Engineers the gift of knowledge to seek organic perfection. The scientists betrayed god by creating inferior races to worhsip them and their achievments. A civil war that spanned the universe between Science and religion left millions of worlds wastelands. The Religios faction wins the civil war crushing the heretics. The scientists are detroyed and their achievments turned into weapons. The Zealots forge a plan to cleanse the universe of the perverse spawn known as man. They will use the very technology used to create them. LV-223 becomes a military base. the seed ships become the harbringers of death. Life and Man in the universe will become ripe for the reaping and become the source of the new order. The perfect order. The perfect organism. The most powerful life force in the universe will use MANKIND as its food source. The perversion of man will become breeding grounds of the unltimate in Organic perfection as ordained by the gift of knowledge, passed down from the gods, to the engineers. They become the instruments of God and the method of Man's destruction. As they prepare to destroy the worlds of men in favor of the new Xenomorphic perfection, a lone Scientist remains and unleashes the seeds of Xenomorph destruction on the base. In a final act of sacrifice, an Engineer opens the gates of pandora and the black oil spills upon the holy grounds consuming the Religious Zealot/Engineers before they can launch. Once all in the base have been infected or killed, the weapon of mass destruction goes dormant waiting for thousands of years to be discovered once more. They have been created to stand the test of the ages. They give the gift of death to all who find them. They create new life out of that death. That life has but one purpose - kill every other living creature not themselves. They are unmatched in organic perfection and violence. There will be one God and one race. Once and Engineer who escaped the outbreak awakes from his sleep. he find himself surrounded with the inferior race of man. He finds himself alone in his task given to him by God. He must travel to their homeworld and undo what the blasphemors had done. They planted a BAD seed and wanted to be worshiped as Gods. He will set the world to right. He will present them the gift of death. He will show them their true place in the universe.

The Great Stone Face of Man - is the target of their labors.

The Great murals tell the story of the war - and of the creature God gave the engineers to SEED the Universe.

The capsules react in the presence of MEN.

The Great Holographic display shows the unholy release of the black death before they could leave. Betrayed by one of their own. Death was their fate.

The very life cycle of the Xenomorphs destroy the weak and make the strong - they make perfection from imperfection. (Ash said the ALIEN was the perfect organism - matched only by its ferosity.)

The Engineers hate us for what we are - inferior - imperfect - against the nature of God. God is Strong. God is Perfect. Only the strong prevail. Mankind is weak, frail, mortal.

The End of Mankind is their penence for the blasphemy of their creation of mankind in their own image.

Once the sleeper was awakened - their worst fear had been realized - Man has left his ancestral home and crossed the stars to contaminate the galaxy. He had one chance to launch one ship and stop the plague of Man from Spreading by destroying their homeworld. One engineer could not pilot the ship and defend it at the same time. Surely they alien ship had weapons. He could not target and fire before the Prometheus rammed them. He tried to escape with his cargo of death - but crashed back onto the planet. Before trying a second time, he had to make sure all the humans were dead first. Then try with a second ship. If no one made it off the planet - all the others must be dead. He might just be alone. He could not have known the humans had begun the life cycle of a Xenomorph when he tried to kill the girl. He was not preapred for the encounter with the face hugger. Maybe they engineers should have kept a couple of guns around. Might have come in handy.

Time had changed the engineers and their purpose. The humans had followed a message left by representatives of a scientific faction of their race now long dead. The engineers gave up science and intrumentality to embrace organic purity - in their machines, in their purpose, even in their clothing.

What do you think?

Oh and the final ANSWER to the Universe and everything is . . . 42

Gordon

blipper said:

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For all we know it is the same mass as when it was removed from Shaw's C-section. The analogy to expanding foam would still hold true and suggest the body of the face hugger is 'muscle' that's sponge like in structure but toughened in density somewhat by dna instruction.

You don't even need to invent a reason to justify its mass being the same. The laws of physics do not prohibit creating mass from nothing. That's general theory of the Big Bang. Of course that does not state there was nothing there BEFORE. Matter can be formed from energy. Mass can also appear out of nothing with it’s gravitational field balancing it out, and the total energy being zero. A particle can literally pop into existence but it has to borrow energy from that system.

The fact is, physicists are not even entirely sure what mass is and where it comes from, so as a sci-fi concept, I have no problem with the Alien doing what it does. It is a "perfect organism" and I like the fact that it can do things our minimal understanding of physics can quite explain.

Or they may have had a mini fridge inside that room and he snacked away for a few hours

Harada357 said:

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THEORY # Four-hundred-and-Eight . . . I know another one ...

It would seem to fit the evidence, so it's a valid theory IMO.

Well, Gordon, as a backstory quite a lot of it seems to fit. When I first saw the trailers I thought that religion might serve as a motivator for the aliens doing what it appeared that they were.

Given the whole petroglyph thing at the beginning for a reason to be out there, and the massive misinterpretation trope that sparks off so many stories, I'd thought it might turn out to be something along the lines of "If you can read this we'd like you to come out and get your species killed. Kthxbai."

blipper said:

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heh -an excellent way to approach life in general
I think we may be thinking this through far more than was intended, but there's a number of problems I've read that people have that are either explained on-screen or require no more closer scrutiny than any other well respected sci-fi movie, imo.

Yes. Of all the issues I have, this is not one of them. I just watched Alien and the chestburster goes from cute critter size to full size with no (onscreen) consumption of anything. In 33 years I never thought it snacked on anything. It's just part of their physiology. I think Ash has a line (I'm sure that someone else can find it) about the outer cells sloughing off and replacing themselves with silica...or something.

Now, leaving a hostile organism in Prometheus without telling anyone about it...ugh. It's just inexcusable, although I'm sure I'm about to read a few. :-)

letmebestormy said:

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Now, leaving a hostile organism in Prometheus without telling anyone about it...ugh.

Damn right. It's a sackable offence. At least a written warning.

Harada357 said:

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What if the Alien Engineers who left the message - created Man - and left the world in their flying saucer were killed off during a civil war? The victors of that war HATE mankind. Now there is a new order. ...

Aw man... my entire post was nuked when your post was merged with this one.

Anyway... trying to recall my thoughts from before.

Most of what you said made perfect sense. In many movies an alien race is often depicted with a sort of hive mind - they all want the same thing and work for the same thing. They are rarely at odds with each other or at war with each other.

Also, in many rituals it is required to consume a liquid to become more than you are. A rite of passage. Like in ancient times where you had to stick your hand down a vase and hope you didn't pick one of the ones holding a deadly cobra inside, but picking the one that was empty. Or something.

The chamber was clearly ritual in nature, with various threats and perhaps prices and it was up to those summoned forth to pick wisely - several bringing death and one bringing light. Like the grail room at the end of Raiders. Only the right choice will bring you the answer/goal you seek.

Definitely interesting about the factions of jockeys and their motivations. One seeking to create and another finding that creation to be abominations and an affront to God or whatever they worship and seeks to cleanse it out of existence.

There really shouldn't be just one answer to the questions: "why were we created" and "why did they seek to destroy us". If there really are two or more factions... then there are multiple answers... also... if there are two factions at war with each other - the scientists and the religious zealots... then what if those back on the homeworld are not part of those groups, but just want to live in peace, but are constantly in the middle of the other two minority factions' strife.

Jedi2016 said:

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The scene with Janek and Shaw talking is, I think, a pickup/reshoot, done as a result of moving the scene and changing it around slightly. I think the scene would have been more interesting had they left it in its original place because, like you said, it actually involved some of the main characters, rather than happening more or less "off screen" as far as the main characters are concerned.

I made a post earlier in this forum.... well, I think it was this forum since there are like three Prometheus articles in the Entertainment and Movie Forum alone. Anyways, if you watch the original teaser trailer for the film, you will see some shots of the original placement of the zombie scene.

- One shows the two astronauts coming into the hanger shooting at the zombie. If you look behind them, you can see Shaw and Weyland complete with his robotic space suit.

- The next two shots show Shaw in the driver's seat of the eight wheeled rover, throttling it in reverse while still in the hanger. So she technically was the one to kill the zombie.

I guess nobody in the editing room thought this scene would work because, well, they just suffered heavy casualties from one of their own who mutated thanks to a substance that the engineers supposedly created. Why would they decide to go back to the temple after seeing such atrocities? Still, moving it earlier doesn't really fix the problem anyways because someone should have pointed it out.

"The Engineers from 2000 years ago have what appears to be a biomechanoid skin. It appears to be infused with their flesh from the neck on down. Nothing is explained in the film, but the Engineer, or the Engineers creator shown in the mural in the temple has his arm around something biomechanoid looking. The shape is not very defined, but I can see that it is crouching, knees bend, head down."

The Art of Prometheus explains this second skin as the inner skin of the suit fused with the Engineer, including biomechnaical hose connections and ports, and the exoskeleton (Jockey) is the outer suit. So the Engineers actually biomechanically fuse with the suit, or the hypersleep pods.

Kit Rae said:

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"The Engineers from 2000 years ago have what appears to be a biomechanoid skin. It appears to be infused with their flesh from the neck on down. Nothing is explained in the film, but the Engineer, or the Engineers creator shown in the mural in the temple has his arm around something biomechanoid looking. The shape is not very defined, but I can see that it is crouching, knees bend, head down."

The Art of Prometheus explains this second skin as the inner skin of the suit fused with the Engineer, including biomechnaical hose connections and ports, and the exoskeleton (Jockey) is the outer suit. So the Engineers actually biomechanically fuse with the suit, or the hypersleep pods.

So they probably don't practice good hygiene... EEWWW

Kit Rae said:

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This implies the forms of the alien we know from Alien, existed at this time, 2000 years ago, and were worshiped.

....those instinct driven, mouth raping, head bashing bugs were worshipped? Why? Did the engineers have some serious mental issues like Golic? Shoot. Another bloody Alien3 reference.

Shoot.... Shoot. Dangit. SHOOT. This is why we're in trouble to begin with. Dangit.

Several religions worship a harbinger of death and destruction. Since it is described as a perfect creation it certainly has special meaning. It is the physical manifestation of death and it is beautiful.

Also... we've only seen a few cycles of their evolvement. What we saw in Alien was only about a day old... who knows what it could have evolved to. It's practically a baby.

For the RECORD: I love the film. I think when we look back in ten years - it will have a cult following and become a Ridley Scott Classic.

I understand everyone want something different.

I wanted the Prometheus crew to be well armed - with an iconic array of weapons. - The ALIENS Pulse Rifle is a prop ICON. Why didn't Ridley and the Art Department give us something besides a Stock Benelli and a stock expensive target pistol. (Still want to collect the pistol)

I wanted more time answering questions.

I wanted ... I wanted .... but Ridley Scott delivered a beautiful film that has people talking. The extended cut and deleted scenes will add more.

The setup for ALIEN is AWESOME. It has story, it has depth, it has visuals, and it has unanswered questions .... i.e. we are still talking about it. Mission accomplished. Thank you Ridley Scott.

Gordon

Kit Rae said:

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You can go overboard in inventing a scenario and details for this, but going strictly by what is presented in the film, there is a somewhat clear cut layout of who the Engineers are and why they did what they did. Lets just go strictly by what is presented in the film.

Ages ago the Engineers seeded the Earth with the building blocks of life by breaking down their own DNA, creating the building blocks for complex life. Life developed from this, including mankind, who share the same DNA as the Engineers.

The Engineers visited Earth many times, and humans illustrated them pointing to group of stars in the sky, over and over throughout history. By the dates of these artifacts in the film, we know they visited Earth within the time frame of 35020 BCE to 680 CE. Maybe earlier, maybe later.

Many of these images indicate humans worshipped the Engineers gods, and the Engineers most likely posed themselves as those beings. The things they were capable of probably appeared god-like. They likely were responsible for the origin all early deities that mankind worshipped, including Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Mayan gods. This is implied in the art the film makers chose to use as the artifacts.

Humans later discover these ancient pieces of art all have the same star configuration and surmise that it may be an invitation to meet our makers. In 2073 they discover where this configuration of stars is located in space, and determine the Engineers are likely from a moon, LV-223, orbiting a planet around one of these stars. Neither the premise they put forth that this is an "invitation", and the probable location they have chosen due to it being Earth like, may be accurate.

The Prometheus arrives at LV-223 in 2093. The five dome shaped buildings discovered on LV-233 with skulls carved on the tops appear to contain temples, meant for worship. The main chamber appears to be a sanctuary, with a giant Engineer head as the focal point, painted mural on the ceiling depicting an Engineer with his arm around a biomechanoid creature (that we have not seen before). The exact meanings are not clarified in the film.

There is also a sculpted mural depicting a biomechanoid being resembling the xenomorph we all know very well, as a focal point in the temple. The entire life cylce of the alien we know from Alien is also depicted. There is an altar with a bowl on top in front of the altar. The exact meaning of this is not clarified in the film, but one would assume this was an altar meant for worship.

The large head in the sanctuary room may be that of the Engineer's creator, NOT an Engineer. The head sculpture includes rib-like features not found in the Engineers features, along with writing on the cheeks. It also may very well be a head of the Engineer, just stylized. The ceiling mural may imply the biomechanoid creature is a creation of the Engineers, or this may be the Engineer's creator that is illustrated, hand around another of its creations. The temple is full of ampules of a black DNA altering substance. Overall, the intention appears that this room was meant as a place of worship. The exact meanings are not clarified in the film.

The skulls on top of the domes perhaps the domes actually served another purpose, and this image was used to warn others that this was a dangerous place. The substance in the ampules appears was intended to activate in the worshipper's presence, but to what end? It is all very alien, and not clarified in the film.

The Engineer ships in the hangars in front of the domes are full of these stacked ampules, in various sizes. From a human perspective these are weapons (as the Prometheus crew surmises in the film), and the ships that contain them are ships of death. There are multiple hangars around the temples, indicating a whole fleet of these carrier ships are present.

The ampules were possibly manufactured in another section of these domes. The domes may simply be factories for the mass production of this substance, and the ship hangers are there for loading this cargo for transport. This place may be nothing more than a weapons depot, and the crew of the Prometheus comes to this conclusion in the film.

2000 years ago mankind was at the height of civilization, and we were doing some very awful things in the Roman Empire, including the killing of Christ, then later Christ was worshipped as the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. The Engineers visited Earth both before and after this event.

For some reason, around 2000 years ago, the Engineers decided to take the black DNA altering substance back to Earth and destroy (or remake) mankind. In the process, the black substance was accidentally, or was intentionally released, infected the Engineers in the temple, killing most. Over the following 2000 years the temples were eroded and worn down, in disrepair, indicating that no Engineers have returned LV233 since the incident. This makes sense if the whole area was considered a biohazard after the outbreak and abandoned.

The 2000 year old Engineer in the ship is awakened. He sees this group of humans before him, a creation of his own kind. He then finds the one who speaks to him in one of the ancient earth languages is not one of his creations, but an artificial being made by his creations. He destroys it and, knowingly or unknowingly, kills the man responsible for its creation, then attempts to destroy the other humans.

He is clearly disgusted or angered with them about something, and powers up the ship to go to Earth and complete the Engineers mission to destroy mankind, according to David. The question still remains, why do they want to now destroy what they created?

This is where you have to examine the Christian symbolism presented in the film. There is too much of it to ignore, and no, it does not mean Jesus was one of them. It does not mean other religions may not have contributed to the cause either, but Christianity is the only one presented in the film.

Symbolism - The Prometheus arrives on LV-233 two days before Christmas, Shaw's creature is removed from her abdomen on Christmas Day, and she leaves LV-223 on New Years Day. This totals seven days. The captain playing "Come all ye faithfull" on the squeezbox, Shaw's cross, the story elements of faith presented in the film, and several others.

The Christian references are there to clue you in to Christ as a catalyst for the Engineers decision to destroy (or remake) mankind. Seeing as how the Engineers are more into using rather hellish methods of creation as we see in the black substances, they do not seem to be the benevolent or kind beings in any way that humanity would recognize, very much the opposite of anything Christ like.

Considering that they continued to visit the Earth upwards of 600 years after Christ's death, long enough to witness Christ being declared the savior of mankind and the worship of him as the son of God, this seems the more likely reason they were en route to destroy mankind, or possibly start over. The Engineers created man, and man worshipped them as gods. Mankind had now stopped worshipping the Engineers as Gods in favor of another.

There can be other theories, but this is the only reason I can find presented by the evidence in the film for the Engineers to want to destroy mankind 2000 years ago.

So maybe they are just dicks? Sometimes it's like that. LOL
Maybe the squid mom and David will get to "explain" that to them.

Prometheus Cinefex Scans - AvPGalaxy

CessnaDriver said:

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So maybe they are just dicks? Sometimes it's like that. LOL
Maybe the squid mom and David will get to "explain" that to them.

By "explain", do you mean with a cargo of of alien black goo ampules delivered right to the home world, James Cameron style.

Yes I want to see that...err, no I don't

One odd thought occurred to me:

1) Since it's reasonable to assume that the Engineers held themselves to be some sort of ideal, whether physical, intellectual, genetic, what have you, and...

2) since it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe that the Engineers' sense of superiority would lead them to want to be the only sentient species, period, and...

3) since, the Engineers having created life on Earth, of which humans rose to be the dominant species, one could argue that Engineer DNA was "programming" earth life to lead to the development of humanity (rather than sentient lizards, or bugs, or dolphins,) then...

4) I would speculate that the entire program to seed Engineer-like life across the galaxy was simply to ensure that no other species developed that could threaten the Engineers. If the developing humans showed promise, they'd be welcomed as proto-Engineers. If they turned out not to be living up to their potential, they'd be subjected to the goo (and the xenomorphs, which may be connected.)

Not taking Scott's comments into account, we don't know that 2000 years ago, Earth's humans fell short of the Engineers' standards to the point of meriting destruction. After all, they seem to have been breeding humans across the galaxy. If they were gearing up to destroy a planet, it could have been any of them.

It could be that the Engineer would have welcomed the expedition had it not been for David, a different "species" created by the test subjects of Sol III. If not stopped, the androids could easily go the route of the Cylons, Terminators, Agents Smith, etc., and become not only a threat to the Engineers, but a threat that wouldn't be vulnerable to their genetic weaponry.

Just a thought.

David was certainly something they couldn't control. And the mission to destroy Earth was related by David... so, was he telling it straight or was that what he wanted the humans to believe because that's what he wanted? Did he spur the jockey on to do that, which prompted the jockey to snap and basically go on David's proposed mission?

A translation of what David said would certainly clear up several things.

SmilingOtter said:

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2) since it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe that the Engineers' sense of superiority would lead them to want to be the only sentient species, period, and...

Except nothing in the film indicates this. What is in the film implies they create sentient beings and visit them throughout their development as a species, and are worshipped by them. If they want to be the only sentient beings, they would not create other sentient beings.

SmilingOtter said:

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Not taking Scott's comments into account, we don't know that 2000 years ago, Earth's humans fell short of the Engineers' standards to the point of meriting destruction. After all, they seem to have been breeding humans across the galaxy. If they were gearing up to destroy a planet, it could have been any of them.

The information in the film saying that they were going back to Earth indicates only comes from David, but the the visuals we see in the holograph of Earth back it up, and there is nothing indicating David would lie about it. His motives in the film are clear, and that would not benefit him or Weyland.

I also think if you are going to go outside what is shown in the film, then I think you do have to listen to what Ridley, Spaiths, and Lindeloff have said, as they were the storytellers. Rid and Damon have said they were going back to Earth. Damon has said we don't know if they were really going to destroy mankind, but everything Ridley has said indicates they were.

SmilingOtter said:

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It could be that the Engineer would have welcomed the expedition had it not been for David, a different "species" created by the test subjects of Sol III. If not stopped, the androids could easily go the route of the Cylons, Terminators, Agents Smith, etc., and become not only a threat to the Engineers, but a threat that wouldn't be vulnerable to their genetic weaponry.

David being one of the things that set the Engineer can definitely be interpreted from the film. Nothing happens until he puts his hand on David's head. Seems most people are in agreement on that point.

Nothing in the film clearly indicates this - but we can assume the Engineer has telepathic abilities, could sense brain waves, or something in his biomechanoid skin may have allowed him to sense David was is a flesh and blood creature - but it is interesting he first put a hand on David's head.

Or, if David did say something that was not what Weyland wanted him to, and it would have not fared well for the humans, the Engineer may have sensed that too, made him even more PO'd than humans had made artificial humans that lie - then off with his head.