Vickers

I hate Vickers. I just posted this elsewhere, thought it was relevant. The reason you dont care, is because the character isnt very good. Lets look at Vickers. - Strong, independant - Focused on the mission - Has a hidden agenda - Not frightened to remind people they are employees and she is in charge - Will use lethal force to protect herself and the mission objectives - Aware of quarantine procedures. She actually shaped up quite well to start with but then the following happens. Crew taken their helmets off and inform the ship this is happening. - Vickers says nothing - Vickers allows them back onto the ship - Vickers randomly has sex with the captain while team members are in mortal danger. - Vickers gets precious about quarantine after the second trip, killing holloway These undermines everything we already know about Vickers. Her authority is diminished, she doesn't enforce rules herself. Shes selfish and easily led to the detriment of the mission. The character is now broken and unbelievable. What would have been more logical is Vickers telling the crew not the take off their helmets and refusing to let them on board after they do that. Maybe have Vickers as a corporate ball breaker who follows the rules to the letter. The Weyland scene then shows this to be a reaction to his unwillingness to hand the company over to her and to seek immortality. Unfortunately this doesnt follow the plot and so what was built up is sacrifised. I could do this exercise on pretty much every character in the story.

@Slipp_Digby Agree with everything, and another example that the script is broken. It's sad because it's such a waste of talent. The biggest WTF moment for me was when she torches Holloway without any sign of empathy, while the rest of the crew doesn't even question this afterwards. And Janek wants to sleep with her! Great captain...

@Merc7 I agree. Its not only the contradictions in the individual characters, but how the massive events of the film don't seem to directly impact their actions or emotions. They pass almost without reaction.

I didnt like at all the vickers character ...i think is the only one that dont work but .... 1)Crew taken their helmets off and inform the ship this is happening.Vickers says nothing - What she can say ?? she is not a science officer or a medic ..why she have to complain the the air is pure ?? She just said ( and everyone say ) to not touch anything 2)Vickers allows them back onto the ship - why not ??? nothing did happen ..everything was checked safe and clean ( and nothing happen ) ..plus there was the storm arriving ...you let them die outside for what ??? 3)Vickers randomly has sex with the captain while team members are in mortal danger - mortal danger of what ??? She didnt know its an alien movie ...just 2 people waiting in a cave for the night ..nothing tragic in theory . 4)Vickers gets precious about quarantine after the second trip, killing holloway - did you saw halloway ?? It did look like a zombie and he did ask to be killed !! so all your points are debatable ( imo of course ) ..btw i still dont like her character ...a bit odd and out of place

@slipp whats wrong with the character that she has random sex with someone, anyone for that matter. i have yet to see the movie but i will say most of us here do not have perfect logical sex records and have regrets, random sex, or something as negative as cheating at one point in life. the fact that people are complaining that a strong suit of a woman had sex with someone (oooh scary) makes me feel like id be looked upon as a total whore. im stronger then most of my male and female friends, a sociopath, and have always had a strong devotion to my job/jobs but i still like to get down and dirty on occasion :P my private life has never gotten in the way of any of my jobs, so why is that a way to judge people. the captain is the afro-american man, yes? (im not up to date with character names, as i said i havent gotten to see it yet) im starting to wonder if the issue isnt about a break in character, or sexism, but because she is a fair skinned white lady having sex with a black man. people have a tendency to manifest their feelings in other negative ways (such as deep rooted racist feelings). perhaps in giving negative movie reviews. eh??? eehhhhhh???? yeah this is my one post for this morning, i need to go flop back down into bed, with the horrid hell fever who doesnt want to go away.

@belladonna Ah, playing the racism card are we? LOL. This only exposes your complete inability to either i) address the point I was making and ii) come up with any coherent argument against it. Try again and this time play the ball not he man. I'll re-phrase it. "Why does a strong independant character who is focused on the mission and "making sure the crew do their jobs" suddenly decide to have sex with a sub-ordinate crew member while two crew members are trapped in a temple by a dust storm in a temple designed by intelligent beings?" In you answer you might want to consider that Janek is aware sensors read life other than the two crew members.

The more I read about what goes on in this movie, the more it sounds like I will hate it. I find it ironic that Janek's sacrifice leads to Vickers death. Maybe there is some story for that in antiquity too.

@franz "1) What she can say ?? she is not a science officer or a medic ..why she have to complain the the air is pure ?? She just said ( and everyone say ) to not touch anything" She is the funder and hence project manager. She tells people they will do as she says, she tells them they are employees, and she tells them not to make contact with anything just look around. For some reasons, once in the temple the exploration team call the shots. I find this odd as it totally undermines vickers authority. She doesnt even object verbally, even though later it suddenly become important that quarantine is observed. You dont need to be science officer, or medic to understand germ theory. It would suggest to any crew member who knows about quarantine procedures that taking a helmet off outside is a severe breach of quarantine. "2) - why not ??? nothing did happen ..everything was checked safe and clean ( and nothing happen ) ..plus there was the storm arriving ...you let them die outside for what ???" Ripley is a Leiutenant on a commerical towing vessel and even she understands quarantine better than Vickers. This is an exporation ship which had a reasonable expectation of finding life. Even a stray microbe which their immune system could not recognise could have killed the whole crew, her and her father. Her actions jepodise the whole hidden agenda mission. "mortal danger of what ??? She didnt know its an alien movie ...just 2 people waiting in a cave for the night ..nothing tragic in theory ." So Vickers who hired them (and hints at working with some of them before so has a degree of loyalty), didnt tell them where they were going somewhere dangerous, should suddenly not care about their fate. This makes her character morally vacuous. "4)Vickers gets precious about quarantine after the second trip, killing holloway - did you saw halloway ?? It did look like a zombie and he did ask to be killed !!" Yep, she kills him without remorse. But why get so pissy about quarantine after she allowed it to be broken once already without intervening. For all Vickers knows this could be an airbourne illness from the temple. Most of the crew could be infected, yet she lets them all on board, again without quarantine. I did see Holloway. Quarantine is a preventative measure. The idea is you isolate people who might have been exposed to something dangerous to ensure it isn't passed to others. Quarantine is not waiting until some is ill and then acting. This is exaclty what Vickers does and it makes no sense. This is wretched character and a waste of a very decent actor. I actually liked Wickers to start with, but she acts illogically and then becomes part of the background.

Seems like Charlize's acting talent was wasted in this movie. She did after all win an Oscar.

hells yeah i pulled the "racist card". humans are humans and they want to have sex when they feel ike it. it was mutual sex, would you want a rape scene instead? vickers wanted to get laid so she did, if you feel poorly about it .... you are racist or a sexist. i got laid under military service while i was injured in a wheel chair, oh thats right... i was lifted up out of the chair during the "bow chicka wow wow"! then i told the guy to get the hell out because i was done with him :) if vickers getting laid rubs you the wrong way, i bet my life just grinds your gears :)

To answer the OP I always Love it when one of the "Company" gets killed...the entire franchise has been attempting to train me to feel this way thru 33+ years and 7 films now, and I've been "Going With It" ever since Parker intervened in Ripley's Magazine Style Rape & knocked Ash Apart.

Who says that Vickers is dead? We're all just strongly made to believe she was crushed by the crashing ship. But we were never shown her dead body, did we? I bet she'll magically reappear in Prometheus2, revealing that she is an android after all.

She is expensive for the next movie dude, let her go.

[u]Who says that Vickers is dead? We're all just strongly made to believe she was crushed by the crashing ship. But we were never shown her dead body, did we?[/u] Even if she was a Cyberine systems Terminator, she would have been crushed by that thing. And she's human, so she's flat as a pancake. bad enough we're supposed to swallow Shaw's lucky break, but if you think anyone would swallow the idea of Vickers getting some kind of 'Buster Keaton' lucky break, and then not being killed by the Space Jockey, or the Xeno, or just running out of air, I would have to strongly disagree. [img]http://images.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/keaton-house.jpg[/img]

..maybe the real vikers are sitting on earth safe and sound and what got crushed by the juggernaut was merely her android replicant...who knows...but i doubt it....i think Theron performed well....unfortunately they gave her a very tiny role....I am hoping that the dvd extended cut will flesh out her character a bit more...?

tenoh, when I saw it, I heard her screaming, saw that massive thing land on her and saw the screen go black as she screamed one last time real loud then it switched to another scene after the blackness which right away told me she was One Dead Mama, I sure hope that past brief encounter with Janek was a real pleasure for her 'cause it was her last...ever...the poor spoiled rotten rich girl !!! lmao !!!

I think Vickers role was meant to be restricted. It's obvious from how some people describe her. Control freak, running the mission etc. She actually wasn't in charge of anything, but wanted to be. And she was terrified the whole time, and trying to hide it behind a mask, and drowning it in straight vodka. Her Dad may not have snubbed her in the hologram appearance, because it turns out later, he was not sure that she would come, and that may be why he made no reference to her in the briefing, just to David 'closest thing to a son' and to Shaw and Holloway as being in charge. Why would he mention Vickers if he didn't think she's be there? I wrote a[url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/8039] thread called "Give Vickers a break.[/url]

...i liked her....boo hoo....;/....i want her in paradise....i mean why let her escape the prometheus ship just to have her crushed by the juggernaut minutes later......whYYYYYYYYYYY....!!!...snort....sniff.....nooooooo!!!....booo hoo!

[u]To answer the OP I always Love it when one of the "Company" gets killed.[/u] But Vickers wasn't there on company business, and neither was Weyland. It was private personal mission for Weyland, and it was a family matter for Vickers. She had no official authority on this mission at all. In fact her father wasn't even sure she'd be there. He doesn't mention her in the briefing, he tells people Holloway and Shaw are in charge (and the captain, Janek obviously has some rank, being captain). the only person who says Vickers has some authority... is Vickers... and yet do you see a single instance where anybody obeys her authority? Janek doesn't go the briefing she tells him is starting soon. He eats breakfast. She tells Shaw and Holloway not to do anything without telling her... they bring back a Space Jockey head. She demands to know from an android, what her flesh and blood relative said... and she has to push him to the wall and threaten him just to get a two word answer. She tells the cargo bay guys not to open the door... they open it. She tells everyone that Holloway isn't coming on board... and they don't respect that, she has to enforce it with a flamethrower. And she tells Janek to take them home,,, he tells her she's got 40 seconds to eject. Vickers is not Burke. She's not that interested in the objective of the mission, in fact she'd prefer if her father didn't find a way to live longer. She's not interested in any scary bio-weapons to take back to the labs. In fact, she echoes both Ripley and Lambert in this role. She's very certain that quarantine should be taken seriously, and she's also gripped by fear. (You notice she never goes off the ship, except by escape pod?) She wants to be able to inherit the company, and to have people listen to her for a change instead of her father. Between that, and being terrified of being so far from home, with strangers, and strange scary alien crap, it's no surprise she's hitting the straight vodka. I think Charlize Theron made a good part out of a small role, especially when she's meant to hide so many things, like her identity and her fears.

...yes i loved her.....dammit i loved her and i am saying that with a tremble in my voice with a tear threatening to roll down my cheek..........vicky!!!!!

It was a pretty dumb way for her to go. But they had limited options. They wanted her to outlive Weyland, so she could react to his death. Doing Holloway was really going to be her job, Janek is way too laid back about safety, which is meant to be part of his job as well as Jacksons, but Jackson might be interested in getting Holloway back to the lab for his boss, (like Burke was), but he's not going to confront the boss's daughter she's holding a flamethrower. If she had survived and made it to the lifeboat, it also complicates the ending, Who would discover 'cuddles' in the med pod? Who would the Space Jockey grab, and would the other woman help fight him off... and what would it mean for a member of the Weyland dynasty to actually be more concerned with saving someone, than making a buck from alien technology? So, cue stupid death, which we are to assume is caused by blind panic. In fact, the blind panic is not the stupidest part of it, really. She could be terrified beyond her capacity for rational thought. It's the whole..."Wow, how come that ship fell back towards them, and then ROLLED along the surface? " bit that is most stupid.

I recently vieweed the openning scenes with Vickers doing her push ups. She wakes up from cyro and sarts right in on a excercise program. She is one determined woman. She talks to David as a he was a servant and asked pointed questions like an executive(Anybody die, How Long)) She is getting an overview of the new situation. Adn when discussing why she was there Vickers tells her dad she didn't want to sit in aBoardroom trying to figure out who is charge of the Company. Shows business Politics. The way this charactor is presented is that she will get what she wants, when she wants it and would roll over anybody or anything to get her visioin of the future. And what do we get the rest of our movie? An occasional appearance by her during some critical plot points making some profound comments that shows she doesn't give a damn about the crew. Just what was Vickers actually doing during this entire mission? I can;t imagine down in the cafeteria drinking her drink and chatting about the weather to any other crew members. This would be a fill in story that i would like to see. Just watching the first scenes with Vickers tells me she want to know everything and anything about what is going on. I want to know if she any communication with her comany. And does she have any influence on the activities of our story. She seemed more reative to events rather than proactive as she was depicted in the beginning.