Forum Topic
Voidhawk
MemberOvomorphSep-15-2012 11:39 PMNow...
Prometheus deems itself to deal with concepts of Life, Evolution and such...
So we see that initial sequence, where aliens come to a barren place and sacrife one of them (very advanced they are...) to spread foreign aminoacids and such into a body of water...
So thrilling huh...dramatically appealing...but a scene you would see only on a TV series if much, being shallow as it is!
Lets think here...the concept of Aliens tampering with humans is not new (movie wise). 2001 did a marvelous work, better than here I fear, into this idea, and it did not take the alien visit BILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE PAST.
To accept that single scene as if they seed ALL life on Earth would put them at least a billion years in the past. So the author wants us to believe that a culture billions of years old would still be so similar to their ancestrals...and would use a technology unchanging for aeons....my this is just so lame! If they have seeded life on Earth by now they would have moved to something we would not even understand!
We move forward, and learn that they have not seeded all life on Earth...only helped advance proto-humans. More accepting, but still they would have been around for 2 million years...2 million years...and they kept the same appearance and still the same tech...and were uncareful enough to let loose a bio-experience that went awry and killed everyone...the bioengineers responsible to seeding stars? Yet the images at the beginning still lead to the first idea, and the 100% DNA match...jeez, a mere 20% would have been magical as we are dealing with a alien life forms...and here is 100%! Oh my...Back again to the billion year visit on Earth...
No one really saw the absurdity of the concept? A never changing culture stuck biologically and technologically for billions of years?
AH, but they are not living beings! They are a culture of androids, never changing...never advancing more...and still a bad plot device and a lame science fiction plot.
That inconsistency alone is dangerous, not even talking about why those aliens would try to mark a small weapons depot as something important enough to etch in human minds...
There is a way to reason that part of the plot, used on other stories and movies which could be acceptable, but the time spans used here, in the way they seemed to have used it...wrong, very wrong, especally on a movie talking about evolution and bioengineering.
2001 still has the best approach to the theme here, or maybe At the Mountains of Madness in the way it is presented. But here, the plot concept is shaky and they should have paid more attention to details!
Now lets be more daring, and yet lets try to tie the ideas laid more interestingly...
The scene now shows a barren Earth...and a ship comes from the skies...the image shifts and now a group of aliens appear...totally alien and not even humanoids...more like the murals we saw on the ampule chamber...they move around and prepare equipment, analysing the water body...they spread small biomechs into the water, everyone carrying a cargo of aminoacids...the image spands and we see more ships nearby...more of the seeders around. A xenomorph like head looks to the skyes where their massive ship hovers, but this xenomorph is intelligent, user of technology and builder of starships...and the image goes out, back to the stars! They are the Seeders, the Elder Gods if you want...and millions of years later the engineers come, and find remains of the Old Ones, and worship them, and yet look to emulate them from the little left behind, after millions of years of their departure.
They are to be worshiped (hence the murals) and left biotechnology behind that was so advanced as to be magical, but yet the engineers would try to emultate those experiments, even being that a Pandora Box given that their expertise (the Old Ones) was so advanced it would be too hard to be really understood, and tragedy ensues...
My ideas are wild and such, but that at least would have been more plausible.
Yet the next movie comes, and it can still be very good if they address the mess they made now in a plausible, serious, original way ^^
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11 Replies
Custodian
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 2:31 AMSo, the original Seeders (your Xenomorphs from Space) seeded the pre-historic world, the billions-of-years-ago one eventually occupied by long-headed Dinosaurs like pterodactyls and parasaurolophylus etc?
[img]http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/01882/pterodactyl.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.dinosaurusi.com/foto/all/Parasaurolophus/Dinosaurus_-_Dinosaur_-_Dinosaurio_-_Dinosaure_-_Parasaurolophus004.jpg[/img]
Don't see why not... every king has his reign.
2013 sci-fi horror novels 'Custodian' and 'Tandem' available from Amazon, B&N, iTunes etc...
zzplural
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 3:37 AM@Voidhawk:
It is incorrect to claim – as others have done – that the movie states a 100% match between Engineer and human DNA. It does nothing of the sort. Nowhere is '100%' shown in the movie. What is shown is a match on certain key gene markers. Unless you have a twin, your DNA will not be a 100% match with anyone else's, but you will share plenty of key genes, as you do with me.
We don't know how Engineer society operates. There are any number of reasons why an alien culture might reach a certain level of physical development and then impose an absolute constraint on departure from a perceived ideal. I can think of many plausible reasons including, for example, religion. Look at the Big Head. That could well be a depiction of God, and they/we are made in God's image.
Convergent evolution on any planet could lead to the development of bipedal humanoids, just like eyes and ears have evolved independently on countless occasions. We don't know how many times in the past the Engineers have come along to steer things along.
So, all in all, your claim of absurdity kind of falls flat on its face IMHO.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent
Voidhawk
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 9:07 AMAh!
Actually I put the ideas as questions in reality, in regards to the absurdity of the claims proposed by the plot. I put an example with the scene as it could be just for illustrate the idea ^^
I keep it as absurd.
I will rewatch the movie when I get the BluRay, but I remember it is said there "a 100% match" and that hurt my ears...but I will rewatch it to be certain.
Systems stuck in a certain level will decay, as entropy will assert itself. Granted we are talking about aliens, but there are cetain things that will be applied to every biological entity. If a culture tries fo fix itself in a given state for even hundreds of years it will decay. Entropy will take its tool no matter what, and not even millions of years would be necessary, set aside billions. Such has never been even attemped in any science fiction book/movie (so far...) disguised as original idea, because it would be just bad, incoherent science fiction, so the concept is mooth, or just inept. It does not hold.
Even an artificial species would evolve into something different after millions of years....evolve or decay and wither away.
To fight entropy (a very ungrateful battle) you need to adapt, evolve.
The sequels (more than the original idea) were so found of mutatios/adaptations...and try to pull this on ? Fail
That could have been done in a given set of concepts, like another species doing the job then moving away/going away, or their society being of machines (but that would also involve some change over the time), or a soiety with no FTL drives and with a galactic culture (THAT would work in a way, but would create many diverse Engineer different races, the slowest changing one the Space Farers - this has been done with great mastery in other works), or a whole civilization in stasis for long time laps (ugh...that is stretching it thin....but could e done...)
The use of the concept of this given alien species seeding life on Earth (All Life) is really based on sand, does not hold well and tastes of bad science fiction. so I hope this will be proven not what happened in the second movie...
Trying to weave a good storyr based on a bad concept just for dramatics does poison the story. I like the movie so I hope this will be revisited and better explained...
Crap, they could have made them land 100.000 years ago and the effect would have been the same, without throwing this million/billion year idea...and ten it could be acceptable, even if forcing a bit. This was used on Battlestar Galactica in its final episode and done well, even though within the series some points were a bit forced, but they came to Earth and found our ancestors, and mixed with them, creating us. There the concept was well done...
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BigDave
MemberDeaconSep-16-2012 9:25 AMsome good ideas, and some are a little upset at the Engineers.
They would have liked to had seen the Space Jockey being the bones of a large Ancient Race at War with their creators who resemble the Xeno.
Yes we have the Mural and it shows a Xeno in a Christ like pose, thus maybe how some of us worship Jesus via image of him dying on the Cross. This means the Engineers worshiped the Xeno and a Xeno was God?
Maybe or maybe not, remember in our culture on Earth we have cultures that depict animals on Murals, Paintings and even Statues and Carvings but this does not mean these animals are God or Godlike.
I believe the Xeno on the Mural is placed like that to link it to a Sacrifice and connect it to the Sacrificial Engineers Sacrifice... and in the Trailers the Sacrificial Bowl was in front of the Mural.
As far as how advanced they should be, it depends... Evolution would say that mankind has evolved from Apes but then we just cant say how far mankind would evolve in a million years... maybe we would not change very much.
I dont think we can assume we would change to some kind of God Like beings that dont need bodies and that can communicate with every other via telepathy no matter where we are etc... would we advance to be like Angels in the Bible.
Well we cant say...
When something has evolved to near perfection for its purpose and habitat it then never changes..... Ants and Spiders have never changed or Evolved for Millions and Millions of years.
How much further could the Engineers had Evolved in Body and Flesh and Blood?
As far as the Outbreak goes well again maybe Sabotage is the answer, and the idea is that these Engineers are not Gods at all.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
BigDave
MemberDeaconSep-16-2012 9:39 AMAs far as the movie plot of seeding goes...
Well they are going to mix the theory of Evolution with Persudo Science and the Ancient Astronaut theories.
Evolution shows that we evolved from basic lifeforms, from bacteria and the like and these bacteria may had got to Earth via comets that contained the basic building blocks of life such as Amino Acids etc...
This movie is going with the concept the Earth was not Baron but was Terra Formed, it had Water, it had Trees and other plant life...
Now with no CO2 you cant have plants and trees, and basic lifeforms like Bacteria can produce CO2.
So i think the movie was going that the Earth had basic micro organisms, and that the Engineers broken down Genetics/DNA then fused with these early and basic Micros and caused them to Evolve.
Now this would had to had been set many many Million if not a Billion years ago... the Artwork shows the seed breaking down, it shows basic organisms getting effected and it shows at the end product a land amphibian like the Ichthyostega
Ridley had said that the Engineers had visted us through History giving us upgrades.
To me this hints that through the natural Process of Evolution of the basic organisms after they was affected by the Engineers DNA/Seed.
They came back and made some other alterations to the natural Evolution to then eventually bring about Mankind.
So i guess Ridleys idea would be if the Engineers never came back after the Sacrificial Scene then the Evolution on Earth would not have brought about Mankind.
That mankind came to be, because the Engineers came down and tampered about with life on Earth at various times and forms of Evolution.
And maybe this is where PROMETHEUS ties in.... maybe the other Engineers who came back and tampered with the Evolution did so against the wishes of the Engineer Elders who seeded Earth at the start of the movie.
So they never intended to create mankind, but a rogue fraction latter came along and tampered with life on Earth and their own genetics to then create a Race in their Image.
This would be the stealing of the FIRE...
The Punishment would be those rogue Engineers then using the FIRE to create a Bio Weapon to wipe us out and then thus getting burnt by playing with that FIRE too much.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
Major Noob
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 9:55 AM^what they said^
I don't think that was billions of years in the past. I've heard that Africa is visible on the planet that opens the film, which if so would be post Pangaea. Also there is already flora visible and plentiful water so life was already in place. It can be assumed they were seeding human life but really, who knows? We could have been an accident.
There are no official numbers to quantify the timespan of Engineer culture, nor does there need to be. They're ancient. Being taken down by their own creation ( if that's what happened) says more about the power of their creation than their own weakness.
2001 and its successors did offer a very original take on a SIMILAR story, but it can't be literally compared to Prometheus. It's influence is everywhere, yes, as an homage. But RS said Prometheus would be like 2001 on steroids, meaning shall we say 2001 gone berserk. The Alien universe is darker and more brutal by definition than that of 2001, and I think it's a mistake to judge them side by side. Just my 2 cents.
All that said, your alternative ideas are very cool.
zzplural
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 10:19 AM@Voidhawk:
You are mistaken. What was shown on the DNA sampler was that there was a "match" between the Engineer and human DNA. Not a 100% match. The accompanying graphic showed an overlay of a very limited subset of gene markers, not the entirety of the 3-billion-plus base pairs that make up the human genome. Shaw went on to say "It's us. It's everything." Meaning that we share genes (as do many other lifeforms on Earth).
Entropy: I imagine that the Engineers, being super-advanced as they are, have a good handle on this kind of thing. As Big Dave has rightly pointed out, evolution does not mean that an organism has to change to survive over a very long period of time. Horseshoe crabs are doing very nicely, thank you very much.
I don't think it's bad sci-fi at all. Especially when you thrown into the mix the fact that the original black goo ingested by the sacrificial Engineer was working at a sub-atomic level – check the animation, that black stuff is smaller than the atomic bonds that bind DNA strands together. That being the case, there's some highly intriguing physics going on there that goes well beyond what is understood by the standard model of particle physics. That's OK with me: they are advanced aliens and we are to them as ants are to us.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent
BigDave
MemberDeaconSep-16-2012 10:29 AMRidley gave some hints to the timeline.
He had said that the Technology of the Derelict Ship was Millions of years old, i assume he means thats how old the Engineers Bio Tech is.
The opening scene we dont see any of that Bio Tech, the Engineers are robed and the ship is more mechanical, well lacked that Organic look of the Juggernaut.
He also said the scene was not the creation of Man, it was the seeding of life as we know it. He went on to say that the Engineers had been to Earth many times and upgraded us.
This points to the scene not being one that leads to mankind, but one that leads to the start of Evolution from basic organisms to complex ones that Evolved into Fish, Mammals and Birds etc.
Mankind would come a lot latter than that, and Evolution says we Evolved from Primates and maybe Ridley is hinting that upgrades means the Engineers came down and tampered with life and maybe thus something they did to primates leads to Mankind and if the Engineers never came back... then well we would not have evolved from primates because simply we are a hybrid of them and primates etc.
Ridley also hinted that the start scene and said what if there was something before us, does he mean the Engineers created life and intelligent species and then wiped them out to then go back to the drawing board until in the end ultimately we was created and they deemed us to be the perfect creation in their image.
So i think the opening scene is maybe set in the time of Proterozoic in the Evolution of Life.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
BigDave
MemberDeaconSep-16-2012 10:34 AM@zzplural
And good point at the end of the day its Sci Fi, and while it may try and use some Science it is only Fiction.
And in basically every Sci Fi movie you would find things that contradict what it actually at the time of the movie scientifically not possible.
We can argue the movie is flawed in how it is trying to say some Race who have not changed in Millions or Years created us and had a hand in Evolution which is well a fairy tale.
But then go back to the drawing board and scrap this Space Jockey is Ancient Astronaut creators of Mankind and Life Story.
Does Giant Elephant people and Xeno Aliens fit in more scientifically.
It does not....
If we can only make movies within the boundaries of Scientific Fact... well Sci Fi movies would be pants really.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
zzplural
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 1:09 PMI couldn't agree more. Didn't Ridley say something along the lines of "it's a science fiction story, not a science lesson"?
Of course, some people have argued that it has to be completely plausible to be a good film. I don't agree with that point of view. Current scientific thinking would not allow for the artificial gravity* on the Prometheus, for example, but I happily let that ride.
*It is possible to simulate gravity by rotation or acceleration in the direction of a ceiling. Neither of these were happening on the Prometheus.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent
Voidhawk
MemberOvomorphSep-16-2012 8:27 PMGood ideas coming along, nice nice...
As I am at my job now, not much time to post, but here goes something...
Good points BigDave posted, but then again ants and other well adapted animals are not technological beings and they do not have societies.
Dinosaurs lived for over 60 million years and never developed, but they had no culture nor technology. Did not need to develop any as well, as they had no competion then....so yeah organisms can reach a level and not change...but they are not technological and their adaptation ultimately leads to extintion as too well adaptations will likely not accept changes in their environment.
Technological cultures will advance, and in a million years, if a given culture does not wither away, it will surelly be a lot more than what we saw from the Engineers here.
Good point on the ship...we cannot see it clearly but it is huge, but does not seem organic, so it could be showing their tech was evolving up to the Juggenaut time...but again aeons of evolving tech would create magical things, telephaty or whatever...would be not recognizable. See our own technological development rate in 20 years....
Add millions to an advanced species...well.
Anyway some ideas posted are good. Yet I still do not think that science fiction should be careless...attention to details makes any story better...
I will post more later...
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