Saw the midnight showing last night, in IMAX 3D, and thoroughly enjoyed it. With the exception of the very last scene, I was completely content with the movie and it actually exceeded my expectations.
I am somewhat perplexed by the negative reactions I'm seeing all over the internet. What's with all the vitriol? Over and over, I keep reading accusations that anybody who enjoyed the movie must think they "get it" and are therefore smarter than everybody else? Seriously? One thing is for sure, whether you liked it or not, whether it met up with your expectations or not, it sure has sparked a lot of passionate discussion on the subject matter. So, let's discuss...
"Black goo" - It seems everybody wants to assume that all the black goo is the same stuff. People seem to be upset because they can't figure out "the rules" of the black goo. It seems to me that the engineer’s technology is based around genetic manipulation, and the medium often comes in the form of goo that is black. Surely it isn't all the same stuff. The black goo the engineer ingested at the beginning caused him to disintegrate and broke down his DNA, contributing that to the primordial ooze that eventually evolved into us. The black goo from the vial that David tricked Holloway into ingesting had a completely different effect, that may or may not be similar to the goo that turned the worms into the nasty serpents and Fifield into a mutant. My guess is that numerous "vases" might contain all sorts of differently engineered contents in similar black gooey mediums.
Fast growth of creatures – This seems to require no more suspension of disbelief than has ever been necessary for any of the Alien films. All the xenomorphs have grown dramatically in very short periods. Prior to chestburster stage, they could feed off their hosts, but once out of the host they still grow to huge size within hours without feeding. Why would this be nitpicked in Prometheus?
Space Jockey "suit" - Even the characters in the movie initially make the incorrect assumption that what they encountered was a being with an exoskeleton, and this was actually briefly stated as they examine the helmet. The suit is clearly bio-mechanical, and the hard armor-like parts are very bone-like. The helmet has cranial plates that are fused, much like any skull. I like that they bio-engineer their gear. I find this much more fascinating and creepy than if they just naturally looked like elephantine giants with exoskeletons. Looking at the shots with the un-helmeted living engineer, I couldn't tell where his suit ended and his original body began, yet we know from the naked engineer we see in the beginning that they aren't originally that way. It seems they bio-engineer their own bodies as well to some extent, but draw the line somewhere. About half-way up the neck, the bio-mechanoid suit fades away to their natural appearance. Vanity, maybe? Whatever it all is, I don't feel like the mysteries of the space jockey have been tread upon. At the same time, they seem both more human and even more alien than ever before.
Atmosphere issues – I don’t recall the exact details, but my recollection is that the atmosphere had toxic levels of CO2. It wasn’t without oxygen, and not entirely CO2, just too much CO2 to safely go without suits for more than a few minutes (was it 2 minutes?). That would be consistent with 5-10% CO2. Flamethrowers should work fine. The pressure was apparently fine. There was apparently some sort of CO2 scrubbers inside the pyramid, but I don’t think it is a big leap to think that the 10’ tall un-helmeted engineer would have had too much of a problem making it to the lifeboat from his wrecked ship.
Poor/stupid/unscientific character actions - There have been a plenty of these pointed out, and some might actually be just as dumb as they seem, but I don't think any of it is pointless. We see humans being VERY human, during incredible circumstances. They act irrationally. We see them motivated by fear, ego, and hubris. They (like many fans, it seems) make huge assumptions that end up being wrong. Super-trained by-the-book fearless experts who don’t make bad decisions would have made flat unbelievable characters that would not nearly have served the story as well. I love that tough-guy geologist Fifield completely loses his nerve upon sight of a decapitated alien corpse in a creepy pyramid on an alien planet. I love that biologist Millburn loses his objectivity when faced with seeing his first living alien life-form, and goes out Steve Irwin style. Of course Holloway gives up and starts drinking when he finds out the “gods” they came all this way to meet are all dead (and of course he assumes they’re all dead, why else would they leave their buddies corpses laying around for 2000 years…). Shaw shows up mostly naked, covered in blood, stapled together, after assaulting crew members, and old-man Weyland and his robot boy seem disinterested? That’s not a stupid mistake. That shows exactly where Weyland’s ugly human priorities are, and where Shaw and the rest of the crew stand in the big picture (crew expendable).
Suicide crashing Prometheus to stop the ship – What other alternative was there? They have no anti-ship weapons (why would they?). The only hope of survival is the lifeboat, but they must know that isn’t an option under the circumstances. It has life support, but didn’t seem to have any faster-than-light propulsion (if any propulsion at all, since it just ejected and crashed on the surface), and maybe 2 hypersleep chambers (the one that Vickers was in, and the other that Weyland was in). We saw the same scenario on the Nostromo. They knew they were doomed, and faced with the possibility that the engineer was going to destroy life on Earth, they decided to bravely go out like heroes instead of take their chances and go out like punks. Even Shaw was ready to give up (despite the lifeboat) until David offered up a way to get off the planet. Once everything went sideways with the living engineer, they all knew they were all doomed.
I love that they didn’t try to spell out all of this stuff, and I don’t think much of anything was pointless or careless. I don’t see bad writing at all. To quote Ernest Hemingway: “If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”
My hope is that Scott and Lindelof have a much bigger story going on, and they fed us just enough to get our attention and get us thinking and talking and emotional about it all. I can’t wait to see where this goes, and I’m really happy that it isn’t what any of us seemed to expect or imagine.
I agree that David is the central character. I like to think that David is more like the mythical Prometheus, rather than that engineer at the beginning of the movie. David steals the fire (the black goo) from the gods (the engineers), gives it to man (Holloway), and ends up getting dismembered for it, yet remains alive to continue suffering it for his arrogance as a head in a bag.
The alien at the very end did unsettle me. I didn’t care for the design of it. Seeing some of the concept art for it after the fact, I think they passed over better designs. I don’t dislike the concept, though, just the way it was executed. Even the xeno-looking thing on the wall in the pyramid is only suggestive of the original Alien by the basic shape and smooth elongated head. This thing was much less like the classic xenomorph, and didn’t even have a tail, back spines, or exoskeletal features (though at least one of the concepts at least had some back spines). The coloring and jaws gimmick weakened it. I certainly don’t get making the jump to seeing it as a baby queen. At most, it shows some evolutionary level of the familiar life cycle taking place, and shows the audience that there is still a survivor left on LV-223 for some evolution to possibly continue.
What can we speculate about any links to the original Alien xenomorph we all know and love? The mural in the pyramid did show what looked very much like the classic egg. That, and the other thing on the wall that looks a lot like an adult xenomorph shows that something like it has existed for at least 2000 years. Warning sign? Instructions?
The bio-mechanical nature of the engineers, and their “suits” intrigues me. If they genetically engineer the suits, and their under-suits seem to be part of them, do they biologically interface with the suits on a genetic level as well? Are the exoskeletal bone parts armor? Did the xenos we know have exoskeletal armor by design, or did they inherit that from an engineer wearing/interfaced with his suit? For better or for worse, that possibility gives some credence to the variation we see in the xenos from the other movies as they get another step removed from the Space Jockey in Alien.
Thank you, Sir Ridley Scott, for taking the mysteries I’ve loved wondering about for 30+ years and compounding them into newer ones. I haven’t looked forward to the possibility of sequels this much in a very long time, and I’m eager to go see Prometheus again soon.
