Prometheus (2012) discussion - *SPOILERS!*

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Judderman

Anyone got any comments on the actual characters? A bit weak?

They were weak characters because of weak actor playing Shaw's husband/boyfriend.

I think Idris Alba,Fassbender and Rapace gave their characters depth but the films pace was too high after half the film so you couldnt get to know them better. Thats why it cant be compared to quality of the best,first two alien films. There were many good characters in those films.

[PTeppic]

Originally Posted by Moonbat

Ok last bit, and this will only help if people have seen it once, read this and see it again (Pteppic) After Shaw gives herself emergency surgery and then meets David he says he is amazed by her survival instinct, at that bit both my fiancee and I thought we heard him call her Lisbeth (instead of Elizabeth) I'm not sure if it was just a poorly enunciated word or if it was a nod to Noomi Rapace's character in the millenium trilogy Lisbeth Salander, it would seem a bit of an odd nod to give in such a different film, but we both heard it and I'm wondering if anyone else noticed it?

Yes, noticed it even during the first showing

[mr kite]

Originally Posted by Judderman

Anyone got any comments on the actual characters? A bit weak?

They did`nt really have enough time to for us to get to know them I thought.
But there was one or two I didn`t really want to know .
The Scottish woman for one .

[James Coote]

Went to see Prometheus last night in 3D with two flatmates. It was ok, but I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe if it came on TV

The problem with the film was that it tried to shoehorn about half a dozen different themes into one film and does none of them justice. Same with the characters. There are just too many, so none get the screen time to make them really deep and allow me to connect with them

All this leaves no time to build anything resembling tension or atmosphere

**BIG SPOILER WARNING AHEAD. SPOILING JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING***

<rant>

Characters

The characters were not believable in the slightest. They were two dimensional and irrational. Quite frankly there were too many of them put in front of you to give any time to develop fully. For example, the two pilots of the ship start off with their bet, and have a bit of banter, but you never see them put into a really dangerous position where they have to depend on each other

The geologist and biologist duo really wind me up. Right when they have their first encounter, you think "ok, these two aren't going to get along and that will be the basis for something later". That never really comes to pass.

They are supposed to be educated professionals (the best for the mission?) and I'd assume to be picked for this they ought to have been on expeditions before. Instead they are running around like headless chickens. When they get creeped out and decide to leave the room with the big head and jars and get lost is where the film finally loses me. Everyone else managed to get out just fine and in a hurry. You're telling me a geologist can't navigate, read a map or doesn't bother to bring one with him? And with all that technology. We can see where they are the whole time on the hologram on the ship's deck, and that alien structure does not look very complex

Once cut off by the storm, why did they decide to hole up in the room with the head and jars? Did they not think that hanging around in a previously sealed room with a bunch of vases that have black goo oozing out of them, that weren't oozing before (as was even pointed out by one of the characters at one point iirc) wasn't the greatest idea? The biologist clearly did not study biology (oh yeah I'll just stick my hand at this animal that I have no clue what its biology is and whether it is about to bite my hand off or spit acid. Even to me that looks like a mouth and not something you poke your finger into).

The geologist guy is also meant to have a whole 'bad omens' thing going on and an 'I'm just here for the money', hesitating before they first enter the alien structure. However, we've really not seen anything up to that point to justify his fears.

Furthermore, the rest of the team quite blithely wander into the structure like it's the disney castle. They don't take any time to do a survey, safety assessment, make sure they don't contaminate the structure with anything they've brought with them.

Then there's David, who is the most confused character of all. I wanted to like him, but really he didn't have a moment where his previously ambiguous character suddenly shone through, showing his true colours, in the way it did with Bishop and Archer in the other Alien films. He's like a child playing, but the film never really lets us get that. I just wanted one of the other characters to turn around and slap him and tell him to stop playing, but they never do (they never even question what he's doing, like why did he touch that alien machine when he can't possibly know what it'll do). What is his ultimate motivation anyway? Trying to justify himself as worthy of his creator? Or trying to find the true meaning of the human soul he apparently lacks?

Elisabeth is another confused character. The whole can't have kids thread is chucked in half baked and so late into the film that you just think "wait what?". Her cross and religious beliefs feel like they've been dropped in to somehow add a theological element to the story that really shouldn't be there and satisfy a certain Christian demographic in the USA.

And her husband/boyfriend. They are built up to be the core relationship around which the story revolves. Then half way through he is just randomly flamethrowered to death. Why is he drinking so heavily? He shows no sign of it before the ship sets off, then soon as they find the engineers he goes all out of character, slouching around with a bottle in his hand.

Charlize's character is the most believable until she bangs the captain a bit too readily. So she suffers from inferiority complex and being second fiddle to David, despite being Weyland's own flesh and blood (which is another thing that doesn't make sense as Weyland claims he loves David like a son, but in the same breath says he has no soul... most people don't love soulless robots over their own daughters). She also suffered a crappy death. I never really hated her, and I figured she had a reason for getting to the escape pod in time, but apparently not.... Also she hand picked the crew ("well, at least those I picked") but you never quite work out who she didn't pick or get a sense of factionalism that is hinted at maybe coming later

The captain was reasonable, though quite why he was so happy to suicide kamakazi himself at the end was a bit out of character (same with the two pilots. They all went a bit too happily to their fiery deaths). Also he never really seemed to care for his crew, who were being picked off in batches, nor ever really sweat at the weight of responsibility for the ship and crew, nor get very involved in the obvious power struggle and questions over authority from having Theron and Weyland on board

Weyland was also ok, but never struck me as someone who was desperate. More like he went on the trip on the off chance. He didn't really have a comeback when the obvious point of "well what if these engineers don't feel like making you live longer (assuming they even could do that)," which surely he must have thought through before even setting off. I can't really believe this guy was a rich business mogul with such naive and optimistic outlook on things

Engineers

The engineers are a total cop-out. The original alien film had the pilot, who was never explained or really covered in any of the subsequent films. All we know is he's bizarre looking alien and fossilized and a victim of the (main) aliens. Part of the appeal is having some things that are never explained. So going back and saying 'oh he was just an advanced human in a suit' is quite frankly insulting

The introduction to the engineers is all amiss. Got his head chopped off by the door? Looks quite a hard feat to achieve considering the bulkiness of their suits. What happened to the other engineers who were just in front of him? If they were in a panic, running away from something, they still had time to record a video of the whole thing for whoever came next? But not record what they were being chased by. And if humans had been pointed to this place in space, why would they give any clues or help to those humans coming after them? And why was the recording quality so bad? In the pilot's room they had some pretty swanky graphics

There are multiple engineer ships, but how come none of the others ever gets launched to go destroy humanity. Even if one gets taken over by aliens, the engineers in the others should have enough warning to get off the planet (the engineer at the end certainly wastes no time in getting out of there).

I quite like the idea they created humans and then changed their minds, but if they're so smart, I can't imagine them failing to destroy humanity nor picking such an obscure way to do it.

Black Goo

The black goo stuff is another part of the alien lifecycle that wasn't in any of the previous films.

Why did the engineers create a weapon with such a round-about way to kill? Using creatures that are transformed by the black goo into yet another creature that then impregnates yet another creature to finally produce the alien that will actually do the killing?

Then again, for my favourite geologist, it just zombifies him, causing him to rage beat up a bunch of throwaway characters, whilst for the engineers, it causes their heads to explode. Inconsistent

Deeper Meanings

The film starts off 'oh look, here are these aliens who were on ancient Earth.' Well that's gonna be a fairly fundamental turning point in human history and could probably take up a whole film in its own right.

The archaeologists then make the unqualified assumption that these aliens created us somehow (as one character points out, throwing out centuries of established Darwinism). Again a whole film's worth of stuff at least right there.

Then we have all the stuff about David and can androids have souls, something that again isn't something you normally just chuck in there. And then on top of that you mix a bit of 'I can see your dreams'.

And then throw in some vapid shallow christian belief stuff.

Then Mr Weyland rocks up and tells us he's looking for immortality. Really now? This film is only 15 minutes in and already I'm thinking "What is this film about? Because at the moment it seems to be about half a dozen different things."

Other Inconsistencies

David finds some alien-type goo when he plays the first engineer's hologram, but that is never expanded on.

The alien cut out of Elisabeth somehow grows enormous despite being locked in a room with nothing to eat

Quarantine is another thing that riles me about this film. It's like all the characters purposely ignore the most fundamental and basic rules of quarantine. Taking your helmet off on an alien planet that obviously has life on it? You might as well roll out the red carpet and welcome on board whatever unknown pathogens happen to be floating around

The eponymous ship is nice and shiny, a (no doubt expensive) research vessel, yet the crew look like they were just picked randomly from a bunch of dock workers looking for casual employment.

Then at the end, flying off to ask the engineers some more questions? It may be a nice setup for a sequel, but after the response the engineer in stasis gave when woken up and queried, I wouldn't hold out much hope that any other engineers are going to give a more polite answer. In fact they might just blast Elisabeth's ship out of the sky

Finally, the warning beacon Elisabeth places that ties into the first Alien film. If it was a human beacon then the crew of the Nostromo would have immediately recognised it as such, not mistaken it for a distress beacon. If Weyland corp still exists (even as a merged WeylandYutani corp) that suggests not far enough into the future that language has changed enough they don't understand it, nor that so long has passed, the beacon has become corrupted and scrambled and sending out an ambiguous signal. If the Nostromo was sent on company orders and the company knew about the fate of the Prometheus, why not send a proper expedition. It could still work, but is just more plausible as a mysterious alien signal than a human one

</rant>

[TheTomG]

I didn't like the movie that much, too inconsistent.

For instance, the geologist has these little flying bots ("his pups") that do all the mapping - yet he gets lost on the way back to the ship? A feat that no-one else manages, even without them being in charge of the mapping bots.

Then one bot picks up life signs, and geologist and biologist decide to quickly go in the other direction. Sensible. But when life finally does turn up, the biologist has the totally opposite reaction than he just had a few moments ago and wants to cozy up to it and not get away. So why did he not go zooming TOWARD the detected life sign earlier if he is that eager? Or why not be equally cautious or fearful when some (frankly, disturbing-looking) lifeform shows up in front of him?

As mentioned, some fresh goo on some control panel, but apparently all life was in stasis, so where did that come from?

As mentioned, a life form that manages to grow about twenty times larger with no biomass to draw from to grow like that.

Now, if this was 35,000 years ago (or was it 3,500, sorry I forgot, all the same, quite a while) - why was there no search party from the engineer's home planet come to find out what happened here?

And if the engineers appear to have happily forgotten to eradicate the Earth for many thousands of years, why go to their home planet and go "Yoohoo! You forgot to destroy us, we'd like to remind you of that so you can have another go."

One point about the distress beacon, this is not the same planet that the Nostromo lands on, it's an "LV" but a different number. Of course, somewhat weird that the crashed ship crashes in much the same way as the one the Nostromo finds, though maybe given its shape, it can't crash many other ways ha!

David was also annoying in fiddling with things, and none of the humans seemed to say "STOP fiddling with things! Honestly!"

Then Elisabeth, having just undergone emergency caesarian, fails to mention this to the people she then runs into. "I just gave birth to a weird freaky monster, maybe your search for immortality is misguided!!" Or even "Help me!" or any other sort of reaction, other than to calmly join a discussion and saddle up to go back in to the place that started such horrors.

She'd started out fighting for her life on hearing about her abnormal pregnancy, pretending to be drugged and then smacking people around, and knew David planned something against her best intentions with his announcement to just deep freeze her with the thing still inside, but all is quickly forgiven and forgotten eh? What's a little alien impregnation between friends and work mates?

Her husbands change was dull, as was his death, served no real point.

Why indeed would there be some recording of the engineer running, but no recording of what they ran from - defeats the point of your security camera if you're not going to record the criminals, right?

Why would the humans be sent to the bioweapons planet and not the home planet? How, in fact, would they have known about that planet anyway? I guess there is the large flying saucer shaped ship, perhaps some engineers stayed on Earth to watch how their life developed, based on that. Though, why would they send humans to the bioweapons planet again, especially if said planet was going to send ships of mass destruction here anyway.

The engineers were disappointing, the "strange unknown type of alien body" being "just a space suit" was disappointing to say the least. As was their brutish nature - no mystery or mysticism, just "smash things up a lot." They don't seem like a very interesting species.

The mysterious green crystal placed below the carving of the alien, what was that? Also, it was a carving of a finished alien of the type we all know, though the film seemed to show that we were evolving toward that with first a giant face hugger, hatching into a fully formed alien (or something pretty close to it.) So where did the carving of the final form alien that hasn't evolved yet come from?

Where did the original crawly bugs come from (that the black goo presumably turned into the larger snake alien) ? Why does the black goo make things with acid for blood? Why does the biologist just die, but the geologist (who presumably can't breathe since his plastic helmet just melted over his face) turn into a crazed being? And why does he not mutate further, or just go like Elisabeth's husband and turn black and get very sick, or go like the engineer and just break apart?

Unanswered questions a-plenty too. Did the engineer at the start MEAN for that to happen? He seemed kind of surprised by it all.

Why did the engineers need so many capsules of black goo when it seems like just a few would be enough, given the chain of events it can start?

Altogether, unsatisfying. Even the monster designs didn't do it for me, losing the demonic sexuality that Giger imparted to his creation and becoming blunt regular horrors more like a Cronenberg (or as someone elsewhere said, something more like an H.P. Lovecraft imagining.)

I did love the tech and ships though, and plenty of spectacle, but a disappointment to me overall.

[TheTomG]

Oh, not to mention Vickers running AWAY from a rotating wheel, rather than off to the side - and she'd seemed so smart and in control and willing to do whatever it takes to survive!

And the throw-away connection of her being Weyland's daughter, which again added nothing. Surely she'd be a mite more peeved at her dad for choosing an android over her.

And the captain, in the end out for what is best for humanity - yet he sees two of his crew uncover a mass of dead engineer bodies and is completely unconcerned for what this might signify and never mentions this to anyone else, nor seems overly concerned about the lifeform detected by the probe. In fact he even seems to lie about seeing the pile of bodies, saying that the static is cutting out the feed for a lot of the time, as if he has some ulterior motive. So he goes from being blithely unconcerned, to willing to sacrifice himself later?

Why wouldn't Weyland send David in to talk to the engineer and only be woken up afterward? After all he only has limited time to live, and the engineer may take hours or days of conversation to go over the possibilities of immortality. Maybe he'd need weeks or months to prepare whatever was needed to make him immortal. Why not stay safely asleep until all that was uncovered?

The more I think about it, the more flawed it gets

[Huttman]

What a waste having Chalize in this film. What was the point, they already had a captain. I like her, and I don't think she did a bad job in this film, but besides the predictable relationship she had with Guy Pearce, I just don't for the life of me understand her role on that ship. Guy Pearce, they really should have had that speech he made on that video while he was young in the film. It would have helped the audience who does not watch things like that relate to him more. The xenomorph at the end was kind of laughable, too. Other than that, it was enjoyable to watch, plotholes not withstanding.
Oh yeah, why was that one surviving engineer still alive? I mean, why didn't he wake up earlier?

[Steve S]

Overall, I enjoyed Prometheus, especially from a design perspective. I found there to be too many paper-thin characters and the script weak, especially in the final act, with perhaps too much left unresolved. I think it will reward multiple viewings though, and I was particularly taken by the mysterious opening to the film, and left wondering if this was a reference to the common creation myth of the 'dismembered God', with life on Earth formed from the body parts of a deity (or 'Engineer' in this case!). I'm possibly way off beam with that idea, but for all its flaws, it's always welcome to have a film that stimulates further discussion.

[iansales]

Prometheus is to Alien what The Phantom Menace was to Star Wars.

[PTeppic]

Originally Posted by iansales

Prometheus is to Alien what The Phantom Menace was to Star Wars.

And a lot of people expected it to be "Revenge of the Sith"... (or all three)?

[Phyrebrat]

I was getting ready to post a long rant about my disappointment (both at myself for believing the hype, and the shoddy film, itself) but then I read James' post which says exactly how I feel about this film, so I hope he doesn't mind if I carve and add to what he has said.

The characters should have been halved in number. In stories, empathy with the characters is ultimate importance. They did not allow us time to develop any sense of care or intuition for the character. By intuition I mean this: You would know what Ripley or Burke would have done in similar situations early on in the movie Alien or Aliens because those characters are drawn so well, so early that you know one is a pragmatic kick ass and the other is a cowardly manipulator. Therefore, you can intuit what their actions would be in any given situation.

Re:Characters
The Engineers: I exist, therefore I'm a villain.
The Converted Geologist: I've been infected, therefore I'm a villain.
David: I'm an Android, therefore I'm a villain (regardless of how sketchy his motives or character was).
Charlize: Point of her? Just to add some link to Weyland from the franchise canon?

Why do we keep seeing these boring hackneyed sci-fi tropes? (Not to mention TheTomG's comment above about Vickers running away instead of to the side of the rolling ship. When Jar Jar runs down the hill at the Battle of Naboo to escape the rolling boomers we're like; 'Of course, it's cool, cos Jar Jar is a twit!'. But when the two most intelligent females in Prometheus do the same thing there is cause for concern.)

Anyway, back to my best bits from James' post (my edits);

Originally Posted by James Coote

The problem with the film was that it tried to shoehorn about half a dozen different themes into one film and does none of them justice. Same with the characters. There are just too many, so none get the screen time to make them really deep and allow me to connect with them...Quite frankly there were too many of them put in front of you to give any time to develop fully...[I would recommend anyone who is not a visitor to the Aspiring Writers forum here to get thee hence and see how important this comment is]

...why did they decide to hole up in the room with the head and jars? Did they not think that hanging around in a previously sealed room with a bunch of vases that have black goo oozing out of them, that weren't oozing before (as was even pointed out by one of the characters at one point iirc) wasn't the greatest idea...

Then there's David...they never even question what he's doing, like why did he touch that alien machine when he can't possibly know what it'll do... What is his ultimate motivation anyway? Trying to justify himself as worthy of his creator? Or trying to find the true meaning of the human soul he apparently lacks? [And are we to believe he pilots the craft out of altruistic needs or to follow his initial directive - there is no evidence for a definitive answer in the movie]

Elisabeth is another confused character. The whole can't have kids thread is chucked in half baked [exactly!] Her cross and religious beliefs feel like they've been dropped in to somehow add a theological element to the story that really shouldn't be there...[we're bluetoothing now, James!]

And her husband/boyfriend. They are built up to be the core relationship around which the story revolves. Then half way through he is just randomly flamethrowered to death. Why is he drinking so heavily? He shows no sign of it before the ship sets off, then soon as they find the engineers he goes all out of character, slouching around with a bottle in his hand. [Exactly!].


The captain was reasonable, though quite why he was so happy to suicide kamakazi himself at the end was a bit out of character (same with the two pilots. [Why? Well because he is black and we all know black folk are happy-go-lucky singalong comedians who always get killed before the end of the movie? Notwithstanding the fact that Idris Elba was born down the road from me and has an English accent. It's just another example of racism in Hollywood.]

Engineers
[now for my biggest moan]
The engineers are a total cop-out. The original alien film had the pilot, who was never explained or really covered in any of the subsequent films. All we know is he's bizarre looking alien and fossilized and a victim of the (main) aliens. Part of the appeal is having some things that are never explained. So going back and saying 'oh he was just an advanced human in a suit' is quite frankly insulting.
[You've hit on the most iconic moment in Alien for me; when the away team in Alien find the Space Jockey I was intrigued and obsessed to a small degree of how/what/why it got there. Most clear in my childhood mind (I'm 40 now) were two things; 1, the fossilisation; 2, the hole in his chest. So where is this Space Jockey?]


Black Goo
[the only thing I have to say about this is that it was another concept introduced to muddy already conceptually over-populated and muddy waters]

The black goo stuff is another part of the alien lifecycle that wasn't in any of the previous films...

...Then again, for my favourite geologist, it just zombifies him, causing him to rage beat up a bunch of throwaway characters, whilst for the engineers, it causes their heads to explode. Inconsistent...

Deeper Meanings

The film starts off 'oh look, here are these aliens who were on ancient Earth.' Well that's gonna be a fairly fundamental turning point in human history and could probably take up a whole film in its own right.

...The archaeologists then make the unqualified assumption that these aliens created us somehow (as one character points out, throwing out centuries of established Darwinism). Again a whole film's worth of stuff at least right there...

[I love the idea of panspermia but it has to be consistent with our existing knowledge of the Theory of Evolution. To my knowledge it is accepted that what is now Eastern Africa - Tanzania etc was the crucible of humankind. I'm betting they did not look like huge white giants...or maybe the DNA exact match scene has me confused.]

Other Inconsistencies

The alien cut out of Elisabeth somehow grows enormous despite being locked in a room with nothing to eat. [I'm glad someone else was bothered by this.]

...The eponymous ship is nice and shiny, a (no doubt expensive) research vessel, yet the crew look like they were just picked randomly from a bunch of dock workers looking for casual employment. [And I also thought it anachronistic in terms of technology. it seemed way advanced to the stuff we see in the following movies. I'm not talking about the Nostromo hauler or the prison planet; I'm talking about the military tech in Aliens which (as we know from our own Military-Industrial Complex) should be far more advanced.]

Then at the end, flying off to ask the engineers some more questions? It may be a nice setup for a sequel, but after the response the engineer in stasis gave when woken up and queried, I wouldn't hold out much hope that any other engineers are going to give a more polite answer. In fact they might just blast Elisabeth's ship out of the sky... [And I hope they do, and that we don't need to suffer an extension of this rotting franchise. Alien died after Alien3 for me (possibly after Aliens), to use this morass of concepts and bad screenplay to groom us for future instalments is petrifying.]

...If it was a human beacon then the crew of the Nostromo would have immediately recognised it as such, not mistaken it for a distress beacon...[Indeed.]

Before I go I want someone to explain two things to me. I'm sure there is a reason for this which I missed as it is far too big an error to have made accidentally; In Aliens we are told that the moon is LV426 yet in Prometheus we were shown LV223. What happened/will happen?

Where is the fossilised Space Jockey with chest burster hole?

And finally, I know that this post may make me come across as a hater: I am not. I am not a fan of Aliens in the way that I am of, say BSG or Star Wars (and yes, I love the prequels ), but I just feel so let down by a movie I was looking forward to seeing.

pH

[HareBrain]

The alien cut out of Elisabeth somehow grows enormous despite being locked in a room with nothing to eat. [I'm glad someone else was bothered by this.]

Doesn't the same apply to the original Alien? What did that grow so large on? (Been a long time since I saw the film, so apologies of it was explained.)

[Aun Doorback]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

[/B]

Doesn't the same apply to the original Alien? What did that grow so large on? (Been a long time since I saw the film, so apologies of it was explained.)

Ah the explanation I've read says ' Although such a rate of growth is quite unheard of in Earth's fauna, we should bear in mind that this particular life-form is extra-terrestrial, and therefore not necessarily subject to conventional wisdom about growth and development. Perhaps the Alien is a physiologically simple creature with all body structures present when it bursts out of its host, and all that is needed is that its cells quickly replicate and grow in size...blah blah blah ete etc '

Sounds like a get out of jail card when creating fantastical things

[Phyrebrat]

The original Alien grows incrementally, although you're right in that this is not explained in the film other than the finding of shed skin, and implied.

Personally, I think this is because it has had a nice old chow down on some of the crewmates and because Kane had been eating Wheyland protein <groaaan>

I think the fact that the one in the Prometheus film was trapped in a med bay makes it harder to believe its size, but I think you're right that, essentially, there is no empirical proof of it eating in Alien, either. It just bothered me.

pH

[TheTomG]

While a similar problem exists in Alien with the unexplained growth (even cell replication needs raw material to draw from, alien or not - you can't spontaneously create matter), at least that Alien had a whole ship to run around, and who knows what food it might find? Being trapped in a med bay kind of removes that feel of "Oh it probably found something to chow down on."

Yeah the name of the moon is different, because it's a different moon. Which is why no fossilised space jockey - not the same place at all. This relieves them of the need to explain why the Nostromo didn't detect all the wreckage from the Prometheus and the escape pods and the survival capsule. Basically it frees them from having to dovetail too precisely into the Alien saga (or just yet anyway, as I hear there may be other movies in the making so we may end up precisely with the scene before Alien yet)