OK guys, I'm just about to head out the door with the wife to go see Prometheus! It's been a 33 year wait and I can't wait for the film to begin. I'm VERY curious to see what Ridley Scott can do with all the new technology that is at hand these days.
I've been keeping up with all the new pics and information, but stopped about three days ago because although I have a pretty good idea what happens I didn't want to know it all before hand.
I'll write-up a detailed review when I get back and go through all the things that I speculated on in the months and weeks leading up to today and my thoughts on what could come next.
Stay tuned!
11 comments:
Looks like he is setting up for some additional films...and I hope he gets to make them!!!
Too much left unanswered. We didn't get to find out why the original Space Jockey ended up like he did! Still enjoyed it though.
I bet Dubya wished his army had found as much W.M.D. as the Prometheus crew did.
That is a good point. There was some sort of emergency at the alien installation that cause the evacuation. I have already pieced together that it must have been a bio-weapon outbreak due to the scientist being left behind during the storm remarking about the state of the bodies piled up in the hallway. Since the carbon dating put those events at so long ago, that would mean any resultant xenos would have died off; oddly leaving no remains. I say oddly because the xenos shared DNA with the host organism, so if the Jockeys were hardy enough to leave remains then why not the xenos? Unless, there suit technology is just that good; which is what I'm going with.
I wonder what it was about the outbreak that caused the one Jockeys head to explode though. I'm also thinking of a logical leap of why they chose to carry eggs on the LV-426 craft versus the original delivery canisters seen at the LV-223 installations. Although the LV-223 canisters have a clear outcome designed in, it had a very long and uncertain path to maturation. Carrying eggs, however, short circuits the step of creating a genesis hugger and an initial egg bearing xeno.
Well I’d say there will definitely be more movies. After all look at how much “original” stuff is out there at the moment. Not much hey! Yes, lots of questions unanswered, but I like that. It actually leaves space for another explanation for what happened to the Space Jockey on LV426.
We know from the Space Jockey hologram that they were running pretty fast away from something. We don’t however know what it was, nor what actually dropped the Jockey that got decapitated. And what the hell caused that slaughter in the hallway? The suits and helmets that remain show multiple holes and as, I think Fifield states, blown out from the inside. So, did they face an onslaught from facehuggers and adult aliens?
The reason for no remains of the attackers I think would be due to the amount of time the bodies have been there and the fact that the alien organisms had no suits or helmets so it would just be an organic body that would have rotted away leaving very little if anything. Also the remains could have been intermingled with the Jockey’s bodies. But since Fifield and Millburn didn’t exactly hang around we’ll never know.
Those are very fair assessments.
Something else I noticed in the film was with the alien ship crashing. It initially crash landed on a portion of the ship that should have caused massive structural failure, yet it remained in one piece.
This suggests not only something about their level of technology, but that the downing may have been more due to the disruption of sensitive internal systems as the superstructure seemed entirely intact.
We have also seen at least two different types of crafts from the Space Jockeys. That coupled with the comment that the LV-223 Space Jockeys were military from the captain of Prometheus, and by extension possibly the LV-426 Space Jockeys as well for flying similar craft, will make things very interesting.
...and what of Shaw and David traveling to the Space Jockey home world or last place they came from anyway? I could only imagine what humans would do if one of them landed in our ships on our world. I don't think they would feel remotely threatened by humans though, given their advancements and biological mastery at a fundamental genetic level, e.i. less concerned with contaminations of most kinds except for what they brew themselves.
I am curious about the way the Space Jockeys were running the way they did and the trouble the Space Jockey soldier had with the giant face hugger. If I could engineer the things the canisters were designed to, I would also make prions and aggressive RNA agents designed to attack infected hosts in such a way as to disable them if not destroy them. But then again, this can be overcome, at least in infected hosts, by an attack agent with a cycle that is too rapid for treatment without preserving the infected subject.
Yeah, I noticed that about the crash too. It must be made of some sort of “Engineer” epoxy carbon substance? There didn’t appear to be much if any external damage, yet the Prometheus was totalled. There were fires though and it lost flight capability instantly.
I actually wonder about that ‘disc’ shaped ship. Are the occupants the same species as the Engineers or are they something different? I can only see the Engineers as being like worker ants for some other species and that the differences between the Space Jockey in ALIEN and the Engineers in Prometheus is because they are two very different species. The Space Jockey in ALIEN is 30 feet tall; the Engineers are around 7 feet tall. The design of the “suit” is different between the two movies. Maybe the design of the suit is some sort of homage to their owners?
Well I got my art book a few days ago and unfortunately there is a direct quote from Ridley Scott referring to the "humanoid creature" in the Space Jockey suit as an Engineer. I project their path on this to be pretty clear and that they will only present one race, but they could always change their minds.
The elements you are noticing are real and very valid, but I think the discontinuity is a result of them trying to A) paste together elements of two films made over 30 years apart and B) "attempting" to make a few subtle changes that makes the interactions more feasible between the humans and Engineers. I also did a google image search and saw that they actually used a live actor in a suit and prosthetics for the Engineer which generated a size restriction (maybe not the best idea).
Feast your eyes (http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/6/15/prometheus-first-look-at-elder-engineer-and-more-behind-the.html)
We do know that the LV-223 Engineers and the sacrificial Engineer have the exact same morphology. So there were some along with the "disc" ship or at the very least the one that seeded the planet. According to what they are trying to achieve story wise, I don't believe they are going to go all "Halo" on us with a conglomerate Covenant type organization for the Space Jockeys.
Honestly, even with all my comments on the science of biological warfare and other things, there are only a couple of things that bother me. Why give an invitation that essentially leads to the secret bomber base and why the canisters had variations in size and shape.
Oops, forgot to cite my source...
Page 15 of the art book is the Scott quote about Space Jockeys being Engineers.
So I was examining Clarke's 3rd law and discovered something else that perplexed me. The canisters being so easily deconstructed by David. Perhaps if the civilizations were a little closer in development, but imagine a caveman trying to dissect and comprehend an iPod. There is only something like thirty thousand years separating the parties in that scenario where the Engineers may have millions of years of development on us.
So my expectation of the canisters were that it would be a solid material that was re-organized at a molecular or even atomic level at the time of use. The source material could be transformed into other configurations and substances at that time. So with that if the canisters were broken apart ahead of time and without the requisite nano scale triggers, they would appear to be solid rock, or metal or whatever the source material is. That would be 3rd law worthy...
Based on the artwork in the ampule room changing when "the environment was disturbed" (if that's what really caused it), we know they even already have the rudiments for such technology.
It's a great pity that Scott decided to make the Space Jockey a humanoid. It was my greatest fear actually. I find it lazy and a great dissapointment after 33 years of waiting to find out what it was sitting in that chair, for it to be "us"!
I agree,
He seemed to be at least partially concerned about minimizing them based on interviews and what not, but I believe he ended up doing just that to an extent. All because he needed a feasible fight scene towards the end I assume.
There were so many angles he could have taken as well. For instance, rudimentary measure of cognitive ability is based on fluid volume of brain matter. He could have use this as the basis for all sorts of abilities for the Space Jockeys based on their comparative stature to humans. All to assert them as a legitimately dominant race that could be seen a thoroughly capable of dominating xenomorphs and marshaling them as an effective weapon.
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