Prometheus

[Sohtaraz]

Well my personal opinion on Alien 3 is that it was a good movie but lesser of the three of its brethren, it was more based around the story of Ripley so the actual scifi was not that important in it to begin with. The new movie has more weight attached to science fiction and that for me is a big deal on a personal level since in the current movie age there is a severe lack of proper science fiction films to begin with. It gives a bit of fresh air to the plot as well instead of following old characters.

[Malachi]

You're right on that last part, good to know Prometheus passes as proper SciFi. The last movie I saw I could call that was probably "Moon".

[Carl]

@Malachi: I wasn't a movie goer at the time it was released but to sum it all up, (in no specific order):

1. The movie was very diffrent to waht had originolly been promised to the fans. The accoutn si've heard of what it was supposed to have been have varied drasticlly, the only common element i'm familliar with was that i was supposed to be compatible with the follow on comics for the second movie. It met none of the expectations.

2. Killing ripley off bassiclly ended any possobillity at the time of a future movie, (the half assed way they brought her back is a big part of what hacked people off with the 4th movie).

3. Virtually everyone who went to see the movie had previouslly seen aliens 2 and had considrable time between that and 3 to dwell on the movie. Newt and higgs where incrediblly popular and (again hersay here), i've heard some polls done before the movie was released showed newt to be even more popular than ripley. Killing those 2 off was a good way to hack off huge numbers of fans. Add in them being kiled off, off screen with no proper send off and it turned an enormous amount of the fan base against it.

4. It's a rehash of the first movie. New location and new characters appropriatte to the location, but otherwise a rehash. The second movie kept the big scary gribbles. But via it's actiony elements brought somthing new to the table. The 3rd was bassiclly a bigger budget vershion of 1, and largely did everything, at best, equally good. It never stood on it's own for being unique or did anything that set it apart.

[Yoshi]

Okay, that's off topic, but I have to finally ask: What the fuck is the reason people have so much beef with Alien 3? Is it somehow inconsistent with the previous 2 movies or something?

It was, the way Alien 3 kicks off makes zero sense with what we have been shown from the previous two moives. the Alien Eggs onboard the Sulaco is essentially the worse way they could of started it off. Yes the Queen could of possibly been able to lay without the egg sac but I'd imagine it'd be more difficult and take much much much longer if possible. Otherwise what's the point of having the egg sac to begin with? So the fact that in her 'rage' mode she spent the time dumping out two eggs makes very little sense.

Facehugger causing the ship to crash is also abit out of whack from what we've seen of them.
I consider Alien 3 a decent movie but not as good as Alien or Aliens.

As for Prometheus

Spoiler

I rather liked the movie though for being a movie about the Jockey's it does leave and create more questions than it answers. I was alittle dissapointed by the Jockey's being just big big humans. I did however like how they harkened back to the first Alien by them thinking the exosuit was an exoskeleton at first and thus not realizing what the Jockey's really looked like for awhile.

I was amused by the botanist being so incredibly dumb when those two discovered the two worm aliens. I mean the first rule when discovering something new like that is not to treat it like a Dog until you know its not gonna give you a bonebreaking handshake and then kiss your esophagus.

Both ships were one of my favorite things, Prometheus being one of the most impressive designs I think I've seen in a Sci-Fi movie for a long while. And I honestly wasn't mad when David infected Doctor Holloway with the mutagenic goop because the guy overall was a ginormous douche to David for little reason beyond, "Man made him." I do think David lied about not being able to be disappointed or feeling any emotions. Some of his facial responses indicated a tinge of sadness/disappointment, annoyance especially when reference was made to him not feeling, lacking a soul, and us building him solely because 'we could'.

I did love the Proto-Alien at the end though.

[LoCo]

Meh.

The movie was lackluster at best.

It wasn't bad. It just never quite reached good.

The whole movie felt like an introduction. Like what the first act of a movie should be, but they just never seemed to end Act 1.

Spoiler

Prometheus couldn't have been landed a little closer? "Nope! Because of PLOT POINT!!!! If the ship landed closer we couldn't have had the alien ship open the ground hatch and spend a million dollars on a woman hopping to escape the giant ground sphincter!!!"

And what the hell was with that half assed end? "I want to find their homeworld because I want to ask them; Why?"

Bitch please. You've got a ship full of biological weapons that some alien dicks were going to send to wipe out your entire plant. You don't go and ask them why. You go and dump that fucking cargo into their homeworld.

Then you take all their tech back to Earth.

Seriously.

Completely over-hyped. Stupid characters who didn't even fulfill the roles assigned to them by the script.

I was right. An underwhelming experience.

[Sohtaraz]

Well to be fair Loco I didn't have any hype for the movie at all since I don't like to work my expectations high...

[A7K]

Just came back from a showing in 3D.

Sekkrit Story Schtuff

A lot of people seem to be struggling with David's motivations for poisoning Holloway with the mutagenic virus(I'm assuming that's what the ship was carrying, as it makes sense from a story standpoint) It seems to me like perhaps David was under orders from Weyland to see the effects. Or he was merely curious to the outcome of infection.

Also i find myself wondering exactly why the Engineers want us dead, the mission to annihilate humanity was from my guess to be launched 2000 years ago. What could we have done done to make them wish to destroy us? Were they disappointed with humanities progress? At the time Rome was at it's peak, and china was largely unified those being that largest states at the time i believe (Could be wrong)

[JAL-18]

my reaction to the movie

I don't understand why anyone did anything they did in this movie. Charlize Theron flamethrowers a guy, disappears for 40 minutes and no one says jack shit about it? Half the crew dies, but fuck it, who cares. Suddenly, doctors! Weyland! Emergency c-section again completely unnoticed by anyone at all. Aryan Master Race Engineer man decides to kill everyone, because fuck it, kill everyone. The robot is kind of a dick through the entire movie, which was great acting, but then at the end he wants to help? Black Captain was okay. The main chick was a horrible person and I wanted her to die the entire time (I also didn't think the actress was very good). Everyone in this movie was stupid, insane, or both.

Visuals were nice.

[Mr Carrot]

Spoiler

I thought the point was David told the engineer that humans had become a dangerous species and should be destroyed based on dialogue he said earlier in the movie about creations wanting to kill their creators and how the engineer became suddenly hostile after he said it. Importantly we don't KNOW anything about their motivations, or what they were actually planning to do with the ship or what the base was, anything stated were all character assumption.

I also loved the fact that the main players were operating on a higher level than the rest of the crew, they simply did not give a fuck about anything except mission no. 1 with Weyland and so everything else played out to them in a completely unimportant manner, David experimenting, Rapace C-sectioning etc. was all just stuff happening around the a-mission and as long as the ship worked they couldn't give a fuck. They noticed, they were suprised with the outcomes but dealt with it through calm detachment, I really loved the effect it gave off "oh you're not dead? that's nice" because SRSSS BZNESSS

It reminded me of 70s sci fi instead of modern sci fi where EVERYTHING has to be commented on

[Nurizeko]

After weight Carrot's and JAL's opinions, I'm siding with JAL.

Spoiler

Having some alien infection raging through the ship with mutants and squids and all that is a threat to the mission, simple as.
Characters don't need to especially care for other crew members but a threat to the mission/themselves warrants a least some interest. Also Rapce's character obviously isn't a psychopath so maybe something like "wtf is wrong with you people,there is a fucking alien monster-baby on the ship! would have sufficed.
Even the Alien movies had more believable character development, there's a fucking xenomorph killing shit, you fucking let someone know!

One of the clearer points of the movie is a ship full of a bio weapon with a flight plan to Earth, I doubt engineers being so great and powerful are going to destroy a race on the word of one (in their mind) crude android. You're right there was a lot of new and un-answered questions.

I would want to watch it again to make sure but I'm starting to think visuals aside, this was Ridley Scott's Avatar. Yeah visually stunning and note-worthy, but the actual movie itself was weak in points, with some poor acting, and plot points.

[Kirjava]

Siding with JAL and Nuri here, and when can we stop spoilering?

Agreed- in hindsight a lot of the plot made me go, "WTF?!?" There wasn't a whole lot of character work done on anyone- when Idris Elba and his Magnificent Pair of Jolly Sidekicks decided that, hey, they were gonna blow themselves up by crashing their ship into another ship, there didn't seem to be any sense of despair, concern, hesitation, sadness or anger, just a bizarrely cartoon breeziness about their imminent suicide. "We're gonna go kill ourselves now- see you on the other side bro!" And when whoever that was that got turned into the folded up mutated guy showed up outside the ship, everyone apart from the guys having their faces beaten to a pulp was remarkably blase. I appreciate a certain, "Gotta get the job done," sensibility, but one of your crewmates has just come back to life, looks like a fucking zombie and is beating the crap out of your other crewmates wouldn't you be panicking a little? Wouldn't someone be panicking a little? Wouldn't any of this, including the baby Cthulu, be worth mentioning to whoever's in charge of this clusterfuck?

[Mr Carrot]

Spoiler

I just think they didnt give a fuck, it was a one shot trip, outside of delivering Weyland to the engineers and them giving him some kind of treatment nothing else mattered, presumably after he was thawed and mobile the safety of the shit didn't matter either to the core team. Very much a Damon Lindelof writing trate straight out of lost, the big players just waft over the issues the little guys have been worrying about for three seasons.

Coporate exec bitchface was running around worrying about shit so this is probably an issue of Ridley Scott being completely unable to turn out a cinema cut succesfully since Gladiator, I expect the Directors Cut to be far better, it might even be all kindgdom of heaven and introduce two key characters who answer most the problems the audience has... vic and kev the loading bay dudes who are running around going "what the fuck is this thing?!" "what the fuck is that thing!!!" "what the fuck happened to her?!?!"

[Inquisitor Lok]

Spoiler

Saw the movie last night and i thoroughly enjoyed it. Until the end with the proto-xenomorph bursting threw the space jockey's chest, i had expected that the xenomorphs had just been a further advancement in their genetic engineering as they had also been on that similar style of ship in the original Alien movie.

Also this article is a really interesting read all about the themes/ symbolism between everything and sort of explains a possible reason for the space jockeys change in heart towards humanity: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1

[Shoota Fodder]

Spoiler

Jesus Christ (literally), Lok. That link explains a lot. Though I'm taking it with a grain of salt, it all seems a little far fetched even for a Scott movie.

Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him.

Had a good chuckle at that.

The idea that the slime only activates when around emotions and functions in sync with them was definitely something I never picked up on if it's true. Need to get the DVD now (grr).

[OhJohnNo]

Thank you so much for that link, Lok. Excellent stuff.

[LoCo]

So wait... Now we need random essays to explain movies that are made for the masses?

I never thought I'd say it, but I miss the days when the masses were supposed to be stupid so you didn't make a movie that didn't make sense and expect people to go and read essays after to figure it out.

[Vijil]

Yeah, so, I loved the visuals, had a good time, but was definitely disappointed overall for reasons mentioned many times here. I was hoping for a story worthy of RS. I got a generic alien horror with a bunch of chasmic plot holes and unbelievable characters. Maybe the execs killed it and there was a really good movie in there somewhere, but this cut at least certainly wasn't it.

[OhJohnNo]

There was a reason Scott didn't want to tell people it was an Alien prequel. He wanted people to judge it on its own merits, not as an instalment in a line of blockbusters. I don't think it was made for the masses, originally.

I enjoyed it even without having read the essay, though.

[bman3k]

I just saw the film and I really enjoyed the visuals, both of the landscapes as well as the aliens and stuff. Though there were some pretty significant plot holes, I enjoyed the movie, I felt it was paced well enough and I found the sci-fi biology very fascinating (though I know its just that).

Since most of my nitpicks have already been covered I just have some questions to ask:

Spoiler

-I don't get how the first Engineer we see is "seeding life", he is already on a planet with water and apparently breathable air (what appears to be the ship he came on is far off and he has no life support) with exposure to light and such the basics for life are already there.

-How does the black liquid stuff work? David put a bit in the guys drink (was there another organism in the droplet he took from the vial thing? I couldn't tell) which causes him to disintegrate, but he has sex with the woman so an alien develops in her? Then that alien knocks up a space jockey to produce a proto-xenomorph, interesting but a bit convoluted and confusing to me. Also the snake thing that attacked the two lost scientists appeared to have been the worms that were in the ground and got mutated by the liquid, did it not impregnate the nerd scientist since it got cut?

-Why did the mohawk scientist who fell face first into the black liquid turn into some kind of super mutant? Why didn't he disintegrate?

-Why were the space jockeys running into the room full of the vases in the first place? That seems like a shitty place to flee too since it looked like they were running from infected creatures. Also was it supposed to be air tight or something? I think the doctor said something about them entering changing the environment, but the room has a dirt floor and already had worms and stuff in it.

-How did her abortion alien grow so big, it didn't even eat anyone, it just hung out in that medical pod room. This question kind of goes for the other alien movies as well, chest bursters seem to transform into full blown xenomorphs in like an hour.

-Also how the hell was she running around after her c-section? If they like had some canister of "healing spray" and used it I could at least somewhat suspend my belief, but nope they stitch her up and she's running around everywhere. I know she looks like she's in pain and is doping herself up, but still.

-One more, how the hell is finding the remains of an alien that is genetically the same as a human (though that statement doesn't make sense) considered to be "nothing"?

[Kronoch]

I loved every second of it. There were some weird moments in the movie, but it didn't bother me at all for some reason. I chalked it up to people acting like morons because this is a horror movie. Wouldn't be much of a movie if the characters went "oh shit, this stuff is dangerous" and immediatly evacuate.

Spoiler

One thing did bother me. Why on earth would the aliens ever have need of such an insanely complicated weapon? If you want to get rid of the life on a planet, what would stop them from engineering something like an anti-human virus or, I don't know, bomb the shit out of Earth? Why would you ever need a weapon that creates zombies and murderous impregnating lifeforms? As far as WoMD go, it's a pretty stupid one.

[Kovac]

I don't think I would classify Prometheus as a horror.

It is temping to do since it is a prequel to a horror movie and it certainly has some horrific moments, but I think the tone and pacing of the film is more about exploration and discovery than it is about horror.

I enjoyed the majority of the characters - At least more so than the ones found in Alien 3 or 4.

It was always going to be incredibly difficult creating a followup to such an iconic and perfectly executed (imho) film as Alien, particularly since any film maker is going to bring something new to the table instead of just rehashing past success. And what are the chances of striking gold like that more than a few times?

I'm quite happy with how he managed to create something relatively different while keeping at least something of Alien and the universe. And it was fantastic getting at least some kind of full on science fiction for a change, I think that the last one might have been Moon in 2009?

[Langy]

My Theory on the Goo

It's just a horribly mutagenic compound. It doesn't have a definitive 'this will always be the result when you are exposed to it' type deal, instead it's more of a 'we know shit will happen and it will be extreme but we don't know exactly what will happen' type thing. It may or may not even be intended as a weapon.

[Kovac]

My Theory on the Goo

It's just a horribly mutagenic compound. It doesn't have a definitive 'this will always be the result when you are exposed to it' type deal, instead it's more of a 'we know shit will happen and it will be extreme but we don't know exactly what will happen' type thing. It may or may not even be intended as a weapon.

Goo

To expand on that idea, I wonder if the goal is not to simply wipe out humanity when they reach earth but perhaps it is to re-expose us in an effort to push us into another stage of life. Destroying in order to create.

And they don't have much interest in our objections or protests

[Nurizeko]

There was a reason Scott didn't want to tell people it was an Alien prequel. He wanted people to judge it on its own merits, not as an instalment in a line of blockbusters. I don't think it was made for the masses, originally.

I enjoyed it even without having read the essay, though.

In all fairness he shouldn't have set it within the Alien universe then.

He could of made a better meeting-the-makers type movie if he just left Alien stuff behind and went for a completely new setting.

[OhJohnNo]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the original intent. I wonder what convinced him otherwise?

[Gorb]

Advertising/funding, perhaps. Who knows? Who will ever know?

[Rincewind]

Was utter shite. There were exactly two good things about the movie and those were Michael Fassbender & Idris Elba.

[Yoshi]

The Original Intent WAS to be an Alien Prequel, but as R.S stated as development progressed prometheus grew into something else rather than being a direct prequel to Alien it became a movie that is a prequel in ways but is mostly just a different story set in the same universe as Alien dealing with the Engineers instead of the xenomorphs.

[Starblade]

There were exactly two good things about the movie and those were Michael Fassbender & Idris Elba.

Fassbender is becoming the best part of any movie he's in.

Saw Prometheus yesterday. I really enjoyed it, but I can't contest most of the criticism. Much of the plot doesn't make sense once you step back and look at it.

[fuggles]

Who doesn't love a future where spaceships are controlled by piccolos?

As an aside, yeah, Alien 3 was pretty bad, mostly because no-one could decide what the heck they wanted the film to do - check out all the rejected scripts! http://www.avpoe.org/amr/html/scripts/scripts.html

[Mr Carrot]

It's not just that, they also wouldnt let fincher do re-shoots when he rushed the first round of principle photography through. There was a lot he wanted to go back and hammer out (including the start) which he never got the chance to do, which is why the workprint is a million times better.

[Master Chief]

Saw it yesterday too, everyone in the movie is a stupid idiot except like maybe David. At first I thought the captain and his two amigos could be there as well but no they're also idiots. Visuals were really cool though and it was fun but man were they fucking dumb. I know it's been said that they have to be dumb or it wouldn't be a horror movie, but like Carpenter's The Thing is a great horror movie and those guys aren't retards. Hell same with Alien and Aliens, they screw up and do dumb stuff but my god Prometheus hit a new level.

[Elukka]

I think it would be rather more effective if they were competent and professional and things still went horribly wrong.

[Kronoch]

I don't really agree with that. I think it's more effective and entertaining of the characters do make mistakes (if we're talking about thrillers and horror movies in general). I've always found an enemy that can beat everything the protagonists can throw at it more annoying than intimidating, unless if it's a movie that's heavy on suspense with little or no action. If the opponent is all-powerful it really takes me out of the movie. On the other hand, people acting irrational and just being assholes doesn't. With Prometheus the rampant stupidity didn't bother me.

On a side note: I've watched both Alien and Aliens yesterday for the first time, and both movies were... okay. Bit hard to get into if all the future technology monitors have less colors and a lower resolution than my phone. But these movies age faster, I suppose. I have yet to see The Thing, but that's because it's no rental stores have the damn movie and I don't want to have to buy it.

[OhJohnNo]

Yeah. People act stupidly in stressful situations, IRL too.

[Elukka]

Competent people still make mistakes and there's nothing wrong with them making a lot of mistakes if it's done believably. This crew, though, they couldn't climb Everest without dying horribly.
I thought the movie was alright. It didn't do anything particularly interesting or groundbreaking but it's a summer blockbuster and I had my expectations in check.

[Master Chief]

They weren't in a stressful situation when they started acting stupid, they did it from the start. And you can't say it's because they're so awed by finding alien life because none of them gave like even the slightest fuck, hell the Holloway guy was fucking bitter and drinking himself into a hissyfit stupor because he didn't find a live one in the first day of landing. Everyone else just kinda was like "oh hey, a thing. yeah that's cool I guess."

Also this is a trillion dollar expedition to find essentially God, and they picked the single most incompetent crew imaginable. Say what you want about how people act, that alone is so fucking stupid it took me out of the movie. I mean they all just rip the helmets off as fast as they possibly can and it just gets dumber from there. This movie has the world's dumbest scientists, geologist, biologist, captain, bridge crew, hangar crew, and anyone else who was floating in the background.

And I mean, they're finding the genesis of human life, the Space Jockeys. Wouldn't it be something if the crew was like actually smart and competent and still got fucked? Instead of the Three Stooges in space bumbling around? Like, they're the best and the brightest, they do everything right, but this shit is just so far beyond them it all falls apart and they die learning nothing. That'd be better than a bunch of idiots shitting around.

In fact I'm making a big dumb post right now that I call:

Spoiler

EVERYONE IN PROMETHEUS IS A FUCKING IDIOT ASSHOLE
Holloway is dumb because he just takes his helmet off as fast as possible. Everyone else is dumb for doing the same damn thing. Also he whines and cries because he didn't find live ones to talk to after a couple hours of looking at one spot.
Shaw is stupid because she fucking rips a horrible alien monster out of her gut and tells no one. Also she clubs two people with a steel pipe or something and runs off to Charlize Theron's private space pod to have her c-section and no one cares. She wanders into the room with Weyland near-naked, covered in blood, and with her gut stapled together and no one cares but David a little. No one finds out about the space monster ever.
The captain is an idiot because he fucking stops watching the bridge when there's two guys alone and stranded on an alien planet. The rest of the bridge crew are also dumb because they are also not watching the screens or doing their actual fucking job. You don't leave the bridge empty.
The hangar crew are dumb assholes because they open the door for zombie geologist, even though they know that he is totally dead and are even looking at a big zombie body. Theron freaked out over Holloway being all sick so why would they open the door for the dead guy. This is a bit more of a nitpick but it's still really dumb. Also I didn't really get how he turned into a zombie but whatever.
The geologist is a fucking retard because he has the god damn map on his arm and he gets lost. Like seriously how the fuck. He could even just call up the bridge and ask them. The only reason he gets lost is so he can die. That's on the level of like Jason Goes To Space, this should not be in Prometheus. Find a better reason to just kill off the idiots. At least he's smart enough not to touch the alien snake unlike...
The biologist, who is a big stupid asshole. His entire job is to study life forms and shit, and he's face to face with actual alien bodies and he freaks the fuck out. Understandable, but I mean what the hell was he expecting to do. Obviously not his job. Anyway then he runs away and finds the snake thing flaring up like a cobra and acting really aggressive. So he of course has to play with it. Dead guys? Fuck that I ain't doing that. An angry alien snake monster? Hell yeah!!! Then he died and I laughed.
Charlize Theron is stupid because she hired all these idiots.
Weyland is stupid because his makeup looks dumb. He doesn't really do anything else so I just marveled at how dumb he looked. Like why not just get an old guy. But this is getting really nitpicky.
David was cool and the best part of the movie.

Maybe if a couple of the above happened, or like if some of them started screwing up after shit went down it'd be better. But nearly every single person in the movie is stupid. I could barely focus on what was happening since every time something happened I just marveled at how much stupider they got.

All that being said, I did like the movie because the visuals were flat out amazing and I really liked how it was more of a mystery/exploration movie. The first half was really good. But a lot of stuff doesn't really make sense if you look closer at it and the characters don't properly react to what's going on, they choose the worst possible ways to go about things, and they're generally not good at their jobs. Also again Michael Fassbender stole the show and made the movie.

[Langy]

I gotta wonder - why'd they use a relatively young guy for Weyland, anyways? And why not use Lance Henrikson, who is at least half-again closer to the correct age than the guy they chose and, hey, he's already known to be the founder of Weyland industries in that universe.

But yeah, I gotta agree with most of what you said, Master Chief.

[OhJohnNo]

This crew, though, they couldn't climb Everest without dying horribly.

Well, actually, climbing Everest without dying horribly is really fucking hard .

[Kronoch]

Surely you must have enjoyed seeing them ripped apart, eaten, beaten to death, melted, explode and zombified for their stupidity? Yes, they were stupid fucking idiots, and I quite enjoyed seeing them being punished for it. Each and every one of the crew members had the survival instincts of a bunch of lemmings. Going in to the movie, I expected too see a group of people that would all die horrible deaths at alien hands/claws and I wasn't disappointed.

And Fassbender was indeed awesome, I was kinda hoping David would be the only survivor.

[Ira Aduro]

Just saw this, some questions, thoughts, and critiques.

Spoiler

In the opening sequence, what planet is the "engineer" on? It would seem it is earth.

Note that the ship that seemingly maroons the "engineer" is different than the warship that was found later on in the movie. The engineer in the opening seemingly commits suicide. Why?

The star cluster murals. They point to the facility our intrepid crew finds. So the engineers that drew them or gave the idea to the humans (I never was clear if the star cluster mural predated humans and humans drew around it or if humans drew it and knew about the star cluster) must have worked on the moon the installation was on. But the engineer we see in the beginning isn't from the same kind of ship and doesn't seem to have contacted humans. He merely commits suicide and some of his DNA falls into the stream. Note that not all the DNA is destroyed, just most. I am thinking the engineers created humans by accident. It would seem the movie is suggesting some DNA from the engineer survived and was the "spark" that set off evolution.

It would seem the black "goo" makes weapons out of life forms. We see worms in the ground of the chamber and then the creatures that attack are worm like but hyper aggresive / warlike.

Two scientists are left behind from the first exploration. One (Milburn) gets the worm in his mouth. The other (Fifield) gets acid on his face. Fifield shows up later as an impossibly strong and super aggresive human mutant. I say that because the way he was "sitting" on the ground would be impossible for any human to do and he has found super-human strength. What gave him this mutation/strength? Last we saw he was dead. What happened to Milburn? He's never seen again.

The black goo that is given to Charlie seems to have the same effect (albiet much slower) as the thing the engineer in the opening sequence drank. So is the goo the engineer drank the black goo from the containers? And if so why does it destroy some life and mutate others? It seemingly mutated Fifield but doesn't Charlie.

One critique of the characters:
Charlize Theron character felt redundant, she overlapped her fahter's role and attitude. Her death felt "tacked on". They should have kept her alive and had her as an evolving character who overcomes her and her father's obsession with doing anything to stay alive and therefore serves as a foil to her father.

[Starblade]

It doesn't matter if it's Earth or any other, it's implied that the process, wherever it's shown to be done, also happened on Earth.

Vickers

Someone on Something Awful pointed out that she growls "father" in the same way Roy Batty does in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It's opposite, though. The biological daughter states it instead of the artificial son. The father wants life, the child knows things must end.

David

Another thing pointed out to me is that the humans all cringe away from the holograms. The humans don't really seem to understand most of their tech ("it's just a glitch"). They don't understand that David isn't an emotionless machine. David embraces the holograms. David knows what he's doing. David feels, going so far as to have preferences. There's a theme of not understanding anything. The only other person who isn't a total moron is Vickers, besides hiring all the stupid people and running in a straight line.

[Ira Aduro]

Re:David

I agree that despite what the humans say, David shows very strong signs of feeling. It also seems he has an attachment to the protagonist and possibly bumps off her boyfriend for that reason. Though it also seems like Weyland instructs him to do so, not sure about this.

[Starblade]

Also fun fact, basically everything in this movie that isn't human techonlogy is Giger, including the rocky structure they first enter, but some of it isn't specific to this film. From what I've been told that "cave" they enter is actually Castle Harkonnen from one iteration of the Dune film where Giger was on board.

Spoiler

David has feelings, but he's also taking orders. He's fulfilling his tasks, but not in the way people expect. After all, Holloway did say he would do anything, right? David helped him along. He even asked if he'd like some "poison".

Also Fassbender based his role partially off of David Bowie, making Michael Fassbender rule even more.

To be honest this movie wouldn't be even half as good without Fassbender.

[zakublazer]

My speculation on why david spiked the drinks abridged version:

Spoiler

David: Sir, we have discovered some black goo that seems to have extreme mutagenic properties it seems to allow the creation of life out of no where. It is highly probable that it is what allowed the rise of humanity in the first place.

Weyland: can it save my life?

David: we are not sure, its properties and structure are so complex that i/we have no idea how it will effect a human. It can do anything from fixing you to dissolving to into your base genetic pieces. The technology is so beyond us that we can make no accurate predictions.

Weyland: Find out, if our machine can't give you an answer, try harder.

David: Yes sir, i will go find out what it does to humans.

Spoiler

David: Well shit, that didn't work...
David: Dr. Shaw, we are gonna have to freeze you in carbonite, i am sure whatever comes out of you will be interesting, but we have better stuff to do, so you just sit tight. Here's a tranq shot.

...
Weyland: Why Hello Dr. Shaw, we are just gonna go see my maker, wanna come along? why, egads, you are covered in blood! and your stomach is stapled together. Whatever, i have barely days to live so i am gonna go ahead, come along if you can.
Weyland: So what did you cut out anyway? Well whatever, just make sure you didn't throw it out, we will dissect it after i get my genes fixed by my creator.

[LoCo]

Spoiler

Charlize Theron's character really could have been so much better if they just changed two things.

1: Don't kill her off in such an inane manner. That's the stuff from 80's cartoons. Hell, don't kill her off at all. David and Vickers were the only good things in the movie. Blast expectations to shit and have Vickers survive to become the hero in a later movie. But sadly it seems that Scott hasn't evolved past where he was in 1979 where characters can't grow/change, where only one sort of person can ever work for a corporation.

I mean... Who didn't see "the corporate lacky killing off some team mates because he/she was scared" coming? If you didn't see it coming, you obviously haven't watched the previous Alien movies. Which leads to point two...

2: She obviously didn't agree with her father. How about she do something about it. She seems like she has backbone enough to threaten David and stare down the entire crew before killing one of them. So why doesn't she actually do anything? Also... she is not a cartoon character. No matter how stupid everyone was in this movie, the decision to kill a character off like that makes everyone connected to the movie stupid too. If you have to squish someone with a space ship to get your jollies, have her run to the side and then the ship falls over on her.

If these are the people the human race spawns in the future... we won't have to worry about it very long, and I... I for one would welcome our Alien overlords.

[Tiresias]

Spoiler

I agree Vickers could have been kept alive, but become hero in later film? It would make sense for her to survive to carry on teh Weyland Corp, but she's not a 'good' guy if more ambiguous than a villan

[PetarB]

Tiresias, I think the fate of the person under discussion is not clear. Sequel opening.

Also, I adored this movie.

Hopefully I can find some babysitting next weekend so I can drag my wife along, she's going to love it, even if she will be squirming at some parts.

[Alpha_1]

I could have sworn the part about David's android model was in the movie but I could be wrong, the model doesn't have emotions, it understands them and the motivation behind them, not quiet the same as feeling them.

I saw it at a place called Alamo Draft house, they show extra stuff while seating so you get sneak peaks at DVD extras and such and cartoon content they make (like how aliens should have ended), I had thought the android part was in the movie but it could have been in the extras.

[Starblade]

LoCo

If these are the people the human race spawns in the future... we won't have to worry about it very long, and I... I for one would welcome our Alien overlords.

Considering they left us directions to their Space WMDs and left the keys in I wouldn't put too much faith in those either. Unless you mean the Alien aliens in which case sure, bring them on!