My list of plotholes and niggles

Amen brother! I can't believe these plot holes got past the script-writing stage.

All your points are sound as a pound! There was so much irreverence and coincidence. I outline some of them here in mah spoilery review http://fundividedattention.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/i-just-saw-prometheus/ Check her out if you'd like a good vent!

the coming... you said it. unfortunately i'm in agreement with you. couldn't believe how poor the script was. thought i'd add... how about, you have just made the biggest discovery known to mankind. and so you as the Captain, responsible for crew safety, and you as the senior Rep of the 'Company' decide to leave observing 2 STRANDED crew members, to have sex. and lo and behold, all hell breaks loose..... weak.

My plot holes. 1) why is she dreaming in the 3rd person. Come to think of it why do her dream have picture in picture at key moments 2) how after practically nothing has happened does the captain come to the conclusion that it's a military instillation and their creations got out of hand and killed them 3) why would the SJ leave directions to a military instillation anyway 4) what were they running from 5) how does a 10ft engineer give bith to a 6ft xeno 6) why does a tentical monster embryo turn into xeno anyway 7) what was Ridley Scott thinking 8) how can Ridely Scott sleep after pumping out this crap 9) did really just spen £20 and 2 hours of my life watching this rubbish

You all sound like rational type people. I don't think the movie was intended for you.

amen brothers.......amen.

As we are all suffering from prometheus aftershock - This forum has been of real solace for me, to connect with so many intelligent people who feel as conned as I do with this "Teenage Xeno Schlock" has been extremely comforting, and to be fair I have laughed so much with some of the accurate comments that have been made regarding Scott and Lindeloffs hole filled amateur scripted utter horrific abomination of a movie. Oh, but lets not forget........"the visuals where good" Cheers Guys! THP

- How does David infecting Holloway in any way advance his aim of assisting Weylands search for the engineers? Weyland makes it clear that he want to meet a live jockey to speak to them and get the secret of immortality. He is not after space calamari. - Why does vickers allow them back on the ship after they have removed their helmetson the first visit to the temple? Her later hissyfit with the flamethrower suggests she is quite keen on observing that protocol when it suits the plot. - How did Shaw know they were searching for 'Engineers' (plural) when the painting show only an ambiguous large figure in a cave painting. Thats some extrapolation!

My God you guys have way too much time on your hands.....maybe the first 30 minutes of the movie should have shown Prometheus flying around the planetoid looking for the temples to keep you happy. GET A GRIP !!!!!!

@MAJ.....OH so you are ok with movies that make no sense? there is a difference between fantasy and laziness..this is the latter..One must follow their own internal logic.. If the spaceship in a story runs on nuclear power, and then in one scene the captain goes, we need to stop for petrol, would that not piss you off? well this is the same thing...laziness

@slipp "He is not after space calamari." You sir won the Internet

I'm great with movies not making sense. Sorry, generally nothing in life makes any sense, why should movies? Visual books, so very fucking boring. http://www.amazon.ca/Film-as-Art-Rudolf-Arnheim/dp/0520000358 More people need to read this.

@Shane..yes but this is a different sort of not making sense like I said, it's not a cool fantasy type of not making sense...The characters' reactions and emotions make no sense, and I am sorry, but the acting is VERY akin to Phantom Menace..that sort of lame 1 dimensional acting style which draws no emotion from the viewer whatsoever, And I am a HUGE fan of David Lynch too...but this IS NOT IT the characters and storyline fail on a critical level...

You have made a really silly list of plotholes ( imo ) 1. really that is a problem ? i simply dont think that David read dreams but just memories ...thats all 2. radar scan ? 3. why not ?? have you never saw the apollo module that landed on the moon ?? 4. You didnt interact with people much in your life right ? 5. you never read of people eaten by bears , lions etc to have approached them too close ?? And they did know they were dangerous 6. becuase all the measurements and david said was perfectly breathable ..nothing strange here 7. no one of these exclude the others 8.she follow what shaw say and i think is a procedure 9. who knows ?? Thats a plothole ?? come on 10. they did wear gloves and they make a check various times in the movie 11. "Earth" was a direct answer gave by David not a Shaw assumption 12. That can be the only real plothole but maybe david always in contact with the prometheus ? hes a machine after all and part of the ship 13. is a last try .... she did have other options ? she already saw that the squd was a bit hyperactive . 14. Duh ..i guess she have other priorities like ..survive 15. -is the whole vickers character that dont work but is not a plothole 16. -you dont know people then ... 17. advanced drugs ?? i saw people walking without an harm and "trying" to walk without a leg . 18. you dont like it ...then ? 19. because they didnt know that an old tramp would have landed on their planet ?? 20. we are civilized ? 21. what would you do in his place ?? Wasnt a chance worth to explore ?? a last chance .. 22. Why many people belive ?? Silly point 23. they didnt know was an alien movie ..thats all ... 24. Dont know but hes still the winner 25. i would have avoid that ...but ...they have maybe music and artistic choices like us ...

I like what you think. RS really made shit movie this time, same like the Thing screwed up everything. So far the best prequel I had is X-men.

17. advanced drugs ?? i saw people walking without an harm and "trying" to walk without a leg . please...the abbs were sliced right thru 19. because they didnt know that an old tramp would have landed on their planet ?? HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yes they just invite tramps to mess with their security systems...ok good one 23. they didnt know was an alien movie ..thats all ... Yes they are just incredibly irresponsible and don't give a shit.... OK EINSTEIN, explain this one: If the quarantine procedures were so strict, why did they take their helmets off? Why did Vickers not have a problem letting them in covered in Alien moisture and bacteria after the first trip, but has a problem suddenly the second time? STICK TO A PROCESS! explain all you want it sucked and didnt feel natural at all

if you like X-men im not surprised you didnt like Prometheus huh ...

The coming but you saw the movie or not ?? Because it seems not to me ... 1) Quarantine security about what except good sense ?? There were not there to find an infection or something ... the air is breathable ...they remove the helmet ...what there is of so strange ??? Air is breathable ..not contaminated THEN they remove the helment ...its NORMAL and dont carry any kind of consequence later in the movie . The second time they arrive Vickers get the flamethrowe BECAUSE they say HOLLOWAY is sick ...and Holloway is sick not for external contamination . One have to really in bad faith to make problems over this .

you can add greenery .ie plantlife during the opening scene where the engineer sacrifices himself to spawn new DNA. if plantlife already exists then DNA already exists and the engineers DNA is not neccessary for human life.

also, how can anyone be so stupid to open up their helmet to a n ew environment. here on earth thousands of native from latin america were killed off by viruses brought over by the spanish conquistadors. so what about another planer which potentially has more advanced lifeforms. thats totally f.... up. even an ameteur producer wouldnt make such errors in the plot. i hope these can be fixed with a directors cut where theres some sort of remidial scene that shows someone giving them the go ahead to open up as they did.

[quote]23. they didnt know was an alien movie ..thats all ...[/quote] RE:23 --[i]Why weren't the life suits fitted with monitors (heart, vitals) set to raise alarms should the onboard crew be AFK (sic) from their duties?[/i] The whole scene was cringeworthy. As I was watching, I'm thinking, sure the Captain and Vickers can go off have their fun, I'm sure there's going to be an alarm system should something terrible befall our hapless geologist and biologist. (why are the scientists portrayed as such idiots by the way?). But alas, towards the end of the 21st Century it seems we do not have the common sense for such a simple idea ?

Here's one for you: why didnt weyland just send a crew of david's aboard Prometheus? The entire human crew were completely redundant.

@ Frantz Whilst I enjoyed the film and welcome praise at it, its plot holes should be openly discussed and do not deserve blind fanboism like yours. "Radar scan" lol, pretty much sums up your ethos towards this thread --ignorance.

ok, i found this on the weyland website which might explain the helmet removal PORTABLE DECONTAMINATION PACK see here: https://www.weylandindustries.com/timeline

The helmet thing really bugs me. When I see a "scientist" do something like that in a film, I dont think that its a character who is reckless risk taker, it doesn't add to his character. It simplys shows him to be a poor scientist who doesn't understand the basics of germ theory. It completely undermines him and suspends my belief. Shaw then does exactly the same, despite telling him he shouldnt. Vickers the risk averse corporate ball breaker says nothing whilst this is happening, even though she take quarantine seriously enough to kill someone later. Later in the film, we see the air lock being 'decomtaminated' after the storm hits. We also hear Shaw tell Weyland not to remove his helmet in the ship as they dont know how Holloway became infected. The characters actions are so illogical I simply cannot take them seriously at all. Why do any of the crew need to remove their helmets in any of the visits to the temple? Was this essential to the plot? No.

Hi! I don't see it as plot holes. I see it as a display of human stupidity, they believe one thing and nothing else can get in the way. This movie is about the disillusion combined with horror on a once beautifully optimistic mission. I would like to help with my twisted point of view of interpretation, using your first post as a starting point: 1. The dream. Indeed they could have made this better, which would have made it stranger, less accessible for the audience but more plausible. I'm a fan of discomforting experience but I choose to ignore the "easy stuff" as not every audience is the same. 2. 3. The landing. The planet is a moon. Think we missed a deleted scene of survey from orbit and longer atmospheric trip? They had the fuel (nuclear energy) to fly around for days, we were watching a 2 hours movie. The mission wasn't to survey possible resources on the closest point of contact but to find traces of intelligent life so we have to assume they were looking for it. 4. 5. and 6. The geologist and the biologist. Agreed. But the question is why would Weyland corp not use its good money to hire more intelligent people. But it seems every Alien movie is filled with unintelligent idiots who can't keep their cool and who break quarantine, Kane and Lambert to name the first two. The answer is always the same: bring something home. 7. The goo. It's an universal modular compound that in contact with humidity develops an organism that at a fast rate takes the best form for extermination. The movie shows at least 4 different forms of infection. And there was no pregnancy per se, Shaw is sterile - I think Ridley Scott made it pretty damn clear. 8. Electrifying the head in the lab. It's true. You can't have useful brain activity without cardiovascular activity at least. What does a twitchy frog experiment help us with? 9. The head explosion in the lab. That should have been explained and displayed better. It was infected like the other space jockeys who exploded from the inside. Maybe another form of extermination? 10. Medical staff hygiene. Good one. But I guess we're back to points 4.5.6 or they are shareholders to the companies that make their bioscanners. I also thought that in no Alien movie the infected showed up on any scanner but ultrasound so they're assumed healthy. Well there we learn something about assumptions. 11. How did Shaw know where they were headed? It would be naive to think the space jockeys wouldn't head to Earth with the bioweapons. Just like Shaw knew they changed their mind about creating us, she knew all the mistakes were made from lack of information, but she used the new information very well. The discussions with Janek and David help you see how she believes but she is not entirely naive anymore. 12. How did David know where the mean jockey was headed? David saw the star map. And saw the mean jockey kick everyone's ass after Shaw showed her rebellion. The mean jockey was already betrayed by someone, a dissident space jockey like the first one we see in the very beginning of the movie who used the weaponry to create life instead of death. Someone who didn't "agree with the gods". The mean jockey knows the created will turn against the creator, the more intelligent characters of the movie understand this but don't want to explain to Shaw or Charlie, or the audience. David is an interesting character, he is programmed to turn against humans in order to gather knowledge. You forgot to ask about another potential plot hole: why does David want to go back to Earth while knowing the threat? Somehow he developed this rebellion against the creator for creating him inferior and discarding him when a greater challenge comes. He wants to bring something back. Even if it means the end of the human race on Earth - he knows it will happen as long as the space jockeys are somewhere in the galaxy, but they're superior humans to him, he gets off on new knowledge so he's happy anyway no matter what. 13. How does Shaw know the giant facehugger would attack the mean jockey? Refer to her discussion with Janek. He doesn't care why, he assumes you build weapons, and they turn against you. She assumed the same. 14. Shaw's horror but lack of alarming. She is sterile so she was not pregnant. She wouldn't want to be believe she is pregnant even if it was the case. David didn't break it down in a gentle way, revealed that he was involved in Charlie's infection, she knew it was an alien parasite to be brought back to Earth so she didn't trust anyone. Ridley Scott doesn't pretend nobody has seen the other Alien movies. 15. Star Wars analogy. In Star Wars The Empire Strikes back the line is "He told me you killed him." -No. I am your father. Followed by Luke being very very upset. Now someone tell me how a daughter wanting to replace her dad in the family business is like Luke Skywalker's fatherless situation? I know it's not what you meant but give it a break. 16. The bet. It was humor about the Alien movies fanbase who have been speculating since the 80's! How can you miss that? 17. Walk/run after abdominal surgery. Good point. Ridley Scott knows nothing about women lol 18. Tentacles. It's a primitive tier aimed at exterminating at least aquatic life of greater size. We know octopuses are good at escaping both under water and ground surface, it's a modular form. If it needs feet to run it will eventually find a suitable host and get them to put it simple. 19. Space jockey technology: Ease of use. David. He uses the language archaeological information left by the dissident engineers who visited Earth, and finds out how to open doors, access holo feeds... The space jockeys didn't want that, and didn't need high security, they were betrayed. 20. Why do the space jockeys want to kill. They live in hibernation most of the time, where are they from? Unknown. Are they on their way to extinction? Most likely. I think they're nomad, living with the past mistakes from their civilization, terraforming is motivated by a dream/goal they have to be able to live freely on a planet again without a gas mask on. The time it takes to terraform an entire planet was spent by the dissident engineers to do something else meanwhile: create a new human race. If you can't save yourself, save your children - create us humans to evolve on the target planet instead of just preparing it for colonization and then repeat the same mistakes that lead to the loss of a homeworld. That means embracing extinction to leave the chance to someone else. The space jockeys can't all agree to that, they fight and kill because of it. 21. Weyland's last trip. Peter Weyland thought that the same visitor comes to Earth year -35,000 and -900. That means the visitor can provide hibernation technology or immortality. David points at the hibernation pods, Weyland Corp's next hot thing. 22. Faith. Ridley Scott maybe wanted to hint that religion isn't just a human creation strictly to Earth. That the old civilizations were instructed to believe in the space jockeys, they all made their own interpretation. And Shaw descends from this. I think that is pretty cool. 23. Contingency plans about the crew. Every crew member on a vessel has his or her own tasks and contingency plans. They were not all given the same instructions book or code of conduct. You don't get to know your captain will leave two useless expendable scientists to suffer if there's a violent storm preventing your rescue. And back to points 4.5.6.: the objective is to bring something back. 24. Lindelof. Good point but off topic. 25. Flute and Fisher Price squishy buttons. To be sarcastic: Yeah you're right, they should have used holographic QWERTY keyboards, preferably white with square bezels and capacitive touchscreens. I watched Prometheus saturday and then talked face to face with 10 others who also saw it, for what seems like hours. So my interpretation of the unexplained parts of the backstory and symbols may be far fetched in mythology and science but I think it's what Ridley Scott wanted us to do. My wish here is to share how easily you can watch a movie that makes sense even if it doesn't serve it all on a silver plate, and then instead of treating it like the TV show Lost, go straight to the most plausible meaning and choose to believe in it. Not all the space jockeys wanted to create or destroy, like us on Earth they all want different things. I choose to believe that.

actually, at number 11. David does tell them that the ship is heading to earth. if you pay close attention he does say that. And about the helmet thing, it was only holloway who did it. Because he is a reckless idiot. When he didn't suffer, the rest of them did the same. This is just an assumption, but i think the space jockeys want to kill us, because now that we have developed space travel and strong weaponry, they consider us a threat.

The stupidity of this conversation prompted me to make an account simply to reply to this nonsense. I like the explanations of Nicky.the.hutt and Frantz. These aren't 'plot-holes,' this is the poster being a dumb-ass. I'm mean, seriously, I'm still trying to fathom the stupidity. It made me think you (the original poster) was a troll, but there was nothing in the post that resembled a troll sense of humor. Now I'm sorry the movie doesn't take everything and chop it up for you and present it on a silver plate, and I'm glad it didn't. Now, I'm not saying the film was perfect, there were a few things that were a bit strange (Highly religious scientist, wait, what?). But you guys are making it out to be the worst written-film ever (And I watched Snow-White and The Huntsman the same night, trust me, it's not). But the plot-holes were small and manageable, just because it doesn't tell you anything (or assumes you to be relatively smart), doesn't mean it's a plot-hole. My main problem was the ending, I wanted them to die on the planet, not go on another adventure for a sequel. I also hated the last sequence showing the Xenomorph. But overall, I liked the film. And overall, if you thought those were 'plot-holes,' get your head straight, there's something wrong with you.