Prometheus (Post-release)

I felt like that scene happened to fast!

If Ridley's deleted scenes are anything like what happened with Kingdom of Heaven then we can expect a very different story with the director's cut.

In one of the Scott interviews from the past week he said the cuts to Kingdom of heaven were a mistake on his part. I agree. I though the shorter version was awful. The long version is a masterpiece.

He also made it clear that the release version of Prometheus was his "directors" cut, but there may be 20 minutes of added footage for an extended cut in the BR/DVD disk, in addition to the 30 minutes of deleted scenes. He discussed these scenes a bit and it sounded like they were trims made more for the films pacing than anything.
 
Hilarious interview with Damon.
'Prometheus' Secrets Spilled By Co-Writer Damon Lindelof - Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV.com

Here are a few interesting bits.

"David's dialogue with the Engineer has an English translation, but Ridley felt very strongly about not subtitling it. I spoke at length about this on my DVD commentary. "

"Vickers. Yes, she does look like David. Yes, this was intentional. What better way to **** off your daughter than to build the male equivalent of her? But enough about daddy issues (seriously, Lindelof, we get it!), allow me to answer your question. Is she a robot?

She is not.

But did Vickers somehow survive being smushed by the gigantic rolling horseshoe that was the derelict ship? Could her scantily-clad push-up training have saved her in that final moment of cru****ude? And more importantly, WHY DIDN'T SHE JUST RUN ZIG-ZAGGY OR SIDEWAYS TO AVOID IT?!? I don't have the answers to these questions, Josh. I'm just the writer."

"David was chatting with someone in cryo-sleep via headset that we can safely assume is Weyland. If I were a betting man, I'd say something happened in that conversation that very specifically directed David to spike Holloway's champagne. "

"Did you and Ridley and Jon discuss who created the Engineers?
Yes. But the more fascinating question is this: Do the Engineers KNOW who created them?"

"Elizabeth Shaw's burning question, i.e. why did our creators turn on us? Yes. There is an answer. One that is hinted at within the goalposts of "Prometheus." I'll bet if I asked you to take a guess you wouldn't be far off."
 
And more interesting comments form Damon here. He hits the nail on the head of a key point me and my friends discussed after the film, and has been brought up in this thread, regarding this as a weapons installation, and did Prometheus even go to the right place to begin with?

The Secrets of Prometheus with Damon Lindelof - IGN

Highlights:
"Let’s get specific then – in your opinion, do these aliens want us to visit them?

Lindelof: That’s an excellent question and one that I’m not going to answer. But I will say that there’s something fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an invitation. You look at a cave wall, there’s somebody pointing at some distant planets, and one interpretation is “This is where we come from” another is “We want you to come here.” Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that’s interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon the land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the right place? And how close are they to the place that these aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just extrapolating “This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life.” So there’s a lot of guesswork. There’s a small line in the movie where David and Holloway are talking about David’s deconstruction of the language based on Holloway’s thesis, and he says “If your thesis is correct” and Holloway says “If it’s correct?” and David says “That’s why they call it a thesis Doctor.” And the reason we threw that in there is that we’re dealing with a highly hypothetical area in terms of who these beings are, what, if any invitation they issued, and who is responsible for making those cave paintings. And did something happen in between when those cave paintings were made - tens of thousands of years ago - and our arrival now, in 2093, 2,000 years after these things have perished. Did something happen in the intermediate period that we should be thinking about?"

"I think that Proemtheus wanted to have two children. One child grows up to be Alien, the other child grows up to become this other mysterious force where we’re heading off in a different direction and contemplating why it is our creators wanted to destroy us. This is a fundamentally interesting question looked at on a theological level, but also on a sci-fi level as well. In constructing those questions, Ridley wanted to know what the answers were as well, and we talked about those at great length, and then he determined what it was he wanted to put in the movie. I think that we had a very defined idea of why the Engineers put those paintings on cave walls, and why it is that they loaded ships full of death, as Shaw puts it at the end of the movie. So those answers are not definitively presented in Prometheus, though if you look through all the materials, I think that the evidence is all there to form a very informed opinion as to what happened"
 
After thinking about the plot line some more I am beginning to believe more and more that the Engineers create life to sacrifice it. Sort of an interstellar Mayan Cult. As we see in the first part of the movie the Engineer sacrifices himself in a ritualistic manner to create life. When the Earth is full up they are ready for the "knife" so to speak. Every aspect of the Engineers ships, temple, tools etc has a very ritualistic appearance. The live Engineer is outraged at the end because the "sacrifice" has defiled the ritual and immediately sets about to complete it by seeding Earth with the end game. The "other ships" had a similar mission but with other worlds/lifeforms hence the different genetic disposal method/alien type....... Or not.
 
Huh. I watched the original teaser trailer again and found something interesting.

Remember the scene when that one scientist who's face melted by the cobra/worm's acid came back and assaulted the crew? Well, if you watch the teaser again, you'll notice that Shaw is at the controls of the big eight wheeled land rover and is throwing it in reverse. And the shot of the two guys shooting at the mutated scientist? You can see Shaw and Weyland (in his supportive suit) behind them!

No wonder the scene felt so out of place. It was supposed to happen much later with the main characters involved! What the heck Scott?

Further proof that this movie was mutilated by rewrites and no one knew what the **** the plot was supposed to be. At this point I'm at wanted $5 of my $7.50 back from that movie.
 
Huh. I watched the original teaser trailer again and found something interesting.

Remember the scene when that one scientist who's face melted by the cobra/worm's acid came back and assaulted the crew? Well, if you watch the teaser again, you'll notice that Shaw is at the controls of the big eight wheeled land rover and is throwing it in reverse. And the shot of the two guys shooting at the mutated scientist? You can see Shaw and Weyland (in his supportive suit) behind them!

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No wonder the scene felt so out of place. It was supposed to happen much later with the main characters involved! What the heck Scott?

:facepalm:lol I totally forgot about these shots, but, it was on my mind that Weyland wasn't around for the fire fight action scene on the ship and how every differently it was shown in the film.
 
I am no fully convinced that the planet the Engineers were on in the beginning of the movie is Earth. Yeah, on one level it makes sense, but it may be somewhere else. Look at how many ships they had and imagine how much of the black good was on each one. I'm sure that one ship would be enough to take out a planet like Earth. Especially considering how much just one small drop did to Holloway. Imagine a large canister dropped into each major clean water supply on Earth. The Engineers must have a large number of "playground/experimental" planets at their disposal.
 
If you are not convinced it was Earth by what was presented in the film (I was), then consider that both Damon and Ridley have both said that is Earth in interviews.
 
If you are not convinced it was Earth by what was presented in the film (I was), then consider that both Damon and Ridley have both said that is Earth in interviews.
:facepalm

I apologize, I didn't read/listen/watch the interviews. Feel free to smack me upside the head.:$
 
If you are not convinced it was Earth by what was presented in the film (I was), then consider that both Damon and Ridley have both said that is Earth in interviews.
In one of the interviews Ridley mentioned it could be another planet as well.

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 doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. 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."
 
In one of the interviews Ridley mentioned it could be another planet as well.

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 doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. 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."

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 planets
 
The five buildings on LV233 with the heads carved on the tops were clearly temples, meant for worship.

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.

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.
 
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?
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.
 
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.

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.

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.
Or they are not even on the right moon as Lindeloff alluded to.
 
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.

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.
 
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