So a couple of archaeologists find a cave drawing that looks the same as ancient heiroglyphics and stuff around the world. It has a vague picture of some tall dude pointing at five vague circles. Huh. Well it's obvious, isn't it? The big dude is from a race of aliens, and they created human life on Earth! And they want us to go to this vaguely represented star system and pay them a visit!

(Cue Spock saying "Fascinating.")

How do these scientists figure this crap out? I guess it couldn't mean...

1. This is where I want to go. ET wants to phone home.

2. I was out one night and I saw a fellow tribesman pointing up at the stars, and I think he was pointing at those five for some reason.

3. These five circles represent the five stages of life (primitive tribesmen are superstitious, after all).

4. These five circles represent the five gods that we worship.

These vague pictures could mean almost anything. Oh wait, they were generated by independent cultures. Well it's obvious, then! Aliens!

So the starship Prometheus heads out to a distant solar system to investigate and meet our makers. How do you guys even know you're at the right place? Again, the galactic map they're using is five circles on a cave painting. This stuff makes less sense than Stargate where they were using star constellations.

Why does almost everything in the alien complex look like it's made out of stone? The walls, their computer consoles, the space jockey's helmet. How is a stone helmet gonna help you? How are these guys a superior space-faring race?

Why are the holograms of the pasty alien dudes so fuzzy and filled with static? The hologram of Mr. Weyland was much better-looking. Hey, maybe that's why the aliens decided to destroy us. "Hey, Joe. Look at these human holograms I picked up while watching their interstellar transmissions. These holograms are awesome, man! Hey, wait a minute! We're supposed to be the superior intelligence. We created these guys. And they're already outpacing us in the technology department? We gotta wipe these guys out. They're making us look bad." Wait, that doesn't work because the Pink Floyd light show on the alien bridge is pretty good. It's got detailed star systems and stuff, and that stuff isn't fuzzy.

So the chick, whats-er-name... Shaw... gives birth to an octopus monster. Wait, let's back up a bit. So David, the robot, spikes Halloway's drink with the black goo. Then a little worm thingie comes out of Halloway's eye after he had sex with Shaw. Then Halloway starts turning into a monster and gets torched. Then Shaw gives birth to an octopus monster who probably isn't finished gestating in her womb. Shaw is three months pregnant with the monster, in a matter of ten hours. So this monster has a fast gestation period, but we don't know how long the gestation period is. She makes the surgery machine cut the monster out of her. Then later the small octopus monster has grown into a large octopus monster, and it does the facehugger thing on Mr. Pasty, and at the end a comical-looking alien bursts out of his chest. Seriously, this xenomorph looks like a political caricature of a xenomorph. He looks like a cartoon monster.

So I guess Shaw is the "mother" of the facehugger and xenomorph. Whatever. At this point it's difficult to care.

I could say more about this movie, but that'll have to wait for another time. My brain needs to recover from Ridley Scott's onslaught of pseudo-intellectual bullcrap.

I'll bet the alien ship that David and Shaw take off in at the end is the one that later crashes on LV426 with the xenomorph eggs on board. Did they check the cargo hold before taking off?

One more thing, then I'll shut up and let you guys talk about it.

The geologist who likes rocks brings along his "pups", little hovering sphere thingies that map out the alien complex. Then when things start getting weird he wants to do a Scooby Doo. So he and his buddy (the biologist?) get lost.

Hey. How about you bring along a little iPad thingie that shows you a mini-map of the area. I could get a video game on my Nintendo DS with better tracking than what these guys brought along with them to help them know where they are in the maze (translation: nothing). And it's not like the concept of the mini-map isn't already in the movie. The "pups" are transmitting to the ship, which displays a nifty hologram for the people who are on the ship. It shows a map of the area with little icons representing where the "pups" are and different little icons representing where the people are.

So Shaggy and Scooby get lost in a place where there's ghosts and spooky things going on because Scoob was too excited about getting his rocks off to bring along an iPad.

I like your write-ups of certain stuff like this. I just haven't had much of a chance to respond. I'm here on Prometheus by chance. This movie is all about a bunch of elite scientists acting like idiots. I can't believe that Weyland was able to staff a ship that cost 1 trillion dollars for a long-term mission and have people who are willing to take off their oxygen-giving helmets in an alien environment, pet local alien species after being afraid of the POSSIBILITY of another lifesign, and get lost in a cave when you're a geologist.

I can't believe this movie made so much money when Dredd couldn't make back its budget. No justice!

Thanks, dude. I try to entertain.

Yeah, that dude taking off his helmet, that's another thing. Umm... Okay, your computer thingie says the air is breathable. It didn't say anything about, like, airborne bacteria, viruses... crazy alien stuff in the air. Keep the helmets on, you dopes. What if there's some alien flu that your computer thingie wasn't designed the detect?

And yeah, don't pet alien monsters. This isn't a petting zoo. It's a creepy alien facility.

Oh, and another thing about the mutated worms. Why is there dirt with worms on the floor of an advanced alien facility? Where's the foundation? Did they just slap up some curved walls? (Why are the walls oddly curved?) Another thing: If this is a facility where Mr. Pasty and his pasty buddies are working with delicate chemicals and volatile black goo, why is the laboratory and storage facility not self-contained with airlocks? You know, an airlock that you have to go through to get into the area where the volatile black goo is. And hazmat suits for the pasty scientists. Crap, man, we have scientists here on Earth who are smarter than these aliens. I saw smarter laboratory design in "Resident Evil". They had airlocks... rooms that could be sealed to prevent airborne viruses from escaping... a containment cell for Carrot Top...

But we see the hologram of the pasty dudes running from something, and the pasty dudes are trying to get into the storage facility with the vases of black goo. And all they have to do is walk right in there. And don't get me started about the bio-weapons payload bay on the turd-ship being right next door to the bridge. Whaaaat?

I have a confession to make. I've watched this movie four or five times on DVD. It's a fun movie to watch... in that "Plan 9" way. The visuals are fun. It's a good-looking "Plan 9 From Outer Space". I've enjoyed it quite a bit.

And I watched it again. It was as entertaining as ever. I think this might be one of the coolest bad movies ever.

I think I'm starting to understand what's going on here. Maybe.

David notes near the end that "sometimes to create, one must first destroy." Now let's set aside how nonsensical that is and just run with it. He certainly sounds like he's figured out what's going on, as his dialogue becomes more confident as the film nears its conclusion. So here's what I think is going on. The black goo is what the Pasty at the beginning ingested. Then he broke apart and seeded the planet with his DNA. To create new life on a planet, he had to sacrifice himself. Again, doesn't make any sense, but that's the movie's twisted logic.

It's also the birth cycle of the xenomorph, who has to kill his host when he emerges. This movie represents the birth cycle of the xenomorph.

I think the Pasties were terraforming LV223. I also think LV223 was the planet that was seeded at the beginning of the movie. The black goo is a delicate substance that can do different things depending on how it's handled. So Holloway gets a drop of the black goo, spiked in his drink by David. But instead of breaking apart and seeding the area with his DNA, he was fine for the first night, was able to have intercourse with Shaw, and then a tiny worm came out of his eye the next morning. Later that day, he started turning into a monster... because he hadn't been given the correct dosage of black goo.

So, less than a drop of the black goo gets into Shaw as a result of intercourse, and impregnates her with an octopus monster. Again, not the correct dosage to do what the black goo was intended to do, but it does create by destroying, so... octopus monster, which becomes octopus facehugger, which gives birth to cartoon xenomorph (I guess that's what a xenomorph that comes from a Pasty looks like).

As for why Mr. Pasty wanted to pilot his ship full of black goo to Earth and wipe out humanity, do we even know that the Pasties created life on Earth? Maybe they originated on Earth (DNA is a human match) but left a long time ago, and now they just want to start over by creating new life there (and destroying the existing life in the process). Shaw believes that they created life on Earth, and then she believes that we did something to piss them off, but she's making a lot of assumptions here. Looking at it objectively, we don't know what Mr. Pasty was up to because we're simply not told what he was up to.

Also, one scene in the movie implies that the Pasties have given birth to xenomorphs before (perhaps what wiped out their colony on LV223).

One final note: During the Prometheus's approach toward the Pasty facility, we briefly see something that looks like the Nazca Lines in Peru. Check out this article for an explanation of where the Nazca Lines came from:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19205_10 ... ience.html

So this movie draws even further on the "alien visitors" myth than first thought. Amusing. Now that's entertainment!

Sigh.

sh*t like this is why I don't post here often anymore.

I can understand that this is for the sake of comedy. I used to write things like this, as well, until I realized that twisting things from the very foundation for the sake of some laughs is much more asinine than any "nonsensical" plot point you could ever try to make fun of.

There were indeed glaring problems with this film, ones that could have legitimately had fun poked at, but you seem to have opted to ignore all of them.

Here is probably the two biggest actual oversights in the film:

1. How did they travel so far in just 2 years and 4 months? They never said anything about traveling faster than light, and the nearest star is 4 light years away. Do you know how long it takes to travel four light years?

4 years.

At the speed of light.

2. How did the Engineers get written as what eventually became human? The writer of the film very deliberately ignored the entire biological record of evolution - the engineers created us, but seem to have had nothing to do with the creation of other life, not even the ones we share significant portions of our DNA with - animals of the order of primates.

This suggests either that evolution works fully backwards to how we believe it does, or everything else was evolution and humans were conveniently dropped in afterward.

Anyway..





None of the points you posted about possible interpretations would ever be considered. If there was just one "vague" wall painting, sure, some of those interpretations could be considered. However..

Without the script in front of me, or a copy of the movie to watch as I am sitting at work right now, there's some things I can't point out because I don't remember exactly what was in the script.

If I recall, though, the paintings were carbon dated. Unless you're going to attack the legitimacy of carbon dating, there's no way you can argue that the paintings were painted during a time when one civilization would have been capable of painting the exact same STAR MAP on caves all around the world. The only way that would have been possible is if the civilization were worldwide, which at the time the carbon dating points to was most certainly not (they were unconnected cultures), and could coordinate on a worldwide scale the endeavor of painting the exact same star map in all corners of the world.

Had this happened in real life, the conclusion would be the same. We call it occam's razor - when there are two possible explanations, the simpler one is almost always true. If there were paintings on our caves all over the world that were the same as eachother and predated any known level of worldwide communication (while also portraying a message that is so advanced in nature, which a star map is) then we would conclude that we were not the first intelligent beings to walk the Earth.

However, we have nothing like that - which is why the idea of aliens having been here before us is a widely rejected idea.



You clearly don't understand star maps. Star maps have been used by humans for more than 30,000 years to map the sky. An arrangement of stars on a painting.. the key word is arrangement. Do you know what arrangements of stars are called?

Constellations.

Constellations are used prevalently to determine our own location in the universe. The light they give off, among other things, can be used to determine how far away they are and how far apart the stars contained in the constellation are from eachother.

Finding a star map in a cave and locating where it points to in the sky is as easy as looking up and finding that same arrangement in the sky.

If I recall (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), the painting had someone pointing at a particular one of the bodies of mass in the star map.

Target confirmed.



I'm so glad you bothered to notice that this organism, from its very beginning form, sticky and gross between David's fingers, was an evolutionary road map from the tiniest creature through several stages of life to become the full-fledged Alien we know and love from Scott's earlier Alien films.

What other lifeforms have this same kind of multi-form path to maturity?

Butterflies.

Oh, wait, you didn't notice that. Or, if you did, you deliberately ignored it.



Did you watch Alien?

This is no different from parasitic beings on Earth, and is the exact same as what is seen in Alien. Are you planning to say that humans can't be considered parents, hosts, to their parasitic hangers-on?

Because we are. And biologists agree.



Congrats, a legitimate complaint.



This complaint circulates all over the internet and it is entirely bullsh*t.

Let me define, for you, what breathable means: the material contained in the air, all of it, is known to be safe for the human cardiovascular system. Had their devices detected a foreign gas, chemical, bacteria, anything.. they wouldn't have removed their helmets. Systems that check the safety of air don't just look for the presence of oxygen, they check for everything that is contained in the air against what is known to be breathable, as well as anything that is known to be unsafe AND anything that is unknown. Any of the latter two would still be detected and handled accordingly.

People who don't understand science make this complaint. Smooth move.



It was airlocked.



Given the shape of the ship, that is actually the best place to put it. You'll remember that the ship is crescent shaped. Crescent shapes, in order to be balanced properly, require the most weight to be at the center point of the crescent. Think of a bow and arrow.



From the law of conservation: Matter cannot be created or destroyed. It is merely converted from one form to another.

In order to make a piece of paper, a tree must be destroyed.
In order to make a road through a mountain, the mountain must, at least in part, be destroyed.

How about intangible things?

In order to learn, what you already "knew" must be destroyed. Else you become confused. Sometimes, even clinically insane.

Sometimes, in order to create, one must indeed destroy.



Good for you. It's not.

According to Scott himself,



He is an example of what the Engineers do in their travels. Which is, as we've established above, completely ignore all evolutionary theory. It's generally believed that this planet is Earth far back in the past, but Scott has repeatedly stated that what planet it is has no consequence.

The rest of that post is one of many interpretations of the film and I needn't critique it.

But now we can have some fun!



This film touches on a lot of myth that people don't seem to realize is being touched on. Allow me to present you with my own interpretation of this film.

Who is Prometheus?

According to myth, Prometheus is the original creator of us. He made humans using clay. He then bestowed upon us a glorious gift we now call fire. For giving us fire, Prometheus was sentenced to death by having his bowels torn open. Left to be eaten by birds.

So, the death of the Engineer at the beginning of the film.

He sacrifices himself, with homage to a river, in order to create life. Throughout mythology all over the world, there have been mentions of old Gods creating life in this manner. However, to stick with the idea of Prometheus, the most relevant one automatically becomes Osiris. The act of killing himself, also, was somewhat ceremonial. He removes his clothing, and paused a moment before downing the sweet sweet death contained in his lovely beverage.

What have we got, then?

We now know the Engineers feel that, in order to create or advance life, death and sacrifice are required. This idea permeates through religion all over the world, and myth as far back as myth goes. Prometheus and Osiris are great examples, as is Jesus himself.

Now, skip ahead in the film to when they enter the sealed chamber. There is a painting on the wall. Look familiar?

A man dying with his bowels torn open. Prometheus. The giver of life.

Consider what we know about the Alien species.

They care not for life. They care little for anything other than replication. They kill without regard for the sanctity of life. There is no ritual, there is no value, there is only progress of the self.

This, then, makes Alien the exact opposite of the Engineers. You'll see a mural in the same room that gives off this idea.

So lets run with the idea that they indeed created human life, and the planet at the beginning of the film was Earth. If that idea doesn't sit well with you, then there's no reason we can't assume that Earth was one of several or many or even countless planets that the Engineers had visited and done this to, as Scott states the planet seen at the beginning is irrelevant.

I recall from that scene that a ship was leaving the planet as the Engineer sacrificed himself. Ergo, we know that the Engineer species certainly lived on while leaving behind its one sacrificing individual. We know that paintings on the walls called for us to come visit them, or at least one of their satellite homes, should a time come that we are capable of interstellar travel.

We also know that, given their level of technology, they could have killed us at any time. Why didn't they?
Because we didn't disappoint them. At least, not at any known time from the sacrifice of a lone engineer until they decided to send a loaded ship to destroy us, which most certainly wouldn't have been very soon after they created us in the first place.
The fact they they would invite us to visit them, but later decide to destroy us, implies only one logical thing: they were watching over us somehow. How they did that is irrelevant, we're not expected to understand how all of their technology works. However, in watching us, we must have eventually pissed them off.

How?

The Engineers are sacrificial beings. They believe in ritual and the sanctity of life. It is easy to assume, then, that us carrying on those beliefs was something they'd hoped for. And certainly, we did through much of our development.. until Jesus was killed. The idea of sacrifice for a greater good has been challenged ever since then. When was Jesus killed.. ? About 2000 years ago.

Recall the film.

When did the event on LV-223 take place? The one the holograms seem to depict?

About 2000 years ago.

I think you might understand what I'm getting at.

And this idea isn't totally insane.

Scott has stated once during an interview,



This implies that the Engineers are the ones who sent us Jesus. We murdered their emissary. Is it too far off to consider that this would anger our creators?

Prometheus had his bowels torn open. The mural in the chamber on the ship displays this same kind of idea. Jesus had a spear in his abdomen upon his death. All three of these are in the name of sacrifice for life. Keep remembering that there is another mural in that room.

So, 2000 years ago we kill an Engineer emissary. The next question is how in the balls did this result in the death of every Engineer on LV-223.

We need, now, to discuss the black slime. The black slime that eventually became Alien.

You'll recall that David had no reaction at all with the slime no matter how he interacted with it - this implies that the slime requires biological matter in order to function on any level. We have to wonder, then, if this black slime is really something that is so hostile.

The Engineers are able to exist with it. They use it to create. Their self-sacrificial tendencies allow them to ritually use the slime in order to destroy themselves and create further progress. David recognizes this: In order to create, one must first destroy. David is much smarter than we seem to think he is. You'll note that this means their "bio-weapon cargo" isn't a weapon in their hands - so far as we can tell, the slime in their hands isn't a weapon at all in the hands of someone who values the sanctity of life. Now it's not so curious, for yet another reason, that their cargo is right next to the bridge. They need it to create life, and to undo their mistakes.

So, if in an Engineers hand the slime creates life, but in ours it destroys life.. what does this imply?

The slime reacts with the desires of the user. Humans, those who killed Jesus, an Engineer emissary, know little more than to simply grow their own kind. We are parasites to our Mother Earth. The slime recognizes this.

Starting to see the implication?

We created Alien. Because we are corrupt beings that have bastardized the entire idea of life.

So, what happened on LV-223?

They are carrying a cargo of stuff that potentially reacts to the desires of those near it. We have no idea exactly what the Engineers were thinking 2,000 years ago when they were all running for their lives, so we also have no way of guessing what the black slime would have become. Unfortunately, it's an explanation we can't make guesses at and can only hope gets explained in the coming sequels. Perhaps some of the Engineers grew fond of their human children and desired not to destroy us, which inevitably led to a divide between Engineers on LV-223. The slime would certainly have reacted with this somehow. Inconsistent with what we know about Engineers, but certainly one of many possible explanations. Slime is a wildcard - we have no hope of guessing what it did to them as they came to do something to us.

We do know that we never see Engineers die in the holograms from 2000 years ago except by accidental death. Whatever killed them all (except the ship's captain) is all but gone until humans return.

How?

The only guess is that without life there is nothing for the slime to react with - whatever it becomes, then, maybe it reverts back to the slime form until something new for it to feed on arrives. Unluckily, us. The second we do, in the timeline of the film, it takes on our human desires and begins the road to becoming Alien as we know it, instead of if Engineers were there to be reacted with for it to be a lifegiver again.

The slime giveth and the slime taketh away. It is both a blessing of life and something that can undo it. It is both a weapon and a blessing, depending on who wields it.

There are yet more nuanced mythological and religious ideas in this film.

David informs Shaw that she is pregnant. It's not possible for her to be pregnant - she was impregnated in a way that noone can make sense of. The birth is abnormal.

This scene is reminiscent of Elizabeth and the birth of Christ.

But lets skip ahead a little bit in the film.

There's only one way to stop the ship from heading to Earth to destroy us - destroy the ship. Humans on LV-223, then, go ahead and sacrifice themselves to save humanity. A short while later, we find an Engineer who meets a creature that was created from his own black slime but carries on human desires instead of engineer desires. A disgusting, vile creature that knows only to extend its own life and reproduce. The engineer becomes a host for the next stage of Alien development.

And you'll recall that the second mural in the slime chamber is the exact image of this new stage of Alien. This implies, then, that this kind of situation has happened before with the Engineer's various experiments in the universe, which fuels again why they decided we needed to be destroyed 2,000 years ago.

Now go home, my young Padiwans, with new insight into this film.

Very interesting, dude, insults aside. That's a deep analysis of what the movie is about. Got it.

I'm only gonna respond to one thing here. I honestly couldn't make out what was on the murals because everything was so dark and the shots of them were so brief. They're so detailed and briefly shown, I can't make out what they're supposed to be showing.

Thanks for sharing and explaining it.

Well, kinda.

I was having fun trying to figure out what's going on, but it's all clear now. Palpatine's behind it all!

@Xix, don't take Lone's comments too hard. He seems to be really into the movie.

That was a good write-up, Lone. But you gotta admit, these were the dumbest scientists EVER. I think that fact obscures a lot of the mythos that you took the time to write up here.

Ix - Yeah, I understand he really enjoyed it and got into it. One reason why I didn't try to debate him. I understand that it can really hurt to see someone having fun at the expense of a piece of entertainment that you truly enjoyed. I'm almost tempted to apologize for this topic, but I'm really not responsible for other peoples' lives and coddling their sensitivities. All I can say is, don't be surprised when Rifftrax does their thing with this movie. They've done riffs on movies that I genuinely enjoyed. Doesn't affect my enjoyment of the things I like.

My analysis was an honest attempt to understand the film, all joking aside. I kinda like mine better, but that's neither here or there.

Wow, that points out some stuff I hadn't thought of.

Nothing quite like realizing it's more broken than first thought.

Ed Wood would be proud.