Quoted from Ryan1 I'm still trying to figure out exactly why Charlize Theron was needed in this story.  Her character did essentially nothing but annoy up until her final scene.  And in that final scene, I kept wanting to shout "make a left!"

I also pondered the point of Charlize - even though I didn't mention it earlier.  

However, based upon the buzz that stems from the after credits of the movie, there may be a prequel in the works that will be announced on 10.11.12 or it may just be the date of the blue-ray release.

http://www.whatis101112.com/

Quoted from mcornetto ...based upon the buzz that stems from the after credits of the movie...

Waitaminute...there was something after the credits?

Dammit...I hate that!  Just put it in the movie already for Pete's sake -- that trick is played out and it isn't cute anymore.

Somebody mark it with a spoiler and tell me what it was.

Quoted from bert Waitaminute...there was something after the credits? Dammit...I hate that!  Just put it in the movie already for Pete's sake -- that trick is played out and it isn't cute anymore. Somebody mark it with a spoiler and tell me what it was.

POST CREDITS SEMI-SPOILER

Here's the skinny and marketing bread crumb trail in question...

After the credits there is an image that displays “PREVIOUS FOOTAGE PROPERTY OF WEYLAND CORP: BUILDING BETTER WORLDS SINCE 10.11.12. weylandindustries.com/timeline”

Update: There is now a new viral site (WhatIs101112.com) that just launched over the weekend which includes a video with Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce).

In the video, Weyland can be heard whispering to himself, “I am a law only for my kind; I am no law for all.” The website also features a book cover for Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, a book that “deals with ideas such as the ‘eternal recurrence of the same’, the parable on the ‘death of God’, and the ‘prophecy’ of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.”

It’s still unclear exactly what 10.11.12 is. At first I was under the assumption that it was the date the Blu-ray & DVD would be released (which might still be true), but a little research on the Weyland Industries viral site would reveal that 10.11.12 is also the date in which the company was founded with the caption “Weyland Corporation is recognized as a legal entity and corporation under United States law and receives their Certificate of Incorporation from the Companies House in the United Kingdom. Due to the combined value of Sir Peter Weyland’s various patents and patent-pendings, the company incorporates with a higher fair market valuation than any other company in history.”

For what it's worth.

Regards,
E.D.

Saw this today. Many questions. Going to pose a few here, then go back and read through the thread. Maybe they've been answered.

The beginning: This seems to have been when Earth was barren. Leaving aside the scientific fact that a barren earth would not have had that kind of a sky, let's go with the theory that the engineer drinks the goo, which combines with his own DNA, shreds it, and becomes the basis of life on Earth. But that doesn't make sense either. We learn later in the film that humans share DNA with the Engineers. Humans, not all life forms. Also, the Engineer who dies did not seem too willing. He seemed surprised.

the messages: who left the drawings in the cave? We find out later that the engineers were destroyed by their own invention, and that they intended to use this invention to destroy the human life, or all life, that they created on Earth. The messages in the caves seem designed to goad us into space. Why? So we can be destroyed, apparently. But why couldn't they just destroy us when they made the messages in the caves? I suppose the messages could have been warnings instead of invitations. There is a clue to this being the case. At the end, Dr Shaw does the same thing: she leaves a message saying don't follow this message to the source. Maybe that happened in the caves. But who left them?

David's contamination of the doctor: my best guess is he did this because he wanted to be alive himself. This stuff is the goo of the gods. It gave us life. He thought maybe it could give him life. The Pinochio story.

why did the Engineers choose to destroy us? Maybe they were trying to prevent the rise of Al Gore. One thing to consider, though, is that the Engineers, like us, are factioned. There may be different groups of Engineers warring with each other. And one group wanted to destroy us. I hope this is actually the direction they go in sequels, because any other explanation runs the risk of being lame and cliche. Like if they say we need to be destroyed because we are mucking up the environment...please. Enough with that crap. Even if one is foolish enough to think that idea makes sense, aren't you sick of it? It's been done. So hopefully they have something better in store.

Final comments: the movie was decent. I am actually kind of undecided. Answering some of these questions might help. I am cool with a movie generating questions that invite speculation and allow for a range of explanations. But this might be a little too much. It almost feels like a lot of ideas pieced together, and they don't necessarily fit. I hope I'm wrong and others will explain some of these inconsistent plot points.

The characters were not all that interesting. And it was hard to care about any of them. Shaw to a degree, but not til late. She seems worthy of caring after what she goes through with the creature/child delivery. I actually cared more for the robot, David, than anyone. I rooted for his desire to find life for himself.

The guy doctor, the one who got infected, couldn't they have at least made him seem like a doctor or a scientist? He seemed more like some dude. And I could not buy into his unhappiness after the first visit to the ship. Yeah, he didn't get all the answers, but man, after what he just saw! He would have been on cloud nine.

I recommend seeing it. As far as where it stands in sci fi history, I don't know. They tried.

I actually loved it and recommend it, although I can see why its so devisive.

It had a LOT of very high expectations going in first of all and I honestly dont think it could possibly live up to them all. Also it seems a lot of fans were still thinking it was going to be a direct sequel despite the fact that Scott said he wasnt going to rehash "Alien" and would instead focus on the "Space Jockey" race (Something he's been saying since at least 1999).

As for the engineers I think the group on LV223 are a rebel faction, the dark angels. Different from the group we seen at the start of the film. Why they want to destroy humanity is a question I think will be answered in the sequel.

I think you are right that there are factions of Engineers, Hugh. It's the only thing that makes sense. The only problem with it is the story for some reason explains the death of the Engineers on the moon as they were attacked by their own biological weapons. If the factions were the explanation, this would be a strange choice.

Yet, there are clues in the symmetry. Two things in particular: David and his quest; and the final message by Shaw warning other humans. I suspect the story will bring things full circle.

David is our creation and he thirsts for life. We attempted to create him in our image because it is pleasing to us, but he wants to go his own route. His actions in this story are ultimately destructive to humans, and he resents his creator. Why couldn't a similar thing have happened to the Engineers?

The Engineers created something that ultimately came back to attack them. Maybe from this they decided to destroy everything that they created in their image before it could come back to them. I don't know, it still doesn't really make sense why they would weaponize this creative DNA goo. And if the drawings on the walls were left as a warning, it seems they would have been smart enough to make that clear.

We also have to keep in mind that David knows their language from studying our early languages. So the Engineers were involved with us then.

Maybe someone else can figure it out. I believe David is the key, and the idea of our creation becoming a threat.

There's a series of books by Piers Anthony called the Cluster series in which a group of Ancients traveled the galaxies in order to preserve and encourage life on the inhabited planets they found.  But travelling the galaxies takes a long time and somewhere along the journey they were taking their goal was transformed to the opposite.  Exterminate life on all inhabited planets.  I think something like  this is what was going on with the Engineers.

As far as David was concerned, I think he was either jealous of Elizabeth's belief or he cared for Elizabeth and considered her belief a serious flaw - something to be cured.  Either way, that is what he was challenging when he did what he did.

Good possibility on the Cluster scenario. If not that, I think there are factions.

I think David took the cross because he does not understand faith. It's a human emotion that is beyond him. But he wants to understand it, because he wants to be human. He wants to have a soul, as they make a point of showing with the old man's remark.

Think about the scene where he has the doctor drink the magic goo. He asks the doctor first, 'what wouldn't you do to have these answers?'. The doctor says he would do anything. We see this during the scene as the doctor unwittingly giving permission to David to infect him. But it's more than that. He is telling David it's the human thing to do, to seek the answer no matter what the cost. So David feels justified in doing what he does. Not to seek answers about origins, but to possibly discover a way to become biological. To have a soul. That's my wild speculation, anyway.

If David saw the faith as a flaw, he would not have kept and carried the cross, but rather would have thrown it out. He kept it because he was trying to understand. He was trying to be human. Think of him imitating the movies early in the film. He was not just mastering a language or a form. He is trying to learn how to be human, looking for clues. That's why he reads dreams. He wants to know what makes us what we are. Which is what Prometheus is about on every level. Learning why we are what we are.

I thought this was the worst film I've seen in ages. It raised so many questions and answered none. Also the charaters were so stupid it was like watching a comedy. I cant believe this script was made, it's truely aweful. I fancy if it had been posted here the errors would have been slated...in a good way. I also paid extra to watch 3D and that was bad too. Dark and during the few actions scenes it was blurry and unclear. Awful film.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0

This says it better than me.

There certainly were a ton of issues with the characters, Alfy. From the way the guys thought the lizard in the goo was cute, to the way the ladies ran the wrong way when the ship was crashing. I was able to look past some of those. One problem that's hard to get past is that you don't give a crap about any of the characters. The guy doctor, the one who gets infected, doesn't even seem like a doctor, or even educated.

If I can make sense of the plot eventually I'll feel better about the film, though. So far I can't quite do it.

I sooo wanted to like this film but I too couldn't get passed the stupidness of it.  I agree, I didn't give a toss about any of the characters which is bad!
I get the feeling there might be a directors cut disc in the future but I'm not sure it could save this turkey, not even if it ran for 4 hours.  There's so many plot holes I don't think it can be saved.

I enjoyed it, but like Kevin, I'm left confused as to what was going on...the plot seemed completely illogical to me.

They seemed to start life on Earth by using the goo to completely destroy their own DNA and then having it programmed to rebuild into our DNA...which happened to be exactly the same as the DNA the goo just destoyed?

What?

Then there's the cave paintings...from different time periods. So clearly the Engineers have been visiting us over time. The cave paintings all point to what is apparently a military installation....not the home planet.

So the military who apparently wants us all dead, left messages for us to find them?

Makes no sense.

Why didn't they just wipe us out?

The time frame on the ship...2000 years they've been dead. So they were planning on killing us 2,000 years ago, perhaps for something we did. Killing Jesus perhaps? The "Son of God" with special powers...one of them who we were supposed to follow and failed?  Or was Jesus a kind of Prometheus who stole something from them, so they want to eradicate us as punishment?

Something must have happened for us to upset them at that time anyway. I suppose the messages are simply human ones...the yearning for knowledge...our ancestors were somehow able to work out where the Engineers came from and tried to pass on the knowledge to later generations.

I seem to remember reading that the backstory to the original Alien was that the Engineers were involved in a Galatic War against some other group and were using the aliens as weapons...simply dropping them on their enemies planet.

Why does the remaining Engineer get so aggressive? His ship still has full power, so why did he go into hyper sleep in the first place and not just fly straight to Earth and destroy it? He seems to act paternally for a second, then become psychotic...as though we are somehow responsible for their troubles. Perhaps it's as simple as the fact we humans were there looking for technology...and he wants to kill them so they can't steal it.

Fits in with the Prometheus thing...the creators and the created are stuck in a cycle where the created are seeking the elixir of life from their creators.

Perhaps it's just because we are so violent...and this would also be why the Engineer seeks to destroy us when he witnesses the fact we're still violent and greedy. This actually makes the most sense and is the simplest solution. We were too violent and too ambitious for power, so they decided to eradicate us. The Engineer upon witnessing the man's desire for eternal life and the violence perpetrated against the woman, concludes that we are a threat that needs eradicating.

Interesting film, but perhaps hampered by a lack of cohesion. Part of the problem was that the philosophical scope of the film is quite large, but the story itself is very small...basically a two room location job. There isn't really enough of anything..character development, or plot to enable you to comprehend it.


Nice to see someone try and make a proper film though. Everybody should see it.

Thinking about it some more...is David more aware of things than he lets on?

He seems to know exactly where to go and what to do and even finds blue goo on one of the signs "impressive"...like he knows what it is.

He also knows there are other ships.

It seems like he's been there before.

He seems to want to destroy humans as well, because we're so disappointing.."Doesn't everyone want to kill their parents?".

OK...so our creation wants to kill us.

Was it humans who killed the Engineers? Did we turn on them somehow, hence their desire to eradicate us?

OK, think I've largely worked it out.

The Engineers created us and tried to direct our evolution..hence them appearing in many different civilizations.

However, we are too ambitious and represent too much of a threat. Eventually they decide to terminate us with genetic weapons that create alien creatures (which may be used in a war they are fighting that requires such weapons).

Essentially the Promethean thing is that the created will always try and get the knowledge of the creator.

The Engineer turns on the party when the robot speaks to him in his own language asking for immortality for the old man and afte he has witnessed violene towards Shaw.

The engineer seems to show pride in David before he tries to kill him. He acknowledges how far humanity has come, but realises his mission to eradicate them is even more important...perhaps because the artifical life forms represent threat to the Engineers...being immune to all their genetic weapons.

There's also a spiritual angle hinted at. The Engineers have a temple on the ship with a huge Face like a God and pictures representing the Xenomorph/Alien. The desire to live on after death seems to particularly upset the Engineers. With the 2000 years thing...it seems likely that Jesus was an Engineer and us turning on him was the final straw for our race...proof that we'd come after them in the end.