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Why cookie Rocket posted:I like to pretend that the engineers also encountered the completely different species that crashed on LV-426, and they've been aping them ever since. Ships, spacesuits to mimic them, etc. Its just my dumb fan theory but it even fits pretty well thematically.
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May 27, 2016 19:07
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The definition of insanity is trying to pretend Prometheus makes sense and fits into the alien universe.
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May 27, 2016 19:14
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The engineers are really bad at bio-engineering since their own bio-weapon facility had such horrible basic safety procedures it ended up killing them all and they hosed up the whole "exterminate all humans" plan or what ever. I took that to show the engineers are just a few steps beyond humans, they're humans who successfully got some space jockey bio-tech and started engineering poo poo with it just like how the corporation desperately wanted to do the same. I don't understand why humans are just tiny engineers though, that part doesn't make sense. That's some next gen "we seeded the galaxy to produce humanoid life" silliness. I guess they wanted to create some life in their image and seeded a planet with life very similar to their own, let evolution take place over millions of years, maybe popping by every million years to make sure those fish evolve into land creatures that will evolve into mammals which will evolve into ape-like creatures which will eventually evolve into humans that look exactly like them. That's some ridiculously long term planning. Yet they can't even operate a weapons lab. "Why do humans and engineers look the same" is the one question I could never figure out an answer to in a way that made any sense at all and I fully expect the answer will be dumber than anything I can think of.
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May 27, 2016 19:19
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Baronjutter posted:The engineers are really bad at bio-engineering since their own bio-weapon facility had such horrible basic safety procedures it ended up killing them all and they hosed up the whole "exterminate all humans" plan or what ever. I took that to show the engineers are just a few steps beyond humans, they're humans who successfully got some space jockey bio-tech and started engineering poo poo with it just like how the corporation desperately wanted to do the same. Because at the start of the film, the engineer that dies, is Jesus.
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May 27, 2016 19:21
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If we set aside the size difference for a second(lets just assume that was a design oversight/concession), everything in Prometheus fits into the Alien universe just fine. There are a few points where things aren't explained, so the audience is free to come up with their own interpretation, but that doesn't mean the movie doesn't make sense. The two ships are extremely similar, albeit not exactly alike. For me that's easier to swallow than if they were identical. Why would a highly advanced civilization only ever use one space ship design? Why is Prometheus so advanced technologically when the Nostromo is a beat up junker? Its a state of the art research ship financed by the richest man in the world. Even aside from that, things that are brand new eventually become old and don't look new anymore. Prometheus is new, Nostromo is old. I hear some people complain that its a ridiculous coincidence that humans would come across the exact same species twice within the span of a few hundred years. This complaint doesn't take into account that the Engineers weren't hanging around at random, they had an interest and stake in our species and it makes sense to me that as soon as we had the technology to explore we were going to run into them. As for "why do Engineers and humans look the same", that's more of a thematic thing I suppose. They are God, and God created man in his own image. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 19:28 on May 27, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 19:25
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Basebf555 posted:If we set aside the size difference for a second(lets just assume that was a design oversight/concession), everything in Prometheus fits into the Alien universe just fine. There are a few points where things aren't explained, so the audience is free to come up with their own interpretation, but that doesn't mean the movie doesn't make sense. There's quite a number of things that don't make sense in Prometheus. The ship quality kinda makes sense though. Research ship vs space truck/mining ship.
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May 27, 2016 19:29
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Tenzarin posted:The definition of insanity is trying to pretend Prometheus makes sense and fits into the alien universe. On the other hand, an impossible puzzle can be fun if you're not fixated on some kind of solution/goal.
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May 27, 2016 19:29
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Either the Alien comes from the black goo, or the black goo is derived from the Alien. Either way it's dope as hell and makes Prometheus cool
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May 27, 2016 19:35
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Tenzarin posted:There's quite a number of things that don't make sense in Prometheus. The ship quality kinda makes sense though. Research ship vs space truck/mining ship. I remember most of the complaints and I tried to list a few of them. They were a mix of "the movie didn't spell the answer out for me" and "a character didn't act like I imagine I would have in that situation", with a little bit of "I don't understand what pulp sci-fi is" thrown in there.
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May 27, 2016 19:35
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Also, the "Why is the tech in the Nostromo so bad" is dumb because I'm pretty sure giant junky towing boats exist along side incredibly sleek and technologically advanced yachts.
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May 27, 2016 19:37
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Basebf555 posted:I remember most of the complaints and I tried to list a few of them. They were a mix of "the movie didn't spell the answer out for me" and "a character didn't act like I imagine I would have in that situation", with a little bit of "I don't understand what pulp sci-fi is" thrown in there. If the movie requires you to watch clips on a website to understand the plot and why they hired a young guy to be weyland with the "best" old people makeup, its a bad movie.
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May 27, 2016 19:37
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Baronjutter posted:I don't understand why humans are just tiny engineers though, that part doesn't make sense. That's some next gen "we seeded the galaxy to produce humanoid life" silliness. I guess they wanted to create some life in their image and seeded a planet with life very similar to their own, let evolution take place over millions of years, maybe popping by every million years to make sure those fish evolve into land creatures that will evolve into mammals which will evolve into ape-like creatures which will eventually evolve into humans that look exactly like them. That's some ridiculously long term planning. Yet they can't even operate a weapons lab. Alternatively: the Engineers don't know the first thing about creating life or even guiding evolution. The Space Jockeys did, but the best the Engineers can do is ape them with a cargo-cultish ritual where they spread their DNA around on young planets (maybe it creates a few short-lived viruses). The Jockeys created Earth life just like they did the Engineers. They inherited (or stole) the black goo from the Jockeys, but the only way they know how to use it is as a WMD, and they're not particularly good at doing that either.
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May 27, 2016 19:42
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Tenzarin posted:If the movie requires you to watch clips on a website to understand the plot and why they hired a young guy to be weyland with the "best" old people makeup, its a bad movie. I'll give you the Guy Pearce makeup thing, that was a bad decision. I don't think it really detracts from the movie much though. I really have no idea what you're referring to with the website clips. If you didn't understand the plot without web clips that's on you.
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May 27, 2016 19:42
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Red letter media covers a lot of the plot issues in their Prometheus spoiler thing, you should check it out.
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May 27, 2016 19:46
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Tenzarin posted:Red letter media covers a lot of the plot issues in their Prometheus spoiler thing, you should check it out. Thanks but no thanks.
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May 27, 2016 19:49
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It just seems like if a movie has many many people saying they had numerous problems with multiple aspects of it, it might be the movie did a poor job of something rather than people typing paragraph after paragraph of explanation and saying that people just "didn't understand the film."
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May 27, 2016 19:50
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CelticPredator posted:Also, the "Why is the tech in the Nostromo so bad" is dumb because I'm pretty sure giant junky towing boats exist along side incredibly sleek and technologically advanced yachts. Yeah the tech level complaint never bothered me that much. Like, I understood where people were coming from, but it wasn't something that derailed the movie for me. Of course the "space tug vs science yacht" comparison makes a bit less sense when you factor in 'Aliens' (with its "state of the badass art" military warship nearly a century after 'Prometheus') or 'Alien Resurrection' (with its experimental science vessel nearly 3 centuries after Pronetheus) 
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May 27, 2016 19:53
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Basebf555 posted:I'll give you the Guy Pearce makeup thing, that was a bad decision. I don't think it really detracts from the movie much though. I like the way it sets you up for Guy Pearce getting his wish and becoming young, and then he's just beaten to death. It's a neat reversal of expectations.
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May 27, 2016 19:53
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Fox should of just let him make his Ancient Alien, Chariots of the Gods movie instead of making him so desperate to tie it all to the Aliens movies.
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May 27, 2016 19:53
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oldpainless posted:It just seems like if a movie has many many people saying they had numerous problems with multiple aspects of it, it might be the movie did a poor job of something rather than people typing paragraph after paragraph of explanation and saying that people just "didn't understand the film." Its really not so much that people didn't understand the film, although if Tenzarin needed web clips to follow the plot than maybe he didn't. I see it more as a situation where Prometheus just isn't what a lot of people are looking for in sci-fi these days, for several different reasons. Instead of just acknowledging that, they have to come up with complaints to explain why they didn't like it. To make a comparison to another recent thread topic, Under the Skin is a movie that a lot of people flat out didn't understand. I don't think the same thing is going on with Prometheus.
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May 27, 2016 19:53
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Basebf555 posted:Its really not so much that people didn't understand the film, although if Tenzarin needed web clips to follow the plot than maybe he didn't. Sorry to be misunderstood, it has been a long standing defense of the movie that people would say, "you should of read the Prometheus website". The plot is quite shallow for the dumbest scientists with the most advanced space ship ever. Asking for immortal life, who does Weyland think he is? Vegeta? If weyland was Vegeta and it was actually a Dragonball Z movie...... it could be amazing.
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May 27, 2016 19:56
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My main issue with humans and engineers looking identical is... how did they do it? There's a pretty drat good fossil and genetic chain showing how humans and our various ancestor species evolved. If the engineers created humans they also must have created every other human ancestor, guiding them every step of the way (because if just left to chance we'd look not exactly like them). There's no secret hidden code in all of earth's DNA directing life to eventually spit out a species that looks just like engineers, we'd have noticed that, and genetics don't work that way. So, engineers couldn't have just created humans as-is, because there's a direct genetic chain showing how modern humans evolved, they would have had to gone all the way back to the origins of life. But they couldn't have just "seeded" earth and hoped after 4.5 billion years of evolution creatures that look EXACTLY like them would appear. There's no genetic mechanism to do this, at best they could have "guided" evolution along the way, at the latest around when the first mammals started to appear. Who knows, maybe the engineers killed the dinosaurs since after billions of years nothing remotely humanoid was forming. Or maybe it wasn't something in our genes, it was something in the environment. An artificial virus or something that existed since the origins of life that would mostly be dormant for millions of years but every now and then nudge the right species in the right direction. But jesus that's a lot of work and ridiculously long-term. Why not just create humans from whole cloth or find a planet with existing life that was close enough and make some humans there? Why go to the trouble of setting up a planet over 4.5 billion years to produce the outcome you wanted in a way no one could possibly detect was anything other than natural lovely random evolution? My guess is that the writers know gently caress all about biology, genetics, or evolution and just "the engineers SEEDED earth and uh humans formed because god looking like humans is a thing humans believe woah but what if it's true but god was actually a race of gently caress up aliens?" because it suited the plot.
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May 27, 2016 20:00
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The first engineer on earth was Jesus, Part of Ridly Scott's great Ancient Alien movie they turned down.
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May 27, 2016 20:03
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Baronjutter posted:An artificial virus or something that existed since the origins of life that would mostly be dormant for millions of years but every now and then nudge the right species in the right direction. Doesn't that sound a lot like the black goo though? At least potentially? Baronjutter posted:But jesus that's a lot of work and ridiculously long-term. Why not just create humans from whole cloth or find a planet with existing life that was close enough and make some humans there? Why go to the trouble of setting up a planet over 4.5 billion years to produce the outcome you wanted in a way no one could possibly detect was anything other than natural lovely random evolution? There's a hundred different answers to this that would work very easily, but its up to you to think about it or not. The motivations of the Engineers is a mystery, and in my opinion that's as it should be. Is that really what you want in science fiction? You don't want to wonder about anything?
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May 27, 2016 20:04
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The movie would of been better if it actually answered some questions.
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May 27, 2016 20:09
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Basebf555 posted:There's a hundred different answers to this that would work very easily, but its up to you to think about it or not. The motivations of the Engineers is a mystery, and in my opinion that's as it should be. Is that really what you want in science fiction? You don't want to wonder about anything? The motivations of the Engineers have been laid out pretty clearly by Scott--they were upset at the Roman Empire being overly militarized so one of them bought a wig and took a spaceship to Judaea. He got crucified so they decided to drop the black goo on everyone but hosed it up. The End Also it's kind of hard to elicit that sense of wonder when, as baronjutter pointed out, your mysterious unknowable space gods are utter spazmos who can't even control their goo (ooh-er). about the only missing was a hologram replay of one of them slipping on a banana peel
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May 27, 2016 20:10
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If they spilled the black goo, why did they run into the room with more black goo?
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May 27, 2016 20:11
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Clipperton posted:The motivations of the Engineers have been laid out pretty clearly by Scott--they were upset at the Roman Empire being overly militarized so one of them bought a wig and took a spaceship to Judaea. He got crucified so they decided to drop the black goo on everyone but hosed it up. The End You've just described the Engineers motivations for destroying humanity, not why they seeded Earth in the first place. The reasons why they seed planets with life is unknown. Its even discussed in the movie, the idea that they may have done it "just because they could", and how that would be a very unsatisfying answer if true. Your opinion on the "spazmos" is legitimate, but that doesn't mean there's something in the movie that doesn't make sense. It means you personally were unsatisfied by the aliens depicted in the movie.
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May 27, 2016 20:13
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I love a good mind bending space mystery that asks really big questions. But when the writer is tossing out ideas like space jesus getting mad at rome I'm going to assume all the answers are all really dumb and unsatisfying. I don't even need the answers, I just need to have some faith that the secrets are cool and good and not stupid and bad. For me an answer is satisfying if it's remotely believable. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 27, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 20:16
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The aliens can build spaceships and create an organic super weapon but they decide to store it in jars? Jars. Like a sugar jar but this just happens to hold a deadly black goo thst will kill you. What if an engineer tripped or bumped one while on his phone? "Hey boss got the 10 cubic tons of bio organic super weapon you wanted. You got like a sealed tank or impenetrable room surrounded by safety measures to make sure this stays safe before its used so it doesn't cause catastrophe?" "Uh put it in these jars I guess"
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May 27, 2016 20:16
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Those were actually alien space jars.
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May 27, 2016 20:19
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Basebf555 posted:You've just described the Engineers motivations for destroying humanity, not why they seeded Earth in the first place. The reasons why they seed planets with life is unknown. Its even discussed in the movie, the idea that they may have done it "just because they could", and how that would be a very unsatisfying answer if true. I think the Jesus thing does take away from the mystery of 'why do they seed planets', because it establishes the Engineers as people with motivations you can understand. "The Earthlings killed our mate! He was just telling them to chill out a bit, and they nailed him to a post! Let's goo 'em!" That's a pretty human motivation that I can get behind, which makes it more likely that the seeding-planets thing has a mundane explanation too. (e: beaten by baronjutter) Anyway I never said it didn't make sense. FWIW I think it hangs together okay, just that the execution works against the points it's trying to make more often than not (eg the bit with the biologist and the worm that everyone complains about). I liked Prometheus a lot, it looks great and the 3D is fantastic. But it is very very silly and pretending otherwise is silly too
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May 27, 2016 20:22
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Tenzarin posted:should of Tenzarin posted:should of Tenzarin posted:would of Stop that.
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May 27, 2016 20:24
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LesterGroans posted:Stop that. Please don't cyber bully me.
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May 27, 2016 20:29
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Tenzarin posted:Please don't cyber bully me. 
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May 27, 2016 20:37
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Basebf555 posted:There's a hundred different answers to this that would work very easily, but its up to you to think about it or not. The motivations of the Engineers is a mystery, and in my opinion that's as it should be. Is that really what you want in science fiction? You don't want to wonder about anything? Just because a movie doesn't answer your questions doesn't automatically make it good. A movie can not answer questions in satisfying or unsatisfying ways
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May 27, 2016 20:43
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Why do we need to worry about biology, genetics, and evolution in a series where a chitinous possibly-biomechanical creature with acid for blood can grow from six inches tall to seven feet tall in a matter of hours, and never needs to eat? (yes I know they like pig meat in the comics but that's Canon Level: totally not canon)
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May 27, 2016 20:45
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MrMojok posted:Why do we need to worry about biology, genetics, and evolution in a series where a chitinous possibly-biomechanical creature with acid for blood can grow from six inches tall to seven feet tall in a matter of hours, and never needs to eat? The Alien is alien. Like, that's kind of the point, that it's crazy and we don't know what's up. We do know about human evolution, though.
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May 27, 2016 20:47
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The black goo is extremely adaptive and has bio-mechanical properties and aggressively seeks out life and technology. Any sort of advanced container would be subverted by the goo. A simple primitive ceramic jar is the lowest tech and thus safest way of storing it! Also the jars need to be piled loose on the floor or else a powerful space mystery you can't understand might happen.
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May 27, 2016 20:54
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Gee, it's weird that this movie about people asking the wrong questions or for the wrong reasons might come out with an unsatisfactory answer for some people. The answer of course is there are no gods, and you live in a terrifying, uncaring universe. That's okay, though, because only from that knowledge can true authentic belief emerge.
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May 27, 2016 20:58
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