They're Remaking 'Alien' -- the 'Prometheus' thread

Mother receives the original distress signal and wakes up the crew and sends them down to the planet. Distress signal contained a "warning", as revealed afterwards and discovered by Ripley. So Mother deciphers the warning, determines an alien is involved, re-routes ship according to standing order and wakes up crew

xps

alien does not have plot holes it has constructive zones of indeterminacy

zones of constructive indeterminacy

Also, when Ash 'dies', he seems to know all about the Alien, despite never having actually seen it, except when they're all eating noodles.

Though why a badass Engineer would send a warning call when he crashed is anyone's guess. Maybe he also took off from the "Prometheus" planet, with alien cooties, then activated the distress signal when he had a hunch a giant monster was about to burst from his belly? And he realized it was so bad he needed to warn everyone not to come close? Except the stupid humans he created and guided to this part of space in the first place?

(This movie messes everything up)

pretty sure that counts as seeing it xp

the thing about the replacement of Ash is an odd detail, but it doesn't necessarily prove an a priori conspiracy (which raises more questions than it answers - if the company knew where the alien was, why bother with the distress signal pretext etc.)

xp

ya that doesnt really prove anything

I prefer the cloudy conspiracy - The Company knows about this evil weapon alien and sends nostromo towards it (we don't know how The Company knows, or its exact financial reasoning, & we don't know if the purported, completed mining mission is just flim-flam) - to the algorithm explanation - 'in any circumstances in which a ship locates possible alien life, send the crew towards it, get the alien and sacrifice the crew if necessary

I think the mining mission is legit, but my takeaway is that The Company knew what route the Nostromo was taking and took advantage of it to place Company Man/Robot Ash onboard. From the shooting script...

RIPLEY: What is Special Order 937.

ASH: You know I can't tell you that.

RIPLEY: Then there's no point in talking to you. Pull the plug.

ASH: Special Order 937 in essence asked me to direct the ship to the planet, investigate a life form, possibly hostile and bring it back for observation. With discretion, of course.

RIPLEY: Why? Why not tell us.

ASH: Would you have gone.

PARKER: It wasn't in the contract.

ASH: My very point.

RIPLEY: They wanted to investigate the Alien. No matter what happened to us.

ASH: That's unfair. Actually, you weren't mentioned in the order.

LAMBERT: Those bastards.

ASH: See it from their point of view. They didn't know what the Alien is.

Dudes, no. A standing order is "in the following situation, take the following action". A special order is "do this now". The special order says reroute to following co-ordinates -> either they know about the planet (ash put on board for this reason) or this special order comes about after the message is decoded. They were definitely sent there for the alien.

maybe he was on a video conference when it burst out of his chest and mother intercepted the feed

BTW, the Dan O'Bannon Alien script from 1976 is here: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_early.html (no mention of The Company, no Mother Computer, no android, the ship is a "deep space commercial vessel")

And actually the original O'Bannon script shares some elements with Prometheus: the pyramid, hieroglyphics, "jars" of alien-stuff, religious overtones.

hmm okay I concede the point to Elvis' close reading ... so I guess the scenario is (somehow) the Company knows about the planet w/the engineer and the alien (maybe some other ship picked up the distress signal and forwarded it?), and in order to minimize costs/risks they just send Ash on the next ship likely to be in the area, thus the special order

BTW it's definitely a Pred ship.

Surprised we're arguing about this. I'll gladly rewatch but iirc it's slowly becomes clear that the human crew of the Nostromo was set up from go. Who Is The Real Monster Here etc etc

If I could I'd like to suggest it's Damon Lindelof.

andrew otm. after puzzling over clues through my first couple viewings, i eventually decided that the company probably knew in advance about the distress beacon and intentionally set up the nostromo to "accidentally" discover it (i assume that no one knew what sent it or what they might find on the planetoid). the last-minute addition of ash to the crew roster is the biggest indication that they don't just happen to stumble into their fate. and special order 937 reads more like a specific mission than something that just kicks in under certain circumstances, imo. agree that it's all pretty vague, though.

important questions to be answered in prometheus sequel

1) are there space jockey women

2) do they have hair

I really liked this! I guess the general consensus is not positive--but I got a kick out of the double edged sword of the "promethean" urge to know (even David's curiosity). I like that it sets up all these big epic questions only to answer with "there is only death here."

Somewhere there's an 1979ish interview with Ridley where he mentions (muses?) that the Company has sent out multiple crews to investigate multiple finds in the hopes of bringing something

I should that the bait-and-switch of the set up and delivery (my dad immediately commented "that didn't answer anything!") def seemed deliberate and kinda perversely satisfying. About as much as I could hope for from a high concept sci fi thriller.

Certainly this show's Ridley's had a pretty consistent idea of where he wanted to go with it:

http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/831

I'm totally OK with the GRAND SCHEME being mysterious and unexplained or even corny, but the small, scene to scene details like the idiotic, entirely unbelievable behavior of the crew and clumsy revelations are what really killed this for me.

I am going to wait for on-demand at home for this. I think the idea of a space jockey prequel is just something that was way too sexy in my head to be satisfied by anything real - had I my druthers, this would be a giant flop of epic proportions (John Carter!!!! Speed Racer!!!! Blade Runner!!!! ok and I guess it would also have just been called Space Jockey!!!! because all my fave flops share dactyl titles that I can add many bang bangs to the end of) wherein the space jockeys are the main characters and the plot would probably go along the lines of Project X with a dash of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, except xenomorphs in place of simians. So it's not that, obviously, and so, with lowered expectations, I will wait.

I did enjoy the long bad review by the archeologist guy whose name I forgot. Discussing his point re: holographic spaceship interfaces that get replaced with 1979 technology in the future gave me a chance to bring up the antikythera mechanism in conversation the other day.

I totally googled antikythera mechanism. That's cool!

so I have a t-shirt with big cooper black letters that says "Language is just math that's hard for engineers to do" - if I got another one that said "science fiction wishes it came up with the antikythera mechanism," which t-shirt would be the best

I love the idea in Dune of computers once ruining humanity, so machines from then on had to be simple and purely mechanical.

In Alien I feel like the shittiness of the tech makes "Mother" seem more intimidating; like there's a huge, powerful computer but we can only tap into it in limited ways.

xp - i dunno, probably that "clowns will eat me" one

I'm totally OK with the GRAND SCHEME being mysterious and unexplained or even corny, but the small, scene to scene details like the idiotic, entirely unbelievable behavior of the crew and clumsy revelations are what really killed this for me.

― circa1916, Tuesday, June 12, 2012 8:23 PM (36 minutes ago)

oatey emm

like there's a huge, powerful computer but we can only tap into it in limited ways w/ a trs-80

I totally googled antikythera mechanism. That's cool!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, June 12, 2012 8:28 PM (38 minutes ago)

Yeah, have heard about that thing a few times but had forgotten the name. A great find.

it's cool but also pretty hard to believe. not saying i don't believe it, just in a "truth is stranger than fiction" sort of way. and in a "i wonder what other crazy inventions are lost to the sands of time" sort of way too.

The Great Big Grondologer

Slightly more seriously, my other favorite thing along those lines is the Baghdad Battery:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

Both it and the Antikythera Mechanism I learned about from this so thanks Arthur C Clarke:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke%27s_Mysterious_World

i was searching for the baghdad battery just now! i forgot what it was called!

i think i learned about it from the book of that show. did it have a crystal skull on the cover?

The very same. I think I have it around somewhere still.

oh right, here it is

http://sireadair.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/mystworldcoverskull350w.jpg

This may be the first movie that I've totally agreed with every criticism entirely, yet enjoyed the picture 100%.

Mother receives the original distress signal and wakes up the crew and sends them down to the planet. Distress signal contained a "warning", as revealed afterwards and discovered by Ripley. So Mother deciphers the warning, determines an alien is involved, re-routes ship according to standing order and wakes up crew

― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, June 13, 2012 12:30 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is the message Shaw sends at the end of Prometheus intended to tie in with this message Mother picks up? Think I'd probably prefer if it wasn't.

Nope, different planet.

Yeah I thought they were probably different planets or at least not necessarily the same one. Wonder how widespread the alien bio-engineered killing machine usage was supposed to be?
Though of course once you have a mating pair they can perpetuate indefinitely. Or at least I'm assuming a queen needs an inseminator or whatever.

Haven't read this thread, so someone else might have said this already but... did anyone else notice that the alien ships were exactly the same crescent shape as the design on the ELIZABETH SHAW mint crisp box? Spooky!

http://www.yourhamper.com/uploads/images/large/ezshdarmi175_g.jpg

Also, why is David called David? Considering the all the other heavy-handed allusions in this thing, why did they choose that one name? Was he supposed to be jewish?

Maybe Peter Weyland is Saul.

This is why he took the crucifix away right?

http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/images/symbols/crescent-200.gif

^ Crescent-shaped spacecraft descending from the stars, engineers = muslims?

Ash/Bishop/Call/David