Topic: Prometheus (Alien Prequel)

[Strudel]

Why does the female commander have this surgical pod but it's not designed for women. She's a woman! WTF.

(click to show/hide)

It's a clue that Weyland is in cryo aboard the ship

[WC]

I don't know why religious people think Hollywood is their worst enemy. We keep getting movies with themes like "faith, not reason, is the highest value".

This shit has made me give up on the tripe being ground out of the meat grinder.

The end of I Am Legend ends on a wide aerial shot of a chapel's steeple with some parting monologue that was all faithy waithy. Screw how awful it got after the first 30 minutes of awesome. Damn the CG vamps to hell, and nuts to the deterioration of plot and characters. It was THE WORST remake of Matheson's classic because of that goddamned religion wank at the end. Fuck all.

[Belathane]

Here's a gem I found from an interview with Damon Lindelof.

"So the idea behind Prometheus was: If we as human beings in the future got a clue or an indication of our origins ... and then we had coordinates, we actually had directions to go and basically meet our makers, what kind of people would go there? What would they hope to achieve? And then, of course, what happens when we get there? Because science fiction is really just the cautionary tale writ large. The fundamental law of nature is to not know too much about yourself. So God forbid we fly too close to that flame — we are going to get burned."

 

[David E.]

3/10  I did not like it, could not get into; and worst of all I could not shut off my disbelief during it.  Between the absurdity of the plot, the holes in said absurd plot, the total lack of sense of almost all of the characters...including the Aliens, I watched the whole thing just because I was there. 

(click to show/hide)

I mostly gave up the moment they all took their helmets off.  I fully gave up when the two generic asshole types freaked out for no reason: left, got lost, got stuck, and got dead - with no one the wiser even though the ship had a running record of it all!  The only character with a lick of sense was the Captain...and that sense got shut off for reasons of bad plotting.  For 1/2 the movie it seemed like the crew was split into 3 stories that had no connection to each other, which would have been impossible. The more I think about this movie, the more terrible it becomes.

[andrewclunn]

Well it can't be any worse than "The Skeptic" at least.  Darn, I was planning to see this tonight.  Maybe I'll push for another movie now.

[Moloch]

I thought there were some interesting themes and motifs mixed in with a poorly written film with terrible characters. The faith/Christianity elements were a little on the nose, especially the part about us angering the space jockeys 2000 years ago *cough* crucifying their messenger *cough* Jesus.

The general theme with the goo seems to be that the life created echoes something about the intentions of the host via a sort of psychic imprint. Sacrificing your own life to create new life with the goo (opening scene) promotes harmonious creation while unwilling sacrifice creates life that consumes (xenomorphs). When the humans entered the pod room and the atmosphere "changed", the goo was attuning itself the to life in the room (humans), who as flawed creations driven by self-preservation will go on to spawn malicious life with the goo. The dichotomy between willing sacrifice for the sake of new life versus destroying life to preserve your own seems to be a major theme. The scene with Elizabeth desperately trying to remove her alien represents the antithesis of the opening scene, violent rejection of new life contrasting absolutely with the idea of a willing sacrifice. The two murals in the pod room represent this dichotomy clearly, with the serene looking jockey with his chest open contrasting with the xenomorph style engraving.

But humanity is shown to be capable of willing sacrifice in the film, with the ships crew and Holloway both indicating that perhaps humanity is worthy of redemption after all.

My understand of the jockeys process is that they would send a member to a planet who would sacrifice themselves to let their own DNA merge with the planet's existing life.

For whatever reason they chose to nurture and guide humanity (their creation), hence the drawings, but when humans killed space-Jesus they decided to destroy humanity but were foiled by some mysterious calamity before they could do so.

Weyland as the "villain" was less about his atheism and more about his unwillingness to let himself die, thereby restricting his own creation (his daughter). No wonder the space jockey reacted so aggressively when the representative of the species they failed to kill 2000 years ago for their hubris shows up as an old man looking for eternal life, standing next to an android.

That's my perhaps not so coherent thoughts.

[WC]

I liked the Space Jockey more when it was a weird piece of production design with no explanation.

[David E.]

I thought there were some interesting themes and motifs mixed in with a poorly written film with terrible characters. The faith/Christianity elements were a little on the nose, especially the part about us angering the space jockeys 2000 years ago *cough* crucifying their messenger *cough* Jesus.

The general theme with the goo seems to be that the life created echoes something about the intentions of the host via a sort of psychic imprint. Sacrificing your own life to create new life with the goo (opening scene) promotes harmonious creation while unwilling sacrifice creates life that consumes (xenomorphs). When the humans entered the pod room and the atmosphere "changed", the goo was attuning itself the to life in the room (humans), who as flawed creations driven by self-preservation will go on to spawn malicious life with the goo. The dichotomy between willing sacrifice for the sake of new life versus destroying life to preserve your own seems to be a major theme. The scene with Elizabeth desperately trying to remove her alien represents the antithesis of the opening scene, violent rejection of new life contrasting absolutely with the idea of a willing sacrifice. The two murals in the pod room represent this dichotomy clearly, with the serene looking jockey with his chest open contrasting with the xenomorph style engraving.

But humanity is shown to be capable of willing sacrifice in the film, with the ships crew and Holloway both indicating that perhaps humanity is worthy of redemption after all.

My understand of the jockeys process is that they would send a member to a planet who would sacrifice themselves to let their own DNA merge with the planet's existing life.

For whatever reason they chose to nurture and guide humanity (their creation), hence the drawings, but when humans killed space-Jesus they decided to destroy humanity but were foiled by some mysterious calamity before they could do so.

Weyland as the "villain" was less about his atheism and more about his unwillingness to let himself die, thereby restricting his own creation (his daughter). No wonder the space jockey reacted so aggressively when the representative of the species they failed to kill 2000 years ago for their hubris shows up as an old man looking for eternal life, standing next to an android.

That's my perhaps not so coherent thoughts.

That is a very interesting take that I had not considered.  Very nice. 

I still did not like the movie.   

[Belathane]

I thought there were some interesting themes and motifs mixed in with a poorly written film with terrible characters. The faith/Christianity elements were a little on the nose, especially the part about us angering the space jockeys 2000 years ago *cough* crucifying their messenger *cough* Jesus.

For whatever reason they chose to nurture and guide humanity (their creation), hence the drawings, but when humans killed space-Jesus they decided to destroy humanity but were foiled by some mysterious calamity before they could do so.

Where did you get this from? Did I mis something in the movie?

[Moloch]

The space Jesus part? They do explicitly mention that the carvings stopped appearing 2000 years ago, and that the jockeys intended to destroy humanity because we did something bad.

There's also this:

Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?

Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.

[DoctorOHM]

Saw this, had to share!

[mindme]

Very interesting interpretation, Moloch. Your take is 100x better than anything that made it to the screen.

[Belathane]

The space Jesus part? They do explicitly mention that the carvings stopped appearing 2000 years ago, and that the jockeys intended to destroy humanity because we did something bad.

There's also this:

Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?

Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.

WTF?!
You know. At this point nothing should surprise me anymore but alas.

Saw this, had to share!

Thanks for sharing.   

[Moloch]

Very interesting interpretation, Moloch. Your take is 100x better than anything that made it to the screen.

I can't claim that interpretation to be my own, it's an amalgamation of my own experience with that of other's.

[mindme]

Weyland as the "villain" was less about his atheism and more about his unwillingness to let himself die, thereby restricting his own creation (his daughter). No wonder the space jockey reacted so aggressively when the representative of the species they failed to kill 2000 years ago for their hubris shows up as an old man looking for eternal life, standing next to an android.

In the intro video, Weyland quips that David is his greatest creation. Not really caring that his other creation, his daughter, was right there.