Agreed, I remember seeing that reveal the first time and kinda just being like, “oh. okay” Same when Theron calls him dad
When the prequels come up I am always surprised how easily people brush off what a narrative left turn it takes between the two films. Killing off all of the Engineers and Shaw in flashbacks and off-screen was not the intention when they were releasing Prometheus. It is arguably more of an insult to the audience than killing off Newt and Hicks.
why? because the entire premise of Prometheus was to give more back story to the Space Jockey from Alien, no matter how goofy or hamfisted. imo the new story of the Engineer and the new questions it presents are definitely a lot worse than the simple but provoking mystery of the setup for the SJ in Alien. also Alien presents both the Xenomorph and the Space Jockey as biomechanical beings which is a super cool and ALIEN design, the audience is simply left to their own devices to interpret what they see on screen. Prometheus says oh actually underneath the suit homie is just a Greek sculpture. I guess there’s still some interest there in the question of why the Engineer wears a biomech suit akin to the Xenos makeup, but I think it’s a lot easier to attribute the lackluster design as bad taste by comparison to Gigers work. and writing it so that a Weyland android was actually the one that created the Xenomorph is even worse still. the Engineers story was to introduce the black goo, that is the real reason WHY. they needed two cheap devices to give David these abilities, it was a simple way to write that plot. both are examples of classic Hollywood BS where a good mystery has to be answered, but the answer is amateur writing hour. and the mystery to Alien was the whole point, the shit was Alien i.e. not explainable. what is more scary or interesting than that?
Interview: Sir Ridley Scott Explains 'Prometheus,' Explores Our Past, and Teases Future 'Alien' Stories okay, apparently Ridley Scott says that the planet at the beginning of Prometheus isn't necessarily Earth, which isn't the same as just saying it's not Earth I suppose but it's Earth if we're being serious here
The opening planet not being Earth is as silly as when people realized the planet they go to is not the original one from Alien. It is just creating more unnecessary threads.
hey, I think it is Earth but i also think that Ridley Scott has a history of saying dumb things about his movies that aren't supported by the movies themselves
Remember when he re-edited Blade Runner to support Deckard being a replicant? Guy's not that much different from George Lucas.
In Prometheus, why was Holloway so certain that all of the Engineers were dead after they found those first few dead in that one hallway/room...? that seems like an extreme jump when they haven't even finished exploring or mapping that one temple, nevermind the entire rest of the planet
Because he knew they only had two hours to tell the story so he was trying to be helpful by saving time.
I've been thinking about the movie since rewatching it the other day, and I think aside from me not knowing the Alien lore well enough, a lot of what doesn't make sense to me in the movie are what the characters actions and motivations, like the Holloway example that I mentioned before: here's a dude who was willing to go on a 3.27 x 10^14 kilometer journey on a space ship based on his own hypothesis about cave paintings, and upon arriving at their destination and finding out that his theory was in fact correct, instead of being elated or triumphant he immediately acts like a bratty child and throws drunken temper tantrums because the very first one of the Engineers they found was a dead body also, a bunch of highly educated scientists taking off their helmets and exposing themselves to a wide array of unknown pathogens, toxins, etc. simply because the atmosphere was breathable where they happened to be standing at that moment, thru a mechanism or system they have absolutely no understanding of whatsoever or the trillionaire with a god complex who is paying for the entire operation out of his own pocket choosing to hide aboard his own ship like a stowaway so he can surprise everyone (?) when they get there as opposed to just naming the entire endeavor and spaceship and everything else after himself and his enormous ego the lore stuff is fine and the writers can always just write whatever explanations they want after the fact to connect all of the dots - I definitely do not think that anyone else involved in the original Alien thought the 'space jockey' was actually just a big bald human in a suit, even if Ridley Scott says that's what he always thought all along though
Remember when people got made at me for nitpicking this for the nonsensical callback line from Aliens? Lol
some guy in my theater audibly laughed during it, and i couldn't tell if it was a good thing or bad thing (probably bad because the line was stupid)
okay, toss all of those critiques out as nit-picking - we're still left with a movie where it feels like the filmmakers got embarrassed about the story but didn't change any of the plot and instead just left things vague and mysterious and unexplained