Re: Official Alien Prequel/Prometheus Discussion Thread
Saw it yesterday and will add my voice to those criticizing this movie for lazy writing and poor plot construction.
The movie wasn't terrible but is just silly and illogical. I laughed at certain parts of the movie because it was just incredible.
1. You find a painting of some stick figures pointing at 5 balls in the sky. Immediately you jump to the conclusion that they want you to go to the stars to find them? Uhhh? What sort of idiocy is that? Why would you jump to that conclusion especially if you are supposed to be world-renowned researchers and PhD's in the field?
As it turns out, as far as the events of Prometheus unfolded, things couldn't be FARTHER from the truth and even Shaw admits tearfully at the end of the movie that she was "wrong."
2. Somehow they convinced a TRILLION dollar operation to proceed with ONLY 17 crew-members???
If as Weyland you invested that much money to find the source of creation so hopefully you can hold onto eternal life, does it make sense to just send one stinking space ship with 17 people on board?
Wouldn't you send an army of people? MULTIPLE scientists, physicians, specialists?
Can you imagine a more motley, idiotic bunch of crew that wound up going on what is supposedly one of the most important, seminal moments of mankind??
YOU ARE LOOKING TO MEET GOD.
Just . . . think about that for a minute.
3. Why is the geologist such an a-hole? No background to his character, no motivation, nothing. He's just written that way so he can be conveniently killed off later on. Or . . . in one of these cliche movies, we NEED an a-hole and he's it.
4. Why did everyone take off their helmets on the world? Sure Charles was an idiot but why did everyone else follow his lead? Just because the air is BREATHABLE doesn't mean it's safe. What if there's a poison in the air that affect you late? Could there be something out there that NOT AIR RELATED that could kill or injure you? Again, idiocy from what we are supposed to believe are a group of well-trained specialists.
5. Why did David poison Charles in the first place? Why Charles? Did he not like him? Are robots capable of that type of emotion? Why didn't he experiment on anybody else on the ship? Did Weyland ORDER him to do that? Isn't that stupid? Isn't Holloway one of the two MAIN scientists on this expedition, wouldn't it make sense to experiment on someon LESS VITAL to the mission?
What did "try harder" mean? Nobody knows anything about the black goo or the Engineers so how is messing around with that black goo "trying harder." How did David smuggle that thing on board anyway? Isn't there universal protocols in place in terms of scanning to make sure NO ONE does that? Is this like the airport in the good old days where "mules" can just strap a bag of drugs to their pants and walk through security?
6. Why did the scientist with the glasses all of a sudden treat the Alien tentacle like it was some sorta puppy? What events prior to that gave us ANY indication he would behave like that? Wasn't he as freaked out as Mohawk guy just earlier?? Is that the rational thing you would do when confronted by something like that? Wouldn't you RUN away as fast as you can?
7. Why did Shaw tear up suddenly. Ridiculous. Look I know family members who can't have kids. Her reaction was completely ridiculous and unbelievable. His off the cuff remark had NOTHING to do with her ability to have children and her sudden teary over the top sensitive reaction is COMPLETELY out of character. Again, incredibly poor writing.
8. How the heck did the Captain suddenly decide out of the blue that this rock was a place of weapons of mass destruction research? Is he a psychic? What are his qualifications and background to suggest he could say this with any type of conviction. How much time has he spent in the alien structure? What did he see to make him suspect this?
Couldn't an equally plausible explanation be that the Engineers were trying to do research on a cure for a deadly epidemic and the experiment got out of control leading to unforeseen consequences?
Why does Shaw believe him?
Why does motivation have to be attributed to these Engineers prematurely when there's simply no empiric data to support that?
9. After cutting that thing out of her belly, this lady should have been traumatized for months. Have any of you actually recovered from abdominal surgery or a c-section? Ladies? Were any of you doing what Dr. Shaw was doing oh . . . a few HOURS after your hysterectomies and C-sections?
This is the same lady whose sobbing because her husband made a weird remark about how easy it was to create life (on the God level mind you) and now she's turned into the Terminator?
What overwhelming emergency was there to catalyze this? Was it the fate of the world? A crew member's life?
She had ARGUED to Weyland just minutes before to get the F out of there but all of a sudden she decided to go to meet the Engineer anyway because someone questioned her faith??
Remember she just had a TENTACLED MONSTER OF HELL ripped out of her belly in real time.
Is this believable to you guys? Did that resonate?
10. What does faith have to do with any of this??? At a certain point, isn't it painfully obvious that these Engineers aren't God or even gods at all? What is all this melarkey about what she chooses to believe? How does this play ANY role in this movie at all?
I know it's supposed to be a HUGE part of her character arc and motivation but is presented extraordinarily poorly in my opinion.
11. I enjoyed the banter between the Captain and Vickers but it was clumsy. At first I thought he was just jerking her chain and then all of a sudden, she tells him to go to her room to screw around?? Why would you she do that? Why the Captain and not somebody else? It was a weird out of character moment again and not very believable.
12. What groundwork was laid for the two pilots to suddenly decide to just kill themselves with the captain? Are they that good guys? Nothing was explained to them, they seemingly had NO idea what was going on, they just trusted Shaw and the captain blindly?
13. How did Shaw escape being crushed by rolling over a few feet SIDEWAYS, and Vickers who was running just next to her get killed? Couldn't she have done the same thing?
Are you kidding me? This reminded me of a Looney Tunes cartoon with the Road Runner "outwitting" Wile E Coyote.
14. Is it believable that the Engineer would survive a devastating mid-air collision between 2 spaceships that massive and then immediately come out and go after Shaw? Why didn't he run after her to kill her earlier? After the wreck, how did he find her that quickly? How would he have known that her oxygen is running out? What if she was hiding among the rocks? If David could communicate with her, why wasn't he doing that much earlier and why didn't he warn her THE SECOND the Engineer left the room instead of waiting until he was basically at the door?
15. A precursor to the Alien comes out of the body. My question is why wasn't the planet swarming with them already ala Aliens?
There's evidence earlier of TONS of Engineers all of them dead, most of them likely because of the black goo. There was mention in the film of gaping holes in the chests of some of the bodies. What exactly was so unique about what happened to that Engineer at the end of the movie? Shouldn't that have happened to ALL of the Engineers in that ship?
16. Why the F did Shaw decide to go the Engineers home world by herself with David?? Don't we have undeniable proof that these Engineers are hostile? What evidence has been shown that they wouldn't tear her head off her body the minute she landed on their world? What's to stop them from simply destroying the ship in mid-air?
Why wouldn't you go back to Earth first, let people know WTF happened IN MINUTE DETAIL, get reinforcements, PLAN PLAN PLAN and then go to the homeworld?
Shouldn't a military fleet be sent to the moon to NUKE IT FROM SPACE to make sure none of that black goo ever gets off the planet considering it is a PLANETARY LEVEL THREAT CAPABLE OF ENDING ALL LIFE?
17. The fact that there are other ships available basically changes the entire movie, it is a critical plot point. Without it, Shaw is stuck with nothing to look forward to except an agonizing death after 2 years. We know she wouldn't have lasted even that long as the Alien birthed from the Engineer would have killed her immediately. This was literally thrown in as a one-liner by David. Game changing fact mentioned casually at the end of the movie. Were those ships also filled with black goo?
I could go on and on and on and on and on.
The visuals are nice, the sense of MOOD is excellent, but the plot is inane, the dialogue atrocious, the characterization tragically bad.
The most damning thing about the movie simply is that characters are not given enough time to breathe and develop in a reasonable manner such that we could bond with them, understand them, respect them, and then empathize with them when ultimately they are killed.
They also don't behave, act, think, or speak in believable, rational, logical ways and this removes them from reality. They become not people we believe in but video game characters with the depth and complexity of Mario or Zelda.
This is NOT about thinking for yourselves. Anyone who TRULY sat down and thought about this film will quickly realize that it just doesn't make sense on multiple, multiple levels.
THIS IS OCCAM'S RAZOR.
The simplest explanation is usually right and the simplest explanation here is that Prometheus simply had a very very poor script and not enough time to develop all the wildly ambitious ideas it wanted to incorporate.
EVERYONE remembers the crew of the Nostradamus and the Marines from Aliens. Next year, I promise you NO ONE will remember anybody from this film except for Fassbender's phenomenal David.
, destroys them and knows he needs to complete his mission ASAP.. 
