I've come to 3 conclusions about this movie... 1. It's either too complex for me to follow at a level I feel comfortable with (biblical symbolism, etc). 2. It's flawed. 3. We don't have enough pieces of the puzzle yet for it to make sense (we need sequels to Prometheus). And finally... if Ridley Scott didn't make this movie... if it was Michael Bay or me or you... the fan boys wouldn't like it. They'd say it was glorified fan fiction and it would be rejected by the Alien fanbase. I really do believe that. But with that said I enjoyed this movie and think it opened up a lot of new doors to explore.
Spoiler They took samples of the death Engineer's head and carbon date it. So some theorize that Jesus was maybe some sort or form is part of the Engineer race or a messenger for the Engineer. So the Engineer weren't please with their creation and decide to wipe them out because the human rebel and kill "Jesus" one of their messenger.
Sometimes they simply don't answer the answers to leave it for us to keep an open imagination and make whatever we want of the situation. As much as i love that approach it annoys the hell out of me because we dont have the answers we want, yet when we do get the answers we are annoyed (Citizen Kane).
Michael Bay would never make a film that proposes such deep questions. Again I applaud them for taking some creative risks and going big. He could have easily made a film that ties directly into Alien and show the Space Jockey going into battle with the Xenomorphs, or creating them only to have them turn on him. They could have done something simple like that. And I bet people would be complaining that it's too formulaic and doesn't present any fresh ideas. It has flaws yeah, but at a time where there is a definite lack of any-sci films, let alone good ones, I'm not gonna complain. Similar to Sunshine, an awesome film that is not without it's flaws, namely in the second half.
I think a lot of confusion and frustration from this film is because people forget a few things. First of all, this is at its core science horror. It's meant to be dark and perverse. Cruel and evil. Secondly, the first film - Alien, answers many of the questions. While Alien comes after this movie, the actual ship that crash lands on the moon with the Space Jockey and chestbuster - happened a few thousand years ago as indicated by the fossilization of the ship and space jockey. That means that Space Jockey was infected with the alien life form around the same time that the Space Jockeys on this moon went extinct. That means the queen who laid the eggs for the first Alien movie did so thousands of years BEFORE the events of Prometheus. Early scripts for Alien said the ship crashed landed there 10 million years ago! Spoiler it then makes sense that 2,000 years ago, on the planet they were on, the Xenomorphs were created as part of some experiment to be used a biological weapon. There's some sort of religious element as indicated by the murals depicting the chestbusters and eggs. They know what they are doing. The murals depict space jockey's as the hosts though - implying some sort of sacrifice and that it was themselves who were being given up to create this life. So we know that Xenomorphs might be pretty old and were not created in Prometheus, and that the Xenomorph we see at the end of the movie is a far newer breed and not the same one as we saw in Alien. As for the Engineers planting human life on earth to serve as hosts for these Xenomorphs - that doesn't make sense. First there is a time scale. DNA was introduced about a billion years ago. Who would seed DNA and wait that long? Secondly, if they intended to kill the humans, why lord over them guide them. Why teach them anything so they can just turn around and slaughter them. And finally, the xenomorphs are a killing machine. Nothing more no less. They can not reproduce without a host. So if the Xenomorphs are successful and kill everyone they encounter, then there will be no hosts and the Xenomorphs will not survice in the long tun. In other words, the original goal could not have been to use Earth as a large scale testing ground since all life would eventually be extinct once there were no more human hosts...and the aliens died off from a lack of food / old age. Their purpose was cleaning - genocide. Truly dark and evil, something we didn't get from the engineers who supposedly make us.. So why point earthlings to the star system that was actually a military base? As I said before it only makes sense if they were trying to warn them or if they were trying to impress them My sense is that the ancient engineers created life as a terraforming project. At some point, they morphed or a faction took control that was highly fascist. They developed the perfect killing machine as a great weapon against anything inferior. Thus, the xenomorph we all love and know. The early forms had the eggs, and these were sent out to start creating havoc. That is - the space jockey & alien in the movie Alien. Years later, they perfect a better way of doing this - using this black oil. Something goes wrong and their plan to test it on earth either as genocide or just to see what happens goes wrong. The Space Jockeys are running to find a way to kill themselves. They know they are infected and will die, and so they stay out of lime out. One decapitates themselves, the other jumps down a well. They are trying to kill the alien in their chest. Some aliens get created anyway and that is what causes the alarm.
Spoiler She gave herself an abortion and then went back to do some 'xplorin. She didn't question why. She didn't question how. She was just like "ABORTION!...lolk let's go back to the alien ship guyz." This movie blew chunks.
Just saw this yesterday. Spoiler Plenty of plot holes, and I never cared about any of the characters. I also still don't know what I am supposed to think about Charlize Theron's character. But damn she had a nice arse. But I don't expect top-notch story telling for big-budget science fiction movies; I just want them to be grand in scope and enjoyable, which I found this to be. I enjoyed it despite its shortcomings.
This movie was weird....some of the characters were seriously pointless. Charlize therons was a head scracter she was a B the whole movie and then killed her off that way? she couldnt get hulk smashed by the Engineers or eaten by the squid things? lame. also why the hell the david poision holloway?? was he pissed off at him for talking crap or was he told to? dunno was kind of random. Also what happend to the friendly nerd playing with nut sack worm?? He just vanished from the movie and the guy that gets his face melted shows up being a possessed super strength human wrecking shop.
Spoiler That made sense to me. She went to confront David and then when she saw Weyland there and heard that there was a living engineer she was determined to get answers for why they went through all of this.
Here is my take on the Space Jockey / engineers and why they wanted the humans to come to LV233. Spoiler The engineers are the same who created the humans but while they are interested in creating life they also are cautious about it. They feared that their creations could become technologically advanced enough to become a threat to them and built in a system to warn them when they did. Only when humans developed space flight could they actually encounter the engineers. The engineers then left clues leading to a bio engineering military facility so that humans wouldn't come to the engineer's homeworld first but instead to the military facilities where the engineers could defend themselves against possibly hostile humans and / or wipe out humanity altogether so they can't threaten the engineers. This idea is one that has been brought up in other sci-fi, such as 2001 that aliens that had visited Earth, and changed human evolution, left hints about themselves that could only be acted upon once humans reached a particular technological level. In other sci-fi like the movie Supernova and the drones from SGU there was the idea of advanced civilizations leaving traps that were activated when another advanced civilization encountered them. The engineer that they find alive is part of that trap and as soon as he is awakened, triggered, he immediately sets out to carry out the plan. As for why the engineers created human life they did it because they could but just like other sci-fi where humans create things like cylons only to have them rebel against them the engineers had no qualms about destroying them once they could threaten them to start again. It's possible they engineers frequently create and destroy life on Earth and other planets as part of a longer term plan of perfecting bio-engineering. All the dead engineers I took to be less of a sacrifice than the result of an accident regarding their bioweapons research. The last engineer survived the accident but still was dedicated to carrying out the mission to wipe out humanity once they became technologically advanced enough to find the engineers.
Spoiler Ghostbusters Overall, it was a pretty disappointing movie. I'd much prefer a well written movie with an interesting story even if it's not up to the same visual level to a crappy movie that just looks good.
Please use spoiler tags. I've already seen it, but plenty of folks haven't yet. To your questions: Spoiler Sometimes death is empty and meaningless. Bio-nerd was a hollowed out corpse when they found him. Which I thought was odd - the cobra-worm demonstrated serious face hugger tendencies (the tight wrapping, acid blood, and oral rape). I would have thought that it would have impregnated him with our first pseudo-proto-alien. It was postulated in a mega write up/break down. I don't buy into it 100% - there were a lot of very interesting notions in it, but it's still largely speculation and not at all gospel. In my opinion, Spoiler The black oil-ooze was a genetic super retro "virus" that breaks down DNA and rewrites it to be Xeno-DNA. I do not believe the Engineer at the beginning drank the same stuff. His drink simply broke him down to become the first building blocks of life on Earth (assuming it was Earth) Worms + ooze --> pseudo-proto face huggers Halloway + drop of ooze --> hybridized sperm --> squid face hugger --> proto-Xenomorph Fifield + face full of ooze --> zombie half-proto-pseudo Xenomorph I'm also still curious about the tomb Spoiler The murals were interesting, moreso when given full light of day Especially this one: Notice the Christ on a cross imagery used, as well as depictions of facehugging below on the left and right Even creepier, the original still of Halloway in front of the "Christ Alien" had a pedestal with a "communion cup" on it: In the film, it had a green crystal on it....possibly a poured out "goo bottle"? Concept art that didn't make it to film: So we have plain evidence that they "know" about what the vials in the room produce. So wild speculation on my part - What if there was an "outbreak" of spores (what they were going to dump on earth?)...and the last engineers ran into the tomb room to "take communion" as a final desperate act to eradicate everything/everyone? It doesn't make all that much sense to me...but it does appear as if they knew what they were doing in that tomb. They knew full well about the Xenomorph process. That or one of them was semi-oozed like Holloway and kicked off the xeno-cycle. But it was weird for them to be found in a massive pile like that. On the exploding head - there's talk going around that there were "spores" - which kind of makes sense so long as we're totally in the dark on what killed the engineers. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jCeyW9m0SXA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I think this film suffered from the same fatal flaw that afflicted films like Matrix 2. Occasionally you have directors get so consummed with the deeper meanings and subtle nods that they lose the forest for the trees and come away with a movie that just isn't enjoyable on its surface. When done well, you should be able to love a movie without even realizing a deeper theme is in there (Wizard of Oz, Matrix, etc). This film ends up clunky because Lindelof-Scott didn't focus on a seamless story foremost.
Spoiler from the article cowboybebop linked a few pages back. I think the article was trying to desparately to make sense inconsistencies and plot holes.
I thought it was great, but don't prefer to spend to much time dissecting movies anymore. I just enjoyed the ride. It was visually stunning and fulfilled my expectations of falling in the ballpark of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. I get the complaints about the story and characters, but I wanted visuals first and foremost out of this and got it. TL;DR the entire thread, just bits here and there. My wife seems to have a totally opposite idea of what most others have though. She's a geneticist, so that's where her approach came from, thought I'd throw it in here: Spoiler She thinks the engineers weren't trying to wipe out humans. Rather, they just wanted to follow up on their Earth experiment by introducing the goo to humans with the goal of creating a greater species. That would be an interesting revelation to the story, where everyone is mostly expecting destruction rather than new creation. So while the engineers were planning for one new species, they unintentionally reached 2 in this movie. The scientist's octopus baby from the goo = one step higher. Then that octopus combined with the engineer for another one, taking yet another step toward a superior species. Anyways this thing is so open-ended, far too much IMHO, that anything and everything is plausible in a way. You can come up with reasons upon reasons when there seem to be mysteries upon mysteries.
This movie sounds like "'Contact' with Aliens". Does Jodie Foster make a cameo to tell what she saw and nobody believes her? :grin:
