Ridley Scott's Prometheus

Originally posted by Esau Cairn
I got the impression that the Engineer in the beginning that sacrificed himself was actually DESTROYING life on the planet & not CREATING it.

I mean the black goo he drinks clearly poisons him, destroys his body & then spreads into the water corrupting & breaking down every living organism it touches. You see red cells forming but to me they're more like plague cells. Nothing in that opening sequence suggested life was being created but much the opposite. And then based on that opening & then the discovery of the cave paintings, everyone assumes the Engineers created life...

Did you not notice that new cells form and start dividing? That kind of suggests that life was ultimately created, not just destroyed. Ealier concept art and pre-visualization actually showed an organism crawl out of the water. There may be many things that are somewhat ambiguous in the film, but this is not one of them.

Ooooh yes. Good call. But if it caused mutations with existing life, would that technically not being destroying the previous form, Genesis matrix style?

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth

(And some non-bay generation long term fans seemed confused to.) But kudos to Scott for not pandering to the "cater to the lowest denominator" crowd and going for something higher.

Ok...I'll go with your Bay comparison & no, I'm not a Bay fan.

Now the similarities are both Bay & Scott both wish to tell a story in movie-form. However lame (or juvenile), Bay's story telling is straight forward, it's so blatantly obvious, one does not need to think but sit back & enjoy the ride & the popcorn.

Then you have Scott & Prometheus...the story isn't as obvious, it's on an intellectual level that has everybody guessing & surmising what's going on. The more people question whether it's the story itself or the actual editing of the film that suppresses the message to get across.
I mean, why watch the movie AND THEN have to rely on numerous articles & interviews from Scott to explain his intentions...? Those intentions should've been made clearer on the screen, not behind the scenes.

Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Did you not notice that new cells form and start dividing? That kind of suggests that life was ultimately created, not just destroyed. Ealier concept art and pre-visualization actually showed an organism crawl out of the water. There may be many things that are somewhat ambiguous in the film, but this is not one of them.

I did notice the cells forming & dividing.
Did you note the colour of them?
As a sci-fi/horror norm, RED CELLS, suggests death, plague, pestilence. It's the rage virus in 28 days, it's vampire blood coursing through human veins, it's tainted soil destroying crops...
I mean if the cells were blue or green, that would've easily associated to life, to evolution...

Everything from the engineer breaking down in pain to black dust, mutating, destroying everything it touched & spreading suggested to me destruction & not creation.

If one of the final questions was why the engineers decided to destroy mankind after creating us...then why is it difficult to grasp that maybe the opening sequence was of destruction & not creation?

Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Ealier concept art and pre-visualization actually showed an organism crawl out of the water. There may be many things that are somewhat ambiguous in the film, but this is not one of them. [/B]

And obviously those ideas were dropped or dismissed since they didn't appear in the final cut.

Red color? Really? Human fetuses are red.

The pleasant, wonderous music that plays while the cells are dividing doesn't suggest the frightening destruction that occurred moments before. It's an interesting notion, Esau, but not really one worth exploring too much, imo. It's well established in the film by Shaw that "they created us, and then tried to destroy us." She wants to know why they changed their minds. I think that's going to be a big theme, and what you're suggesting negates all that and makes the whole film even less comprehensible.

Originally posted by Esau Cairn
And obviously those ideas were dropped or dismissed since they didn't appear in the final cut.

Probably more for budgetary reasons rather than because they were abandoning the idea altogether. Plus, it lacked subtlety, which Ridley is very fond of.

Originally posted by Patient_Leech
It's well established in the film by Shaw that "they created us, and then tried to destroy us." She wants to know why they changed their minds. I think that's going to be a big theme, and what you're suggesting negates all that and makes the whole film even less comprehensible. [/B]

Yeah...but dude,on what basis did Shaw come to those conclusions?
Yes, the DNA of the engineers matched with the human strain...but where in the movie (I can't remember) does she come to the conclusion that something in history happened to make them want to destroy us?

I mean she surmised that all the cave paintings & carvings were "an invitation" to visit them, then at the end of the movie, figures pointing at the star constellation is meant to be a warning to stay away...?

And yes, a human foetus is formed from one living cell. Cells duplicating at a fast rate kinda suggests something more...ominous.

PS: It's a slow day at work, that's why I have nothing better to do but debate...

Yeah it bothers me...

All those cave paintings & carvings indicating the star constellation as a map to the planet.

Shaw logically surmisses an invitation.

Then later Janek realises the planet is just a site for building & storing weapons...not their home planet.

Why the hell would the Engineers advertise the location of their weapons depot?

Yeah, that's probably the biggest question in the movie.

I dont think they did.
Humans did the painting, and also did the surmising/assuming.

BTW Bay's TFs movies have way more plot holes and inconsistancies than Prometheus. You say you don't have to think whilst watching them, I say you cannot afford to think whilst watching them, lest you realise the horrifying ridiculousness/nonsensical shenanigans at hand! Prometheus gets more right and allows the viewer to ponder and imagine like an awesome piece of art, where as the recent transformers films comparitively were like a picture of a packet of Q-tips or something from some local catalogue, by comparison. Zero room for wonder or imagination.

Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Then later Janek realises the planet is just a site for building & storing weapons...not their home planet.

Why the hell would the Engineers advertise the location of their weapons depot?

Not only was that an assumption on Janek's part, but who knows what that planet/installation was 50k, 35K. 20k years ago when the cave drawings were drawn. It could have been an Engineer's welcome depot at one point for all we know.

IMO, Shaw's assumption that the Engineers were benevolent towards humanity and then turned malevolent at some point/for some reason makes more sense and that the planet likely wasn't always some death trap. The question is exactly why and when did their attitude change.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
BTW Bay's TFs movies have way more plot holes and inconsistancies than Prometheus. You say you don't have to think whilst watching them, I say you cannot afford to think whilst watching them, lest you realise the horrifying ridiculousness/nonsensical shenanigans at hand! Prometheus gets more right and allows the viewer to ponder and imagine like an awesome piece of art, where as the recent transformers films comparitively were like a picture of a packet of Q-tips or something from some local catalogue, by comparison. Zero room for wonder or imagination.

Sure, but saying a movie is better than Bayformers isn't much of a compliment.

Not by itself, no. I agree.

But the awesome concept, great cinematography, cool design, largely better employed cast, depth, actaul characters, intellectualism and potential for great series development set it further apart.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
[B]I dont think they did.
Humans did the painting, and also did the surmising/assuming.

Yes, ancient human civilisations were responsible for the paintings & murals & carvings...yet they didn't have the know-how or technology to see those star constellations so far away. So it's still logical that the Engineers gave the humans the planet's destination to mark out.

I mean pointing to a destination clearly cannot be mistaken for ,"Stay Away."

Originally posted by Robtard

IMO, Shaw's assumption that the Engineers were benevolent towards humanity and then turned malevolent at some point/for some reason makes more sense and that the planet likely wasn't always some death trap. The question is exactly why and when did their attitude change. [/B]

As I asked before, what exactly happened in the movie for Shaw to change her mind & ascertain the Engineers became malevolent to humanity?

Really want to see this... Looks awesome

Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Yes, ancient human civilisations were responsible for the paintings & murals & carvings...yet they didn't have the know-how or technology to see those star constellations so far away. So it's still logical that the Engineers gave the humans the planet's destination to mark out.

I mean pointing to a destination clearly cannot be mistaken for ,"Stay Away."

Yes. But if you are the engineer, you could be telling folk where you are from, but assuming that they are pre-fire/wheel, you could surmise that all the giving away of where you came from could probably never yield a visit from these folks.

Also they didn't visit the whole system. Just LV-233.
Maybe the good guys are on one of the other planets.

Another possibility is that once these guys become a space faring civilisation, and there is a grievance against them, inviting them to your bioweapons lab and infecting them, is a more easy method than travelling all the way to their domain to do it, perhaps having to negate any defences they may have by then... (Which they looked like they were gonna try anyway, beofre they tripped on their own slimy mandible'd shoelaces... granted..)

Originally posted by Robtard
Not only was that an assumption on Janek's part, but who knows what that planet/installation was 50k, 35K. 20k years ago when the cave drawings were drawn. It could have been an Engineer's welcome depot at one point for all we know.

IMO, Shaw's assumption that the Engineers were benevolent towards humanity and then turned malevolent at some point/for some reason makes more sense and that the planet likely wasn't always some death trap. The question is exactly why and when did their attitude change.

My sort of tentative theory is that they were in the middle of terraforming the planet (LV-223) as an invitation for humanity (or perhaps more accurately for a person or group of people) to partake of the black, life-fostering bacterial goo and populate the planet. It is a way of saying, "Hey, you've grown up and realized that death is a natural progression of life, so here is a planet for you to inhabit, so you can have renewed resources instead of being stuck on that overpopulated and depleted Earth." But in the middle of it something went wrong (i.e. Jesus the Space Christ was crucified) and caused an outbreak of the bacterial goo and hence the new animosity toward their human-race offspring.

Originally posted by ares834
Sure, but saying a movie is better than Bayformers isn't much of a compliment.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Not by itself, no. I agree.

But the awesome concept, great cinematography, cool design, largely better employed cast, depth, actaul characters, intellectualism and potential for great series development set it further apart.

😆 Exactly. Don't forget: "non-retardedness." 😛

Originally posted by Esau Cairn
As I asked before, what exactly happened in the movie for Shaw to change her mind & ascertain the Engineers became malevolent to humanity?

Well, she was walking around the place like everyone else and noticed that something pretty devastating happened about 2,000 years ago (she suspects it was an outbreak), the decapitated Engineer head exploded after she revived it, she watched Holloway (her soulmate) die. I also think that she suspect that David knows more than he is sharing with everyone (since he is probably able to understand the language and engravings). At this point, she's pretty sure that human-Engineer relations are not as peaceful as they may have once been. And then she learns that the ship is packed to the brim with the black bacteria and was intended for earth. Badda-boom-badda-bing... conclusion: they don't seem to like us too much anymore. Then she desperately tries to inquire to the remaining Engineer, "Why do you hate us?" and "What did we do wrong?" Then the Engineer rips off David's head, beats Weyland to death with it and then proceeds to take out everyone else with ferocity and irritation at their mere presence.

Basically in short, she did some detective work.