Re: Paradise (Prometheus Sequel)
A special edition of the film (?) and DVD where it appears they just want to throw out more ideas to us like petrol onto the bonfires of debate and wait to see which one is the best liked. I wonder what will be so special (apart from the speculation) about this DVD. I thought the bluray documentaries were extremely comprehensive as it was.
Personally, the storyline I prefer is one where the Engineers are a subspecies that attempt to recreate their own planetary dominions against the edicts of their society. It certainly helps to explain why nothing else has bothered to look in on us for two thousand years since their deaths, why their base was so isolated, primitive and left abandoned until we arrived to investigate . Every time I watch the DVD I am struck by just how ordinary the “Engineers” seem to be (other than their size and strength). Its quite hard to differentiate them from the crew of the Prometheus in terms of behaviours and they seem restricted to be doing simple grunt work.
In fact the reactivated Engineer seems totally human in his reactions, no super brain at all.He is “panicked” into violent action when he witnesses scientifically advanced human beings have been able to achieve spaceflight, decode Engineer language and ship controls, but doing so through an advanced robotic intelligence, David.He tears his head immediately ,attacks and kill everyone else and sets out on the original mission to deliver that payload of ampules to change humanity into something not so “mankindish.” They look less like gods and more like huge work horse drones to me. Perhaps the idea was to allow mankind to multiply until they could be converted into “Engineers” who could then be led into a rebellion against their “Gods/ ruling species”. Perhaps the engineers themselves are merely made to look like human beings for a similar purpose ie we humanity will follow and worship them. After all, blindly following the leader does seem to be part of the human condition. After all, if a worm can become a giant snake, then a human being similarly enhanced (within the confines of its biology) to become an engineer.
What does an engineer evolve to be?
Remember the Engineers are given that description by Shaw and Holloway based on their thesis that several images of giant humanoid figures pointing to a specific planetary configuration suggests humankind was designed by them and we are being invited to visit them (when we can). Reach for the stars ,they are your destiny! Or it could be simply them saying, this is where we came from.
Take the initial opening scene of the engineer apparently “sacrificing” himself by a waterfall . I’ve played that sequence muted, no music to colour perception, and also with other soundtracks playing in the background (even parts of the original Alien score), and its surprising just how different that event feels with that backing. Try it and see.
Was his death a willing surrender, a sacrifice knowingly performed for the noble purposes of his race?
Or was it a “poisoned experimental chalice” where the substance within the cup had a far different outcome to the one expected on his physiology. Clearly nobody else wanted to find out ,they were off in their spaceship. Interestingly a very differently designed ship to the juggernauts. Fear of contamination? Or an “overlord ” species ship
Perhaps it was a “criminal” death sentence, where a rogue “engineer,” perhaps one of several now placed strategically around the planet, is forced to kill himself to right a terrible wrong they had perpetrated. While the list is not endless, I can come with half a dozen different explanations that similarly substantially change the premise behind the rest of the film.
And that same “multiple” reasoning can be applied to most of the other events through the film. Is the opening originally on Earth or another planet? Why do they need ampules as a delivery system of the gru to the human race when before it required only a single engineer to drink and then collapse into pieces to infect a whole ecosystem. You can just open question after question building on the differentiating answers.
This is the real reason I find Prometheus so frustrating. Its clear from the emphasis placed on the editing on some scenes and the complete removal of others that it seems to have been done intentionally to leave the first story in the trilogy much more open to redirection in the sequels, as Ridley said near time of release last year, even further away from Alien if they are allowed to.
Given all the post film flack that has been flying about what was written and what was changed and who is responsible I can see why finding a proper structure for the sequels is going to be a demanding task. Because no matter what they do now it will be at odds with the many theories constructed by the audience left in absenteeism of any definitive storyline from the first film. So imagine what this thread will be like if they get it horribly wrong. Then I guess we will be posting even more in this thread.
