I give Prometheus a hard time, but only because it has so many things going for it. It feels so large that it’s almost like the slice of life we saw in the movie got lost in its grandness. My good friend and editor of the site and I went to go see Prometheus together (having waited many months to see it) and got to talking after the movie was done. Here are some of the things we thought were great as well as some of the things we thought needed work, were weak or just plain horrible. Feel free to chime in to give us your explanation as to why you think something we think is bad works. It’s all for fun!
SPOILER: THIS POST DISCUSSES PROMETHEUS PLOT. SKIP IT IF YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING RUINED. CLICK ON THE POST FOR MORE!!
The good
Engineers
Those big guys remind me of Resident Evil Tyrants. They’re massive and die hard. Great alien race.
Trilobite
While there wasn’t too much of this ancient head hugger type, I like to think about it’s size and musculature as being designed to wrestle an Engineer as opposed to the much smaller size of the head huggers in Alien which had strength enough to attack a human.
Prometheus collision with the space croissant
Epic. While the set up for this was a little fast in my opinion (think Shaw and the captain’s talk about values at what seemed to be maybe 10 minutes before he had to act on what he said), it was pretty awesome to see the two collide. I mean, the characters were mostly forgettable (the two co-pilots had how many lines and how much screen time again?), but it was still cool.
Special Effects
If you saw the movie, you’d know what I was talking about.
The Bad/ The Weak/ The Horrible
The Rock guy and the biologist get lost
“Are you kidding me?” was what I was thinking when we found out these two were still in the pyramid. There is so much wrong with that scenario. First off, those two don’t even like each other. The movie made a point to highlight that early on, but suddenly they have each other's back when rock guy freaks out in front of the giant face statue room? Ok, so they both didn’t want to be there, but why establish the conflict?
And what of rock guy and his scanner “pups”. The way I see it, if a guy brings along reconnaissance devices that everyone seems surprised about then that guy should know a thing or two about getting around in a cave. It isn’t even established that the place is maze like. The argument here is that rock guy was so flustered that he might have gotten disoriented, but wouldn’t he or Bio guy have thought “I should have found an exit by now” before they ended who knows how lost in the maze? Lucky for them though they could navigate their way back to the friggen room they were so scared of to begin with.... and SLEEP THERE!!! They definitely would have known it was the room because there was that severed head alien corpse in front of it. The place looks a mess with black stuff everywhere, but that’s better than camping out in the corridor apparently.
What’s with Bio guy’s snake charmer act when the phalic snakes appear anyways? And why does the snake want to make its way into his mouth? To sleep there? We don’t see it do anything else. Meanwhile rock guy gets a face-full of the black goop that allows him to enjoy turning himself into a pretzel and makes him go apeshit. Why? What was that supposed to illustrate?
The Black Goop
Does the black goop make you go apeshit? But also attaches itself to your sperm where it matures into a trilobite tentacle thing if inside a womb? Is the black goop the stuff that the Engineer is seen ingesting at the beginning of the movie that decomposes his body? If so, where’s the consistency in what the black goop does? Why does David poison Shaw’s Boyfriend with it? Why not run tests? David’s mischievous “small beginnings” spiel would suggest he knows something about it. Why not let us in on it?
David’s motivations
It was established that David’s following orders from Weyland. His father of sorts. But then at one point, David asks us something along the lines of 'don’t we all just want to kill our parents?' Is he loyal to Weyland or not? If he’s following direction, then would Weyland really have wanted David to poison Shaw’s boyfriend? If David expected to infect Shaw’s boyfriend with the black goo then wasn’t he potentially putting Weyland at risk if the contamination spread? Wasn’t David happy and on board with getting old man Weyland out of cryo and up to meet his maker... unless he told the Engineer something to provoke it’s attack... but in that case, why?
And what about David and Shaw when he finds out she’s 3 months pregnant. Wouldn’t someone who’s so interested in Shaw, as well as is an android, be aware of Shaw’s condition where she couldn’t have a baby? Why would he ask if she was pregnant? If he already saw the fetus, and could calculate that she couldn’t have gotten pregnant while in cryo, then why deliver the news the way he did? Then he makes her go night night, but when he sees her again (covered in blood and having just undergone a c-section) he’s alright with it. Would he not be worried about if she posed a threat to Weyland?
And she almost finds out that David infected Shaw’s boyfriend and was ultimately responsible for his death. But then, the conflict is absent when the two escape hand and head in another space croissant?
Weyland
Why cast Guy Pearce as Weyland? He’s old. Why not cast an older actor? Why have Weyland in there anyways? To add another parent/child example and to have an Engineer assault him with David’s head? Was Weyland really hoping the Engineer would have a solution for death? To me, the whole 'Weyland was actually on board the whole time' was a place they could have cut out and replaced with more focus on the others.
Vickers
Charlize did a good job, but how insignificant was her character? Sure, she was a hard ass and fried up Shaw’s B.F. but why else have her around? Combining the captain and Vickers’ role would have made for a tighter story. I mean, how in charge was she? She wouldn’t let the overtly infected in, but she’d have someone bring aboard an alien head and one of those metal Alien eggs (no one knew David brought that in? Is no one checking the stuff?)
What do you think?
Engineers
Those big guys remind me of Resident Evil Tyrants. They’re massive and die hard. Great alien race.
Trilobite
While there wasn’t too much of this ancient head hugger type, I like to think about it’s size and musculature as being designed to wrestle an Engineer as opposed to the much smaller size of the head huggers in Alien which had strength enough to attack a human.
Prometheus collision with the space croissant
Epic. While the set up for this was a little fast in my opinion (think Shaw and the captain’s talk about values at what seemed to be maybe 10 minutes before he had to act on what he said), it was pretty awesome to see the two collide. I mean, the characters were mostly forgettable (the two co-pilots had how many lines and how much screen time again?), but it was still cool.
Special Effects
If you saw the movie, you’d know what I was talking about.
The Bad/ The Weak/ The Horrible
The Rock guy and the biologist get lost
“Are you kidding me?” was what I was thinking when we found out these two were still in the pyramid. There is so much wrong with that scenario. First off, those two don’t even like each other. The movie made a point to highlight that early on, but suddenly they have each other's back when rock guy freaks out in front of the giant face statue room? Ok, so they both didn’t want to be there, but why establish the conflict?
And what of rock guy and his scanner “pups”. The way I see it, if a guy brings along reconnaissance devices that everyone seems surprised about then that guy should know a thing or two about getting around in a cave. It isn’t even established that the place is maze like. The argument here is that rock guy was so flustered that he might have gotten disoriented, but wouldn’t he or Bio guy have thought “I should have found an exit by now” before they ended who knows how lost in the maze? Lucky for them though they could navigate their way back to the friggen room they were so scared of to begin with.... and SLEEP THERE!!! They definitely would have known it was the room because there was that severed head alien corpse in front of it. The place looks a mess with black stuff everywhere, but that’s better than camping out in the corridor apparently.
What’s with Bio guy’s snake charmer act when the phalic snakes appear anyways? And why does the snake want to make its way into his mouth? To sleep there? We don’t see it do anything else. Meanwhile rock guy gets a face-full of the black goop that allows him to enjoy turning himself into a pretzel and makes him go apeshit. Why? What was that supposed to illustrate?
The Black Goop
Does the black goop make you go apeshit? But also attaches itself to your sperm where it matures into a trilobite tentacle thing if inside a womb? Is the black goop the stuff that the Engineer is seen ingesting at the beginning of the movie that decomposes his body? If so, where’s the consistency in what the black goop does? Why does David poison Shaw’s Boyfriend with it? Why not run tests? David’s mischievous “small beginnings” spiel would suggest he knows something about it. Why not let us in on it?
David’s motivations
It was established that David’s following orders from Weyland. His father of sorts. But then at one point, David asks us something along the lines of 'don’t we all just want to kill our parents?' Is he loyal to Weyland or not? If he’s following direction, then would Weyland really have wanted David to poison Shaw’s boyfriend? If David expected to infect Shaw’s boyfriend with the black goo then wasn’t he potentially putting Weyland at risk if the contamination spread? Wasn’t David happy and on board with getting old man Weyland out of cryo and up to meet his maker... unless he told the Engineer something to provoke it’s attack... but in that case, why?
And what about David and Shaw when he finds out she’s 3 months pregnant. Wouldn’t someone who’s so interested in Shaw, as well as is an android, be aware of Shaw’s condition where she couldn’t have a baby? Why would he ask if she was pregnant? If he already saw the fetus, and could calculate that she couldn’t have gotten pregnant while in cryo, then why deliver the news the way he did? Then he makes her go night night, but when he sees her again (covered in blood and having just undergone a c-section) he’s alright with it. Would he not be worried about if she posed a threat to Weyland?
And she almost finds out that David infected Shaw’s boyfriend and was ultimately responsible for his death. But then, the conflict is absent when the two escape hand and head in another space croissant?
Weyland
Why cast Guy Pearce as Weyland? He’s old. Why not cast an older actor? Why have Weyland in there anyways? To add another parent/child example and to have an Engineer assault him with David’s head? Was Weyland really hoping the Engineer would have a solution for death? To me, the whole 'Weyland was actually on board the whole time' was a place they could have cut out and replaced with more focus on the others.
Vickers
Charlize did a good job, but how insignificant was her character? Sure, she was a hard ass and fried up Shaw’s B.F. but why else have her around? Combining the captain and Vickers’ role would have made for a tighter story. I mean, how in charge was she? She wouldn’t let the overtly infected in, but she’d have someone bring aboard an alien head and one of those metal Alien eggs (no one knew David brought that in? Is no one checking the stuff?)
What do you think?
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