Prometheus (spoilers)

[RedRocket1647545505]

Sick. Movie.

 

Who else has seen it? I'm still confused on some things that happened or that they alluded to. I think it's one of those movies where I'm going to have to watch it 2-3 more times before I pick up on everything.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

Spoilers below

Edited June 8, 2012 by RedRocket

[sol740]

Going tonight. Anxiously excited.

[87GT]

Going tonight lennox.

[RedRocket1647545505]

A few thoughts/questions:

 

1. If the engineers were human, why were they ~3ft. taller than the actual humans?

 

2. If the planet/moon was an outpost for the engineers to build bio WMDs on, then why did they put an invitation to humans on Earth to come visit there instead of their homeworld?

 

3. What pissed the engineers off?

 

4. What were the little snake/cobra thingys?

 

5. Did the Aliens originate from a parasite? i.e. Big things in small packages?

 

6. What was the point behind David fucking everything up? I realize he was directly working for Weyland, but I still see no reason to sabotage everything.

 

7. What caused ol' boy with the tats on his head to come back to life? Let alone, as some fucked up, super strong creature thing.

[Orion]

I thought it was bad. See red for answers to your questions...

 

A few thoughts/questions:

 

1. If the engineers were human, why were they ~3ft. taller than the actual humans?

 

Because they weren't. Any resemblence we bear to them is due to the implication that the first scene is what the "seeding" of Earth looked like. So, the Engineer's genes were the direct precursors to our own. That race would have had it's own evolutionary path and environmental pressures that it would have muddled through during the eons, and of course they would end up looking far different from us. Also, they are technilogically far superior, and don't mind mucking about in genetics. No reason to think that some "self modification" hadn't occurred.

 

2. If the planet/moon was an outpost for the engineers to build bio WMDs on, then why did they put an invitation to humans on Earth to come visit there instead of their homeworld?

 

The scientists interpreted it as an invitation. It could easily have been a warning. Also, remember that the cave marking were from as old as 35,000 years ago, whereas they dated the dead engineers head at 2000 years old. Do you think that we are the only species who goes through belief/policy changes throughout our history? The first scene shows an Engineer that looks and acts a bit like a monk, the crew of the ship were warriors.

 

3. What pissed the engineers off?

 

See above. Perhaps they werent pissed, just indifferent. How attached are you to your ant farm? If you wanted to switch it up a bit, would you ask the ants how they would like for you to go about it?

 

4. What were the little snake/cobra thingys?

 

An assumption is that the black goo is a mutagen. There was already life in the chamber (shown as little worms in the footsteps of the scientist). As the mutagen filled the ground space, it began to alter the structure and behavior of the life that was there. Apparently, not only does it increase the size and growth rate, but also instills predatory instincts.

 

5. Did the Aliens originate from a parasite? i.e. Big things in small packages?

 

I think the implication is that they were "engineered" as both a weapon and a way to create new life.

 

6. What was the point behind David fucking everything up? I realize he was directly working for Weyland, but I still see no reason to sabotage everything.

 

David is an android. He has no human perspective on anything. It could have been out of curiosity as much as anything else. It was evident that the only human whos life meant anything to him was that of his creator, Weyland.

 

7. What caused ol' boy with the tats on his head to come back to life? Let alone, as some fucked up, super strong creature thing.

 

See my answer from above. When the blood melted his felmet, he fell face down in the mutagen. The assumption is that he was killed, but there is never any proof of that. In fact, I can't recall them finding his body, only the other guy.

 

In Sci-Fi, the most important aspects of a movie or book is one of two things, the "creature", or the "setting". Here, though, the planet isn't even named but in a very quick map scene, and the only bits of it we see are the valley where they are. For all intents and purposes, it is essentially a primordiol world, minus almost all of the life. He may as well have set the movie on an inactive volcano in iceland. In addition, the audience never really knows what alien thing is going to happen next, and can't relate to any of it. It's like Ridley Scott saw "Evolution" (The goofy one with David Duchovny) and said to himself, "I bet we could make that into a serious movie. Everytime we need some dramatic event, I'll just toss in whatever neat alien prototype I can think up, and we'll make it look cool post production".

 

In this movie, Scott tried to tell this grand, sweeping story about origins, and there were several nuanced plot points that were given such short shrift that I in the audience didn't really connect with them. (Example: Humans search the cosmos for their creators, viewed partilly through the eyes of one of their creations.) This really could have been given a 2 or 3 movie treatment.

 

Whats unfortunate is that, lost in the bad reviews are some VERY intense and excellent performances by Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender. Fassbender, I thought, did an AMAZING job pulling off something that was designed by humans to be as human as possible, but was just a bit...off. Rapace is believable throughout the movie, and given what she goes through, that is a high compliment.

 

I would give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

[Richard Cranium]

Overall I enjoyed it. I will have to watch it a few more times I'm sure before I get a real handle on everything going on. Something tells me when the directors cut comes out it will be much more clear with an extra 30 minutes of footage.

 

That the "engineers" were human is based on the DNA scan and comparison. Their DNA had been modified in the opening sequence to create what we now look at as human. But I guess what it boils down to is how you define human. While we all have similar DNA there is a large variance in color, height, weight, etc... That the "engineers" would be a genetic match, but look a little different doesn't bother me that much.

 

On a side note, Noomi Rapace is incredible. I'm not normally into foreign films, but if you want to see her really cut loose check out the original "Girl with the dragon tatoo" trilogy.

[RedRocket1647545505]

On a side note, Noomi Rapace is incredible. I'm not normally into foreign films, but if you want to see her really cut loose check out the original "Girl with the dragon tatoo" trilogy.

 

And she's hot. Especially the accent. :megusta:

[sol740]

Mild Spoilers

 

I thought it was great. Some of the story elements felt a tad hamfisted, and some of the humans acted rather oddly, often in regards to their self-preservation (dude talking to the alien snake thing instead of running like a bitch). Overall though I enjoyed it, and appreciate a lot of the ambiguity. What Ridley Scott imo nailed was the atmosphere, and setting, and giving some fanservice nods.

 

SPACE JOCKEY!

 

I also thought the use of 3d was really immersive and tastefully done. When this comes out on 3d bluray I will pony up the tax.

[RedRocket1647545505]

In-depth theory/explanation of Prometheus:

 

It's a long read, but interesting.

 

Prometheus contains such a huge amount of mythic resonance that it effectively obscures a more conventional plot. I'd like to draw your attention to the use of motifs and callbacks in the film that not only enrich it, but offer possible hints as to what was going on in otherwise confusing scenes.

Let's begin with the eponymous titan himself, Prometheus. He was a wise and benevolent entity who created mankind in the first place, forming the first humans from clay. The Gods were more or less okay with that, until Prometheus gave them fire. This was a big no-no, as fire was supposed to be the exclusive property of the Gods. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver ripped out and eaten every day by an eagle. (His liver magically grew back, in case you were wondering.)

Fix that image in your mind, please: the giver of life, with his abdomen torn open. We'll be coming back to it many times in the course of this article.

The ethos of the titan Prometheus is one of willing and necessary sacrifice for life's sake. That's a pattern we see replicated throughout the ancient world. J G Frazer wrote his lengthy anthropological study, The Golden Bough, around the idea of the Dying God - a lifegiver who voluntarily dies for the sake of the people. It was incumbent upon the King to die at the right and proper time, because that was what heaven demanded, and fertility would not ensue if he did not do his royal duty of dying.

Now, consider the opening sequence of Prometheus. We fly over a spectacular vista, which may or may not be primordial Earth. According to Ridley Scott, it doesn't matter. A lone Engineer at the top of a waterfall goes through a strange ritual, drinking from a cup of black goo that causes his body to disintegrate into the building blocks of life. We see the fragments of his body falling into the river, twirling and spiralling into DNA helices.

Ridley Scott has this to say about the scene: 'That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself. If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.'

Can we find a God in human history who creates plant life through his own death, and who is associated with a river? It's not difficult to find several, but the most obvious candidate is Osiris, the epitome of all the Frazerian 'Dying Gods'.

And we wouldn't be amiss in seeing the first of the movie's many Christian allegories in this scene, either. The Engineer removes his cloak before the ceremony, and hesitates before drinking the cupful of genetic solvent; he may well have been thinking 'If it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me.'

So, we know something about the Engineers, a founding principle laid down in the very first scene: acceptance of death, up to and including self-sacrifice, is right and proper in the creation of life. Prometheus, Osiris, John Barleycorn, and of course the Jesus of Christianity are all supposed to embody this same principle. It is held up as one of the most enduring human concepts of what it means to be 'good'.

Seen in this light, the perplexing obscurity of the rest of the film yields to an examination of the interwoven themes of sacrifice, creation, and preservation of life. We also discover, through hints, exactly what the nature of the clash between the Engineers and humanity entailed.

The crew of the Prometheus discover an ancient chamber, presided over by a brooding solemn face, in which urns of the same black substance are kept. A mural on the wall presents an image which, if you did as I asked earlier on, you will recognise instantly: the lifegiver with his abdomen torn open. Go and look at it here to refresh your memory. Note the serenity on the Engineer's face here.

And there's another mural there, one which shows a familiar xenomorph-like figure. This is the Destroyer who mirrors the Creator, I think - the avatar of supremely selfish life, devouring and destroying others purely to preserve itself. As Ash puts it: 'a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.'

Through Shaw and Holloway's investigations, we learn that the Engineers not only created human life, they supervised our development. (How else are we to explain the numerous images of Engineers in primitive art, complete with star diagram showing us the way to find them?) We have to assume, then, that for a good few hundred thousand years, they were pretty happy with us. They could have destroyed us at any time, but instead, they effectively invited us over; the big pointy finger seems to be saying 'Hey, guys, when you're grown up enough to develop space travel, come see us.' Until something changed, something which not only messed up our relationship with them but caused their installation on LV-223 to be almost entirely wiped out.

From the Engineers' perspective, so long as humans retained that notion of self-sacrifice as central, we weren't entirely beyond redemption. But we went and screwed it all up, and the film hints at when, if not why: the Engineers at the base died two thousand years ago. That suggests that the event that turned them against us and led to the huge piles of dead Engineers lying about was one and the same event. We did something very, very bad, and somehow the consequences of that dreadful act accompanied the Engineers back to LV-223 and massacred them.

If you have uneasy suspicions about what 'a bad thing approximately 2,000 years ago' might be, then let me reassure you that you are right. An astonishing excerpt from the Movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:

Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?

Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.

Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him. Reader, that's not me pulling wild ideas out of my arse. That's RIDLEY SCOTT.

So, imagine poor crucified Jesus, a fresh spear wound in his side. Oh, hey, there's the 'lifegiver with his abdomen torn open' motif again. That's three times now: Prometheus, Engineer mural, Jesus Christ. And I don't think I have to mention the 'sacrifice in the interest of giving life' bit again, do I? Everyone on the same page? Good.

So how did our (in the context of the film) terrible murderous act of crucifixion end up wiping out all but one of the Engineers back on LV-223? Presumably through the black slime, which evidently models its behaviour on the user's mental state. Create unselfishly, accepting self-destruction as the cost, and the black stuff engenders fertile life. But expose the potent black slimy stuff to the thoughts and emotions of flawed humanity, and 'the sleep of reason produces monsters'. We never see the threat that the Engineers were fleeing from, we never see them killed other than accidentally (decapitation by door), and we see no remaining trace of whatever killed them. Either it left a long time ago, or it reverted to inert black slime, waiting for a human mind to reactivate it.

The black slime reacts to the nature and intent of the being that wields it, and the humans in the film didn't even know that they WERE wielding it. That's why it remained completely inert in David's presence, and why he needed a human proxy in order to use the stuff to create anything. The black goo could read no emotion or intent from him, because he was an android.

Shaw's comment when the urn chamber is entered - 'we've changed the atmosphere in the room' - is deceptively informative. The psychic atmosphere has changed, because humans - tainted, Space Jesus-killing humans - are present. The slime begins to engender new life, drawing not from a self-sacrificing Engineer but from human hunger for knowledge, for more life, for more everything. Little wonder, then, that it takes serpent-like form. The symbolism of a corrupting serpent, turning men into beasts, is pretty unmistakeable.

Refusal to accept death is anathema to the Engineers. Right from the first scene, we learned their code of willing self-sacrifice in accord with a greater purpose. When the severed Engineer head is temporarily brought back to life, its expression registers horror and disgust. Cinemagoers are confused when the head explodes, because it's not clear why it should have done so. Perhaps the Engineer wanted to die again, to undo the tainted human agenda of new life without sacrifice.

 

[RedRocket1647545505]

Continued...

 

But some humans do act in ways the Engineers might have grudgingly admired. Take Holloway, Shaw's lover, who impregnates her barren womb with his black slime riddled semen before realising he is being transformed into something Other. Unlike the hapless geologist and botanist left behind in the chamber, who only want to stay alive, Holloway willingly embraces death. He all but invites Meredith Vickers to kill him, and it's surely significant that she does so using fire, the other gift Prometheus gave to man besides his life.

The 'Caesarean' scene is central to the film's themes of creation, sacrifice, and giving life. Shaw has discovered she's pregnant with something non-human and sets the autodoc to slice it out of her. She lies there screaming, a gaping wound in her stomach, while her tentacled alien child thrashes and squeals in the clamp above her and OH HEY IT'S THE LIFEGIVER WITH HER ABDOMEN TORN OPEN. How many times has that image come up now? Four, I make it. (We're not done yet.)

And she doesn't kill it. And she calls the procedure a 'caesarean' instead of an 'abortion'.

(I'm not even going to begin to explore the pro-choice versus forced birth implications of that scene. I don't think they're clear, and I'm not entirely comfortable doing so. Let's just say that her unwanted offspring turning out to be her salvation is possibly problematic from a feminist standpoint and leave it there for now.)

Here's where the Christian allegories really come through. The day of this strange birth just happens to be Christmas Day. And this is a 'virgin birth' of sorts, although a dark and twisted one, because Shaw couldn't possibly be pregnant. And Shaw's the crucifix-wearing Christian of the crew. We may well ask, echoing Yeats: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards LV-223 to be born?

Consider the scene where David tells Shaw that she's pregnant, and tell me that's not a riff on the Annunciation. The calm, graciously angelic android delivering the news, the pious mother who insists she can't possibly be pregnant, the wry declaration that it's no ordinary child... yeah, we've seen this before.

'And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.'

A barren woman called Elizabeth, made pregnant by 'God'? Subtle, Ridley.

Anyway. If it weren't already clear enough that the central theme of the film is 'I suffer and die so that others may live' versus 'you suffer and die so that I may live' writ extremely large, Meredith Vickers helpfully spells it out:

'A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.'

Vickers is not just speaking out of personal frustration here, though that's obviously one level of it. She wants her father out of the way, so she can finally come in to her inheritance. It's insult enough that Weyland describes the android David as 'the closest thing I have to a son', as if only a male heir was of any worth; his obstinate refusal to accept death is a slap in her face.

Weyland, preserved by his wealth and the technology it can buy, has lived far, far longer than his rightful time. A ghoulish, wizened creature who looks neither old nor young, he reminds me of Slough Feg, the decaying tyrant from the Slaine series in British comic 2000AD. In Slaine, an ancient (and by now familiar to you, dear reader, or so I would hope) Celtic law decrees that the King has to be ritually and willingly sacrificed at the end of his appointed time, for the good of the land and the people. Slough Feg refused to die, and became a rotting horror, the embodiment of evil.

The image of the sorcerer who refuses to accept rightful death is fundamental: it even forms a part of some occult philosophy. In Crowley's system, the magician who refuses to accept the bitter cup of Babalon and undergo dissolution of his individual ego in the Great Sea (remember that opening scene?) becomes an ossified, corrupted entity called a 'Black Brother' who can create no new life, and lives on as a sterile, emasculated husk.

With all this in mind, we can better understand the climactic scene in which the withered Weyland confronts the last surviving Engineer. See it from the Engineer's perspective. Two thousand years ago, humanity not only murdered the Engineers' emissary, it infected the Engineers' life-creating fluid with its own tainted selfish nature, creating monsters. And now, after so long, here humanity is, presumptuously accepting a long-overdue invitation, and even reawakening (and corrupting all over again) the life fluid.

And who has humanity chosen to represent them? A self-centred, self-satisfied narcissist who revels in his own artificially extended life, who speaks through the medium of a merely mechanical offspring. Humanity couldn't have chosen a worse ambassador.

It's hardly surprising that the Engineer reacts with contempt and disgust, ripping David's head off and battering Weyland to death with it. The subtext is bitter and ironic: you caused us to die at the hands of our own creation, so I am going to kill you with YOUR own creation, albeit in a crude and bludgeoning way.

The only way to save humanity is through self-sacrifice, and this is exactly what the captain (and his two oddly complacent co-pilots) opt to do. They crash the Prometheus into the Engineer's ship, giving up their lives in order to save others. Their willing self-sacrifice stands alongside Holloway's and the Engineer's from the opening sequence; by now, the film has racked up no less than five self-sacrificing gestures (six if we consider the exploding Engineer head).

Meredith Vickers, of course, has no interest in self-sacrifice. Like her father, she wants to keep herself alive, and so she ejects and lands on the planet's surface. With the surviving cast now down to Vickers and Shaw, we witness Vickers's rather silly death as the Engineer ship rolls over and crushes her, due to a sudden inability on her part to run sideways. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps the film is saying her view is blinkered, and ultimately that kills her. But I doubt it. Sometimes a daft death is just a daft death.

Finally, in the squidgy ending scenes of the film, the wrathful Engineer conveniently meets its death at the tentacles of Shaw's alien child, now somehow grown huge. But it's not just a death; there's obscene life being created here, too. The (in the Engineers' eyes) horrific human impulse to sacrifice others in order to survive has taken on flesh. The Engineer's body bursts open - blah blah lifegiver blah blah abdomen ripped apart hey we're up to five now - and the proto-Alien that emerges is the very image of the creature from the mural.

On the face of it, it seems absurd to suggest that the genesis of the Alien xenomorph ultimately lies in the grotesque human act of crucifying the Space Jockeys' emissary to Israel in four B.C., but that's what Ridley Scott proposes. It seems equally insane to propose that Prometheus is fundamentally about the clash between acceptance of death as a condition of creating/sustaining life versus clinging on to life at the expense of others, but the repeated, insistent use of motifs and themes bears this out.

As a closing point, let me draw your attention to a very different strand of symbolism that runs through Prometheus: the British science fiction show Doctor Who. In the 1970s episode 'The Daemons', an ancient mound is opened up, leading to an encounter with a gigantic being who proves to be an alien responsible for having guided mankind's development, and who now views mankind as a failed experiment that must be destroyed. The Engineers are seen tootling on flutes, in exactly the same way that the second Doctor does. The Third Doctor had an companion whose name was Liz Shaw, the same name as the protagonist of Prometheus. As with anything else in the film, it could all be coincidental; but knowing Ridley Scott, it doesn't seem very likely.

[10phone2]

I thought is was decent until the last ten percent and it went to shit. People in the theater were laughing when David with no body got put in the camo bag to. The graphics were amazing, but I kept waiting for the movie to get going and it never did. Overall grade: D+/C-

[sol740]

I saw that post on some forums and really enjoyed reading it. I can even say I agree on quite a few of the thematical, and plot points. I tend to think of the engineers as far less altruistic by nature. I really meshed with David's message to Holloway that we may be unimpressed with our makers.

[El Karacho1647545492]

It was interesting but it was somewhere between gritty reboot and a prequel to Alien. Didn't realize that walking into the theater.

 

Wish they'd just dropped the charade and made Shaw's name "Ripley"

[wagner]

I liked it, better than most of the total trash put out by hollywood today.

 

Good website for more info and theories: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/

 

A little note on there that they might have 2 more movies in the works, would explain more, and draw everything up to the Alien movie.

[schmuckingham]

Great movie but made no sense in connection to the space jockey history I am used to

[sol740]

It was interesting but it was somewhere between gritty reboot and a prequel to Alien. Didn't realize that walking into the theater.

 

Wish they'd just dropped the charade and made Shaw's name "Ripley"

 

Story-wise it's stand-alone. Though it's the same universe, and is suppose to lead up to the events in Alien. It's definitely not a reboot. Though yeah, Ridley does love his strong female protagonists.

 

Great movie but made no sense in connection to the space jockey history I am used to

 

I'm not sure what Ridley Scott considers canon, I assume just Alien, and possibly Aliens. I personally pretend the rest don't exist, but AVP the comic books were sick.

[Mr. Jones]

Brilliant movie.

 

Love the one liners about meeting your maker and not liking what you see.

As a non-religious person, I feel I enjoyed it that much more, and love the open ending if you will.

[Ackbar00]

I thought it kind of sucked, and I am a major Aliens buff. I mean, did R. Scott even watch alien before he made this movie. A FEW things I noticed:

 

 

-The engineer had to die in the pilots chair and didn’t.

-Crew of the Nestromo would not have noticed all this human spacecraft wreckage all over the alien ship

-Same crew would not have noticed all the bodies that the Engineer killed around the bridge?

-Ship full of Eggs, not Bio Containers

-Shitty acting (Except David)

-Tat guy is scared to death of a 2000 year old corpse, but finds a snake like thing to be cute a cuddly

-Same Tat guy gets lost and he invented those red probes?

-My Fav part. Captain tells them sensors finds life. I mean, this would be the first signs of live life in human existence, but instead, he tells them later and off he goes to get laid (Honestly, Id do the same thing )

 

 

It would have made more sense to say they engineered our species to be host for the aliens. Nothing more, and some of them got out and killed all the engineers, so the plan never happened.

[wagner]

I thought it kind of sucked, and I am a major Aliens buff. I mean, did R. Scott even watch alien before he made this movie. A FEW things I noticed:

 

 

-The engineer had to die in the pilots chair and didn’t.

-Crew of the Nestromo would not have noticed all this human spacecraft wreckage all over the alien ship

-Same crew would not have noticed all the bodies that the Engineer killed around the bridge?

-Ship full of Eggs, not Bio Containers

-Shitty acting (Except David)

-Tat guy is scared to death of a 2000 year old corpse, but finds a snake like thing to be cute a cuddly

-Same Tat guy gets lost and he invented those red probes?

-My Fav part. Captain tells them sensors finds life. I mean, this would be the first signs of live life in human existence, but instead, he tells them later and off he goes to get laid (Honestly, Id do the same thing )

 

 

It would have made more sense to say they engineered our species to be host for the aliens. Nothing more, and some of them got out and killed all the engineers, so the plan never happened.

 

Riddley Scott was the guy who MADE the movie Alien and this is on a different planet that has nothing to do with the Alien movie...

[Richard Cranium]

http://www.thewertzone.blogspot.com/2012/06/filling-blanks-tying-prometheus-to.html

 

Filling the blanks: tying PROMETHEUS to ALIEN

Ridley Scott's new movie Prometheus has won a fair amount of critical acclaim (though a more mixed general reception) and an impressive opening week's worth of money, but it's also left a lot of people pondering over the precise relationship between the movie and Alien, to which it acts as a sort-of prequel. Through careful research (i.e. googling interviews) the following clarifications can be made:

 

NOTE: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR PROMETHEUS, ALIEN AND ALIENS.

 

 

An Engineer ship crash-landing on the surface of LV-223 in 2093.

 

Time and Date

Prometheus opens in 2089 with the discovery of a cave painting in Scotland which points the way to the Engineer base. The ship arrives at this location in the final week of 2093, with the final moments of the film taking place on New Year's Day, 2094.

 

No date is given in Alien for the action, save that it happens in the 22nd Century (due to the presence of a crew uniform patch that says, 'Flag of the United Americas 2104 to present'). In Aliens Carter Burke orders the colonists to investigate the crashed Engineer ship on 12 June '79. Assuming Aliens happens in 2179, then Alien takes place 57 years earlier, in 2122 (and this was later confirmed in featurettes in the Alien Legacy boxed set). From a computer display at the start of Alien, the movie starts on 3 June.

 

Thus, Prometheus concludes 28 years, 5 months and 2 days before the start of Alien.

 

The planet LV-426 orbits, along with several of its moons, in 2122.

 

Location

The planetary body that Prometheus flies to is called LV-223. The planetoid that the Nostromo crew land on in Alien (and is later colonised by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation prior to the events of Aliens) is called LV-426, informally known as 'Acheron'. The different designations seemingly confirm that these are different planetoids.

 

Both planetoids are depicted as moons circling larger gas giants. LV-426 is one of at least four moons orbiting a red-hued gas giant. LV-223 is one of two moons orbiting a blue-coloured gas giant. Given that we physically see four moons in Alien (three moons and the gas giant are seen in LV-426's sky) and a comprehensive 3D starmap in Prometheus only shows two, the conclusion is that these are different gas giants (otherwise the gas giant changes colour and acquires two additional moons in thirty years, which seems implausible).

 

In Alien, LV-426 is identified as being located in the Zeta II Reticuli star system. Zeta Reticuli is a real star system located 39.16 light-years from Earth in the constellation Reticulum, consisting of two stars in a binary orbit. However, the two stars are extremely far apart (dozens of times the distance between the Sun and Pluto), meaning that each star could hold an extensive solar system of its own without gravitationally interfering with the other.

 

LV-223, along with its mother planet and another moon, as shown on the Prometheus's scanners in 2093.

 

In Prometheus, the destination star system is not identified. A distance of 327,000,000,000,000 km is given, which translates as 34.56 light-years. Given that Zeta Reticuli's distance has been estimated with a strong degree of accuracy (the error margin is only 0.1 light-years), this would seem to confirm that LV-422 is not only a different planetoid to the one in Alien and Aliens, but is located in a totally different star system altogether. Some fans have postulated that LV-422 is located at Gliese 86, a star just under 35 light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus. This is especially popular as an extrasolar gas giant was discovered circling Gliese 86 in 2000. Gliese 86 and Zeta Reticuli are located in the same general neighbourhood, only being separated from one another by 10 light-years.

 

This splendid theorising has been torpedoed by Ridley Scott saying straight-out that Prometheus takes place in the Zeta Reticuli II star system as well, however.

 

Thus, the two planetoids in Prometheus and Alien - LV-223 and LV-426 - are different planetoids but they are located in the same star system. Based on the evidence above, I'd still suggest they are orbiting different gas giants.

 

The USS Sulaco approaching LV-426 in 2179.

 

Engineer bases and ships

According to Prometheus, the Engineers built an extensive military installation on LV-223 more than two thousand years ago. This installation consists of approximately five large domed buildings, each huge in size. At least two of the buildings had large, horseshoe-shaped spacecraft located adjacent to them. The installation appeared to be a base for the creation of a biological weapon of mass destruction, apparently for use against Earth. This facility was overrun and its population almost completely wiped out by unknown forces (but likely a bioweapon they lost control of) approximately 2,000 years before the events of Alien.

 

In Alien and Aliens, an Engineer starship of similar design to those seen in Prometheus is found on the surface of LV-426. Initial assumptions were that it had crashed, but more recent interviews (at the 18-minute mark) have suggested it landed or was parked deliberately there. According to Ridley Scott, this ship originated at the LV-223 facility and was on its way somewhere else (presumably not Earth) with its cargo of facehuggers when its cargo got out of control. The pilot landed on LV-426 and was killed, within a couple of hundred years of the destruction of the LV-223 facility (so between 1,800 and 2,200 years before the events of Alien). The fact that the facehugger eggs could survive and remain viable for that time period is impressive.

 

A mural in the Engineer base on LV-223, suggesting that the xenomorphs were extant more than 2,000 years ago.

 

The bioweapons and the xenomorph

On LV-223 a black liquid stored in vase-like containers serves as a destructive bioweapon. It can animate corpses, turning them into monstrous killers, and transform little worms into large, snake-like monsters. Rather more bizarrely, it can convert human sperm into a parasite-like creature that, when given a female human body to gestate in, transforms into a squid-like creature which can grow to colossal (some might indeed say, totally fricking preposterous) size and then impregnate another type of creature into another host, a creature which more closely resembles the traditional xenomorphs.

 

On LV-426, the cargo of the crashed Engineer ship consisted of eggs which, when hatched, produced parasitic 'facehuggers'. These creatures would attach themselves to a human or animal host and place an embryo in their chest. After a period of gestation (typically several hours, or several days for a queen creature capable of laying further eggs en masse) this 'chestburster' erupts through the host's ribcage and grows to large size within a matter of hours. This creature is the traditional xenomorph. Unlike the black goo things on LV-223, the xenomorph's life cycle appears fairly stable and predictable.

 

Note that, based on both the information provided by Scott in interviews and the mural in the LV-223 facility depicting the traditional xenomorph, the traditional xeno appears to have already been in existence for some time when the base on LV-223 was wiped out. This would then seem to contradict the popular (and perhaps obvious) theory that the black goo stuff in Prometheus is some type of prototype that would lead to the familiar xeno in future films (though the appearance of a proto-xeno in the final seconds of Prometheus would seem to suggest that this was the direction things were heading in).

 

Based on all of this I would argue that the standard xenomorph was already in existence and the Prometheus bioweapon was an attempt to replicate it. Given the inefficency of the Prometheus creatures, with a confusing and bizarre life-cycle, it can be concluded that the Prometheus bioweapon was a miserable failure. Perhaps all of their 'normal' xenomorph eggs had been put on the LV-426 ship and they were forced to develop a secondary weapon when their main one was put beyond their reach (which seems extremely unlikely, but there doesn't seem to be too many other conclusions that can be reached)?

 

 

Conclusion (speculation)

The Engineers are an intelligent alien race who may have had a hand in the appearance of life on Earth. If not, they certainly visited our stone age ancestors around 35,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago a group of Engineers, possibly military in origin, established a base on LV-223, a moon in the Zeta II Reticuli system, 39 light-years from Earth. They created a bioweapon, apparently taking inspiration from an already-existing alien lifeform known as the xenomorph. They apparently decided to wipe out life on Earth for reasons unknown (possibly ranging from fear that their creations were getting out of control to one of their emissaries being nailed to a cross - this latter idea is extremely idiotic, so hopefully that's not the direction they are going in).

 

A ship took of from the LV-223 base carrying a cargo hold full of xenomorph eggs. The pilot ended up getting infected. He made an emergency landing on LV-426, a moon circling a neighbouring gas giant in the same system, but was killed. He activated a warning beacon telling his fellows to stay away. They respected that and did not go after him. Instead, they decided to use their own bioweapon (perhaps thinking they could control it better than the xenos themselves, or perhaps they had put all of their xeno eggs on the ship and lost them in the crash) against Earth, but it got out of control and wiped out most of the facility. The last surviving Engineer managed to seal himself in stasis in a ship away from the threat of the bioweapon but ended up oversleeping by 2,000 years, until he was awoken by the crew of the Prometheus and was then infected by the bioweapon and killed.

 

There are still plot holes you can drive a power loader through in this scenario, but this does seem to be a fairly likely chain of events given the information we have so far.

Posted by Adam Whitehead at 19:52

[Ackbar00]

Oh you are right. Ripley was on LV 426 and this is LV 223. Starting to make a bit more sense.

 

This actually makes more sense:

http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/7765

[schmuckingham]

I was going to say, the Alien creatures were pre existing the "engineers". Makes the movie a little more enjoyable now

[sol740]

The mural depicting the Xeno has facehuggers mouthraping engineers, or possibly humans on it. Lower left and right. Very similar to Gigers Lifecycle.

 

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg

[schmuckingham]

If you look at it right the top portion of the mural is the queens head or thats what it looks like to me

 

 

 

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1600&bih=775&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=pLtslFMVLLm2gM:&imgrefurl=http://suvudu.com/tag/alien-queen&docid=ujf0TRjh_ZyqBM&imgurl=http://suvudu.com/files/2010/10/Alien-Queen.jpg&w=500&h=322&ei=ESTWT5_7MqPV0QHI6LGFAw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1155&vpy=341&dur=318&hovh=135&hovw=186&tx=188&ty=115&sig=108560430087165617672&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=171&start=0&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:17,s:0,i:193

[Chief8one]

I watched the movie this afternoon and it def. confusing at points. I was thinking towards the end that prometheus was in a way an explanation of the evolution of the "Alien" species from Alien movies. Lots of holes to be filled, I will have to watch all the movies more closely I guess.

 

Movie wise, prometheus was a 6/10 I would say. I'm an uber fan of "Aliens", however and like more action over suspense.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Chief8one