Ridley Scott's "Prometheus"

[Magusigne]

Spoiler

I took it as him experimenting to see what the stuff does because his mission was to help weyland extend his life

Spoiler

He also gave the scientist a way out too. He asked him what he would do to meet his maker..when he replied "anything"..boom

 

[KaOTiK]

Can anyone explain why the

Spoiler

robot poisoned the male scientist?

I couldn't quite understand why he did that.

Spoiler

Probably because Weyland told him too test out the black ooze on someone, after David opened the vase with the ooze, he went to talk to Weyland and that was when Theron confronted him demanding David tell her what Weyland said, of course he doesn't but tells Theron he said to try harder.

 

[Aikouka]

A movie that intentionally has themes of man's hubris, self-sacrifice, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and the like aspires to be more than a popcorn flick. We as the audience can ignore this and watch all the pretty lights buzz about the screen as if it were a popcorn flick, but that is reducing this to something lesser than it wants to be. It also makes it a better film because reducing out the "science fiction" aspects means throwing out the garbage present in the script. So, yeah, we like it as a popcorn flick, but no, it was not really meant to be such.

Ehh I don't think the presence of those themes necessarily insinuates anything about the movie itself. In fact, you can probably find a majority of those in this movie's biggest hit, The Avengers, which I would certainly call a popcorn flick.

I think I know what the problem is with your post. Let me suggest a slight change:

So, yeah, we like it as a popcorn flick, but no, it was we did not really really meant expect it to be such.

Do you think it's apt to say that Scott pulled a "Reverse John Carter"? John Carter made everyone disinterested because it failed to present decent trailers, but the movie itself wasn't too bad. Prometheus kind of did the exact opposite.

EDIT:

Spoiler

He also gave the scientist a way out too. He asked him what he would do to meet his maker..when he replied "anything"..boom

Yeah. If you watch the scene closely, you'll see that when David grabs the glass, he specifically avoids placing that finger inside the glass until the part that Magusigne mentions.

 

[torpid]

It seems pretty clear to me from the interviews with Scott that he did intend for the movie to be a deep one with a lot to say about humanity. I just think he failed.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enzaao300M0&feature=related

 

[Ichinisan]

Can anyone explain why the

Spoiler

robot poisoned the male scientist?

I couldn't quite understand why he did that.

David

Spoiler

put on the visor thing to talk to Weyland while Weyland was still in a sleeping pod and had not revealed himself to the Prometheus crew. Only David and Vickers knew Weyland was aboard. Weyland told David to test the black ooze on the male scientist to find out if it's what he was looking for (a way to extend his life).

 

[Via]

David

Spoiler

put on the visor thing to talk to Weyland while Weyland was still in a sleeping pod and had not revealed himself to the Prometheus crew. Only David and Vickers knew Weyland was aboard. Weyland told David to test the black ooze on the male scientist to find out if it's what he was looking for (a way to extend his life).

Was that made clear in the actual movie, or is that your hypothesis? Just curious; I could have missed it.

 

[Nemesis13]

i saw the movie for the second time lat night how did i miss this

 

[BladeVenom]

Was that made clear in the actual movie, or is that your hypothesis? Just curious; I could have missed it.

That's just his hypothesis. David said Weyland told him to "Try harder."

 

[Aikouka]

What seemed odd about that scene is that David specifically infects the scientist after he ascertains his deep conviction to trying to answer the question "Why (they created humans)?". However, infecting him really only answers the question "How (they create life)?" Based on the prior scene with David examining the ooze, he seems to understand what it is capable of.

What would the scientist have become anyway? It appears that it would have been something relating to a Xenomorph based on how having sex with Rapace's character formed a Cthulhu-wannabe Facehugger. I would guess that Fifield, even though he was infected a different way (and that black ooze had acidic properties akin to the Alien's acidic blood), essentially became the same thing. He only seemed to gain superhuman strength, but still had a fairly humanoid form.

Ultimately, I'm not even sure that there are answers to these questions, because they may have just been plot devices to further the story.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Let no man sully the name of Noomi Rapace.

Why? She's terrible.

 

[kage69]

That Lost guy needs to be drug out into the street and have both his hands broke.

This.


Saw it Saturday, and am still stewing over what a let down it was. The last 20min of that movie made me want to slap Ridley Scott, I expect better from him.

The opening scene with the Engineer killing himself with a chem weapon smoothie was also curious, wtf was that scene for?

 

[lokiju]

When the advanced surgery machine is no more advanced than a toy crane machine... Whoops, alien slipped out, put in another quarter and try again

Heh, having just the day prior to seeing this won a Curious George that my son LOVES, I couldn't help but think of it as a claw toy machine when I saw it.

The one thing that REALLY struck me was that we have/had two robots on Mars for YEARS in real freaking life. One of them is done for but the other is STILL going to this day exploring. It's truly an incredible act of engineering and it's not scifi.

Yet in this future they decide to spend a TRILLION dollars on a voyage using people that DON'T FREAKING KNOW why or what they're even there for and they can't be bothered to send out some exploration robots first to make sure shit is copacetic? What in the bloody fuck?!?!?


If anyone went to the timeline url that was referenced after the credits of the movie and actually read through it all, it paints the clear picture that Weyland is off the charts brilliant, having a dozen patents to his name by the age of 14. They have the mock TED talk by him, a somewhat well fleshed out site thats supposed to fill in some blanks and connect some dots while making it clear how brilliant he is/was.

Yet he blunks down a trillion dollars and walks right up to a just awoken alien creature after seeing all the other crazy shit happening on the planet that's killing mindless others left and right?

Beyond that, the next thing that bugs the shit out of me is WTF was the point of Vickers? She she was hot in her outfit but was there a point? She was a bitch mostly other than banging the captian and then calls Weyland "father" but he never said and the timeline never said he had a daughter.

Then David calls Vickers "Mum". WTF is that about?

Is she or is she not a robot.

I have to assume not cause I sure as shit hope a robot would of calculated to step a few feet to the right or left to avoid being crushed to death...

Lastly, why did they cast a young person to play a role where he's ONLY shown as being young in the actual movie? Sure they had filler video on the website where he's shown as how the actor actually looks but why in the hell make the actual movie use a younger actor that is then in excessive makeup that is so clearly not a genuine old person. I just don't get this unless there is an intention to use him in the next movie as his younger self. Then again even the writer jerk-face (I cringed when the movie started and I saw his dipshit name as a writer for this) from Lost Lindelof said basically nothings figured out about a "next" movie and it all hinged on if this one did well or not. Only upside to that Wiki quote is he said he'd likely NOT being a writer for a sequel. One can hope! I realize Joss Whedon can't write everything worthwhile in the world, but I can't help but wonder how much better this movie could of been had he been the writer.

The sucky part is Whedon actually DID write a Aliens script for Aliens 5 that would of taken place on earth but it never happened.

It might sound like I hated the movie, which is not the case at all. I actually was thoroughly entertained and would LOVE to see another one but given time to analyze after the fact I keep coming up with gripes like the above, but that doesn't mean I don't like the movie. It was enough to even get me to start re-watching Alien last night and was blown away to see the same damn alien ship and the Engineer/Jockey in the very first movie made all those years ago. Totally forgot about all that since it's been so long since I've seen it.

 

[lokiju]

i saw the movie for the second time lat night how did i miss this

Well this will just blow your mind then!

Windows 7 is STILL in use that far in the future!!?!??! Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lokiju]

The opening scene with the Engineer killing himself with a chem weapon smoothie was also curious, wtf was that scene for?

Was to show the Engineers creating life on "a" planet. Scott in an interview said it could be any planet, not just earth. But that was the intention, to create life on a planet that had none.

 

[kage69]

Was to show the Engineers creating life on "a" planet. Scott in an interview said it could be any planet, not just earth. But that was the intention, to create life on a planet that had none.

I guess I'm missing how an alien drinking a black liquid and quickly dying a painful, gruesome death while he tumbles into a river represents aliens creating life on any barren planet.

 

[Ns1]

IMAX 3D showing tomorrow, reserved seating dead center. can't wait =D

 

[TallBill]

Was to show the Engineers creating life on "a" planet. Scott in an interview said it could be any planet, not just earth. But that was the intention, to create life on a planet that had none.

Thought this was pretty damn obvious...

 

[KaOTiK]

I guess I'm missing how an alien drinking a black liquid and quickly dying a painful, gruesome death while he tumbles into a river represents aliens creating life on any barren planet.

Well it did show his DNA being broken down and rebuilt as it was happening, thus seeding the building blocks for life.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

This.


Saw it Saturday, and am still stewing over what a let down it was. The last 20min of that movie made me want to slap Ridley Scott, I expect better from him.

The opening scene with the Engineer killing himself with a chem weapon smoothie was also curious, wtf was that scene for?

The morphogenic gell allows DNA to splice into and change that which is around it. As such, they sacrificed an engineer inorder to seed our planet with life that might become intelligent. This makes them our creator.

In a former version of the scrip Jesus was an engineer that came to tell us to knock our shit off; so we crucified him. As such, 2kyago ish the engineers were set to take off with enough morphogenic goo to destroy a planet full of life.

Before they got a chance to take off, though, the worms in the soil got hit with some morphogenic gell and attacked the crew.

An engineer survived in stasis for 2ky and when he awoke to find humans all around him, his last memory of humans was they killed an engineer that went to help them: thus, murder time for all around him and fly off to kill earth time when they were destroyed.


Real problems with the story:
There's no good reason for Wayland to pretend to be dead because there is no implication for anything in the plot when he is revealed to be alive.

David is the main character, the one we identify with, and he is the impact character, the one that makes major changes to the plot. Despite being a 'bad guy' he is the super-hero and the other characters are side-kick material. It's very 'breaking bad' in that way. But it's confusing because we expect more than one character to be characterized, something this story didn't do.

The crew was unbelievable. A trillion dollar mission with a bunch of people that are "here for the money" and clearly social deviants does not make sense. Nor does having the biologist be afraid of the greatest biological discovery in the history of anything ever. This could have been solved with some characterization that would allow these character's motivation to act against their own archetype to make more sense.

Reaction to Davids superhero status is not questioned. This is a big problem because he is constantly activating things, going in unexpected directions and generally not following orders in a way that should have indicated that he was a problem. They should have thought of him as C-3PO human-alien relations; he was acting like indiana jones: temple of the alien puzzels. This could also be solved through characterization that indicated David's independence as established amongst everyone.

The stupidity of taking your helmet off... geting lost in tunnels despite being the geologist with a map... not finding your way back to the ship or indicating that you were lost while over hearing the conversation about impending glass-storm... David risking himself for the unnecessary sid-kick scientists... The shitty transformers-like jitter cam during the rescue... not having the alien snake in your eye investigated... going on a mission when you are feeling bad and likely to become a liability... random, meaningless, implied sex... asking to be burnt alive/burning alive instead of studying... someone turning into a half-spider-man thing for no good reason... awakening an alien with no method of protection or security in place... the heroic sacrifice of a group of people that we don't care about... the use of an escape pod instead of getting directly on the life raft... the c-ship running over someone that would have been more-entertainingly killed by cathulu... surviving an entire ship landing on you because of some rocks... air running out when the oxygen outside is breathable for a few min... some-how piloting a ship to a home world with nothing but the robo-head of a super hero (instead of going home to inform earth of the major threat)... a cop-out 'see the next film' ending...

And what pissed me off the most, the thing that made no fucking sense at all and which had no damned reason for being: the planet they had painted on the walls was a weapons facility, having humans point to that planet in cave paintings makes NO damned sense![/spoiler]

 

[Aikouka]

Well it did show his DNA being broken down and rebuilt as it was happening, thus seeding the building blocks for life.

In his defense, it isn't terribly obvious. For awhile, all you see is his body and eventually his cells decaying. However, at the end, you see some cells undergo mitosis, which is supposed to be the big, in your face clue.

Yet in this future they decide to spend a TRILLION dollars on a voyage using people that DON'T FREAKING KNOW why or what they're even there for and they can't be bothered to send out some exploration robots first to make sure shit is copacetic? What in the bloody fuck?!?!?

I would attribute this to a rich, genius realizing his own mortality. He knows that the trillion dollars will do him no good when he dies, and he may end up finding the key to living longer on that planet.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Spoiler

The morphogenic gell allows DNA to splice into and change that which is around it. As such, they sacrificed an engineer inorder to seed our planet with life that might become intelligent. This makes them our creator.

In a former version of the scrip Jesus was an engineer that came to tell us to knock our shit off; so we crucified him. As such, 2kyago ish the engineers were set to take off with enough morphogenic goo to destroy a planet full of life.

Before they got a chance to take off, though, the worms in the soil got hit with some morphogenic gell and attacked the crew.

An engineer survived in stasis for 2ky and when he awoke to find humans all around him, his last memory of humans was they killed an engineer that went to help them: thus, murder time for all around him and fly off to kill earth time when they were destroyed.


Real problems with the story:
There's no good reason for Wayland to pretend to be dead because there is no implication for anything in the plot when he is revealed to be alive.

David is the main character, the one we identify with, and he is the impact character, the one that makes major changes to the plot. Despite being a 'bad guy' he is the super-hero and the other characters are side-kick material. It's very 'breaking bad' in that way. But it's confusing because we expect more than one character to be characterized, something this story didn't do.

The crew was unbelievable. A trillion dollar mission with a bunch of people that are "here for the money" and clearly social deviants does not make sense. Nor does having the biologist be afraid of the greatest biological discovery in the history of anything ever. This could have been solved with some characterization that would allow these character's motivation to act against their own archetype to make more sense.

Reaction to Davids superhero status is not questioned. This is a big problem because he is constantly activating things, going in unexpected directions and generally not following orders in a way that should have indicated that he was a problem. They should have thought of him as C-3PO human-alien relations; he was acting like indiana jones: temple of the alien puzzels. This could also be solved through characterization that indicated David's independence as established amongst everyone.

The stupidity of taking your helmet off... geting lost in tunnels despite being the geologist with a map... not finding your way back to the ship or indicating that you were lost while over hearing the conversation about impending glass-storm... David risking himself for the unnecessary sid-kick scientists... The shitty transformers-like jitter cam during the rescue... not having the alien snake in your eye investigated... going on a mission when you are feeling bad and likely to become a liability... random, meaningless, implied sex... asking to be burnt alive/burning alive instead of studying... someone turning into a half-spider-man thing for no good reason... awakening an alien with no method of protection or security in place... the heroic sacrifice of a group of people that we don't care about... the use of an escape pod instead of getting directly on the life raft... the c-ship running over someone that would have been more-entertainingly killed by cathulu... surviving an entire ship landing on you because of some rocks... air running out when the oxygen outside is breathable for a few min... some-how piloting a ship to a home world with nothing but the robo-head of a super hero (instead of going home to inform earth of the major threat)... a cop-out 'see the next film' ending...

And what pissed me off the most, the thing that made no fucking sense at all and which had no damned reason for being: the planet they had painted on the walls was a weapons facility, having humans point to that planet in cave paintings makes NO damned sense!

Yea, much of what you point out is either really bad writing or really bad editing. I would prefer to think it's really bad editing, but who knows...

One other thing that confused me..

Spoiler

When they get alerted to go back due to the storm, they almost instantly cut to them being at the vehicles and one of them says "they are aleady gone". I assumed at the time that was the 2 people who ran off earlier, however no one realizes that no vehicles are gone? Secondly, how did THEY not get lost and get out so fast when the people with the map got lost.

 

[SP33Demon]

Spoiler

And what pissed me off the most, the thing that made no fucking sense at all and which had no damned reason for being: the planet they had painted on the walls was a weapons facility, having humans point to that planet in cave paintings makes NO damned sense!

It would make sense if they wanted us to go there for peaceful reasons (which David could have fcked up for the crew); or it's possible that they initially wanted to see the fruits of their labor for whatever reason and then that favorable opinion changed for whatever reason.

 

[Gibsons]

Spoiler

And what pissed me off the most, the thing that made no fucking sense at all and which had no damned reason for being: the planet they had painted on the walls was a weapons facility, having humans point to that planet in cave paintings makes NO damned sense!

I agree.

 

[oddyager]

Spoiler

some-how piloting a ship to a home world with nothing but the robo-head of a super hero (instead of going home to inform earth of the major threat)... a cop-out 'see the next film' ending...

I agree and it was most likely shoehorned in because I don't think Scott had much of a choice with the way the story was crafted. Having Shaw and robot return to Earth could potentially play out exactly like Aliens with Shaw being confronted and then going back with "better armed" group.