PROMETHEUS - Grade and Discuss

[137th Gebirg]

Saul wrote:

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Don't get that either. I would have thought that they'd be pissed for another reason like people starting to believe in Jesus and worship him instead of them.

Based on my previous post - My take was that maybe the "mission" Jesus undertook was to teach the Romans the need for self-sacrifice, with the hopes that our species may have become an advanced-enough civilization to grasp the concept. To paraphrase one of the mantras in the movie - "Every king must die" - perhaps it was hoped that whoever was serving as Caesar during that time may have been compelled to die for the Greater Good of civilization. Methinks the Engineers heavily underestimated their creations' instinct for self-preservation - a potentially unique adaptation to our species during its development on a hostile Earth - an adaptation they didn't foresee.

[Starkers]

137th Gebirg wrote:

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He's one of the big proponents of the Ancient Alien theory. He's on the History Channel and on any other channel (TLC, Discovery) along with a bunch of other folks that has shows produced on the topic. Very much the mouthpiece of the overall movement - and the most polished. Just wish he would get that damn hair under control.

Thank you, I figured it was something like that...does he actually look like a Centari intentionally then?

[Disruptor]

davejames wrote:

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I'm still curious about the relief of the xenomorph on the wall myself. If they're just supposed to be another bio-weapon or black goo mutation, why are they the only ones that share the same Giger-esque ribbing and bio-mechanical look as the Engineers?

In the "Art of" book, Ridley talks about the mutations taking on the form of their hosts, but it was shown pretty clearly in the movie that the bio-mechanical detail was only part of a bio-suit, and the Engineers look much more human underneath. So I don't think the xenomorphs could have gotten it that way.

Maybe they were some kind of special creation the Engineers patterned after themselves or something. Or maybe they even come from the same home planet...

I was wondering that. Though, parts of the biosuit on the pilot himself seemed integrated with his skin. Also, why do the hives the xenos make resemble the Engineers' structures?

Maybe the xenos were a mere engineering tool...to create structures. "We pale giants are too lazy to build, let's make some worker ants. But what if they breed incontrollably? We'll engineer them so they require hosts to breed."

So the xenos are their David's, their artificial lifeforms.

Or not. The ALIENS don't seem designed for digging tunnels. Acid for blood is messy, too. They'd need a kill switch to make sure the aliens could be eradicated when their job was done.

And we don't know the end stage of Alien metamorphasis. We think we do. At some point the hive changes into something else, maybe the Newborn alien in Resurrection wasn't a hybrid, maybe it was the next step in the xeno "life cycle". hell, maybe it was the kill switch. It kills all the xenos.

[Warped9]

I just got home to find the book Prometheus: The Art Of The Film waiting for me from Amazon. This is a really nice book and I'm looking forward to reading it. Maybe I'll also get some clues regarding some of the thinking that went into the film.

I also picked up Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual. Another nice book with lots of tech about the stuff we saw in the film as well as stuff we didn't get to see.

[137th Gebirg]

Starkers wrote:

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Thank you, I figured it was something like that...does he actually look like a Centari intentionally then?

I'm thinking it's a Greek thing.

[Trekker4747]

If anyone's heard of it, Kevin Smith's new Blip TV series "Spoilers" covered this movie last week. In the show Smith has taken a group of people to see a movie and then he has a session where they discuss aspects of the movie, followed by Smith's own reactions and then usually a relevant interview. (For Prometheus it was David Lindeloff (sp?.) The show itself isn't too bad but Smith seems a bit... too... "hopped up" than how he usually is, like he's trying too hard to be an excited show host.

Decent enough show, though.

Spoilers with Kevin Smith

[doubleohfive]

JarodRussell wrote:

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But there is a hundred people involved during pre-production and production.

Of course there are. But the majority of them are not in a position to tell the director of a film what works and what doesn't, let alone a director of Ridley Scott's calibre.

Expecting that some wardrobe assistant is going to kick down Ridley's door to tell him his script doesn't make any sense is ridiculous.

Likewise, studio execs have their say, sometimes for good and sometimes (usually) for ill. There's not much to be done about that either. It's just the nature of the business.

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Probably one of the reasons the final cut was trimmed down by almost 30 minutes for theatrical release. I will honestly never understand this mentality.

[doubleohfive]

Why don't you understand it? The people paying for the film to be made have a say in how it gets made. I don't know that I necessarily like that particular aspect of it all, but it is what it is.

[137th Gebirg]

I have a hard time with stupidity, I guess. M'kay?

[Bob The Skutter]

To be fair a lot of films recently are bloated and could use a trim. Though they seem to trim the wrong films and of the wrong things.

[doubleohfive]

137th Gebirg wrote:

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I have a hard time with stupidity, I guess. M'kay?

Sorry if that last post came across as incendiary... I was aiming more for rhetorical. I definitely agree with you re: the stupidity thing though.

[Warped9]

I've started reading Prometheus: The Art Of The Film and so far I've gleaned a few nuggets.

The ship was originally supposed to be called Magellan and was later changed to Prometheus. I don't know why yet or if it's significant. The next thing thats been mentioned a few times is that Ridley Scott used the 1979 film Alien as the sole source or jumping off point for Prometheus. He doesn't seem to have gone out of his way to contradict latter films, but he didn't feel beholden to them.

One of the primary ideas he started from was: who was the Space Jockey and how did he come to be there? That was the jumping off point. He acknowledges that while the Space Jockey does look like he/it could be an alien RS also thought it could just as easily be a humanoid form in a deteriorating space suit thats been there for some 2000 years. That was his jumping off point.

Prometheus was initially planned as more of a direct prequel/tie-in to the 1979 film, but as the project developed they saw the opportunity to paint on a broader canvas, one that would be tenuously connected to the 1979 film, but not anchored by it. What I get out of this is the Giger xenomorph seen in Alien isn't necessarily the ultimate form of the Engineers' bioweapon. It seems that it is interpreted as but one possible form.

There is a parallel in the film. The Engineers' bioweapon was also a way of creating life and it got away from them. Now we have David (as well as Ash) representing humanity artificially creating life and is it possible that we could face a similar fate? Could David and his kind develop minds of their own and turn on us? It's a question that is suggested in the film, and David's actions can make you wonder.

Finally here is a quote from Production Designer, Arthur Max:

"We wanted to be not very comprehensible, not very explained and almost unknowable." ... "It was a challenge to come up with a whole society and culture that is more advanced than ours in most ways and maintain the intrigue of it. But by not explaining it, how do you describe it? That was the challenge, So visually we tried to leave enough information to where the audience would be filling in their own interpretation of how things might've worked, and what they may be doing with the objects at hand. How we suggested that is the dynamic of the film." ... "Another big challenge was how to incorporate the shape language and design language of Giger, which is always lurking there because of the fan base---and Ridley was aware of this too---had expectations about where we were going to take this. There was a lot of pendulum swinging between 'Shall we embrace Giger or shall we do something new?' In the end what evolved was to incorporate some of what he had done, but make it less bio and more mechanoid. We decided to keep a consistency in the design language, still keep the form, but to do a cleaner version. It's still very much a child born out of his vision, and we wanted to retain that."

He also mentions the collaboration between the writers and designers and the cross-pollination of ideas between them.

[davejames]

Warped9 wrote:

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I just got home to find the book Prometheus: The Art Of The Film waiting for me from Amazon. This is a really nice book and I'm looking forward to reading it. Maybe I'll also get some clues regarding some of the thinking that went into the film.

Yeah I flipped through the book and it seemed pretty cool. They talked about how the Engineers were originally going to be upsized to their proper height in post (as they appeared in Alien), but Ridley felt they already looked large enough as is.

The movie is also featured in the new Cinefex (along with Avengers). Looks like there's probably some interesting info in there too, but I haven't had a chance to read it all yet.

[Nightowl1701]

137th Gebirg wrote:

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I can't remember specifically if the team, towards, the end, made the specific assumption (in-dialog) that this was a bio-weapons facility or not. I have vague recollection of this, but can't be sure.

Captain Janek (to Shaw as she's donning her spacesuit and popping painkillers): "You know what this place is? Those 'Engineers'...this ain't their home. It's an installation. Maybe even military. Now, they put it out here in the middle of nowhere 'cuz they're not stupid enough to make weapons of mass destruction on their own doorstep. That's what all that shit is in those vases. They made it here, it got out...it turned on 'em. The End."

In the theatrical cut, it's the Zombie Fifield attack that leads Janek to this conclusion, combined with their disastrous second trip to the temple earlier that day and the mutation/death of Holloway. In the script (and possibly Director's Cut), the Fifield attack comes after this scene.