Line #39 YMMV/Prometheus


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3	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
4	** David and exactly how much emotion and free will he really has. Fan opinions seems to range from him being entirely emotionless and simply following Weyland's orders to being entirely sentient and deliberately seeking out loopholes in his programming. [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey Sound familiar?]]
5	** Did David [[spoiler:infect Holloway]] because [[spoiler:Holloway]] was the most convenient target, or because he was the human who had been the biggest [[JerkAss jerk]] to David? Also, since WordOfGod confirmed David [[spoiler:had something of a crush on Elizabeth]], there is a [[MurderTheHypotenuse third potential motivation]].
6	** Vickers decision to leave the moon and return to Earth, despite being told about the [[spoiler: Engineer ship's genocidal capabilities]] can be read in two ways: Vickers is a coward and is willing to put the lives of everyone on Earth at risk to save her own skin OR Vickers is trying to save the lives of the remaining crew and will try and figure out a plan to [[spoiler: stop the ship later]]. The scene happens so quickly that it's impossible to tell what was going through her head and she lingers for several seconds after [[spoiler:Janek announces his plans for HeroicSacrifice and tells her to AbandonShip]], looking upset but not trying to force him to abandon this plan.
7	** The deleted scene where the Engineer speaks to David and Weyland makes his motivations a little bit fuzzy. He doesn't immediately attack the crew, instead he asks why they are there. He also seems somewhat interested in what Shaw is asking him before being beaten down. It's only after Weyland has David arrogantly tell the Engineer that they're there because Weyland wants to live forever and then gets really up-close and personal, talking about how they're both "gods" that the Engineer actually becomes violent.
8	* CommonKnowledge:
9	** Before the film's release, a supposed early draft of the script was leaked. It contained a lot of religious weirdness (even more) and changed the setting's name from LV-223 to Zeus and the Engineers' to Terraformers, and for a while it was thought to be true, until Lindelof swore it was a fake. Still, some believe it to be authentic.
10	** A mistake that is often brought up is that a character says they're only half a billion miles from Earth - which would put them only as far as Jupiter, never mind another solar system. But this ignores the context- namely, Vickers using it as informal shorthand for "miles away from anyone else" rather than an official measurement.
11	** As noted below under OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight, the movie was heralded as Creator/RidleyScott finally returning to "his" franchise, despite the fact that he didn't create the story for ''Alien'' (the screenplay was a done deal before he came on board to direct), and the few ideas he did come up with himself were roundly rejected by the studio.
12	* DesignatedVillain: Meredith Vickers is presented as an antagonist and technically is related to the villain's scheme. But she really has nothing to do with anything bad that happens throughout the film, tries to talk [[spoiler:Weyland]] out of his plan and is one of the only people making rational calls throughout.
13	* FanDislikedExplanation:
14	** Many fans did not like this answer to the question raised by the Space Jockey. One of the main points was the reveal that they look like humans and not the elephantine alien beasts thought until then, despite the fact Ridley Scott had stated endlessly (back since TheNineties, actually) it was their suit which gave them that shape. Even fans familiar with that bit of WordOfGod were still rather miffed at the HumanAliens reveal, since they had preferred the appearance to stay a mystery.
15	** When the full script of the film was leaked on the internet, it was revealed the reason why Engineers wanted to destroy mankind was because [[spoiler:they killed Jesus, who was an Engineer harbinger himself]]. This is still implied in the film, both in the timelines shown in the Engineers' archives and in a deleted scene where the Engineer sees Shaw's cross, but it is ultimately left ambiguous. Many fans prefer it that way, considering the original reason trite and uninteresting.
16	* FanNickname:
17	** "Cuddles/Squidbaby/Shaw Jr." for the creature that [[spoiler:Shaw extracts from her abdomen]].
18	** "Assflower/Proto-burster/Penis Snake" for the Hammerpede, the snakelike creature that attacks Milburn.
19	** "Cloaky" for the first Engineer seen.
20	** "Basketbike", for the sport David invented.
21	** "Black goo", for, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the black goo]].
22	* {{Fanon}}: People tend to believe Fifield is supposed to be Irish, as his actor is from the United Kingdom and he generally looks an awful lot like Wrestling/{{Sheamus}}. However, nothing about his background has been officially released.
23	* FanonDiscontinuity: A very considerable portion of the fanbase has come to see both ''Prometheus'' and ''Film/AlienCovenant'' as just below ''Film/Alien3'' as films they do not want to acknowledge as part of the ''Alien'' franchise, in large part due to the fact that the Xenomorphs origin as a bioweapon is recent, or that it ignores the fan favorite acceptance that at least some Xenomorphs are natural species living on different worlds.
24	* FanPreferredCutContent: ''Prometheus'' was initially titled ''Script/AlienEngineers'', since the original script was released online, there has been no shortage of fans furiously declaring that it has far better {{mythology gag}}s, action scenes, and plot developments than anything that made it to screen.
25	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: Fifield, Milburn, and [[spoiler:the alien cobra]]. What?! The scene was pure slapstick!
26	* GeniusBonus: One of David's scenes prior to the arrival of ''Prometheus'' at LV-223 shows him studying [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleicher%27s_fable Schleicher's fable]], an artificial story written in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language in 1868 [[ScienceMarchesOn (and updated over the decades as our best guess as to the vocabulary of PIE evolved)]]. David's (presumably virtual) instructor was an actual linguistics professor hired by Creator/RidleyScott to create the Engineers' language and teach it to the actors.
27	* HarsherInHindsight: In a less significant but still worth noting thing to mention, a lot of David's friendly interactions with Shaw becomes this considering [[spoiler:that he kills her in ''Film/AlienCovenant'']].
28	* HesJustHiding: With all the FridgeLogic about how [[spoiler: Vickers]] could have gotten out of the way, it’s not completely out of the question that she actually did, off-screen.
29	* HoYay:
30	** The crewmen who have a running bet with each other throughout the movie, Ravel and Chance. While they are more likely just friends or at least on familiar terms with one another, the duo did have an awful lot of significant glances and nearly all of their screen time was with the other.
31	** Millburn toward Fifield. He seems to be laughing at his comment early in the film in a way to gain his approval.
32	* ItsTheSameNowItSucks: A major weakness of ''Prometheus'' is how similiar it is to ''Franchise/{{Alien}}''. In particular, ''Alien'' was revolutionary for having its protagonists be {{Space Trucker}}s, but here, when the characters are well-financed and highly motivated elite scientists, they still act like unprofessional dabblers and look like they have never been in a field research (or even a field trip, for the inconvenience).
33	* JerkassWoobie: Vickers is kind of icy and a bit self-motivated, but doesn't seem to be bad person beneath it all, and was dragged onto the crazy mission to find immortality, and is traumatized after being forced to kill [[spoiler: Holloway]]. By the time things are over, she wants badly to go home, but can't due to the threat the Engineer ship poses and is forced to abandon ship (seeming both frustrated about this and concerned for the others), then run for her life to keep from being crushed to death [[spoiler: but doesn't move fast enough]].
34	* MemeticMutation:
35	** A lot of images have been made comparing the Engineer to [[WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants Handsome Squidward]].
36	** The scene where [[spoiler:the Engineer gets incapaciated by the Trilobite]] has been infamously compared to tentacle hentai by many.
37	** In Brazil, the wordplay "Prometheus e não 'cumprius'" got commonly used in a joking way to criticize the film among its detractors due to it not living up to expectations, as in Portuguese the name of the deity from Greek myth Prometheus sounds similar to "prometeu" ("promised"), thus giving the idea to make a pun with the sentence "Prometeu e não cumpriu" ("It promised and it didn't deliver").
38	** The way Meredith tries to run away from a rolling ship by running along its rolling path rather than away from it is a famous subject of ridicule on the Internet.
39	* MisBlamed: Damon Lindelof used to bear the brunt of the hate for this film by people who didn't like it, as now it's known that he turned the script from what was originally known as ''Aliens: Engineers'' into the first draft of ''Prometheus'', so the blaming does have a basis. However, his treatment didn't end up being the final product either: as it was revealed when the script became available online, Ridley Scott actually cut '''tons''' of scenes that were instrumental to understanding the film, therefore opening plot holes and ambiguities left and right, all while Lindelof futilely tried to caution him ''against'' leaving so much unexplained precisely because of the bad reaction to the finale of ''Series/{{Lost}}''. With Scott's decision to turn the sequel into ''Film/AlienCovenant'', the weight of the duology's unpopularity has switched mostly from Lindelof to Scott.
40	* NightmareRetardant: Sean Fifield's mutated form is simultaneously horrific and disgusting to look at... [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/avp/images/6/6d/Tumblr_mcgwr4dwpQ1qeksb7o1_500.png/ Until you see this production photo of his actor]], Creator/SeanHarris, in full make-up sitting next to Creator/NoomiRapace, Shaw's actress, and smiling.
41	* OneSceneWonder: [[spoiler:A proto-xenomorph]] shows up only for the last minute of the film, and was a huge hit with the fanbase.
42	* OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight: This was the overwhelming reaction pre-release, but ultimately subverted in two different directions: The polarizing reception of both this film and ''Film/AlienCovenant'' is about on par with that of ''Film/Alien3'', which undermined the "does it right" part, while the "creator" part is incorrect because Creator/RidleyScott did direct the original film, but he did ''not'' come up the original story, characters, or title creature from ''Film/{{Alien}}''. That honor belongs to the screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett.
43	* ParanoiaFuel: David can access the memories of the crew while they are in stasis. They've been in stasis for over ''two years''. Furthermore, entrusting your life to an amoral synthetic for that length of time is unnerving.
44	* QuestionableCasting:
45	** It seems odd to cast Creator/NoomiRapace as an English scientist considering she uses her own Swedish voice. The real 'WTH' moment comes with casting an obviously English child actress to play the young Elizabeth. The character being English isn't necessarily vital to the plot, so it would have been less jarring to just have Elizabeth be Swedish like her actress.
46	** As mentioned below, Creator/GuyPearce's old age makeup looks so awful one wonders why they didn't simply cast a more age-appropriate actor as Weyland, especially since the only footage involving a younger Weyland that would justify this was included in [[AllThereInTheManual a promotional video]] as opposed to the movie itself.
47	* TheScrappy: Charlie. He's a douchebag scientist who acts like a complete idiot (even in comparison to everyone else), acts childish when he assumes the Engineers are dead (after partially exploring ''one structure''), is abusive towards David for no reason and uses his girlfriend's infertility to pressure her into sex. However, his death scene is meant to be tragic, when a lot of people ''liked'' that he died, because he was just so hateable.
48	* SpecialEffectsFailure: In a film that is by and large ''astonishing'' to look at, Creator/GuyPearce's terrible aged make-up really stands out, the result of prepping a design on the fly during a then-tighter schedule. One could explain it in-universe as side-effects of Weyland trying to extend his age, but it can still be jarring.
49	* SpiritualAdaptation: This film can be viewed as modernized adaptation of Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness''. This is due to the fact that much of its first-act material was taken directly from Dan O'Bannon's original ''Alien'' script, which was essentially a rework of that story (the version we're familiar with was a root-and-branch rewrite by David Giler and Creator/WalterHill). O'Bannon (like his friend and onetime collaborator, Creator/JohnCarpenter) was a major Lovecraft nut and would eventually direct ''The Resurrected'', an adaptation of Lovecraft's ''Literature/TheCaseOfCharlesDexterWard''.
50	* {{Squick}}: Elizabeth is forced to perform an [[spoiler:emergency c-section on herself to remove a monstrous fetus from her womb]]. The operation is completely uncensored.
51	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Though the film's premise is that humanity finally uncovered clues that could lead them to the aliens who spawned life on Earth, nothing is revealed about their motivations or culture, since [[spoiler:the only Engineer the heroes meet turns out to be an aggressive killer who hunts them down for no apparent reason]].
52	* VindicatedByHistory: The films remains divisive, but after ''Film/AlienCovenant'' was released as a ''massively'' divisive sequel to it, fans have started re-evaluating ''Prometheus'' and seeing more of his good points.
53	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Save for Creator/GuyPearce's faulty makeup (which, as mentioned, can be explained in-universe), even those with a negative opinion on the film can agree that it looks incredible, ''especially'' in 3D. Some examples include but not limited to would be the opening shots of the waterfall and the world, The Engineer's sacrifice, and the Starmap.
54	* VocalMinority: While certainly not perfect, this movie scored a respectable 73% ("Certified Fresh") critical rating on Website/RottenTomatoes--''far'' higher than ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'', ''Film/AlienResurrection'' or either of the two ''Franchise/AlienVsPredator'' movies--and its audience rating was almost as high. Still, to hear some longtime ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' fans talk about it, you'd think this film was a complete disgrace to the franchise with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Context YMMV / Prometheus