Ridley Scott’s “return to the Alien universe” in Prometheus has been the subject of unimaginable speculation ever since the film was revealed to tell a related story – as opposed to serving as an outright prequel. For months cinephiles have poured over Prometheus trailers and set images hoping for a clear picture of where, exactly, the highly-anticipated film would fit into the iconic story of the xenomorphs. Fortunately, the Prometheus marketing has been (for the most part) pretty subtle – flashing a variety of mysterious and tense shots entirely out of context – leaving speculators with little information to analyze.
Now that Prometheus (read our review) has officially been released, information about the secretive production has come flooding in – and we have a much clearer picture of how Prometheus is connected to Alien (and the larger Alien universe). To help steer discussion we’ve put together a lengthy analysis of Prometheus and explained a few of the plot points that might have been confusing to some moviegoers. Does our Prometheus explanation match your theory? Find out!
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Alas of course, “the question” of who created us is such a stupid and irrelevant question.
Agreed.
Article says we see Shaw and David leave the moon.
We don’t. We see A ship leave.
Could even be the LV426 Jockey.
Finally, a legitimate question has been raised. I bow to you, sir, and now I must ponder what you have said…
But wasn’t LV-426 Jockey fossilized?
Yes.
That is true, but the problem with that is, according to this story line, the traditional chest bursters don’t exist and we saw the lame excuse for a Xeno emerging near full grown from the jockey who was impregnated by the big squidy thing. I just dont know what david and shaw would be expecting to accomplish going to the home world of the Space Jockey unless they were planning on launching all of the canisters on their home world
I expected a movie that either had Xenomorphs, or a cool precursor of them.
Or, even better, something involving the Space Jockeys, and how the Derelict ship got onto LV-426
I got a giant squid and a movie that was more disgusting than it was scary. I’m not saying the movie was ‘bad’. But I hated it. Especially for an Alien prequel.
This guy gets it, lol. I don’t get people who want to claim that this movie was stupendous. It was actually extremely sub par. I love Ridley’s work, but I’m no apologist. He swung and in my opinion, he missed hard.
I wanted to see how awesome they could really make the Alien Universe given the improvements in Movie Technology since the first Alien. Maybe a giant Xenomorph nest so horrifyingly scary that it could barely be imagined.
What better way to pay tribute to the Movie franchise that basically spawned your career than to lay a foundation for it and steer completely in another direction. Ridley is free to pursue his own interests, I just wish he didn’t have to drag me along for his worthless ride. I feel like I had been in a Xenomorph origin tour group, we pulled up to the Xenomorph exhibit but then suddenly sped off to look at this other cool thing that you’ll totally like. “But wait I wanted to see the real Aliens.” “No, a squid fighting an Albino Giant is better.” “How is it better?” “It’s not, but we already got here so be quiet and don’t enjoy this.”
Well, your whole idea for a “giant xenomorph nest” is the climax of Aliens, so wanting that is just repeating what Cameron did in 2(or s if you wanna use their numbering system)and also, Scott has stated on numerous occasions the idea of a xenomorph is played out, the fear in 1 is the GLIMPSES you see of it, not of full on shots, which is why when it takes Brett it was truly frightening for it’s time, when it came for Dallas it was nuts(by modern standards it’s not so frightening anymore but then it was so intense)he felt that after seeing the alien in 2, 3, and Resurrection so much that it lost it’s terror.
Sure the diehard fans are crying foul over it not being a 100% prequel to Alien, but it’s what Ridley Scott said on numerous occasions he would deliver, and has also said multiple times it was going to be part of a series(2 or 3 movies I can’t remember), the fact that you’re so upset about people that like this movie is just you ruining it for yourself by latching onto source material so hard that you spoil the enjoyment of a film.
The movie did what it said it was going to do, what Ridley Scott wanted to do(to tell an origin story of the Space Jockeys). If the moviegoing populace clung to source material as much as you do, Batman Begins and Dark Knight would have never been a success, and Green Lantern would be hailed as a cinematic masterpiece.
TL;DR, the movie was fantastic and I have been a diehard Alien fan(well as big of a fan to say that 3 and 4 don’t exist to me, even knowing full well Joss Whedon wrote the script)since the first one.
The Alien Universe as you put has had five other movies since he made the first one, it’s not like there hasn’t been numerous variations on the creatures over the years. As for the franchise spawning his career, that’s kind of backwards. Him and the original writers spawned the first movie and then by luck Cameron took it in another direction and continued it’s popularity. The set-up for Aliens was pretty much what Starship Troopers probably should have looked like, and the Alien movies seem to switch between that concept and the single creature one from the original.
People who wanted wall to wall creatures chasing down hapless humans were going to be disappointed by this movie, and in reality that isn’t even what the first one was really like when you watch it now. Alien 4 and the AVP movies turned into more into the monsters chasing down the people theme, and nothing that had really been said or shown indicated this was going to be like that.
Just show me one interview where Ridley said that his was a full on Alien Prequel , and that it would give the fan all the answers that they crave .
He NEVER said that .
He said it was a new story set in the alien universe ,
and, that is what we got .
AMEN!!
Look, I will again say this, i was blown away by the visuals. Blown away, still thinking about them. And I also want to say in fairness to Lindlelof, this was a work for hire. He could have taken all those cues from Sir Ridley. I have a feeling that in his presence, a screenwriter (like myself) is probably in awe – like we’re looking into the eyes of an Engineer. And like the flame-retardant zombie that was once a geologist – we want to get paid. So I can’t “blame” DL and won’t. I can blame the master of visuals, who can produce the prettiest 200 million dollar monster I’ve ever seen. But it was a monster none-the-less. It was a story so uninterested in progressing, perhaps to cater to a sequel, that there was NO sense of accomplishment. Hero did not go on journey, encounter obstacle and EARN, yes EARN the result. Idris’ exposition as a weapon, not earned. Suicidal,potential cure,zombie-making, squid baby,precursor to Alien goo – NOT EARNED. All that said, I applaud the effort, and I’m going to see it again because I just love Fassbender as David and I love the look, but for many – like me – the story needed work. That’s not to say I’m whining or guys like me or whining, and I respect the opinion of those who “got it” – but I wasn’t one of them.
Some things are not fact that many are stating.
1. Its unknown where the Space Jockey was fleeing too and what he was going to do when he got there, it was an assumption by Ridley.
2. Its unknown why the Space Jockey too the goo at he beginning of the movie.
I also want to know why he drank the goo at the beginning maybe prior to all else, I wondered if that was some point earlier and how the whole alein got stated in the first place.
Many people are assuming it was black goo he drank at the beginning. Why? This is a culture that makes (or grows) its own bio-armor. They have clearly mastered dna and genetic manipulation. What he drinks is something else they’ve developed, a “deconstructing” goo.
Plus, wasn’t it silver?
So if the goo was deconstructing which i think it was, and to me, it means that it was destroying the DNA, how could that explain their DNA being on earth, if that was earth he was doing it on
So if the deconstructed DNA is in us??? Does that mean we share the same DNA as the salmon fish found in the same river?? Come on, it makes no sense…crappy movie.
There were no salmon. There was no life yet. He put the building blocks there so life could start. It’s science fictional, but based on real science (DNA, RNA and all that). You have to understand something about real science in order to be able to buy into it as a fictional concept.
His light-map of the stars drew a green line to earth and his ship took off, he was headed to earth. The guy in the beginning intentionally sabotages that planet by releasing the substance without the later-arriving space jockey’s knowledge and that is why they are running on the hologram, they are being chased by an overwhelming number of attackers who kill them all.
Great read! Your theories presented within the article are intriguing. My question is this; having seen ‘Alien vs. Predator’, what do you think Ridley meant when he said the following, “So I didn’t really do anything about it and then when they finally put it to bed in Alien vs. Predator I thought “You know what? This is a good idea here.”…
What did he mean by that?
Thank you and keep up the great work!
Said
I’m happy a movie like this was made, in a time where movies are made just for the sake of making them.
Great movie! I enjoyed reading the previous posts here and would like to give my two cents. IMO I must say that Prometheus is by itself a stand alone movie within the Alien universe. Scott’s movie is about the Orgins of the Space Jockey which happens to have non-believing scientists as cannon fodder. Also Scott has MORE backstory than what we just witnessed on screen. I’m sensing a three picture deal prior to the events of Alien. Unfortunately, Lindelhof wants to tease the moviegoers just like he did with Lost; ambiguous storytelling that askew in different paths.
Observations:
1. The Alien Queen at the end of the movie can’t be the only one. If there are more Jockey spaceships, then there must be more biological mutagens that can create an Alien Queen. Also there must be more than one moon with WMDs in the universe.
2. When the black goo killed the Jockeys in LV-223 years ago, could that be the only ‘incident’ of an experiment gone wrong in another off-world installation housing WMDs?
I think that this one movie can’t answer everyone’s many questions from Alien and Aliens. (I disregard all of AVPs and Aliens 3 and 4). Scott has already said he’ll do a sequel to explore the Space Jockey’s homeland. Just like Bladerunner, you have to appreciate and ‘slowly digest’ Prometheus over time. It took me years to finally understand that Deckard REALLY IS a Replicant. (Thank you director’s cut!) So enjoy the movie…again and discuss the theories amongst yourselves.
On Project Prometheus, you can discover which planets Weyland terra-formed prior to this film. On planet KOI: Kareti 739.6 light years away, “In 2068, primitive single cell alien life forms were discovered in this carbon dioxide choked planet, it was left for pristine research.”
In Dylan City, 1046 light years away: single celled alien organisms found.
Peter Weyland bio on this site said he terra-formed many planets. He must have ‘run’ into problems prior to Prometheus.
I think we have some real problems with time scaling. We’ve got multiple catalysts that should have sparked rapid change, failing to spark change. So for me the main questions are not so much what happened, but, rather, why didn’t things happen differently.
We know the aliens have essentially identical DNA. That can’t be a coincidence. But it leaves us with the puzzle of what happened during the 6-8 million years since man was created. 35,000 years ago is just about yesterday against that time span. What happened during the 5.965 million years in between? And for that matter, if multiple civilizations were communicating with space-faring aliens 35,000 years ago, why did scientific civilization only develop about 400 years ago? And if spacefaring aliens were playing the role of God for early man, why did monotheism become the dominant religion–and the one that lead to scientific civilization?
So i’ve heard from a lot of people saying that the first scene was a waste of time. Here’s my two cents. The Space Jockey who drank the bio poison was dropped on earth as a castaway… sort of like when Kirk was shot off onto that ice planet in the most recent Star Trek movie. He was given a poison to kill himself, or he could survive on his own. He quickly made his decision and killed himself. His genetic code survived and later evolved to spawn mankind. The whole question surrounding this film is who made mankind and why… what if the answer is… just like the Aliens… it was a tragic accident.
If you watch it again when he falls in the water and his DNA gets reconstructed they show a lone cell. Then it splits into two, and four, and so on. Thats the dawn of human life in my opinion.
Think of the story of the nephilim:
Angels lusted after human woman and their offspring was abominations. Those angels, grigori, also taught mankind technology. God wiped out the nephilim (the offspring of angel & human) with the flood.
Now tweak that story a bit.
Engineers came to earth and created humanity. Over the years, that group visited, teaching mankind various things.
The present day engineers see us as an abomination that needs to be wiped out. Enter the xenomorphs, the “flood,” the hand of god, the divine cleansing. Notice the spiritual carving of the QUEEN.
Nice theory.
None of you have asked the question burning in my mind:
Why would Shaw and Vickers, two apparently intelligent people, run directly away from a large rolling object that they cannot possibly out run? (If you found yourself standing in the middle of a road, would you run away from the oncoming traffic, or would you run 90 degrees to the nearest edge of the road?)
Worse, after Shaw gets lucky in falling down such that she then rolled 90 degrees out of the way successfully, she then sees the ship stop rolling, and start falling her way. Apparently she doesn’t learn, because once again she runs directly away from it… rather than walking leisurely to one side or the other. (If you saw a tall pole falling towards you, would you run directly away from it, or simply step to one side or the other?)
Sorry, but I was cheering for her to be crushed when she made the same stupid mistake again.
Scott seems to fear two things:
The destruction of mankind by some biological agent.
The destruction of mankind by some artificial intelligence.
And, in my opinion, his movies do a damn good job of planting that in people’s minds!
Personally, I don’t think mankind will last long enough to see human-like AI. I think its a toss-up whether we first destroy ourselves with biological agents, nanobots, or nuclear explosives. And the way things are going right now, it might be economic collapse that is the trigger. Fun times.
I was readin gover the comments and I must have missed something. The “space jockey” on LV-426, we never get to see the rest of his ship so we don’t know if there was more crew or not. As to where the “Space Jockey” came from, has everyone forgotten that at the end of AVP (Alien Vs. Predator) there was an Alien on board a Predator ship. Seeing as how the Aliens take on some genetic structures of the original host is it really much of a stretch that the Alien was able to take out the unsuspecting crew and the ship crash landed on LV-426. With this in mind the pilot and suit would have had time to be fused thru fossilization.
Some have made this point, but others seem to have missed it:
The theory stated in the movie that the site was building biological weapons and they were headed to earth to destroy it seems flawed. Why would they point us to it? And why on earth would any sophisticated race choose to destroy a planet with anything akin to a xenomorph. No matter how good your weapons / skills / whatever, nobody wants more of those things in the universe.
It seemed more like a facility to produce ooze to create life on a planet, as shown in the opening sequence. Or perhaps accelerate mutation to a particular driving DNA. The large map of the universe seemed like a plan for all the worlds that they intended to populate.
It is possible the ooze went awry in their development lab and out came a xenomorph alien. However, more consistent with the other movies would be simply this: Their lab was doing just fine until a space-traveling xenomorph in worm form landed on the moon and either started mutating from the ooze or just started wreaking havoc without any help from the ooze.
So, where did the theory that they were headed to earth to destroy it come from? From the android that seemed to have his own vendetta / mission / evil intentions! So, none of those may have been headed to earth at all. Possibly, they were just intending to populate some more suitable planets.
One last thought:
Why did the engineer space jockey go nuts on the people who woke him up? Well, again the android with his own mystery purpose was involved. We have no idea what he said. And note that the engineer space jockey seemed to notice he was android and THEN went nuts on everybody in the room.
Perhaps he’s seen thousands of years of sci-fi flicks where the android turns out to be EVIL. Perhaps that has led them to distrust all forms of artificial life forms (hence their very organic / biological technology). And given everybody else in the room looked just like the android he identified by touch, perhaps he assumed the rest in the room were also android (he didn’t examine any of the rest).
So, perhaps Scott was just suggesting how we should treat android technology. (Go nuts destroying it!)
Has anyone thought that perhaps Ridley Scott is 74 years old, and may perhaps be throwing his own poop at people in between takes? And having one of the major writer’s / producers from Lost combined with someone suffering from early stage alzheimer’s was probably a mistake.
Prometheus shouldn’t be looked at as a success in cinema, but a success for dementia patients world wide.
David Lindeloff should be covered in lighter fluid and ignited, and Ridley Scott should peacefully retire to a home. Also, people should stop discuss their bat nuts crazy theories as to why this film makes sense. It doesn’t.
LOL!
The ideas presented in the film does warrant intelligent discussion you got to give it that. But, tee-hee your comment is hits it right out of the park.
Lindeloff is the “Questions Questions Questions” guy afterall. Thats his biggest trick. Present the questions and do not answer any of them. My idea for Jacob being a mama’s boy is much better then what he gave us.
LMFAO!!!!!!
I think the movie has definitely made itself a lot cooler than most movies by allowing us to be so creative with our imaginations. By trying to find clues and symbolism we have put these pieces together to come up with our own theories. The theories that matter are Lindelhof and Scott, but these opinions are much more entertaining than the movie itself!
I have a few more theories that expand on my original post.
Everyone here wanted an Alien “prequel”. Scott said from the beginning that he did not want a prequel but an entire new universe to take creative ideas from to spawn new movies entirely. He even enlisted Lindelhof to juice up his script in the hopes that he would manifest this idea better than he can.
This entire movie is based on a minuscule piece of the original film that was the creation of HR Giger and left 100% up to him for creative alien design. There was no book to give us back-story and no explanation in the Alien movie to allude to what the deserted spaceship was or its origin. This was never planned to be a prequel, it was planned to generate buzz based on all of our vivid imaginations that dissected the origins of the first movie to a fault.
If you compare the screen shot of the Disk Jockey in Alien to the Engineer in the Prometheus movie right after he suits up and gains control of the ship there are numerous anomalies. I know they are the same, supposedly, but the dimensions are different than the first films brief encounter with them. The major difference is that the first film shows the engineer to be about 3-4 times larger than man.
This is why there is a difference. The first alien was exactly that, and alien. Since the idea to make a prequel came about so many years after the first film there was no reason to explain the alien back-story. The engineers’ ship was more advanced than Prometheus. The fact that the ship could survive seemingly intact for thousands of years and still work exemplifies that. Why would a pressurized ship capable of faster than light tech need all that apparatus-like equipment around the engineers just to take a drive? Simple, it did not. They had to do some imaginative storytelling there so we could believe they were the same as the first Alien movie.
So basically to make a long story short…No screenplay derived from a published book = a movie with a ton of plot holes. The interesting thing would be a sequel to this movie “Prometheus 2” (who cares if the ship was destroyed…it was symbolic to the idea of our origin…not literally named after the ship) that went on to explain the origin of the engineers while telling the new story arc to wherever that ship went and who was actually on it.
Xenomorphs are biologically enhanced versions of themselves (my opinion). XMs were found on some other world as the dominant creature and were selected by the engineers for testing and later used as weapons. The engineers most likely made a mistake or the aliens became too clever and were taken for granted. This in-turn ended up being the engineers’ downfall.
Xenomorphs are the roaches of the cosmos; ever-evolving and resilient beyond comprehension. The engineers marveled at this and selected them for their personal pleasures in their realm of science. The omnipotent minds of the engineers are hardly ever impressed by natural design and they coveted the XMs for it.
I think the next movie (if it gets done) will have the story arcs that most were hoping for in this movie. Scott does not want to pollute this series while he is at the helm. The dynasty has earned him a handsome cache of money and he certainly wants this series to keep doing that. I bet we will all eat crow when the next one comes around and realize just how groundbreaking this movie actually is.
I disagree, there is a need to explain what and who was in that chair, why all of those eggs were there, where he was going and why did he leave a keep away warning. Who were the Space jockeys and why and how did they create the most horrifying killing machine know to film. what their intent was and who were they plannin on using them against
I don’t get why people don’t get this film. I can get on board with people if they get it but still don’t like it but from what I’ve heard, most people that didn’t like the film simply didn’t understand it. Which kind of sucks, because i came out of the cinema like i’d just seen a dog talk. Confused, bewildered, trying to compound the information that wasn’t pieced together but is there if you look for it. Then i got excited and want to go watch it again, this time with no pre-conceptions of what to expect, without drawing a comparison to the original Alien movie. That wont be there. So i can appreciate it for it’s own merits rather than the merits of a film that basically has nothing to do with this story.
It seems that everybody has been treating “Prometheus” with the expectation that it is a pre-cursor to Alien and the Alien universe, when it isn’t. It’s a pre-cursor to a different story.
It’s like you go down a road and come to a fork in the road, There are two signs, one pointing left, one right. One says “Alien” and the other says “Prometheus” and everybody went down the prometheus road expecting to get to Alien at the end. I mean sure, there were road-signs along the Prometheus road that pointed an arrow to a divergant pathway saying “Alien – 20 miles that way <" but thats all those little things were in the road. Snippets, nods, acknowledgements.
This is basically what i took away from the film:
The whole film is based on the idea of Hyper Evolution by genetic engineering. Showing the epitaph of the alien in that huge chamber simply nods to the audience that the "Alien" creature 1) Wasn't an accident, and 2) The Engineers have a hand in making them. We still don't know why, to what extent, what the engineers needed them for, and so on.
David was used to deliver and move the story forward. He was the Engineers perspective by all accounts because he has absolutely no bias. David is experiencing objectivity in it's purest form, whilst also representing innocence e.g. You'd be hard pressed to call David a ba****d for what he did to Shaw, because he is a mindless robot following his owners programmed orders.
So reflecting on that. Can it not be possible that for the Enginners, humans served a similar position when it came to what the Engineers expected? that isn't to say the Engineers designed humanity to be slaves. but more ratherr humanity served a purpose that was outside of their culture and that was beyond their understanding because it is literally an alien intention. David will never understand human intent because he isn't human, So why would humans understand the Engineers intent?
Ok so at the start of the film Prometheus (yes he for all accounts was prometheus) drank the virus. His body crumbled, his DNA and genetic structure broke down, and he falls into the water…. adding his physical components to the planet, along with the virus, making a different make-up to the chemical soup on the planet, it is no longer just rock and water, it is rock, water, and alien DNA with retrovirus. This allowed life to grow (I can't believe Ridley Scott had to explain that in an interview after the films release). The Title PROMETHEUS came straight after DNA re-formed/re-structured and then pulled out into a cell which started to mutate and divide into multiple cells. That alien sacrificed itself to spawn life on our planet.
Further into the film that virus from the start of makes another appearance. So like David said "To create, sometimes first you must destroy"
What I'm getting at is didn't it seem obvious or conceivable to anyone that perhaps humanity was created out of that chemical soup, from that aliens sacrifice, in order to develop a higher grade base of DNA to Hyper evolve with their "virus" that Prometheus drank at the beginning. So the engineers would return to earth, and there would be billions of peoples strands of DNA to break down into the chemical soup of the planet rather than that one aliens DNA. Considering Humans were genetic match to these aliens, it would make sense. Perhaps they were trying to create more of themselves.
Furthermore, considering there was a portion of the film talking about Terra-forming, which i might add was quite a chunk of plot in "Aliens", that maybe it's conceivable that they use the aliens as a foundation for starting life, and that these aren't bio-chemical weapons but a giant lab for different processes of creating life for themselves…. of themselves.
1) The Alien (1979), would perhaps be used for Terra-forming a planet, to bring about the conditions for life to grow (this is a presumption, but a worthy one….. in my mind), then they would kill them all off, perhaps by using that virus.
2) Then the next stage would be introducing some DNA into the mix, aka… Sacrificing one of your own species to mingle his DNA around for a few million years with a virus that forces evolution.
3) Sit and wait whilst species evolve and die and eventually that original aliens DNA finds its way through the process of evolution to have remade itself in a pretty exact fitting way as it was originally. In essence an underdeveloped form of this species emerges out of that mix… HUMANS!
4) Then the next stage would be to use the virus on the humans (once our genetics had evolved properly), break our DNA down, that would all go into the environment and water and what not, break down, re-form, even stronger, and wait again, and keep doing it until the Engineers Race is made.
Is that not what people got from the film? Because i did. They used a virus that was made for Hyper Evolution to spawn a planet with life….. was that not a curiosity to anyone why an Alien would kill itself to do this? Knowing the virus would kill him/it? Using a virus that was so potentially dangerous. It wasn't a weapon. because they used it on themselves at the start of the film to force life to begin. Janek see's it as a weapon because of, well human instinct and self preservation, specie-ism basically.
I mean they did engineer humans, we obviously weren't a random accident either, as the cave paintings were introducing us to the idea that these aliens have been visiting the planet whilst humans were alive. Maybe they were literally checking up to see how their "product" was doing…. how evolved or matured (like a good cheese or wine) they'd become before their DNA could be broken down.
So the alien race were trying to engineer themselves. Humans weren't supposed to find them, or stretch out that far into space. in the film our purpose is literally to die, from the Engineers perspective that is, to serve a greater purpose of making better DNA to evolve something better out of it. Hence why the alien turned "BAD". It's like a dog biting its master. No one would stand for it. the dog would be put down or have a muzzle put on its face.
So notice how the film shifted from the start to the end with Shaw's question. The very inquisitive "why did you make us?" at the start, to "why do you want to kill us?" by the end.
In summary:
The film introduced some very interesting ideas about not only a potential possibility of where humanity came from and how we came into existence in the first place, but also if we ever did meet our makers we might not get the result we all so desire. Everyone in the film who wanted some answer was operating on the ready baked belief that the answer would be something they could stomach, and it turned out not quite so much. We were made to die.
I don't get why people compare it to Alien. It's a different story. It's told in a different way cinematically reflecting a different visual story too. And to me it wasn't a horror film, it had qualities of horror in it, but it actually seemed more nuanced, and more philosophical for it to be a horror.
It is not alien. Alien is a different path. A different story altogether of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No big questions or answers, just survival against the ultimate predator. Prometheus is about who created that alien, not why they created the alien, but who are these people, what are they up to creating life in the first place. Throw in some droplets of "oh these are the guys that created the Alien" and everyone goes nuts because it doesn't explain it. Well, it wasn't meant to, it isn't about that. Hence why i say i don't understand why people say they don't like it when they don't understand it to begin with.
There are so many other ideas it brings up, but as far as the main plot, the engineers and their relation to the human race and so on, it gave all the necessary information, it's just not quite as A, B, C as people normally get out of a film. A, B, and C, are all there, they just don't tell you where or when.
The more i think of what that film offers the more my mind gives way to excitement. Kudos to people who didn't like in spite of getting it, that's fair game. At least you understand the film.
“One of these unfortunate travelers could then become the Alien “Space Jockey” – who dies in his pilot chair (and crashes on LV-426)”
“given nearly 30 years worth of time between Prometheus (2093) and Alien (roughly 2122) – coupled with the xenomorph‘s highly adaptable physiology (as well as rapid development) – it’s possible that it’d only take a few generations of facehugger-xenomorph queen cycling to streamline both creatures’ development into their “modern” forms.”
This is not possible in the given time-line. The events of Alien and Prometheus happen about 30 years apart. But the Jockey of the ship in Alien was fossiled, and if I recall correctly described as being very very old.
So actually slimy aliens of the Prometheus should be more evolved and advanced versions of original Alien. After all the black oily stuff seems to be able to create “aliens” out of anything living that it touches.
The comment “fossilized” is due to a lack of understanding on our part of the space suit the engineer is wearing. The ship on LV-426 is an event that happens after Prometheus when the engineers come back to LV-223 to collect their new species, the alien and use it to seed other worlds or to fight a battle (using aliens as a bio-weapon) that may in fact be a civil war between their own members. The LV-426 engineer apparently is unaware of the presence of face huggers aboard his ship that have already been born and are on the hunt for gestation-organisms. He crash lands or sets down on LV-426 and humans re-discover them due to Weyland’s prior knowledge of said species acquired by the Prometheus mission.
Based on the carbon dating of the head, the accident at the facility happened 2000 years ago, right?
So, 2000 years ago is when one of the other ships may have taken off in a panic, and then ended up crash-landing on some other moon, where it then fossilized for 2030 years.
I just wanna say the Alien franchise was better off with the way it begun. I think that’s one the main things about the Alien franchise was because there was mystery in it. Id like to say aswell that the franchise should of ended with the first 2 films. But when Alien 3 of-course was made, that should of been the end.
Just had this thought….
Shaw doesnt’s find the engineers but DOES make it back to Earth.
Forever obsessed and now no doubt heading the science divison of the Weyland Corp., its on HER orders that the Nostromo is diverted to check into the ‘signal’ on LV426 hoping its her engineers or more clues. Of course it isn’t.
Maybe she’s “MOTHER” and giving ASH his orders?
Hmmmmmmmmm??????
“Mother” is Weyland’s daughter the woman on the ship in Prometheus is an android who does not know what she is. Weyland would never risk his own kin and heir on a mission which is so dangerous. This explains why the medical pod is not programmed for female anatomy, why perform surgery on a a female android whom is injured? Especially since David was probably ordered to reprogram the machine after they (him and Weyland) knew Shaw was impregnated with an organism. Either of the two or both suffice.
thats a very valid point. Especially since she was the only one to come out of sleep without any sickness (she was doing push ups). (David made the point of putting on a spacesuit to make people feel at ease). So they put her into the sleep chamber.
Also the captain directly asks her if she’s an android, and she immediately takes him to bed.
Ive that about this.
Vickers is no droid.
She cries when she wastes Charlie and tears up when David wont share what Daddy said to him.
MOTHER by the way is short for MOTHERSHIP.
Im suggesting though that maybe Shaw has Nostromo look into LV426 and gives Ash his orders. Maybe she never finds what shes after but once back on Earth is taken care and emloyed by Weyland still looking for answers.
Just my tjought.
In Blade Runner Tyrell’s daughter has been programed to show emotion. Shaw and David are headed to the engineer’s present home world at the end of the movie. The craft on LV-426 has alien face hugger eggs in it, not metallic amphorae. This movie implies that in Alien 1 Weyland Corp. already knows about the aliens so they deliberately sent the Nostromo to retrieve what they could or learn what they could about a ship they know of because the crew of Prometheus has encountered them before. I reckon that ship is carrying a queen who came from Shaw and was sent as a punishment to us and crashed on LV-426 instead of reaching earth.
I think that Prometheus did exactly what it was intended to do, provoke thought; make you ask questions. Unlike most movies nowadays where all the questions are answered by the end like an episode of CSI. Prometheus is different it makes you wonder and makes you develop your own cannon frankly as an Alien fanboy were you expecting anything else? In a universe where it took over 30 years to officially find out what was sitting aboard the ship in the first Alien, are there people really complaining about them leaving too many questions unanswered?
Anyways I’ve developed my own theories aswell as have ran into quite a few problems, firstly whether the xenomorphs as depicted in the Alien series are a specific mutation of the black bio-weapon namingly the mutation we saw at the end of prometheus, or is it a general mutation caused by the weapon. Both theories have supporting elements, for the specific mutation theory as seen right before the credits the creature that rips from the engineer looks very much like a queen, now the queen could easily encounter another engineer between 2093 and 2122. Supporting elements to this theory are the fact that xenomorphs inherit traits from their hosts during the incubation period; assuming that the queen at the end of prometheus lays the egg that ultimately kills the “space Jockey” from Alien, then officer Kane would be the first human host since Shaw birthed the “first face hugger” explaining why the xenomorph is so much larger than the ones depicted in later films (the further they got away from their “space jockey” hosts the smaller they became. Now the incongruencies with this theory there appears a mural dedicated to xenomorph type creature in the room where the black bio-weapon is found suggesting that they have encountered the by-product of the weapon before.
remember the space jockey is a giant human and the first Alien to pop out of the chest of the first human was quiet small. It grows quite rapidly. (the shed skin lying around in numerous alien movies) So this queen could be quite huge.
yes, it has achieved its aim of making people talk about it and debate its contents …. still a s*** movie though!
Another theory is that the xenomorphs we are familiar with were an earlier form of a bio-weapon that the engineers created and used thousands of years prior to Prometheus and that they had advanced this weapon and that is what the Prometheus crew discovered. This would explain why the body of the engineer was fossilized by the time the Nostromo reached it, and why the eggs appeared to be weaponized and in stasis under the blue light aboard his ship.
The bas relief carving or molding of an alien shown on the engineer’s space craft clearly shows that they are completely aware of the life cycle that will produce that creature via their amphora-viral pods. Which I would also like to note represent Pandora’s box and the Pandora myth.
This tells you something about the direction Ridley Scott is going here as Zeus gives his wildest daughter to mankind, whose intelligence is known to the Titans as well as her beauty and yet she is imprisoned and not allowed to interact freely with the other Titans as her personality alone acts as a virus, causing deep-rooted animosity among those she is around. Shaw will be captured and sent back to earth to punish us for accepting the gifts of Prometheus as Zeus sent Pandora to man knowing that her beauty would incite war among human kings over possessing her as their own. Once she opens the box, alien-containing amphora, we are doomed but long before then Weyland and other major powers will fight over her…whomsoever possesses the queen will have the ultimate bio-weapon…those who anger the Gods(Zeus)shall be punished.
One question i would ask is where is the tie into the predators? in the First aliens VS predators, the pyramid had been long frozen in the Antarctic. Which would hint that the biological weapon would have been used a long time ago and matured into the Alien species now being prized as a species to hunt by the predators. The aliens also love to hunt humans, which are the same species as the engineers. So its an interesting twist on how the predators fit into this whole storyline.
The aliens could be a bio-weapon the engineers plan on using in an inter-galactic war with the Predators.
i thought about that, but the predators seems to set up hunting areas using the humans to produce aliens to hunt. if that was the case, the predators would just wipe out both
“Aliens” and “Predator” were both IP’s under Dark Horse Comics after their respective film success. The original crossover story “Aliens vs. Predator” took place in the same futuristic universe as the original Aliens films and follows a very similiar plot line to Aliens (Aliens run amuck in a human colony)
The Predators create right of passage hunts for their young males on uncivilized worlds by introducing the Xenomorphs to the native fauna. Only this time, the predators release the Xenomorph eggs on a planet Humans have recently colonized to raise cattle- the abundance of unexpected hosts quickly allows the Xenomorph population to spiral out of control and take over the human colony. There’s a Ripley character who joins the predators in the fight.
It seems when Hollywood finally decided to adapt the AVP for the screen, they didn’t want to budget a futuristic space war so they keep it cheap by having the whole thing play out in modern times in an underground maze.
Predators were known to hunt other species besides the Xenomorphs & Space Jockey. The 3 Predators in the first AVP film were considered not have reached their adult Predator ways. The 3 of them were to prove themselves worthy if they survived a maze of Xenomorphs trying to kill them. The humans were lured there only to be used as bait to breed the Xenomormorphs & that was it. They didn’t count on their guns being taken by the humans & things not goin as planned.
Okay, here’s something pure and simple.
People with HIGH expectations will ruin this movie for themselves because they expected more and more than what they expected from the first Alien movie.
People who are utterly fascinated, interested, have a high held respect to what a great visionary director Ridley Scott is, and to understand what “film appreciation” means to you as a moviegoer, (if you had taken a college course in some time or fashion like I have) and most importantly if you a person that has low expectations to Prometheus will find it more enjoyable.
If I had to choose between AVP and Prometheus by spending 12 bucks to get my ass out of the basement to see a spectacular science fiction film with great graphics, then I rather see the later, Prometheus.
This goes for anything big movie like Avengers, or The Dark Knight Rises,
dont let your high expectations ruin the movie for you. Other wise why bother going to the movies at all?
Yeah , but that would mean that we would have seen space Jockey skulls in at least one of their show cases
Maybe space jockeys made Predators too? A detective would reason that the criminals might return to the crime scene every once in a while.
I’m truly shocked by the questions being asked in this comment section!!!
Why did the xenomorph come out as it did, instead of like in the previous ALIEN films? Really? So you didn’t notice that the face hugger was GIANT and impre3gnating what is essentially a “perfect” being? You missed that?
Why didn’t the snake thing impregnate the scientist on the ship? Cuz it was a mutated worm, not a “tongue” of a giant facehugger
Why didn’t we see what Halloway would turn into? Exactly what the geologist turned into; but the geologist had a more concentrated dose.
Why didn’t shaw tell anyone about the “abortion”? Because the moment it was over, she discovered Weyland and his true agenda.
“Why didn’t shaw tell anyone about the “abortion”?”
…and here I thought her plaid skirt, stockings, white blouse and Mary Janes outfit she wore while screwing was a dead giveaway that she was Catholic? Maybe I saw a different movie…