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It is a different planet to the one the Nostromo finds in Alien hence why you don't find a space jockey in the chair at the end of this film but it makes it hard to believe that there is another identical looking derelict spaceship having fallen to the ground at a very similar angle.

[quote="reaky"]Why did Fassbender put the liquid in Holloway's glass? Where did the gigantic Face Hugger come from?

I'm assuming Weyland told him to. Remember how David tells Vickers he bas been ordered to "try harder"? Re giant facehugger: unless I'm misremembering details, that's what the aborted alien grew into when Shaw and the Engineer show up

I've been quite surprised that the movie goes so far to put a storm on the main character right after 30 minutes, as if she's going to die when there is 90 minutes left.
Moreover, the characters are all so stupid and without any charisma that nobody cares when Holloway sacrificed himself.

Also, his actions are so useless that you care even less. He dies, that's all.

It's about the same suspense as to wonder who David is talking to. And they even dare trying to make a twist out of Weyland still being alive.

Even more surprisingly, David clearly let Shaw to her fate, but still, she acts afterwards as if he had done nothing wrong to her.

and birth of a xenomorph.

The reason the engineers decided to destroy humans is in the movie with carbon dating the corpse at 2000 - the rise of secular religion. This changed my idea of what was happening in the movie in that the characters stupid actions are trying to reflect the pride in lack of respect for hierarchy. Also it means the ending isn't just a shameless set up for a sequel but trying to alert the audience to the main plot. I think my initial violent reaction in being pulled along by stupid decision after stupid decison was negated a bit by the story explicitly pointing out exactly how wrong all the characters are even at the end.

I'll be buying Prometheus for repeat viewing - I'll just shut off my Blu-ray after Shaw is landed on by the rolling spaceship, before we find out that, conveniently, she's okay and is going to run back into Prometheus and suddenly team up with Fassbender's head even though he mysteriously sabatoged (or just innocently experimented on?) her and blah blah blah. If the film had faded to black after she'd been landed on by the ship and the second film had picked up with the next shot, this would be a five-star film and would be able to stand on its own as a masterpiece. However, as it was left, the sum is far weaker than most of its parts. I shouldn't have left the theater wondering about the whys (like the Fassbender bit I just mentioned) and hows of some of the movie's well-crafted mysteries. But because of the weakness of how it was tied together, I was forced to. Sound familiar, LOST viewers?

The more I think about this, the more angry I get at the numerous plotholes and stupid character behaviours. Perhaps the film's defenders could answer the following questions?

I don’t know why the film’s defenders would be more capable of answering these questions than yourself, as they possess no special knowledge of the film, but I’ll attempt an answer anyway.

Why did an Alien race which we assume to be engineers revisit Earth many times over?

We don’t know if the Engineers visited Earth a few times or many or for how long they visited it each time. Presumably though, if one or a group of them were interested in creating intelligent life on a planet, they might have enough interest to check back in and see how it’s going.

Why did they point the way to a weapons base on the other side of the galaxy?

Who’s they? My understanding is that the cave paintings were made by people. So the question should be, how did people come to learn about the Engineers? Was it through direct contact or artifacts that the Engineers left? And if/when this contact was made, was the Moon a weapons base and did the Engineers intend to let us know about it. I don’t know that we can answer any of those questions. Also, the star map wasn’t a direct map to the base, simply to a solar system where the Engineers had been.

How does one find the only building on a planet by coincidentally seeing it out of a window on a low flypast?

By luck. Does luck exist?

Why don't scientists study the most important find in history before walking right in to it?

The entire motivation behind the voyage (Shaw, Holloway and Weyland) is to meet the Engineers. I agree, dispassionate scientist in some other movie might be interested in studying them, but it’s clear that the character’s primary interest is to simply meet them.

How does an android know Alien language? Are these languages from cultures that never met each other from the Engineers? If so, is it all Sumerian?

Apparently it’s Holloway’s thesis that the languages spoken by the different civilizations that had knowledge of the Engineers have some similarities that shed light on the Engineers language. I don’t know if they’re all Sumerian.

Why does Weyland not screen the staff it is sending on the most expensive trip ever to filter out the idiots?

Weyland’s daughter was in charge of organizing the trip, so the question should be why doesn’t Vickers screen out the idiots? Next, maybe only idiots are willing to go on long space voyages were practically speaking, if anything goes seriously wrong, there’s no chance of rescue. Next, the mission succeeds to a considerable extent! They find and make contact with the Engineers! They all fail to foresee that another intelligent alien species might be hostile (something which I consider obvious, and so idiotic to have overlooked) but that's Weyland's mistake too.

Why are there axes on a lifeboat ship?

Because they come in handy. There might be many tools on the ship of which the axe was just one. It’s possible that such tools are still very useful in the future.

How can anyone get lost in the pyramid when the bridge can see everyones position at all times?

I agree with you on this. How can the person, in charge of the cave mapping technology, not know how to use it, in order to leave the cave himself? This part was unbelievable.

Why does Holloway get flame throwered but mutant Fifield is let in?

At first, all they know is that Fifield is outside, they only learn after they open the door that he’s infected. They don’t let him in, he rushes in, but given the earlier exposure, they should have been more careful.

How can dreams be watched? Can thoughts be read?

Through some future technology. I don’t know whether it’s conceivably possible or not.

When searching for missing crewmen, why does no one rewind the camera feed to see where they lost transmission?

I don’t think looking at the feed would be the best way to find them. They have motion trackers and I think should be able to triangulate their position based on the feed itself.

Why does Holloway take his helmet off just because there's oxygen in the temple? Has he never heard of airborne diseases?

This was stupid. I could understand his character doing it, but you would think someone else might have realized it and not done it.

Why do Engineers have Elephantine helmets twice the size of their heads?

Do you really need an answer to this question? Is there some universal law that says space helmets must be a certain size?

What happened to kill the Engineers in the temple?

It appears the biological weapons (black goo/worms and lizard creatures) they were developing.

Why does no one bother to find out?

Because they’re not there to investigate or learn about the Engineers. The entire trip was financed simply so that Weyland could meet the Engineers and ask them for immortality. Also, when the group discovers the first engineer it was decapitated by a closing door, they don’t know about the other Engineers corpses. Once the group learns about the leaking canisters and find the other Engineer bodies, Janek quickly surmises what killed them and realizes, along with Vickers, that it’s NOT safe to go into the caves.

What are the snake things? Why don't they infect the host?

The snake things appear to be part of the weapons the Engineers were making. Apparently they, infect the host in two ways, by turning them into a homicidal maniac or by making them a host for a larger creature. I don’t know why it works like this, but I don’t know whether it’s completely implausible that it does work like this.

How did the giant facehugger make a proto xenomorph?

Because they were designed that way. Why were they designed that way? I don’t know. Maybe the engineers intended to wipe out the human race and replace them with the xenomorphs, maybe they weren’t designed that way and it was a totally unforeseen consequence. I'm curious though, how alien squids and the original xenomorphs get so large, so quickly, without any apparent nutritional source.

How does David know the motives of the Engineers?

Does he know them or guess them?

How do you reanimate a severed head?

Do they reanimate it? It appears that they’re just stimulating the muscles in the head to see what they act like.

Why does the captain just accept Shaw's plea to fly into the spaceship when she says 'it's heading to Earth and carrying death'

The Captain makes it clear earlier, that he understands, because of his military background, what the moon base is and how dangerous its contents are. He makes it clear that he’s not willing to let ANYTHING from that cave return to Earth and Shaw agrees with him. Is it really not credible that when faced with the reality that a ship of biological space weapons is headed towards Earth that a solider might not sacrifice his life to stop it?

But because the engineers decided to destroy humans for turning to secular religion doesn't it make Shaw's willful ignorance in accepting the part her religion played and then continuing to fly in the face of the gods the perfect thematic end to the movie?

I did not make the connection with their attempt to return to earth to destroy us w/ the rise of Christianity and can't specifically recall her dating the dead Engineer to 2000 years ago, but that's a pretty fascinating thesis if it is indeed the intent. Were there any other suggestions of this that I missed? It does offer an intriguing commentary on Shaw's persistent faith...I just assumed Scott was speaking to the general "Fact vs. Faith" dichotomy inherent in any discussion of religion and science - especially creation. that it might be a much darker condemnation of religion as the death of the human race would be pretty heady stuff. would that suggest that a sequel would be Shaw getting that very answer? Does David know this and is that why he tells her the answer doesn't matter?

Upon reflection and in reading some of the reviews, I can agree it was a disappointment that the emotional investment in the characters was often if not completely overshadowed by the ambitious questions posed throughout.

HistoryProf wrote:I did not make the connection with their attempt to return to earth to destroy us w/ the rise of Christianity and can't specifically recall her dating the dead Engineer to 2000 years ago, but that's a pretty fascinating thesis if it is indeed the intent. Were there any other suggestions of this that I missed? It does offer an intriguing commentary on Shaw's persistent faith...I just assumed Scott was speaking to the general "Fact vs. Faith" dichotomy inherent in any discussion of religion and science - especially creation. that it might be a much darker condemnation of religion as the death of the human race would be pretty heady stuff. would that suggest that a sequel would be Shaw getting that very answer? Does David know this and is that why he tells her the answer doesn't matter? This angle actually invigorates the film for me and makes me care less that I didn't care about anyone on the ship.

I'm all for it if this is where the sequel goes and agree that that lack of investment I mentioned is only less of a disappointment because of this potential direction.

Movies.com: You throw religion and spirituality into the equation for Prometheus, though, and it almost acts as a hand grenade. 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?

RS: 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, “Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it. Guess what? They crucified him.

I was more bothered by the seemingly dead end plot points, mostly relating to Weyland and his daughter, than by the niggling questions of why things were happening when they were. The DNA thing doesn't really make sense, the star chart thing doesn't really make sense, and the relationship between the Engineers and the xenomorphs is left unclear- but I'm way more bothered that the movie had a dozen half developed characters and at best two with any meaningful depth, either in backstory or performance. I feel like Theron in particular should have had two or three more significant scenes for her character really to have felt like anything.

Another race made us.

Ancient civilizations knew about them (not explained how, but whatever) and made various artworks about them.

Archaeologists discover artworks and figure out they contain a star map.

These Archaeologists convince rich old guy to fly them out there.

They discover what turns out to be a military compound that was used to create weapons of mass destruction that backfired on these Engineers thousands of years ago, killing everyone (except one guy who luckily enough was still in hypersleep.)

Turns out these beings wanted to eliminate mankind for some reason, though we never find out why (and I'm with the David character in that I don't think it really matters why, obviously we did something they didn't like)

David, either through curiosity or orders from the old man, plants the biohazardous material in what's-his-name, to see what comes from it.

Poor schmuck impregnates Shaw with his bio-hazardous seed.

The mix of foreign and human DNA creates the giant face sucker.

That face sucker ultimately plants what I assumed was an Alien Queen in the last Engineer (I could be wrong on that, I'm not as into the films as others, and really only like the first one anyways.)

Shaw and David then go off to find planet where the Engineers come from.

the black goo isn't any living thing in of itself, it's some sort of mutagen/recombiner stuff- and as such the thing that gets the first two redshirts is a mutated version of the worms we see a few scenes earlier, and thus the effects on different people vary significantly. I'm not sure if the idea is that familiar Alien monster is a combination of specific elements from this using the unlocker goo, or if it's specifically that this is a weaponized version of the goo that makes everything turn into an acid blooded, nigh-unkillable monster- but if the former, it leads to the interesting thought that it's not necessarily purely a weapon, as it might also be the stuff that took apart the guy in the beginning, allowing him to Adam and No Eve whatever that planet was.

There wasn't a hell of a lot of characterization in Alien. Yes there was more, specifically, the post-statis scene in the galley, but aside from that, there was very little screen time devoted to fleshing out the characters beyond the same brief character sketches we get in Prometheus. Think carefully now, what do you remember about Parker (Yaphet Kotto) beyond that he was a wisecraker and was buddies with Brett (Harry Dean Stanton)? Or who Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) was beyond a whiny crybaby? And do we really learn anything significant about Dallas (Tom Skerritt), or is he really just there to captain a vessel (Director's Cut notwithstanding)? We spend time with three people in Alien the most: Ripley, Ash and Kane. Instead, the other characters in Alien are more defined by their actions and how they move the plot along than anything else.

The latter film's failing is that the crew is about five members too large; cut those guys out (especially the two co-pilots) and/or replace them with automation, and then give the larger parts a bit more to do in the film. Janek could have piloted the ship alone in the end, for example, and Vickers could have been the Company rep on the ship (i.e. the one who sees financial opportunity in the Aliens and wants to bring them back), while David could have simply been Weyland's agent (for his personal goals), eliminating his presence from the ship. The one characterization I truly felt was lacking in Prometheus was Holloway, who felt like he was only there to inseminate Shaw. He did need a bit more screen time.

But just like in Alien, we again spend most of out time with three people: Shaw, David and Vickers. It's simply that these people have less to do because they're on a bigger ship with more people. To have less people in Prometheus would have made it stronger, but I still feel the plot is as inventive as Alien.

People are saying the plot of Prometheus "has too may holes" when really, this is a film full of questions, and (to the disappointment of some, it seems) it doesn't necessarily have the answers to them. Fine, I say. Why do you need answers?

Is it really the point of a single film to make a journey like the one in Prometheus, and at the end of two hours, we should know Who exactly the Engineers are and why they wanted us dead? That after being told repeatedly that the film is not a direct prequel to Alien, we should see a Xenomorph? That we should be shown exactly why David feels he can destroy human lives in the name of his mission?

I think it's unfair to expect a single, two hour film to raise and answer all of these questions. Look at what you already can infer from the Alien franchise:

-Xenomorphs can take different forms based on the host creature. The classic Xenomorph is from a human, but many different varieties could exist (e.g. the Xenomorph of Alien³ or the creature at the end of Alien: Resurrection, which I'm not sure is technically a Xenomorph). Also, from what we can infer from the previous films, "classic" Xenomorphs did not exist until the one from Kane in Alien, because that one came from an egg laid by a Queen on LV-426. The question that Alien did not answer (and which Prometheus may have answered), is what host that Queen had come from.

-Androids are not to be trusted and may have ulterior motives.

I will grant you that the point about Engineers is new material that Prometheus brings to the table, but that very point is what Scott used to set up a sequel to the film, and to be honest, how do you really answer that question? Whatever answer is ultimately provided would arguably be a let down, because it would be like finding out that our creators truly want to wipe us out and here is why. I find it much more appealing to simply contemplate the idea instead of having the final answer, especially when the revelation of the Engineers themselves (including seeing one alive) and subsequent exposure to the creatures that pre-figured the Xenomorph from Alien (like the Queen that came from the Engineer at the end) is already a lot to see in a single two hour film. Much better to let the question weigh on our minds as a possible sequel comes along which could provide more answers and ask different questions.

To my mind, the only other weak point of Prometheus is the idea that this is a different planet than LV-426, when the Space Jockey and ship position have been conveniently set up on this planet (I think it was LV-223?). On the one hand, if we set aside the convenient ship position, and believe, as Scott says, that we are not setting up the events of Alien, we could then say that somehow the Queen from the Engineer (or her progeny) moved planets, and that there were more Engineer ships on other planets, but on the other hand, given the distress signal and the Space Jockey, it feels more accurate to say that this is the same planet from Alien, and the Queen from the Engineer is the missing link between the creatures in Prometheus and the egg that implanted Kane in Alien. As far as I can remember, though, the only time the planet was labeled in Prometheus was on a ship monitor screen, and if I recall, the label of the planet wasn't given in Alien and only first appeared in Aliens (but I could be wrong), so maybe this is just some sort of small but important error.

Do you really think Shaw wouldn't have been sufficiently freaked out by an impossible, aggressively accelerated pregnancy, which could only have been achieved by intercourse with an Alien-infected person, without the ersatz personal tragedy / irony of "But, I cannot have children!"?

Or all the times, presumably in response to a bygone note that a woman who'd just undergone major surgery couldn't be doing a whole lot of running and jumping, that shots of Shaw going "Ow!" and clutching her stomach were inserted between running / jumping shots. That sort of thing is even more embarrassing than inventing a 'magic healing drug' to go with the 'magic surgery machine'.

i'm not sure why this different planets thing is so difficult for people. The ship's position is a silly distraction because I can't imagine any other position such a ship could possibly come to rest. it's not like it could be end up like a horse shoe. And people are reading way to much into the creature that comes out of the Engineer at the very end. In Alien they say something about the Space Jockey being over 1,000 years old. They also can't decipher the distress call - which they surely would have had it been Shaw's message. It was probably sent out in the proto-Sumerian language they spoke, hence the difficulty in translating it. And again, that ship's Engineer had been dead for a very very long time just like those in Prometheus. Ergo it was clearly a different ship that had taken off from the planet in Prometheus but the xenomorphs formed en route and forced the ship to crash.

In addition to the logic failures that clearly indicate they must be different planets you have the director and writers saying it explicitly, yet people still want them to be the same. They are not the same - which fits fine as this story is set up as a tangent anyway, not a true "prequel" (which Scott has repeatedly said).