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

and once again we circle back to forbidden world

― nuts spats (Austerity Ponies), Monday, June 18, 2012 11:59 AM (Yesterday)

belated lols

Saw this tonight -- what an entertaining load of singin' and dancin' malarkey.

Hello my baby hello my honey

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/06/20/5-scientists-share-their-baffled-reactions-on-the-bad-science-in-prometheus/

Bill Chadwick, Geologist, John Milner Associates

The first thing the geologist says is, “I’m in it for the money.”

[A pause that I interpret as puzzled silence.] Uh, typically not.

lol

hahah

so many lols

In one scene, a biologist encounters an alien creature that looks like a giant phallus. The biologist refers to it as a “she.” What would you call a creature that resembles a giant phallus?

A “he.” Definitely.

Yeah, the amount of deadpan in that article is as if every scientist interviewed was deeply British

The first thing the geologist says is, “I’m in it for the money.”

[A pause that I interpret as puzzled silence.] Uh, typically not.

On the other hand, geology does sometimes strike me as one of the more mercenary branches of physical science. I mean, these are people with a fundamental understanding of the carbon cycle and yet many of them are still more than happy to work for the likes of Exxon Mobil etc

The psychologist saying that, yeah, people do put together unbalanced teams and people get mentally ill and try to kill each other in real life was pretty great.

via io9.com, your source for all things trying to rationalize Prometheus:

In the scene where David addresses the remaining Engineer, he talks in an unfamiliar language that we later learned was a combination of real languages. And now, that bit of conversation has been translated.

The Bioscopist notes that when David is learning the "building blocks" of language, a hologram appears to teach him Proto-Indo European Linguistics. The man in that hologram is Dr. Anil Biltoo of the University of London. The Bioscopist located Biltoo and acquired this translation:

Here's the line that David speaks to the Engineer, and the consultant's translation of it:

/ida hman?m a? kja nam?tuh zd?:taha/…/gh??vah-pjorn-?ttham sas da:t? kredah/

A serviceable translation into English is:

"This man is here because he does not want to die. He believes you can give him more life."

Biltoo also revealed that there was a much longer conversation filmed that was eventually cut for the final edit. But we will have to wait for the DVD to see if Ridley Scott decides to include it among the director's cut or deleted scenes.

THANK GOD THAT MYSTERY IS SOLVED I ASSUMED HE WAS ASKING FOR A GAZPACHO RECIPE.

I really hoped the translation was "kill this sad sack of shit"

"Please rip off my head and beat this man to death with it, for the lulz."

the initial discussion language log is p cool, linguists at play trying to figure it out, Dr Biltoo dropping by to tell them how they're doing.

put an 'at' in there after 'discussion'.

The psychologist saying that, yeah, people do put together unbalanced teams and people get mentally ill and try to kill each other in real life was pretty great.

― mh, Thursday, June 21, 2012 9:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ I thought so too. Also, that teams are put together who do not meet each other until they're on site.

Once again, rolling our eyes at stuff that actually happens.

this wasn't exactly a run of the mill scientific expedition but fair enough i suppose

once again, the world rolls its eyes at stuff that actually happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3BV2u8YWps

In one scene, a biologist encounters an alien creature that looks like a giant phallus.

to be fair, it was a giant phallus with a vagina on its face.

i thought this was great. f u haters.

there are some clunks around the way obv (foot washing scene was garbage, old man makeup looked like shit) but i think the main thing here is that people are forgetting that whatever nonsense comes out of lindelof and scott doesnt make a difference abt what the movie is, to get all reader response criticism on yall. ive got a pretty solid interpretation of the movie that revolves around davids prime motivation consistently being the destruction of the human race, and im pretty sure im right no matter what the dudes who made the movie think.

that sounds flip but i am not actually kidding.

Michael Fass-Bender

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.10732811.5429/fc,220x200,black.jpg

been thinking about the david->ash->bishop android progression, and the irony that the most robotic (bishop) is the least dangerous, and the most human (david) is the least reliable. ash was obv dangerous but he was a robot carrying out bad orders. david on the other hand seems to be working his own agenda - did he poison holloway merely because he didn't like him? and between his passive-aggressive sniping and full-blown wonder at the engineer's star globe, he possesses an emotional range. I think someone mentioned the connection to AI upthread and it's a valid one, the idea of a robot driven by its own desires (both named david incidentally).

the struggle between the creation and its inventor is also a theme that gets mirrored - humans/androids, engineers/humans - obv some debt to frankenstein; or, the modern promtheus as well.

kinda get the feeling this movie will get reevaluated down the line, maybe after ridley's final cut is released? like the shining. people hated the shining when it came out! there's a lot of stupid stuff in there, but it's also beautifully shot and works in spite of its silliness.

David didn't poison anyone, he needed a guinea pig to test that stuff on and the guy said he'd do "anything!"

i think davids intentions are darker than that - i think getting the dude to say he would do anything was just an enjoyable further internal dig for david. i think the "doesn't everyone want to kill their parents" (or however it was written) line from david was a pretty big flashing neon sign abt what his intentions are and were throughout.

his motivation isn't clear tho - why does he need a guinea pig? the "anything" convo could just be more of david's needling.

xp jjj otm etc

yeah that "everyone wants to kill their parents" line is telling

true, that

i need to rewatch it to nail some things into place, but if you look at it with the perspective that at some point david has decided that it is in his/the general best interest to destroy his creators, it makes a lot of sense. in fact its the only argument for why david wants to cryosleep shaw and perform the operation back on earth.

i keep wanting to lay out my 13-point plan for why i think david wants to end humanity but it feels a little like shouting into a empty room at this point. this is what i get for waiting to see the movie for a bit i suppose.

after a second viewing vickers becomes a more sympathetic character, would've been interesting if they honored the fire by making her more central. I remember when first seeing alien back in the day, ripley came off as a total brittle officious - apologies to aerosmith - bitch. but that was the genius of alien, making ripley unlikeable made her high probability alien food but the film turns that on its head when our gruff sensible beardo leader gets eated in an airshaft.

would've prefered an end where vickers + noooomi form a begrudging mutual respect and fly off together all girl power with a dude's head in a bag, coulda been scott's in-the-future-thelma-and-louise-get-away-with-it message.

memorial me + jjj talk about prometheus thread

another thing I noticed on a second viewing - the engineer at the beginning of the film is a perfect specimen until he takes the black goo and mutates. but the aggressive engineer at the end of the film has signs that he's been partially mutated, he has a black furrow down his spine and a weird honeycomb on his neck.

xpost -- I'm reading it all, EIII, just not chiming in.

Don't see how a plausible interpretation of the movie makes up for a generally appalling script full of unrealistically asinine characters and scenes that just don't connect with each other.

I like that take on it jjj. I was reading the other day about the gnostic idea of archons (which is obv a big inspiration on the movie) and seeing David that way makes for a compelling doubling (or reversal) of that theme.

The other line about succession that the movie seems to put flashing lights around is of course "a king has his reign, and then he dies"

I'm all for having fun with the movie. I quite enjoyed it, but I think Hitler did a pretty good job of summing up many of the moments that made me lol & roll my eyes.

haha I was trying to think up a line about Fascist criticism

"They should have called it Poopmetheus." = LOLs irl.

Anything that somehow shapes this film into something resembling coherence is based almost entirely on assumption and extrapolation and little on what is actually on the screen. I can extrapolate this (perfectly entertaining!) misfire into just about anything short of a "Lethal Weapon" sequel.

i decidedly disagree! also i think that you can approach most texts that way if you choose to, and that the idea that the source material here is so open-ended that it defies interpretation is only an argument that can be made if you have already decided that the film is inherently without meaning. people develop narratives for late period lynch films with far less to go on, and i certainly dont think they are wrong in doing so.

also i think that the problem is that people are focused on the idea that the film is about the engineers and what they are/why they do what they do, when to me it seems clear that the movie is about david - he is by far the most carefully presented and scripted character, and almost certainly has more screen time than anyone else in the film. if david is the protagonist, the human creation myth and religious vibe becomes a setting rather than a plot.

that should say setting/means of analogy. in other words, the overt creator destroying the created setup is a means to dig into the implied idea of the created destroying its creators. which of course is the idea that the film closes on, with a bioweapon laden ship headed to the world of its creators.

Can someone explain how you go from infected Man sleeps with woman to squid baby??

I understand they are trying to use the DNA-gloop getting poured all over the space worms to explain the aliens parasitic nature and general "oh that's why they look all messed up, its alien worm and engineer DNA", but how did you get the space worm DNA into the man then woman to make the space squid baby.

Or put another way:

if DNA-gloop and engineer next to waterfall = mankind.

how come DNA-gloop and man = OH GOD CUT IT OUT OF ME!!!

how come DNA-gloop and man = OH GOD CUT IT OUT OF ME!!!

Pregnancy in general amirite thank here all week

that was the genius of alien, making ripley unlikeable made her high probability alien food but the film turns that on its head when our gruff sensible beardo leader gets eated in an airshaft.

this is a really good point. it's impossible now to experience alien without the foreknowledge that ripley is its star. but it must have been quite a headfake the first time around to realize that tom skerritt really had bit it, and that this humorless woman was in charge.

btw tom skerritt is 78 years old!!

feel like Tom Skerritt has been 50 years old his entire life