I_R wrote:

They spent hundreds of millions of dollars making a film based on the Battleships game, your logic doesn't apply here

Battleship was a straight forward alien invasion film, that being a well worn concept and a lucrative one at that. 

Prometheus 2 on the other hand centres on a women and an android head visiting the 'gods' homeworld in order to gain an explanation for our creation. 

The budget required for such a film kills any hope of a sequel.  Scott wanted far more than he got for Prometheus. 

I simply cannot see him being given the funds that are needed off the back of a film that has met with a lukewarm response from critics and audiences and one that is highly unlikely to be a huge commercial success.

Let's see how it does on the second weekend.

That $50M isn't surprising when it's TWENTY SODDING DOLLARS for a ticket to see it at the Imax.

I've seen it now, and really quite enjoyed it.  In terms of big sci-fi spectacle I haven't seen anything to touch it for a while, and it was nice that it managed to fill a 60ft screen without needing hordes of aliens or big spaceships blowing stuff up.  The design was the star though, as apart from the couple of standouts already mentioned I think the characters were pretty much entirely forgettable.

I didn't, however, have as many problems with plot holes as most people here seem to have had.  Why did David infect Holloway with black goop?  Because he wanted to know what it'd do, and he was an easy target as he was already half cut.  Why did the Engineers want to go to Earth?  Dunno, that's for the sequel.  I agree with Tempy's decision that the alien snake thing was what happens when the black goop mixed with the worms we saw earlier on, but considering it's such an important part of the film, the method of action of said black goop isn't kept consistent enough.

Ok, we get the idea that it's some sort of alien weapon.  It mixes with worms and turns them into killer snakes that want to leap down throats and presumably impregnate something.  But why does it do such different things to humans?  We see an Engineer at the start of the film drink some, it unwinds his DNA and he literally falls apart into a river on Earth for little or no apparent reason.  Is he the catalyst for life or something?  Later, both Fifield and Holloway get infected by it too; Holloway by drinking it and Fifield by having his newly-revealed face stuck in it during the snake attack.  It looks like it does to Holloway what it does to the Engineer, he starts getting the same black veiny stuff going on, so maybe he'd have collapsed into his constituent DNA if Vickers didn't incinerate him.  If so though, why the hell was he just starting to suffer it after 10 hours, when the Engineer at the start of the film had mere seconds?

But why on Earth does it turn Fifield into some sort of weird killing machine?  And why, when transmitted from Holloway to Shaw, does it not affect her in the same way at all, but rather impregnates her with something?

So, depending on who you are, how it gets into you, or randomly, it either 1). deconstructs you as you fall into a river, 2). turns you into a super-strong killing machine, 3). impregnates you with a squid monster, or 4). does pretty much the same as 1). but over the course of a day rather than instantly.

Tempy's right about Alien lore that the aliens in question were meant to mix a bit with their host's characteristics when they were born, but I don't see that happening here.  Shaw's thing that she extracts is a giant squid monster with no resemblance to a human; yet when it passes on its "infection" to the Engineer, we get a proper Alien alien.  I just can't get the mechanism of action of the black goop right in my head, which annoys me more than anything.

Other plot snags; I can forgive the Engineer waking up and deciding to go straight about his mission.  After all, our humans all woke up in a similar manner and immediately went about their jobs too.  Why wasn't he woken up previously though?  What were all the Engineers running from?  

Now there's an alien on LV-233.  What now?  How does that segue into another Engineer ship full of its eggs ending up on LV-426?  Is this a planned part of the black goop's lifecycle or an unexpected offshoot?  Can we assume that it's mean to be black goop into a female = giant squid = alien = lots of eggs = face huggers = etc?

And what the heck were they doing with the Engineer's head?  "Hey, stick some AMPS in it!  Wow look it's moving!  More AMPS!  No, LESS AMPS!  Oh, it's popped."  What were you all trying to achieve there?

The cave paintings made no sense either.  If the Engineers told early humans where they came from, why were they apparently about to wipe us out?  I guess that'll be revealed in a sequel, but still.

Plus, Weyland; that's a heap of crap.  I can imagine the exchange.

"Hey Mr. Weyland, my girlfriend and I have found matching cave paintings pointing towards this planet.  We've no idea what'll be there, except possibly tall people that early humans worshipped.  Will you fund the trip?"

"Sure.  In fact, I'll sneak along, because you know what?  I bet they can give me eternal life."

What?

EXPLAIN IT TO ME

.... ok, I see where that might come from.  Holloway's the infected one, and it's some of his horrible infected sperm that's bursting out of Shaw.

But why does the white snake/proto-facehugger want to leap down Milburn's throat then, mimicking the spermsquid monster?

Because it was frustrated about him getting his PHD despite not knowing the first thing about how to deal with Alien Lifeforms, which I'm pretty sure doesn't including 'babby speak and petting'

So have you guys seen the epic Space Jesus explanation? Ie the one that references the interview with Ridders who flat up says Jesus was a space alien?

I've favourited it on my twitter... Hold on..

regmcfly wrote:

So have you guys seen the epic Space Jesus explanation? Ie the one that references the interview with Ridders who flat up says Jesus was a space alien?

Mentioned it on the last page or so, yep.
Didn't link to it. Some of it holds a lot of weight but that just makes me slap my face even more as there were clearly the building blocks in place for something greater than we got. Those murals needed more attention, please let the directors cut resolve all of this.

There does seem to be this weird assumption that if you don't like it you just didn't 'get it' which is something I find a little insulting as I most definitely 'got it' but I just don't think it did 'it' as well as it could have done.

There was also a massive critical backlash against it early on, which has evened out now but it did smack of lesser institutions reviewing it before their peers had got around to it and not wanting to look stupid by loving it when everyone else hated it.

Ridley in getting bad then good reviews non shock. Please see Alien, Blade Runner etcs

regmcfly wrote:

Ridley in getting bad then good reviews non shock. Please see Alien, Blade Runner etcs

Yes, I didn't say it was a shock or anything. Just that it had happened. As ever, I've previously discussed this in this here thread.

Tempy wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Ridley in getting bad then good reviews non shock. Please see Alien, Blade Runner etcs

Yes, I didn't say it was a shock or anything. Just that it had happened. As ever, I've previously discussed this in this here thread.

WELL I'LL JUST STOP SAYING THINGS IN THIS TREAD THEN SHALL I

I took that the goo incorporates some of it's hosts features, ie the one birthed from Shaw has the ability to reproduce for the first time since it was a product of sex, leading once again to the more traditional Xeno after it impregnates the Engineer, going one huge evolutionary stage further and having a more bipedal form while retaining the reproductive element, becoming a queen (?).

Still, that couldn't have been the first Xeno at the end because there were already murals of them. Also, didn't the dead Jockey by the door chop off his own head to remove a face hugger?

No U