Prometheus EXPLAINED - Movie Review (SPOILERS)

Prometheus is a movie that in only a few short days of release has caused debate amongst film nerds widespread arguments and more confusion than any film released in years many complain of unanswered questions poor writing or even that it's just plain boring having seen the film multiple times now I feel I've come into an understanding of the events that take place in the movie this video is not meant to be seen as fact since many things in this movie are open to interpretation this is just my take on the film and hopefully it can help let's start with the title prometheus what is Prometheus well in the movie it's the name of the ship that carries the crew which are on a journey to meet the beings they hope created humans but what is Prometheus to literature in Greek mythology Prometheus was a Titan who is known as the creator of mankind and also for the theft of fire for human use which helped further the progression of humankind Prometheus was then punished by Zeus and sentenced to eternal torment for his sin also prometheus is known as a figure who represented the search for scientific knowledge thus the name of the ship in the film Prometheus was also known as foreshadowing the fact that efforts to improve human life could bring forth tragedy instead that brings me to the opening of the film the movie opens with grand shots of a desolate earth no life-forms are shown anywhere except this dude in a cloak walking around and a UFO above him this creature then ingests this black liquid which degrades his body scattering his ashes into the ocean his sacrifice seems to then spring forth the building blocks of human life to me this creature embodies the myth of Prometheus the mythological creator of mankind and the character in Greek mythology who helped further human civilization but the question is why did the engineers as these beings are eventually called knowingly create life did they create life for a purpose we'll get to that later next we meet our two main characters in the film Shaw and Holloway played by Noomi Rapace and the dude who looks like Tom Hardy who isn't as good as Tom already and it's kind of crappiest part of the movie nevertheless they discover this ancient hieroglyphic thing of a dude pointing to a system of planets and it's the same type of painting and design that they found around the entire world this leads to a team of people and working on the prometheus to find the creators of mankind next we meet one of the film's most important characters David and Android played by Michael Fassbender we see David performing his daily routines which consists of learning new languages watching classic movies and spying on people's dreams he decides to take a look at Elizabeth Shaw's mind while she sleeps and for me this told me two things the obvious one would be that we learn a little bit about Shaw's past she got a good father a religious upbringing and a belief in God the second was much more important we discover that David is curious he's an independent thinker and he does what he wants to do why would he peer into Shaw's dreams what purpose or benefit would that bring to a robot the only reason can be that he wanted to know more about her he wanted to fulfill a desire inside him to learn about something new with no regard for how personal or intrusive he was being this is very important to the movie and helps bring understanding to the things David does throughout the film eventually all the characters awake from sleep and land on LV 2 to 3 discovering what appear to be objects made by someone now let me reiterate they land on LV 2 to 3 not lv-426 where the original alien takes place the team explores the inside of this structure discovering a large human-like face made out of stone a room filled with containers that have some sort of black goo oozing out of it and worms those worms are important we'll get to those later continuing his course of independent curiosity David takes one of these containers with him keeping that a secret from everyone else also during this scene the Explorers alter the state of this room's environment causing the black goo to eventually leak from the container they also discover a dead engineer body left behind decapitated by the door that leads to the giant stone head and the two idiot team members who are just stupid get left behind in our total they'll be picked up the following morning due to bad weather outside the ship now let's jump to a little exchange between the captain and vicars the captain jokingly hints at Vickers being a robot leading her inviting him into her room for implied sex it's never clear whether or not they go through with it as it's never discussed or referenced again but this has led people to question is Vickers a robot well there are two different schools of thought to this let's start with the evidence suggesting that she is human she sleeps in a cryo chamber in the beginning of the film which an Android wouldn't need we see her doing push-ups after awakening from sleep like she's working off some kind of cryo hangover she demonstrates emotions such as anger and shock and she seems to be fatigued throughout some of the more physical scenes in the movie she seems jealous when Weyland says David is like a son to him as we later hear in the film Vickers calls Weyland father and we hear that they constantly argued over the ownership of the whelen company all human traits then there is evidence supporting the robot theory as stated she refers to Weyland as her father while he seemed too old to be David the Android also refers to Weyland as a parent Vickers is also able to throw David against a wall and keep him pinned there as seen in previous films dim androids be strong later we learned at the surgery module in her quarters only performs procedures on males it's not even calibrated for females which would be odd considering it's use is for vicars when Weyland later dies in the film she shows little to no emotion which could suggest a deep hatred for her father or that she's an Android also I brought up that Vickers slept in a cryo chamber a human trait as a robot would need the assistance of cryo sleep however in the first alien film Ashe slept in one as he was hiding the fact that he was an Android from the crew there are also people who believe it's possible that Vickers isn't aware that she is an Android and that she's lived her whole life thinking she was a human I find this hard to believe simply because she must have cut herself at least a few times noticing that her blood looks like milk would be a pretty big hint to me huh but perhaps the most important evidence suggesting that there is another Android on board the prometheus besides David is this robots there is a rumor about this movie that there is a robot in prometheus that maybe - when the filmmaker himself says something like that you have to wonder it's clear that he was being very careful not to give defining evidence to either theory she never bleeds once in the film if we saw that we'd know so what do you believe is the vicar's in Android now in the scene where Vickers pins David to a wall David reveals that the sleeping Weyland told him to try harder this seems to suggest that Weyland is instructing David and possibly Vickers on some course of action perhaps treating the rest of the crew as expendable to fulfill his desires in the very next scene while Shaw discovers that the engineers DNA matched human DNA we see David examining the capsule he brought back in which he gazes at a tiny speck of the black goo david wastes no time and immediately goes to dr. Holloway's spiking his drink with the alien specimen but while that is important the conversation these two characters have is perhaps the most pivotal conversation in the entire film Holloway says he is disappointed because all the engineers were dead and his whole goal was to hope to ask them the big question why were humans made for what purpose did they make us this leads David to respond why do you think your people made me yeah we made you cuz we could can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your Creator oh and you suck at acting it's quite possible that the engineers did not have some profound reason for creating us they didn't need to have some grand purpose perhaps they just created humans because they could we'll talk more about this later now we get to see the two lost freaking dumb scientist exploring more of the caverns and they discover a huge pile of dead engineers literally stacked one on top of the other against a wall one of them says it like a scene out of a holocaust painting it seems obvious that this pile of dead engineers and the previously discovered decapitated one suggest that a battle of some kind took place there possibly even amongst their own kind exterminating one another more on that later in the next scene we learn a little more about Shaw she apparently is unable to bear children and in an attempt to make her feel better Holloway bangs her hey sometimes it just works that way I can't have children let's have sex but I can't make babies yes but what's important about this scene is a question that shot asks when Holloway suggests that she should stop believing in God because the engineers made us she responds and who made them now we get an important scene that was possibly handled a little too cliche the two lost scientists the stupid idiots are back in this room with a stone head and the black goo has now created tiny streams along the ground remember those worms we saw earlier well they're back but they're different now they're not only much larger and aggressive but their genetics and look have drastically changed affected by the black gooey stuff Vasili retarded scientist tries touching the dang thing which to me was a pretty friggin stupid thing for him to do it wraps itself around his arm breaking it and when the other scientist cuts off its head it grows right back a definite trait of worms the same time the other scientist is sprayed with a black goo which gets inside his helmet now Holloway wakes up and in just an overnight period he sees that he's been infected with something and we know that it's from David spiking his punch as the team heads back to the caverns to search for the missing scientist David is able to convince the captain to allow him to go off on his own to fix a malfunctioning probe David uses this to his advantage and discovers an engineer still in cryosleep and an entire navigation system pointing to earth showing that the engineers planned on traveling to earth but something stopped the process meanwhile Holloway gets worse and worse to the point where Vickers doesn't want to let him get back on the ship for fear of infecting the whole crew with this intense herpes he seems to have he willingly gives himself up and Vickers uses the flamethrower on him it is reasonable to assume that whatever happened to those worms would have happened to Holloway he may have retained much of his human self but he would have been mutated and violent turned into some form of a weapon now when David is alone with Shaw he discovers that she is knocked up but not just knocked up she's three months pregnant with an abnormal fetus not only is this impossible because she's barren but they only just had sex the previous night upon learning that the fetus as alien she decides to do anything and everything to get it out of her leading to one of the film's best scenes she uses Vickers medical pod and induces surgery on herself removing the creature from its side of her which we will later learn is the very first facehugger ever form in its earlier stages of development remember the dude who got sprayed with a black goo well he returns wreaking havoc on everything in sight it's fair to assume that this is what would have happened to Holloway if he hadn't given himself over to the flames though so what do we know about this black goo now whatever it comes in contact with retains the basic structure and abilities of its genetic makeup as seen by the worm regrowing its head and the scientists still appearing to be human but it makes its host stronger and most of all violent and destructive with no shade of its former self quite a weapon these engineers have manufactured Shaw staggers into a room discovering that Weyland is in fact alive hoping himself to meet his makers with the goal of seeing if they can lengthen his life and save him from death upon first viewing of the film this twist bothered me it didn't really seem to have a point and it felt like it wasn't necessary to the story but after my second viewing it didn't bother me as much I realized it helped bring more light to David's actions and why he seemed to have his own agenda with things it is very reasonable to assume much of what David did was under orders from Whalen later the captain is talking with Shaw and he reveals he thinks that what they're on is actually a military base he says they're not stupid enough to make weapons of mass destruction on their own doorstep it got out it turned on him it seemed a little far-fetched to believe that he could figure that out so quickly but I think that character is clearly much smarter than he lets on he's actually one of my favorite characters in the whole movie neither subtle but plays him really well is it possible that these engineers were infected with their own creation causing an inner war amongst themselves does that explain the piles of bodies discovered earlier the captain says he'll do whatever he has to to see that that black death Gustav doesn't get back to earth now we cut to Shaw David and Weyland and some other pointless characters going to awake the last remaining engineer David reveals he discovered that the engineers were in the process of leaving for Earth when Shaw asks why he says sometimes in order to create one must first destroy after they awake the engineer David says something to him who knows what he says we don't really know it did kind of remind me of that language he was practicing in the beginning of the film perhaps someone will find out what it is later I don't know whatever he says the engineer doesn't like it he rips off David's head and kills everyone in the room except Shaw who escapes she gets message to the captain that they must destroy the ship because the engineer is planning on continuing his original mission heading to earth destroying it with what it first seemed like a surprising amount of acceptance of his death the captain flies Prometheus into the derelict stopping the ship from continuing its course but I recalled later that the captain said he'd do anything to keep the earth safe so I bought it Vickers gets to the escape pod only to be crushed by falling debris Oh too bad now Shaw goes back to the remains of the Prometheus ship which is Vickers separate pod ejected by the captain in it she discovers her alien fetus is still alive and it's grown to a very large size through her earpiece she hears that David is still functional and he warns her that the engineer is very angry and is coming for her she lets loose the giant facehugger which overpowers the engineer and Plan a tentacle in his mouth Shaw then goes back finds David's head and body and convinces him to take her on one of the remaining derelict ships searching for who made the engineers now we get the scene we see the body of the engineer shaking violently and something bursts out of it it's the very first xenomorph alien and it's early stages of development it's shrieks revealing a second set of Jaws and then the screen goes black so what the f does all this mean well here's my take the engineers created humans as seen in the very first scene of the movie why do they really need a reason as revealed when David is told by Holloway the only reason humans created AI was because they could it doesn't have to be a profound reason the engineers created us so why along the way did they decide to destroy us and what stopped them I have a couple theories perhaps they were dissatisfied with the course humans took with all of the death and destruction that humans have brought or perhaps there were always two classes of engineers some who believed humans were a great creation and some who wanted us dead perhaps this led to a war amongst themselves where they turned on each other killing themselves off whatever the reason it's clear they wanted us dead in the end why well the answer isn't entirely clear in the film many have been angered by that I'll tell you why it doesn't bother me for one there's been a sequel for Prometheus planned since the start of production on this film it would be absurd and downright ludicrous for us to expect all the answers in this movie but also I think some of the best science fiction films are the ones that ask the big questions movies that present the audience was something that is difficult to understand and perhaps never gives us the full answers early reviews of Prometheus are mostly positive but slightly mixed this isn't surprising to me considering the original alien film also received the same reception upon its initial release according to Wikipedia critical reaction to the film was initially mixed reviews by variety sight and sound Vincent Canby and even Leonard Maltin mixed or negative a review by Time Out said the film was an empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative poverty which brings me to something alien one of the largest complaints I've heard of Prometheus is that it leaves us too many unanswered questions some have even gone as far as to blame that encore writing but just for one second remove yourself from aliens alien 3 Alien Resurrection and the AVP movies remove yourself from all the lore and books associated with alien imagine that you are a person in 1979 sitting down to watch alien for the first time when the film ends you may have thought okay that was scary but what's with that giant creature attached to that gun thingy what are those weird spider things that lay eggs in people's throats and why did that random ship crash into the planet and what are those eggs doing inside of it and who sent the distress signal to get them there in the first place alien has just as many unanswered questions as Prometheus does if not even more it's just that now over 30 years later the film is so famous that people tend to overlook them we live in an Internet world where people are so used to immediate answers and satisfaction that it seems like we've forgotten how great it is to see a film that asks us questions the audience a film that makes us question things and wonder and search not every film needs a concrete answer to every question it poses to leave us guessing and wanting more is a bold choice on the filmmakers part it's my firm belief that years from now Prometheus will be hailed as a wholly original science fiction film and ranked in with other sci-fi classics that helped mold the genre [Music]

Channel: Chris Stuckmann

Views: 3,564,408

Rating: 4.7889595 out of 5

Keywords: Prometheus, Explained, Movie, Review, Spoilers, Ridley, Scott, Prequel, Alien, Aliens, Xenomorph, Noomi, Rapace, Michael, Fassbender, Idris, Elba, Surgery, Scene, Worms, Engineers, David, Android, Pregnant, Pregnancy, Facehugger, Creation, Science, Fiction

Id: D7CChfYoO_I

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/otherwiseyep]

"EXPLAINED" is an inaccurate headline.

The video is interesting, and explores some of the theories and controversies, but ultimately concludes that the film is purposely ambiguous, and that leaving unanswered questions is a good thing.

[u/sirdrnope]

Excellent need more stuff like this. Keep it coming OP

[u/ShutupPussy]

Thanks for posting! I wasn't as harsh as him on some of his criticisms but I think he did a good job of addressing the critics and the fans. I agree with his conclusion.

[u/Philster08]

Chris Stuckmann is amazing. I watch his videos quite frequently. I agree with him about 98.9% of the time.

[u/randy05]

You guys might wanna check this one out too. Solid answers for popular questions.