Talk about thought provoking sci-fi, the internet has exploded this weekend with some truly incredible Prometheus theories. While we've been getting a ton emailed to us and have been passing
them on to you, we thought we'd gather some of our favorites all in one place. Enjoy! And if you have any links or thoughts you'd like to add, just
bounce us an email.
I almost hate to discuss this because these are things people should figured out on their own, but this is a thread to discuss this. All of these clues were right there throughout the film. Consider all of the facts shown in the film, and consider each is there for a reason.
Milllennia ago we were created by the Engineers when they seeded the Earth with the building blocks of life, or if you prefer, they were sent here to create us by their creator. In this act, an Engineer sacrifices himself to create this life. They use a black substance they either created, or was given to them by their creator.
The Engineers wanted us to find them one day, hence the images pointing to the location of LV233 scattered throughout history for us to find, all pre-dating the rise of the Roman Empire.
The five buildings on LV233 with the heads carved on top were clearly temples, meant for worship. The main chamber in was a sanctuary, with a giant Engineer head as the focal point, painted mural on the ceiling depicting an engineer with his arm around what looks like a biomechanoid creation, et cetera. There is also a sculpted mural depicting a biomechanoid being as a focal point in the temple. The temple is full of canisters of the black DNA altering substance. The intention was that humans were to come here one day, to worship the Engineers as Gods. The substance in the canisters was intended activate in their presence and and to change them into something else.
The Engineer ship in the hangar in front of the temple is full of these stacked containers, in various sizes. Call it a weapon now if you like, since that is now what they are. The Engineers brought these in those ships from somewhere.
2000 years ago mankind was at the height of civilization, and we were doing some very awful things in the Roman Empire, including the killing of Christ. Christ was the one man who was trying to get us off the path we were on.
At this same time, the Engineers decided to take the black DNA altering substance back to Earth and destroy mankind (or were being sent to do so, if you like), or looking at it another way, to remake it. The black substance accidentally, or intentionally, infected the Engineers in the temple, killing most. Regardless of whether or not the Engineers created this substance, or were given it by their creator, they could not harness or control it. One of the Engineers made it to the pilot room and sealed himself in one of the suspended animation capsules to avoid infection. Over the years the temples were eroded and worn down, in disrepair, indicating no Engineers have returned LV233 since the incident.
Over 2000 years later, the Engineers creations finally arrive at the temple. David discovers that the Engineer ship was going to return to Earth with the containers. The containers in the temple room are activated by their presence and start to release their contents. The worm like organisms on the floor are altered, or an new organism grown inside them, creating the ass-flower snakes. They in turn impregnate the humans with another organism.
The holographic images showing the Engineers running through the hallways 2000 years prior seem to indicate one engineer was running from the others, to the temple room. This one could have sabotaged the black substance allowing it to infect the others, they could all be running from the contagions to the ship for escape. They could all be running from something else, but there is nothing to indicate this. Regardless, they were clearly infected in different ways, some dying from the organisms growing in them (piled in the hallway), some infected with the virus that changes them into something else (the virus in the Engineers head that caused it to explode).
I wont get into Weyland's, or any of the individual characters motives, as they are very clearly defined in the film, and they cover the range of imperfect human behavior and motives, as well as the better qualities indicated by the sacrifices several of the characters make to save the others. Their individual fates are also tied to the action each character takes. Note that each person who is infected by the black substance is also altered in a different way, related to their character.
When the Engineer in the ship is awakened he sees this group of humans, his own kind's creation, before him. He then finds the one who speaks to him in his own language is not one of his creations, but an artificial being made by his creation. He destroys it and kills the man responsible for its creation, then attmepts to destroy the rest, as he was going to do anyway by going to Earth. He is clearly disgusted with them, what they have done, and what they have become.
Creation vs creator themes are scattered about the film. The Engineers created life, or were given the tools to create life (the black substance). Their creation turned out to be flawed in their eyes, so they decided to destroy it. Weyland is directly responsible for creating a new life with his self aware replicant-androids. David, who clearly resents his creators, has flaws in his character directly related to the flaws in them (ala Roy Batty and Tyrell). Shaw is barren and cannot create life, but the black substance causes the Cthulu-facehugger thing to be created in her, which then turns on the Engineer responsible for her creation. This in turn causes a new being to be created from him in his destruction, the only other one shown in the temple mural. We already know what the purpose of that being is. The Xenomprph exists only to destroy ALL of these creations.
Note Shaw is a woman of some faith, specifically, Christianity. It is important to note that they arrive on LV-233 on Christmas day, and everything ends on New years day. Shaw asks the question about the Engineers near the end of the film that anyone would ask - "who created them?". The fact that she took her cross back implies that she clearly still believes that there is a creator, does not think it was the Engineers, and she wants to know why they changed their minds and decided to kill us. That answer should be obvious to her, but she still wants to know all of the answers, which leads us to the next chapter...
Thoughts on Prometheus
by SpyderDan
Saw the midnight showing last night, in IMAX 3D, and thoroughly enjoyed it. With the exception of the very last scene, I was completely content with the movie and it actually exceeded my expectations.
I am somewhat perplexed by the negative reactions I'm seeing all over the internet. What's with all the vitriol? Over and over, I keep reading accusations that anybody who enjoyed the movie must think they "get it" and are therefore smarter than everybody else? Seriously? One thing is for sure, whether you liked it or not, whether it met up with your expectations or not, it sure has sparked a lot of passionate discussion on the subject matter. So, let's discuss...
"Black goo" - It seems everybody wants to assume that all the black goo is the same stuff. People seem to be upset because they can't figure out "the rules" of the black goo. It seems to me that the engineers technology is based around genetic manipulation, and the medium often comes in the form of goo that is black. Surely it isn't all the same stuff. The black goo the engineer ingested at the beginning caused him to disintegrate and broke down his DNA, contributing that to the primordial ooze that eventually evolved into us. The black goo from the vial that David tricked Holloway into ingesting had a completely different effect, that may or may not be similar to the goo that turned the worms into the nasty serpents and Fifield into a mutant. My guess is that numerous "vases" might contain all sorts of differently engineered contents in similar black gooey mediums.
Fast growth of creatures This seems to require no more suspension of disbelief than has ever been necessary for any of the Alien films. All the xenomorphs have grown dramatically in very short periods. Prior to chestburster stage, they could feed off their hosts, but once out of the host they still grow to huge size within hours without feeding. Why would this be nitpicked in Prometheus?
Space Jockey "suit" - Even the characters in the movie initially make the incorrect assumption that what they encountered was a being with an exoskeleton, and this was actually briefly stated as they examine the helmet. The suit is clearly bio-mechanical, and the hard armor-like parts are very bone-like. The helmet has cranial plates that are fused, much like any skull. I like that they bio-engineer their gear. I find this much more fascinating and creepy than if they just naturally looked like elephantine giants with exoskeletons. Looking at the shots with the un-helmeted living engineer, I couldn't tell where his suit ended and his original body began, yet we know from the naked engineer we see in the beginning that they aren't originally that way. It seems they bio-engineer their own bodies as well to some extent, but draw the line somewhere. About half-way up the neck, the bio-mechanoid suit fades away to their natural appearance. Vanity, maybe? Whatever it all is, I don't feel like the mysteries of the space jockey have been tread upon. At the same time, they seem both more human and even more alien than ever before.
Atmosphere issues I dont recall the exact details, but my recollection is that the atmosphere had toxic levels of CO2. It wasnt without oxygen, and not entirely CO2, just too much CO2 to safely go without suits for more than a few minutes (was it 2 minutes?). That would be consistent with 5-10% CO2. Flamethrowers should work fine. The pressure was apparently fine. There was apparently some sort of CO2 scrubbers inside the pyramid, but I dont think it is a big leap to think that the 10 tall un-helmeted engineer would have had too much of a problem making it to the lifeboat from his wrecked ship.
Poor/stupid/unscientific character actions - There have been a plenty of these pointed out, and some might actually be just as dumb as they seem, but I don't think any of it is pointless. We see humans being VERY human, during incredible circumstances. They act irrationally. We see them motivated by fear, ego, and hubris. They (like many fans, it seems) make huge assumptions that end up being wrong. Super-trained by-the-book fearless experts who dont make bad decisions would have made flat unbelievable characters that would not nearly have served the story as well. I love that tough-guy geologist Fifield completely loses his nerve upon sight of a decapitated alien corpse in a creepy pyramid on an alien planet. I love that biologist Millburn loses his objectivity when faced with seeing his first living alien life-form, and goes out Steve Irwin style. Of course Holloway gives up and starts drinking when he finds out the gods they came all this way to meet are all dead (and of course he assumes theyre all dead, why else would they leave their buddies corpses laying around for 2000 years). Shaw shows up mostly naked, covered in blood, stapled together, after assaulting crew members, and old-man Weyland and his robot boy seem disinterested? Thats not a stupid mistake. That shows exactly where Weylands ugly human priorities are, and where Shaw and the rest of the crew stand in the big picture (crew expendable).
Suicide crashing Prometheus to stop the ship What other alternative was there? They have no anti-ship weapons (why would they?). The only hope of survival is the lifeboat, but they must know that isnt an option under the circumstances. It has life support, but didnt seem to have any faster-than-light propulsion (if any propulsion at all, since it just ejected and crashed on the surface), and maybe 2 hypersleep chambers (the one that Vickers was in, and the other that Weyland was in). We saw the same scenario on the Nostromo. They knew they were doomed, and faced with the possibility that the engineer was going to destroy life on Earth, they decided to bravely go out like heroes instead of take their chances and go out like punks. Even Shaw was ready to give up (despite the lifeboat) until David offered up a way to get off the planet. Once everything went sideways with the living engineer, they all knew they were all doomed.
I love that they didnt try to spell out all of this stuff, and I dont think much of anything was pointless or careless. I dont see bad writing at all. To quote Ernest Hemingway: If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
My hope is that Scott and Lindelof have a much bigger story going on, and they fed us just enough to get our attention and get us thinking and talking and emotional about it all. I cant wait to see where this goes, and Im really happy that it isnt what any of us seemed to expect or imagine.
I agree that David is the central character. I like to think that David is more like the mythical Prometheus, rather than that engineer at the beginning of the movie. David steals the fire (the black goo) from the gods (the engineers), gives it to man (Holloway), and ends up getting dismembered for it, yet remains alive to continue suffering it for his arrogance as a head in a bag.
The alien at the very end did unsettle me. I didnt care for the design of it. Seeing some of the concept art for it after the fact, I think they passed over better designs. I dont dislike the concept, though, just the way it was executed. Even the xeno-looking thing on the wall in the pyramid is only suggestive of the original Alien by the basic shape and smooth elongated head. This thing was much less like the classic xenomorph, and didnt even have a tail, back spines, or exoskeletal features (though at least one of the concepts at least had some back spines). The coloring and jaws gimmick weakened it. I certainly dont get making the jump to seeing it as a baby queen. At most, it shows some evolutionary level of the familiar life cycle taking place, and shows the audience that there is still a survivor left on LV-223 for some evolution to possibly continue.
What can we speculate about any links to the original Alien xenomorph we all know and love? The mural in the pyramid did show what looked very much like the classic egg. That, and the other thing on the wall that looks a lot like an adult xenomorph shows that something like it has existed for at least 2000 years. Warning sign? Instructions?
The bio-mechanical nature of the engineers, and their suits intrigues me. If they genetically engineer the suits, and their under-suits seem to be part of them, do they biologically interface with the suits on a genetic level as well? Are the exoskeletal bone parts armor? Did the xenos we know have exoskeletal armor by design, or did they inherit that from an engineer wearing/interfaced with his suit? For better or for worse, that possibility gives some credence to the variation we see in the xenos from the other movies as they get another step removed from the Space Jockey in Alien.
Thank you, Sir Ridley Scott, for taking the mysteries Ive loved wondering about for 30+ years and compounding them into newer ones. I havent looked forward to the possibility of sequels this much in a very long time, and Im eager to go see Prometheus again soon.
Thoughts on Prometheus
by visigoth
A lot of folks seem to be missing many clues/explanations in the film.
1) The black goo is some sort of really aggressive retro-viral mutagen designed to turn whatever it encounters into extremely aggressive bio-weapon in the form of an organism with a parasitic life-cycle that ultimately destroys the host.
1a) The parasitic life-cycle is important because it allows for a bio-weapon that can be dropped on a target, forgotten, then safely retrieved after all fauna has been wiped out and the adult forms have died off.
1b) The big worm monsters are mutated versions of the tiny worms living under the pods in the temple.
1c) The squid baby is the result of one of Holloway's mutated sperm impregnating Shaw's egg (she says she can't have children, but that does not mean that she does not produce eggs). It's rapid growth is a bit odd, but in keeping with aspects of the other mutated critters seen elsewhere (the worms that mutate into the big worms are tiny things originally).
1d) The geologist was infected and began mutating after the acid blood from the big worm melted his helmet and he landed face down in the black goo.
1e) The engineer in the end is not infected. He is impregnated by the initial form of Shaw's infected fetus and what climbs out is the adult stage of that particular version of the parasitic bio-weapon.
2) If one accepts that the planet at the beginning is Earth then the mystery of why the engineer race wants to wipe us out seems apparent. The engineer that sacrifices himself at the beginning _is_ Prometheus. He uses a version of the mutagen and his own DNA to seed our world. For those that have read David Brin he is sort of uplifting an entire planet. The sacrificial element and use of his own DNA suggests that this is a quasi religious/ego motivated action not sanctioned by his peers.
3) The autodoc in Meredith's super ritzy lifeboat was programmed for a man because the lifeboat and everything in it isn't meant for her, it was meant for Wayland.
4) The engineer is pissed because the very things he was assigned to destroy have managed to make it all the way to their mutagen storage depot and sabotage his mission. A mission that already claimed the lives of his fellows (the film suggests through some sort of mishap with the mutagen contanimating members of the engineers directly).
5) We aren't told who hired most of the crew (Meredith only hired a few), but one can infer from Wayland's comments about why he funded the expedition and brought along Shaw and her partner that all his decisions regarding this trillion dollar mission were emotion and ego driven. So the fact that you've got some scientists who appear to unstable druggies and the like is not that shocking. Wayland is on a quasi-spiritual quest to turn himself into an immortal demi-god, he doesn't care about the rest of the crew too much, he just wants them not to interfere with him.
6) David is taking orders from the cryo-sleep Wayland. Wayland wants to meet an engineer if they are still alive, but also wants to know what their tech is capable of and considers the crew expendable. Thus the experiment on Holloway and the treatment of pregnant Shaw.
7) The movie has twin POVs. One is David. One is Shaw. Both are looking to pull back the curtain on the mystery of the creator.
David has already been disappointed by his, and wants to know about why his creators were created and if perhaps he might be a better being than them. And for all of his denials, I don't think for a minute that David is emotionless. There is a lot of rage and sorrow behind his placid slave facade.
Shaw wants to find out about humanity's creators in an effort to understand the face of god. Her belief in the mystical and spiritual allows her to face some of the scarier (philosophically speaking) revelations better than her Darwinist partner, Holloway.
8) Holloway's actions are frequently irrational because they are emotionally driven rather than logically driven. He cracked less at not finding living engineers in the first few hours of being planetside, but more because of all that they did find. The reality of being another races creation is worse to him than finding nothing would have been. It makes creationists right in ways disturbing to a strict evolutionist. As a scientist he should approach things more clinically, but scientists are human too, and in the face of the veritable proof that the foundation of your being is in error, some people can't handle it. And once he cracks, he goes and adds alcohol to the mix.
All that being said, it does feel like his character got the short shrift in this edit. I wonder how much more buildup and emotional weight his breakdown would be given in a longer edit.
Overall I enjoyed the film, though the last five minutes were a bit wobbly and the final reveal really didn't need to be there (maybe better post credits?). I suspect a "Kingdom of Heaven" style director's cut will fix what problems there are and that the film will be better thought of the more people have time to chew on it.
Note: originally appeared in the talk back section at Ain't It Cool.
Thoughts on Prometheus
by brightgeist
The black goo does one simple thing
It directs (and accelerates) mutations towards a specific "goal". and, obviously, the goo in the first scene of the film is NOT the same goo that causes all the problems later in the film. the difference between the 2 goos are their "goals".
the engineers seem to have the ability to do genetic programming on a deeper level than simple DNA. yes, they use DNA obviously, but apparently they can set a "goal" to their mutations.
so, when they "create" life on a planet, they use their own DNA as a basis and start the evolution that will, after billions of years, reach its "goal" of human beings.
the weaponized goo, on the other hand, has a very different "goal", and a highly accelerated mutation rate. the "goal" of that goo, as we can see in the painting on the wall of the Big Head Room, is the "xenomorph", although obviously a slightly different model than the one from ALIEN. and whatever DNA that goo touches, it starts aggressive mutations in the direction of that xenomorph form.
of course, when that goo gets in contact with a grown human, it doesn't "transform" him into a xenomorph, because that's not how evolution works. it simply creates mutations in him, as we see in the cases of Fifield and Holloway.
but when the mutated DNA is transferred into a new cell through reproduction (as happened with the worms, apparently, and with Holloway and Shaw having sex, and later with the impregnated engineer), a newly evolved species can grow.
so i think this really explains the goo in a consistent way.
Note: originally appeared in the talk back section at Ain't It Cool.
Thoughts on Prometheus
by fitz-hume
The Black Goo can be Engineered to be used either as a Positive Life Force or Bio Weapon
On Earth the Engineers used the Black Goo to advance life, to kick start the evolution of the species, us included, by mixing it with their own DNA.
The Black Goo found on the Engineers ship was engineered to function as a bio weapon. In this form the Black Goo causes wild destructive mutations that turn what ever life form it mixes with into highly lethal murderous beings. Humans turn into sick mad murderous beings programmed to wipe each other extinct. Mixed with worms and a sperm cell it turned them into freak versions of facehuggers, beings that live to pregnate other living beings with their destructive bad seed. The biggest creature that was born from a mutated human sperm cell was basically a huge variation of a facehugger and functioned in the same manner. It pregnated the only living Engineer and alas a big xenomorph baby came through his chest, one that was quite clearly a Queen Alien baby.
Like Lindelof himself said the question to ask after seeing Prometheus is "What does the black goo do?".
Note: originally appeared in the talk back section at Ain't It Cool.
More thoughts on Prometheus
by Kit Rae
Some interesting comments from Damon Lindelof from interviews he has done in the past few days, now that he can open up about the film somewhat. He confirms what a few of us have surmised from the film.
"I don't want to talk too specifically about what the black goop does. Obviously the characters in the movie are trying to theorize based on what is happening to them. "This thing is a weapon, it's really bad for us." When it interacts with living species, bad things result. So you see little worms and when the black goop gets on the little worms we see what happens to them. And when Fifield gets it all over his face mask, we see what happens to him. When Holloway just has a drop of it in a glass of champagne, we see what happens to him.
We wanted to be purposefully vague, [but steer] the audience towards some conclusions as to what that stuff was supposed to do: Is it supposed to kill you? Is it supposed to transform you - which seems like the most obvious choice - and to what end?
Like, why in God's name would the engineers want to create abominations out of mankind? Some of these questions we wanted to answer directly and some of these questions we didn't want to answer directly, which sets you up for a certain level of frustration and disappointment that I am well familiar with, but I'll take it any day of the week because I also feel like it forces you to fire your own imagination.
We clearly have answers for those questions ourselves that we did not present in the movie purposefully, not just because we're saving them for potential sequels, but because the power of the original Alien - or even Blade Runner - is that to a certain degree, we're giving you all the numbers in the equation but we're not adding them up for you. And that's intentional."
"I would say, did we explore the idea of Vickers being a robot? Well, is there anything in the movie that says she's not? Yes. For us, it was important for Janek to ask the question and for Vickers to say, "Come down to my room, and I'll show you if I'm a robot or not." But what does she show him? Can robots in 2093 have sex? That's as much as we wanted to explain it. I will say this, it sure seems she got crushed pretty hard."
"It's not arbitrary. [But] the movie has to speak for itself. I will say that the theory that is formed by Shaw by the end of the movie - that the black goo is some sort of weapon and it is headed towards earth and if it gets there the result is going to be terrible - [is] based on the information that she has in the movie, but that's not necessarily the correct deduction for her to make. The audience is privy to pieces of the story that Shaw is not. I hope that the movie is one of those films that [is rewarding on] subsequent viewings as opposed to more confusing and more frustrating."
"So he was thinking about that stuff many, many months before he even began photography. And the way that he wanted to play the hits in terms of xenomorphs and face huggers, he wanted to make sure that they looked different than they had in previous movies because of some of the things that we were trying to say in this movie... I've always looked at Prometheus as this huge orgy between three generations of creation. So you have our creators, the engineers; us; and then our creation, the synthetic beings, the androids. And so basically everybody is kind of screwing each other."
"These are questions we can't help but to wonder about, and it's in our programming. So, if you gave us the opportunity to answer these questions, we would not stop.
We're dogs at the bone, you know? We gotta go after it, even if we know we'll probably die in the process or, at the end of that line, are all those things I talked about:
disappointment, and that's the whole point of that conversation between Holloway and David, where David says, "Why did you make me?," and Holloway says, "Because we could."
David tells him to imagine how disappointing it would be if that's what your makers told you, and it's completely and totally true. When David asks Holloway what he would do to get his answers, after saying all that Holloway doesn't even hesitate, saying, "Anything and everything."
"They all have a role in the end result of this movie. None of it would have happened had David not taken that little drop of goo that was generated from the engineers and spiked Holloway's drink with it and then Holloway has sex with Shaw and then their baby essentially ends up infecting the person who started it all, the engineers. So it goes full circle."
"One of the things I think is really cool about David, as a character and Fassbender's portrayal of him, is that there's no part of David that wants to be a real boy. He is not enamored by humanity or jealous by our ability to experience emotions. He's basically thinking, "You're morons."
Prometheus "Internet" Press Kit
by Willie Goldman
Rapace talks deleted scenes and more at Collider here!
If you're one of the legions of Alien fans who have waited more than three decades for filmmaker Ridley Scott to bring his Alien mythology back to the big
screen, then you wont want to miss the newest issue of Cinefex, due out Friday, June 8, featuring a 25-page article on the making of Prometheus. Look
for in-depth interviews with the films leading effects artists and learn the secrets behind the movies mind-blowing visuals. Accompanying the article are
31 color images frame clips from the film and behind-the-scenes shots -- many of them exclusive to Cinefex. You can pre-order your copy now by visiting our
online store here!
Noomi Rapace Prometheus interview here!
Amazon has just launched a promotion where the first 5000 people to purchase Prometheus on home video will receive $10 towards a movie ticket. Click
here for more info!
Propstore sponsored a special screening of Prometheus the other night,
complete with a lobby display of original props, costumes, and artifacts from the film series. Click
here to check out their gallery on Facebook!
Sceenwriter Damon Lindelof talks Prometheus, working with Ridley Scott, and more over at The Verge
here!
Not really sure what's going on with these, but we've been receiving several reports and emails about what looks like a European Prometheus Blu-ray box set/promo.
You can check it out for yourself here,
here,
and a little more info here!
Official Prometheus t-shirts, hats, and more can now be found for sale over at the offical Fox store
here! Speaking of official goodies, those of you in the UK can win a huge
swag bag over at DVD Active here!
Just in time for the launch of Prometheus, Monsters in Motion has stocked up on a supply of HCG's excellent Space Jockey maquettes. Click
here to check 'em out!
A new promotional Prometheus feature can be found on YouTube
here!
