Prometheus

[Adm56]

I think the Weyland Sr. character was a missed opportunity. I realize this obviously wasn't the story they chose to tell, but I think his character would have been a little more interesting with something like this (from another post of mine):When I was a kid I read a short story by Robert Heinlein 'The Man that Sold the Moon'. Now the premise would seem cheesy today...basically the main character (a businessman) who daydreams about the idea of traveling to the stars purchases 'lunar' or 'skyward' rights (similar to mineral rights but UPWARDS) from nations along the equator (pretty much risking his entire fortune) and ends up owning the moon. But when he succeeds he's kept from traveling to the moon himself because if he was killed or injured the entire company would be destroyed and its shareholders ruined. Much later in the series of stories he manages to smuggle himself to the moon (when he's too old to enjoy it) and dies there.Weyland Sr. could have been treated in a similar fashion...he's basically Bill Gates/Steve Jobs...richer than anyone has a right to be....near death and with no more worlds to conquer. So when he hears of these two scientists studying cave paintings of the stars he wants to be part of the great adventure. You could also introduce Vickers as his daughter earlier...with a 'why don't you just die already so I can inherit your cash' vibe. As the movie stands I think Weyland AND Vickers are wasted..she's another potential sinister influence on the mission (when we already have David) and Weyland basically shows up out of the blue just in time to be a murder victim. There is a lot of drama to be had in a man who extended is life unnaturally through wealth that seeks meaning despite having a life that any of us would kill for.

[Plain Old Tele]

That can be the next prequel series. The Alien universe will slowly work its way back to our near-future.

[BiffMan]

Little late to the discussion (been avoiding spoilers) and it's 2:30am local and I just got home from it, so short version:First 20 minutes & Michael Fastbender: OMG, OMG, holy shit, wow.Rest of movie: Meh

Edited June 10, 2012 by BiffMan

[tilko]

Most stupid movie ever made. It is a complete joke and INSULT to human intelligence . What characters do is completely INSANE with no logic.-F or 0/10

Edited June 10, 2012 by tilko

[DeeCee]

I've been told by a friend that the opening scene shows an 'engineer' creating life on earth by allowing his DNA to be spread after his sacrifice. I didn't pick up on that during my only viewing. Not sure if my friend saw that somewhere in some of the prelease hype or if I just entirely missed something obvious.

The engineer drinks the black goo(which might be the same stuff in all those pods), his body reacts to the black goo, the camera then zooms in to strands of DNA breaking apart. The strands break apart, crash into each other and then start to recombine. The screen then changes to a single cell, that cell divides, then divides again. The word PROMETHEUS appears across the screen, it fades to black, then you see Shaw chipping away at the screen as she breaks into the cave on the Isle of Skye that contains the paintings.

[Adm56]

The engineer drinks the black goo(which might be the same stuff in all those pods), his body reacts to the black goo, the camera then zooms in to strands of DNA breaking apart. The strands break apart, crash into each other and then start to recombine. The screen then changes to a single cell, that cell divides, then divides again. The word PROMETHEUS appears across the screen, it fades to black, then you see Shaw chipping away at the screen as she breaks into the cave on the Isle of Skye that contains the paintings.

Thanks. That matches what I remember. I'm just struggling to identify the benefit of opening the film that way. Sure...it creates an immediate 'Wow...we're not in Kansas anymore!' vibe but I think they should have held on to that reveal a bit longer.

[DeeCee]

I think the opening scene is Ridley's homage to the opening of 2001 with the Apes and the obelisk. Whereas Kubrick was a bit more obtuse with his scene Ridley is rather more in your face. As Ridley, Lindelof and others have said this is set in the Alien universe but seperate. The way I see it there are two strands to the story. The main story is the search for who we are and where we came from. This search for answers also includes what it means to be human and the questions about David's existence and can he have a soul. In this regard Prometheus has strong parallels with 2001. The second part of the story is how this search sets off a chain of events that leads to the xenomorph we see in the Alien films. Prometheus is like a road diverging. The end of the film sets up two seperate paths to be followed. One path is the xenomorph and how it ends up on that planetoid in Alien. The other path is David and Shaws continued journey to find out who the engineers were and why they did what they did. My impression from everything Ridley and others have said is that any sequels to Prometheus will follow this path. There is a good chance that what we see of the xenomorph at the end is the only link to the Alien films. Anyway, we'll find out if they make the sequels.

[Plain Old Tele]

The opening creates a lot of instant questions, but it's not like it doesn't answer them fairly quickly. I had heard about the "Chariots of the Gods" connections, but thought that would be a big reveal. It wasn't, they basically got that out of the way in the first 15 minutes.

[Adm56]

I see how they are downplaying the connection to the Alien films but it still bugs me a bit. It's kind of a safe way to establish a new franchise since they know despite their protests that fans of the Alien films will see the connection. If they truly wanted to make a clean break they could have left the Aliens out entirely but I doubt Fox would allow that.I used to play a ton of PC games. There was a popular series of games called Master of Orion. A company purchased the name and made a third title in the series that had NOTHING to do with the previous titles. But since they knew 'New Space Game by Unknown Developer' wouldn't sell well they bought the rights to the name to get a built in audience (that they proceed to immediately piss off).Ripley Scott did the same thing with this film. If you truly want to focus on this new franchise and the search for 'why are we here' why establish the connections with Alien so soon?

[CloneWars]

I see how they are downplaying the connection to the Alien films but it still bugs me a bit. It's kind of a safe way to establish a new franchise since they know despite their protests that fans of the Alien films will see the connection. If they truly wanted to make a clean break they could have left the Aliens out entirely but I doubt Fox would allow that.I used to play a ton of PC games. There was a popular series of games called Master of Orion. A company purchased the name and made a third title in the series that had NOTHING to do with the previous titles. But since they knew 'New Space Game by Unknown Developer' wouldn't sell well they bought the rights to the name to get a built in audience (that they proceed to immediately piss off).Ripley Scott did the same thing with this film. If you truly want to focus on this new franchise and the search for 'why are we here' why establish the connections with Alien so soon?

I have to disagree about the Xenomorph at the end being the only connection. In my opinion, the entire film is an Alien film. Notice I said Alien and Aliens. In the first Alien, we see the dead Space Jockey/Engineer. This tells us the story about the Space Jockey and that is legitimate ground to look at for the Alien series.

[Impact]

Something of interest is, I'm noticitng better reviews from those who didn't realize it was a prequel to Alien.

[Kvikk Lunsj]

I think the sequel can be great.

[Kvikk Lunsj]

That can be the next prequel series. The Alien universe will slowly work its way back to our near-future.

Will it get made? Scott is getting old and what is the budget for Prometheus.

[Ozymandias]

I posted this in the BO thread but I think it better belong here. So I was reading the Prometheus thread over at the somethingawful forums, and here is what some guy had to say about the movie and I agree with it 100%. I think this is why there is a such a divide among internet circles and film buffs on this movie.

Well, congratulations on making a mind-fuck movie, Mr. Scott.

Everyone that sees this can draw their own conclusion of what they just saw. The movie is a massive puzzle that only gave us a few puzzle pieces, with no picture of the final product - and that was the point. It was done so vaguely that anyone could come up with any infinite number of theories of what could be happening in the movie. It was written that way on purpose - "make up your own meaning".

Almost every scene was done such ambiguously that anyone & everyone could draw their own conclusion of what something meant.

That is what they were going for, and it worked.

I've read enough discussion here (and other sites) to know that it worked. I've seen enough people list contradicting ideas - and then realized that every contradicting idea *could* be what happened in the movie. Every idea and theory that you have for every scene could be right.

...but your ideas of what happened may not make sense to someone else. They maybe got a different idea from what they saw... and would think your idea was wrong.

The entire movie is a creation of religious ideas (Ridley Scott) + ambiguous writing (Damon Lindelof). They purposely made sure ideas did not make any sense by their own merit. The audience gets to fill in all the plot holes, patch things up mentally, and draw their own, personalized conclusion of what just just happened. It's like all religion.

Every person will have basically seen a different movie. Their own version - made from their own interpretations and personal biases. I've been listening to my friend "explain" things to me after seeing the movie. You'd think he had seen a different movie than myself and others in this thread. He drew his own conclusions from what he saw.

This makes me like the movie even more. It really is genius in that sense because its so true after reading these forums for the last few days. It basically has internet arguing over their own opinions and conclusions, not facts.

And here were his personal thoughts:

What I thought:

- Yes, it was all different goo.

- No, this movie doesn't invalidate anything in any other movie. It could live happily alongside the AvP movies.

- Who gives a shit which planet or what ships or when things crashed. This movie doesn't explain the origin of anything or anyone. Everything on LV426 could have its own, unrelated-to-this-movie orgin.

- The beginning? Nothing says it is Earth. Nothing says it isn't Earth. That's the point. It's 100% Earth & 100% not Earth.

- The xenomorph at the end? Meaningless. It's not an origin of anything. It's not "proto" anything. It probably runs off and dies within days. There are existing drawings of them in the movie, so it can't be the first. No creature is "proto" in this, as there aren't any indications they are the first of anything. I've seen proto used here and elsewhere a thousand times. Congratulations, you came up with the proto idea on your own, because it certainly didn't come from this movie.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Shpongle

[Impact]

Blade Runner was not that liked when it was released.

[Plain Old Tele]

Will it get made? Scott is getting old and what is the budget for Prometheus.

The budget was $120-130m. At this range, the movie is (probably) going to be a success. If it had a SWATH- or BATTLEFIELD-esque budget, it would've been a financial loser. Just goes to show how important a budget is... and honestly it didn't feel like they were limited by budget at all. The production and visual design was impressive at any budgetary level.

[Plain Old Tele]

Just think of the movie as splintering the Alienverse timeline at its conclusion. Up to that point, we were watching a glimpse into the general back history of the Alienverse. At the conclusion of PROMETHEUS, there are now two on-going storylines: Shaw and David's further adventures into the Engineer-controlled worlds, and the Alien stories, which start at a similar (but not the same planetoid) in the future and continue off in another storyline. There could be any number of Prometheus-related stories, which could either tie back into the Alien story later or continue in their own direction, but in the same universe.I read an opinion on another forum which had an extremely bleak view (but that isn't contracted by any facts and fits both storylines): that the Engineer ship that crashed on LV-426 was Shaw's and David's ship, and that the dead Space Jockey in it is Shaw... which means she gets impregnated at some point in future Prometheus stories.

[baumer]

[Plain Old Tele]

The smart people lived. The dumb ones died.

[Ozymandias]

Transformers 3 is a miracle film lol.

And btw, the giant dead bodies that they found is what freaked those 2 guys out so they were expecting that when Janek told them the probe was picking up a lifeform. When they found that it was a little worm, thats when one of them started laughing and thought it was harmless. Keep up the epic fails baumer.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Shpongle