Prometheus

[squinty]

RG I think you've put a lot more thought into rationalizing the screenplay than the writers put into writing it. That isn't a slam at you, it's a criticism of them. That's not uncommon in genre fiction: fans papering over plot holes the writer didn't bother to close, fleshing out characters the writer left 2D or explaining motivations the writer left opaque, with fanfic.

[greenbeetle]

RG I think you've put a lot more thought into rationalizing the screenplay than the writers put into writing it. That isn't a slam at you, it's a criticism of them. That's not uncommon in genre fiction: fans papering over plot holes the writer didn't bother to close, fleshing out characters the writer left 2D or explaining motivations the writer left opaque, with fanfic.

The more I think about it the sloppier Prometheus seems. Movie producers hire ex-military to advise them on the sets of war movies, drs to help with medical movies, etsc. Maybe Ridley should have hired some scientists to explain basic science to his writers?

[Regular Guy]

RG I think you've put a lot more thought into rationalizing the screenplay than the writers put into writing it. That isn't a slam at you, it's a criticism of them. That's not uncommon in genre fiction: fans papering over plot holes the writer didn't bother to close, fleshing out characters the writer left 2D or explaining motivations the writer left opaque, with fanfic.

Yes, I filled in the plot holes from my knowledge of film in general, from the previous films and from a bunch of Greek philosophy and bioethics. Another think everyone should watch the directors cut of "Blade Runner" before watching this movie. There is a bunch of 'philosophy' about androids in that film.
That stated, I've read that the editors chopped 1 hr from this film and I think they went for an Aliens movie which this was not. I believe the directors cut will expain a lot more.
Aliens, the second film, had massive plot holes until I saw the director cut which is 1 hour longer. I can't blame the writers or the director for what the editor did. For all we know there may have been long speeches and interaction that is very relevant for the plot.
The characters I believe, some of them, were 2D because they were androids. Notice that some of them were freaking out and other not, well, andriods don't demonstrate emotions the way we do. Advanced androids do display some human aspects because they have to 'care' for humans and they must protect themselves so they 'demonstrate' fear. They act human only because they are preprogrammed to act like that so they don't freak the humans out.

All that stated, I do believe this film could have been much, much better but I did really like it.

[Regular Guy]

My thoughts on the scientist doing stupid shit. In a word: hubris.

Look at the modern scientist or engineer. Both in general believe that anything can be over come with science. Look at biologists today, there are a bunch of them that go messing with very dangerous animals.
Look at the guy that took off his helmet, he did so because his 'infallible' instruments told him it was safe. Everyone told him not to, he knew his instruments were right so he put everyone in danger because of his hubris. David saw his hubris and thought, okay, you want to experiment, here try this. How many times has modern science put us all in danger because they knew because. No? Nuclear weapons.
The biologist was messing with the evolving worm because he had messed with thousands of dangerous animals before. Look at the goof that was killed by a stingray or Dr. Brady Barr. Both go after dangerous animals because of hubris. Put those guys on an alien word, yeah, they'd be fucking with everything.
Another point is that interaction between the creator and the created. Just doing things because there is an implied no or an overt no. Like the story of Prometheus, told not to mess with fire, did it anyway. Just like us, I don't think the pictograms on the wall were telling us to go there but telling us where the came from. Like saying "Yeah, see that shit over there, no don't go there."

[squinty]

RG I think you've put a lot more thought into rationalizing the screenplay than the writers put into writing it. That isn't a slam at you, it's a criticism of them. That's not uncommon in genre fiction: fans papering over plot holes the writer didn't bother to close, fleshing out characters the writer left 2D or explaining motivations the writer left opaque, with fanfic.

Yes, I filled in the plot holes from my knowledge of film in general, from the previous films and from a bunch of Greek philosophy and bioethics. Another think everyone should watch the directors cut of "Blade Runner" before watching this movie. There is a bunch of 'philosophy' about androids in that film.
That stated, I've read that the editors chopped 1 hr from this film and I think they went for an Aliens movie which this was not. I believe the directors cut will expain a lot more.
Aliens, the second film, had massive plot holes until I saw the director cut which is 1 hour longer. I can't blame the writers or the director for what the editor did. For all we know there may have been long speeches and interaction that is very relevant for the plot.
The characters I believe, some of them, were 2D because they were androids. Notice that some of them were freaking out and other not, well, andriods don't demonstrate emotions the way we do. Advanced androids do display some human aspects because they have to 'care' for humans and they must protect themselves so they 'demonstrate' fear. They act human only because they are preprogrammed to act like that so they don't freak the humans out.

All that stated, I do believe this film could have been much, much better but I did really like it.

I liked the director's cut of Blade Runner much more than the first theatrical release, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is in my top 10 list of favorite novels. The things I liked best about the novel were the things that the film glossed over or cut out - Mercerism and Buster Friendly and the alternate police station. Made perfect sense to cut them from the film, or let them just inform the background - Hemingway said that the stuff you don't mention in a story is the stuff you had to have down cold.

I recognize some of the source material wrt the relationship between vreator and created/offspring, and curiosity about human origins. A lot of it reminded me of Frankenstein (subtitled "the modern prometheus" iirc.) Just didn't seem very thoughtful or well thought out. Still can't endorse Prometheus. I'd have preferred it contented itself with being a genre piece, instead of reaching for a scope and grandeur it couldn't grasp (except for the opening sequence, and some other nice visuals.) Sometimes the philosophical questions are better addressed in an unpretentious horror movie, than in a Big Important Film that implodes under it's own weight. And I still think the writers from lost should never have been allowed near Prometheus. But it was no worse than Alien 4, really. So far the franchise has to it's credit two bona fide genre masterpieces, one interesting David Fincher failure - and you could do much worse than an interesting failure - and a hideous abortion of a sequel (4) and not quite prequel (Prometheus.) Time to give it a rest. This film, for all it's feeble wrestling with Great Big Concepts, was a cynical uninspired paycheck. Ima stay disappointed in Prometheus, and cherish my blu-rays of ALien and Aliens. And Blade Runner. And A Scanner Darkly, for that matter, which is the most faithful to the novel Dick adaptation yet, and the Schwarzenegger Total Recall.

[Regular Guy]

I do agree they tried to be too mysterious and indefinative about the time lines, 'technology', and the big questions. I think they did get some things very right. All in all compared to the normal sci-fi I really liked it.
Then again, I liked Alien 3 and 4. But again, I think they tried to make a fast paced action movie when they should have made Prometheus what it should have been, a heady sci-fi trip exploring the questions morality, creation and creators, what it means to be either, evolution and life/death loss/found paradigm. It should have been much less about Aliens jumping into people, actions scenes and spaceships.
And give me the 1 hour of tape on the cutting room floor. **Shakes fist**

[squinty]

My thoughts on the scientist doing stupid shit. In a word: hubris.

Look at the modern scientist or engineer. Both in general believe that anything can be over come with science. Look at biologists today, there are a bunch of them that go messing with very dangerous animals.
Look at the guy that took off his helmet, he did so because his 'infallible' instruments told him it was safe. Everyone told him not to, he knew his instruments were right so he put everyone in danger because of his hubris. David saw his hubris and thought, okay, you want to experiment, here try this. How many times has modern science put us all in danger because they knew because. No? Nuclear weapons.
The biologist was messing with the evolving worm because he had messed with thousands of dangerous animals before. Look at the goof that was killed by a stingray or Dr. Brady Barr. Both go after dangerous animals because of hubris. Put those guys on an alien word, yeah, they'd be fucking with everything.
Another point is that interaction between the creator and the created. Just doing things because there is an implied no or an overt no. Like the story of Prometheus, told not to mess with fire, did it anyway. Just like us, I don't think the pictograms on the wall were telling us to go there but telling us where the came from. Like saying "Yeah, see that shit over there, no don't go there."

No scientist in his right mind would pop his helmet off 10 minutes into an alien environment because of his instrument reading. Physicians are admonished all the time to "treat the patient not the monitor." That character wasn't motivated by hubris, he was motivated by the director's decision to shoot faces instead of helmets - ie, by factors relating to convenience on the set, not by any explicable character motivation.

WRT Prometheus, wasn't he the hero of that story, because of his defiance of the (selfish and capricious Olympian) Gods? His actions were considered a boon to mankind. Likewise the Garden of Eden story, I always thought of that story as being the dawn of conscious agency and a moral sense in man. With the beginnings of those two things came the possibility of guilt and shame. But also the possibility of making ethical choices and discovering better ways to live. Knowledge of good and evil is a terrible burden, but is it really better to be spared that burden and stay animals, and live like animals? Animals do terrible things to each other all the time, blissfully untroubled by guilt or conscience or compassion. Human beings however are blessed to feel pain and remorse when they do wrong things. A god who would withhold that sense of moral agency from man might rationalize that he's sparing them, but he isn't. He's trying to protect himself from them, by keeping them blissfully ignorant. I always thought of the serpent in the Garden of Eden story as a hero. Against the god's express wishes, and at great personal cost to himself, he helped man to achieve the knowledge of good and evil. Likewise Prometheus gave man fire against the wishes of the gods, and was punished and punished for it. I thought of that story as being about the birth of technology, and the ability to manipulate our environment for good or ill.
Both stories represent primitive peoples' groping to explain how humans came to be different from other animals, and they both feature gods - nominally the good guys in each of their respective pantheons - as the villain, trying to keep people from becoming human. Yay, scientist who learns about the world at risk to himself, yay ethicist who dares to think about concepts of good and evil. Boo Ridley Scott for making a dull and uninspired film.

[squinty]

I do agree they tried to be too mysterious and indefinative about the time lines, 'technology', and the big questions. I think they did get some things very right. All in all compared to the normal sci-fi I really liked it.
Then again, I liked Alien 3 and 4. But again, I think they tried to make a fast paced action movie when they should have made Prometheus what it should have been, a heady sci-fi trip exploring the questions morality, creation and creators, what it means to be either, evolution and life/death loss/found paradigm. It should have been much less about Aliens jumping into people, actions scenes and spaceships.
And give me the 1 hour of tape on the cutting room floor. **Shakes fist**

And it succeeded at neither. The grappling it did with Big Important Trippy Sci-Fi questions was shallow and trite.
IMO, very often the movie that only tries to be an entertaining genre film ends up doing a better job with the big trippy sci-fi questions. See the above referenced Total Recall, or Memento. Both are about as B movie genre film as you can get. "Action Movie" more than sci-fi in Total Recall, cheesy suspense/noir in Memento. But both were also brilliant and interesting meditations on consciousness, meaning and authenticity. They could be that because the pressure was off, all the producers expected was good audience pleasing genre.

The one hour of tape on the cutting room floor might have been better than what was on screen. it could hardly have been much worse.

[Kommander]

Regular Guy it was and is not my intention to be insulting. However you are drawing conclusions that are simply not supported by the film as it currently exists. Perhaps if/when a directors cut is released we will know more but until then the movie will be a beautifully shot and well acted illogical mess.

[squinty]

Regular Guy it was and is not my intention to be insulting. However you are drawing conclusions that are simply not supported by the film as it currently exists. Perhaps if/when a directors cut is released we will know more but until then the movie will be a beautifully shot and well acted illogical mess.

RG is doing a lot of the heavy lifting that the screenwriters should have done. The movie in his head is, I am certain of it, deeper and better than the movie he's defending. I bet the RG cut of Prometheus rocks. This is a compliment.

[Blacksmith]

WRT Prometheus, wasn't he the hero of that story, because of his defiance of the (selfish and capricious Olympian) Gods?

Right. That was the whole point of the movie. We are all a big act of defiance by a rebel from the creator race who planted us here. Therefore the creators with all their marvelous technology tens of thousands of years ahead of ours have to send several ships loaded with acid for blood parasite alien thingees to destroy us and all living mammal life on our planet. It is the only way to be sure.

Animals do terrible things to each other all the time, blissfully untroubled by guilt or conscience or compassion. Human beings however are blessed to feel pain and remorse when they do wrong things.

IDK, my dog always looks guilty when he does something he should not. He goes running too. Of course he seems to forget it thirty minutes later too... but... why would he act guilty if he did not know it was wrong? Therefore he must have remembered something about it.

I always thought of the serpent in the Garden of Eden story as a hero. Against the god's express wishes, and at great personal cost to himself, he helped man to achieve the knowledge of good and evil.

Not really. The choice was always left there. Woman simply chose not to partake until she was deceived and lied to by the serpent. Now we all have to wear clothes when we could have been looking at boobs all day. That is hardly the act of a hero.... Adam only ate the fruit because of the boobs, Lilith was ever the seductive little trouble maker.

[Regular Guy]

@ My favorite Raccoon: Yes, I think the realization of good and evil is benificial to man. I also think in the story of the Garden of Eden was a plan wholely constructed by the creator, the serpent was an agent of God, since in the story God created and had dominion over all things. God in that story wanted humans to be closer to his original intention and realize that they were not animals, that they were in fact human and for a greater purpose. I also believe that our recognition of morality and the ability to reason is our benefit.
I also believe the creators want us to question with boldness. Weyland had to shut Shaw up because she was questioning with boldness. Weyland went with completely selfish intentions. I think the engineer understood everything she said and was interested but as you stated and I believe, they will not give the answers easily and not without some "harm". I also think he understood David and what pissed him off was the selfish nature of his question. In all the Greek stories, someone got owned or pwned. Same goes in Prometheous.
The "evil" uncaring black ooze was the nature of the harassness of nature that surrounds us, all the viruses, bacteria, other creatures who will eat our ass's and general frailness of life. The engineers created all this life but they didn't realize that with life, there will be death. Always. Or maybe they did.
I found it very interesting that headless Android who can't believe and the scientist who has a strong profound belief were the two who went out to seek the true nature of man, creation and the creators. And I believe the android wanted to believe, he carried Shaw's cross into the ship with him. He can't, he can't even want but he somehow the experience changed him. Has David evolved?

[Regular Guy]

Regular Guy it was and is not my intention to be insulting. However you are drawing conclusions that are simply not supported by the film as it currently exists. Perhaps if/when a directors cut is released we will know more but until then the movie will be a beautifully shot and well acted illogical mess.

No worries, I was being snarky for no reason, all apologies. Yeah, I must admit, I'm filling in their holes.

[Regular Guy]

Regular Guy it was and is not my intention to be insulting. However you are drawing conclusions that are simply not supported by the film as it currently exists. Perhaps if/when a directors cut is released we will know more but until then the movie will be a beautifully shot and well acted illogical mess.

RG is doing a lot of the heavy lifting that the screenwriters should have done. The movie in his head is, I am certain of it, deeper and better than the movie he's defending. I bet the RG cut of Prometheus rocks. This is a compliment.

Wow, thanks, I think the writers bubbled into Greek mythology/bioethics/morality on a high school level at best. Like the characters in the film, they did not understand the philosophy they were bringing up. Or maybe they did but felt they needed to dumb it down, which to me is horribily insulting and pointless. Don't wrestle a titan like the Greek Gods and creators of man unless you want to win.

[Regular Guy]

Prometheus

Prometheus was the wisest Titan. His name means "forethought" and he was able to foretell the future. He was the son of Iapetus. When Zeus revolted against Cronus Prometheus deserted the other Titans and fought on Zeus side.

By some accounts he and his brother Epimethius were delegated by Zeus to create man. In all accounts, Prometheus is known as the protector and benefactor of man. He gave mankind a number of gifts including fire. He also tricked Zeus into allowing man to keep the best part of the animals sacrificed to the gods and to give the gods the worst parts.

For this Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a rock with an eagle tearing at his liver. He was to be left there for all eternity or until he agreed to disclose to Zeus which of Zeus children would try to replace him. He was eventually rescued by Hercules without giving in to Zeus.

Okay, so let's say the black ooze/Alien Xenomorph is the eagle tearing out Prometheus's liver. Science fact, man can not live without a liver, hence the name LIVEr. The punishment from Zeus, if you allow me, then who is the savior of Prometheus? I propose the savior of our benefactor is in fact Hercules, which is an allegory for the strength and resiliency of man kind. So, in the Alien universe do we save our creator from it's creation or the punishment of the creator and it's creation? Upon this time line then Dr. Shaw and David, the synthetic should be the ones to 'solve' the riddle of the black ooze and make 'peace' with our greatest Greek Titan benefactor, Prometheus.
Another thought, is the engineer on the Earth Prometheus and Epimethius. My best guest is the one who sacrifices himself is Prometheus as there is not a mention of a punishment for Epimethius.

Epimetheus

Epimetheus was a stupid Titan, whose name means "afterthought". He was the son of Iapetus. In some accounts he is delegated, along with his brother Prometheus by Zeus to create mankind. He also accepted the gift of Pandora from Zeus, which lead to the introduction of evil into the world.

Is the gift of Pandora Box (Clay pots) from Zeus the black ooze? Was this, is this the punishment for mankind for being created by a higher being, a titan?

[ninja-elbow]

I have not read this whole thread and have skimmed through just the last page of, IMO, some good opinions on this movie. In my personal circels here in PDX I have become kind of a Pariah of Negativity towards this movie. Really, people are making assumptions about me as I am an Alien fanboy like some people are Star Wars geeks or Trekkies. So, my points:

1) It is well known that this movie was billed as "not an Alien prequel".
2) It was an Alien prequel ... and a pretty shitty one at that.

Blacksmith hit up on one of the tropes of alien sci-fi movies I hate the most too. So, we got these way superior aliens that want to destroy us because we are stupid humans that fucked it all up do to greed or something trite like that. Here are the things these 10s of thousands of years more advanced, highly intelligent aliens use (in many movies) to destroy us:

1) Hover sleds and laser rifles (pew pew).
2) Acid blood aliens that bite us to death or face rape our mouths.
3) Giant laser ship that needs to hover over a city before shooting it.
4) Little fighter droids with lasers (pew pew).
5) Walking mech robots that shoot disintegration rays at people (pewZzzap).
6) They don't want to kill us but just want to steal all our water - so they park water sucking ships RIGHT NEXT TO L.A.... as opposed to any other part of Earth's ocean.

In comparison, us stupid and greedy humans have figured out:
1) Make a missile fly to the other side of the planet and blow up a whole city.

[andygates]

The screenplay was by the guy who did Lost. Nuff said.

Don't try to overthink it (seriously: they cut the Space Jesus scene because we'd all laugh) -- it's gibberish. Anger-making gibberish with a few nice moments.

I finally grok why the Star Wars fanboys were so angry about Jar Jar.

[Regular Guy]

Here's some folks that have broken it down:
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments ... _analysed/
It's 59 pages printed out so I did not copy-pasta.
After reading this, I like the movie even more. I'd like to have seen the space saviour scene.

Really, why couldn't there have been more dialogue about this. I think the single living engineer and David/Shaw/Weyland should have had about a hour long conversation before this smashed them. I could see it it now, just me in the theater, sitting entralled with the discourse.

Central theme:
If it weren't already clear enough that the central theme of the film is 'I suffer and die so that others may live' versus 'you suffer and die so that I may live' writ extremely large, Meredith Vickers helpfully spells it out:

'A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.'

[KentsOkay]

Here's some folks that have broken it down:
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments ... _analysed/
It's 59 pages printed out so I did not copy-pasta.
After reading this, I like the movie even more. I'd like to have seen the space saviour scene.

Really, why couldn't there have been more dialogue about this. I think the single living engineer and David/Shaw/Weyland should have had about a hour long conversation before this smashed them. I could see it it now, just me in the theater, sitting entralled with the discourse.

Shoulda had Tarantino direct so that Fassbot and Engineer would compare Engineer and Future Earth pop culture.

[Regular Guy]

Another thing I'm picking up from the reading that the black ooze became a force unto itself. It became the hate and disappointment of the engineers towards us for killing the Space Jesus. The problem is the the humans were sentient and also a force unto themselves. Since we killed space Jesus we were to be punished and the Engineers were to be punished for creating the death they wanted to send us.

[Red Tamarillo]

That 59 page link has this about the space jesus:

"If you have uneasy suspicions about what 'a bad thing approximately 2,000 years ago' might be, then let me reassure you that you are right. An astonishing excerpt from the Movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:

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.

Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him. Reader, that's not me pulling wild ideas out of my arse. That's RIDLEY SCOTT."

My problem with this is I think it's saying the engineers gave the world a 1000 years of big civilizations and warfare before they sent in the space Jesus (to one regional area- what about the other continents/empires?).

But there were lots of nasty warring civilizations for 100's or even 1000's of years before 1000BC- Shang dynasty in China, the multitudes of middle eastern early empires etc...

[Doctorr Fabulous]

Rome was the center of the known world. Histories int he Americas are spotty, so what's to say they didn't send some deities that way? Mayan records say they did. Every civilization has different deities or strange characters with inhuman abilities that manifest in times of struggle. I figure most of them didn't kill those deities, which would make the Ridley-Scott-Space-Christ idea more feasible, strictly script-wise speaking.

Continuing in the realm of "Hmmmm...." what if all the technological and major cultural advances under different god-kings came from the Engineers? The Pharoahs, etc.

[Regular Guy]

Rome was the center of the known world. Histories int he Americas are spotty, so what's to say they didn't send some deities that way? Mayan records say they did. Every civilization has different deities or strange characters with inhuman abilities that manifest in times of struggle. I figure most of them didn't kill those deities, which would make the Ridley-Scott-Space-Christ idea more feasible, strictly script-wise speaking.

Continuing in the realm of "Hmmmm...." what if all the technological and major cultural advances under different god-kings came from the Engineers? The Pharoahs, etc.

I believe that in the Prometheus universe all the advancements were because of the Titans giving certain groups technology. Look at all the cultures that worshipped the sun with blood scarifices and opening the body, removing internals and offering them up to the sun. This is conducive to the gestation of the Xeno, a body being burst open and life coming forth.
I'm being to think they were pissed about the Christ because he was the actual emissary sent by them and not humans given advanced technology. The God Kings were given technology where as the Christ was an actual off world entity, their actual son.

[Blacksmith]

Rome was the center of the known Western world.

FIFY

China was wielding Armies in the 70,000+ range 1600 years before Rome even became an Empire. Lin-tsz was estimated to have a population well into the hundreds of thousands.