Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Making Of The Opening Scene For PROMETHEUS

movie was a disappointment lets be honest, but the effects were prob the best i've ever seen, particularly the engineers- looked amazing. loved the way they used actors in suits mixed with forced perspective rather then cgi cartoon characters,lot of hacks in hollywood who need to start takin notes !

The movie needs Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett

Who IS The Albino?

Wait, "earth DNA?" Did he just confirm that the corrupted Engineer DNA falling into the water is how humanity was formed? Finally, a straight answer to one of the movie's questions.

I loved the movie. :/

@Grif: I loved this movie

@jj2112. Were we supposed to get all of that info from that scene? That's what I thought all along, but they made everything in this movie so vague, I really couldn't be sure of what anything was supposed to mean. I did actually enjoy the movie overall, but I hate it when movies substitute muddy plotting for actual mystery.

Yeah, what I get from the scene is that the goo is a DNA catalyst which breaks down DNA into the "building blocks" of life. I assume that, given that water contains no DNA (I am not sure what they mean by "Earth DNA") it creates unicellular organisms which eventually evolve into humans.

@ BlackAmerica, if that's what you want to call it...

Its like they set the movie up in away that would allow them to play the sequel off any one of the many confusing themes in Prometheus but they don't know which theme they wanna focus on... they're were wating on our reaction... then they'll plan Prometheus 2 accordingly based on our response.

this movie was a 2 star film at best. it's saved from one star status because of it's amazing visuals. BUT the plot holes are endless, the script is atrocious, there is so much underacting going on to major events, and that is just to name a few things. the movie just isn't very good. It thinks it's smarter than what it is.

I only posted this article because I was captivated by the visuals.

@Thamorse answer to question No 1. to create or develop life; answer number 2. Cause humans are like cancer (quoting agent Smith- Matrix) in some point we start to Fvcking things up so they need to clean the house. that's My POV.

@ship i agree with what you're saying there. even i was smart enough to figured this stuff out during and after i saw the film. kudos for being smart dude. and by the way, ridley scott has intended this to be a two parter, so we're going to a second film of this that will definitely answer some questions that a couple of morons would have, lmao...

Ok, here we go. I've never, in my 28 years of life, gotten into an internet fight because it's kind of pathetic, and I'm not about to start now. Just to clear some things up, my all time favorite movie is Pulp Fiction, and I loved Inception, neither of which are straight forward, but they at least resolved major plot points during the movie. I wasn't confused, infused, diffused, or any kind of other "-fused" by Prometheus. I was able to follow the movie and figured out everything that everyone else did. It was just frustrating that the long build up won't pay off until the proposed sequel. Also, the whole "humans are a cancer" point is a) nonsensical, because the Engineers are from millions of light years away, so what happens on Earth isn't of such great importance to them, and b) if that truly is their sole motivation, that's pretty lame, as that angle was already used in a major sci-fi franchise within the past decade.

@ Ship, that really wasn't an attack towards you. I also figured that was the motivation when I saw the movie, and immediately thought it was lame while simultaneously hoping that a better motivation would be revealed. My comment was mainly directed to the guys who ironically gloated about how smart they were for understanding a big budget Hollywood movie while also displaying a command of punctuation and capitalization that is tenuous at best.

people asking and needing to know why he did it is just kind of confounding to me. why is that important? You talk about the film as if it's called Prometheus: The Answers, but if you fallow the film it clearly examines humanity's curiosity. It asks question for the sake of asking questions and David even brings up that sometimes the answers are not what you wanted. not as special as you want them to be. He himself understands that as a creation purely out of curiosity and perhaps humanities' creation and destruction is just more curiosity. Saying that yes we have a creator, but in a malicious and nihilistic way. We aren't special and we don't matter.

As for actual answers my theory is that since the Engineers are a people and an organization in some form they must have factions. I believe that the ones who created us are not the ones who wish to destroy us. Disagreeing factions of cousre. Perhaps they think creating life was an abomination and not their right or again perhaps it doesn't mean anything and our destruction is just another experiment.

Finally lets not forget the namesake of the movie. Prometheus the greek god who gave man fire or as the film put it, leveled the playing field. I think those engineers that came down to us tried to warn us. Remember that Prometheus was punished for helping man. I assume the Engineers that created us were also punished. At the end of the day though we discover their plan what they warned us about and we find out their effort to destroy us destroyed them. Man's curiosity and search for answers is leading us to our makers and perhaps they want to speak to us. Just our shit luck we find the ones who want to kill us.

I think the film does take some thought and patience, but at the same time it is not as tightly scripted as it could have been. It is not a complete package, but to call it shit because you want to know some meaningless fanboy question or want to see more xenomorphs is just missing the point. It is far from a master piece and yet i still feel like it's a fantastic film. It interested me on many levels and perhaps not every character was interesting or entertaining, but enough were to keep me going. At the very least with all the criticisms I expected the film to slow down or get bored, but I didn't. The film had excelling pacing and for what people call a "sloppy" plot and in several ways it is toward the end it still keeps going with my full attention. Thematically again it isn't as tightly woven as it should have been, but every idea it threw out there was fair game. It was a valid question whether its general philosophy or religion. It had a lot of ideas and a lot of questions and I could talk about so many things about the movie that I am baffled to hear people call it a stupid film. Something that makes me think so much and excites me of the possibilities and embraces science fiction in a way that is almost wondrous as it is dark and morbid. I loved the film flaws and all.

The sequel has potential to not only be the better film but make Prometheus a better film. I don't need answers to how something works or dealing too much in fixing the problems with Prometheus, but I do want some resolution to certain themes as well as motivations of the engineers. Those are important answers and even a clever non answer is fine with me. As long as they don't bend to the bitching fan boys and hap hazardly connect it to the truly tired Alien franchise and some how include more xenomorphs would just be a let down. This is set up as a new direction and I want it to go further from the Alien franchise personally. I can see this becoming bigger and and i love the scope and I want to see more not for answers because I think that shits on what will surely be an interesting journey.

I just thought it was a fun film, I enjoyed it!

The fact that it didn't answer the questions it asked didn't particularly bother me. Why did they create us? It doesn't effect the story that occurs on LV-223, so it doesn't matter. What matters is that they DID create us, and the characters make that important discovery. Why they created us is left for the audience to interpret. Why did they want to destroy us? Again it doesn't affect the events on LV-223 so it doesn't matter. That can be left for the sequel if they chose to do so...

The movie had other issues, the biggest 3 being:

1) The black goo was a weak and inconsistent plot device.

2) The alien abortion scene was horribly unrealistic and Shaw then proceeded to continue her action scenes, practically as if nothing had happened.

3) It needed fewer useless characters (and scenes), and more intriguing discussion/dialogue between the characters we care about.


Yes, I had some smaller quibbles about the motivations of the characters, contradictions with other movies in the series, etc. But those didn't really effect my overall thoughts on the movie. The big 3 problems however made this movie a 7/10 for me. Maybe even a 6. It could have been much better if the plot was stripped to its bones and the important ideas/scenes were expanded upon.

of course it needed to answer questions, so do a lot of films. I enjoyed it. Everything Humby said is spot on on! Yeah, there are many unanswered questions, this film just gets picked apart. Do you think Predator, one of the most badass mofos in the Universe really couldn't kill Danny Glover?;)

^^^he speaks the truth you know!;)

To all those oh-so-smart people, riddle me this:

Do engineers have a penis?
Do engineers have lady engineers back home?
Do engineers hane nipples like Batman's?
Do engineers like bodybuilding?
Do engineers like gladiator movies?
Do engineers have a healthy diet that includes squid, or is it the other way round?
Do engineers know they can get cheap wigs on Earth?
Do engineers dream of electric squids?
Do engineers like to dress up as elephants?
And, do engineers know that if they came to Earth Tony Stark would shove a nuke up their tailpipe?

And now for something completely different.

Scott chose to make a HP Lovecraftian modern day rip off of "At the Mountains of Madness". That really irks me ... how Ridley Scott thinks it is ok to rip off HP Lovecraft and claim that it is his idea. Prometheus is basically a rip off of HP Lovecrafts 'At the Mountains of Madness". He even traded the designs of Giger for the lovecraftian squid-tentical designs. I woul d understand if Ridley was doing an homage to Lovecraft. But he isnt. He is claiming the story for himself. Saying that he invented all of this universe. When in fact, it is a rip off of At the Mountains of Madness and just re set the location in outer space. How lame that he would claim credit for that story. Too many similarities between the two stories. 1. Team of scientists/geologists go on an expedition to a remote unhibated location due to arkeological evidence found in ancient writings. 2. They discover fantastic and horrific ruins. 3. They discover the remains of several ancient life forms not of this earth. 4. Team members, gets slaughtered. 5. By exploring these fantastic structures, the men are able to learn the history of the Elder Things by interpreting their magnificent hieroglyphic murals. 6. The elder things were the creators of life on this planet. 7. They built their cities with the help of "Shoggoths", biological entities created to perform any task, & assume any form. 8. The disintigration of the Elder things civilization is directly linked to the uprising of Shaggoths. 9. The Elder Things missing from the camp had somehow returned to life and, after slaughtering the explorers, returned to the city of their origin. 10. They are then confronted with an immense, ululating horror in the form of a black, bubbling mass, which after a brief glimpse they identify as a Shoggoth.


He TOTALLY ignored the previous artistic design from the 1st movie Alien. (He went from using H.R. Gigers xenomorph and set designs in 'Alien' to Star Trek Huminoid aliens in Prometheus. (Which is so unimaginative when you compare to the original Iconic designs by Giger)

The beginning of the movie opens with a sequence of shots of sky, clouds, and fields of grass of some planet, presumably earth. A humanoid alien in a rubber muscle suit drinks some stuff and disintigrates as he throws himself into the water. That is supposed to be how they planted the seed of life in the oveans and how humans came to be - Hence we have the sae exact DNA as the Space Jockies. (How utterly ridiculous). I guess we were engineered into being by giant hairless caucasion bodybuilders with arian blue eyes. ok. Hitler would have liked that part.

Did Ridley Scott forget that he used opening shots of fields before that sequence with tha man in the rubber suit? Because the green fields would already suggest that there is already life on the planet. Because all life on this planet is related in some biological evolutionary way. Grass as we know it didn't evolve into grass until the Cretaceous age about 67 million years ago and by that time, the Earth was already fully inhabited by a dinosaur population. All vertibrates descended from the original vertibrates that crawled out of the ocean, the original anscestors of Humans and Dinosaurs and all animals with a backbone. So if there were already fields of grass by the time engineers came to earth to plant their "seed", then there were already vertibrates walking the earth, in fact dinosaurs.

In the original Alien movie, Ripley initiated a quarantine when the one guy gets the face hugger on his face and the rest of the crew want to bring him aboard. Ripley was perfectly fine with killing those crew members by not opening the door, to effectively engage quarantine protocols. After their initial expedition to the ruins and biological matter in Prometheus, there is no talk of any quarantine. Even after the one crew member becomes mutated into a monster after h e becomes infected. No word on any quarantine protocalls. I love being treated like I am stupid for the sake of formication in a movie. The scientists take of their helmuts for god sakes, there wasnt even a mention of quarantine. Jeez.

Also...the mythos of the alien series already works why change things? Before, Aliens were actual aliens that hail from the alien homeworld Zenomorph Prime. Now, all o fthe sudden, the Aliens in Alien are not Aliens but biologically engineered weapons created in a lab. wha? So ...why is the title of the first movie Alien then? That doesnt make sense.

I didnt appreciate how I was treated as an audience. How everything was explained through dialogue. That was incredibly cheeze and very CSI Miami like dialogue. Film is a visual artform and the story can be explained through visuals, it doesnt need to be dumbed down and baby fed to me by bad dialogue. Alien didnt have perfect dialogue eother, but leaps adn bounds ahead of Prometheus. Almost like Ridley went back and unlearned some of the things that make him such a great filmmaker to begin with.

Then the motivations of the individual characters were non existant for the most part. -In one seen the professional botonist and biologist are panicking and runaway froim their group, only to, in the next scene, they get turned into comic relief for some reason and they do the exact opposite of what they did in the previous scene and engage the vagina snake.- If it were a real biologist and a real alien, or even a rare species on earth, he would have only observed from afar, take notes, leave without touching anything, then come back with a special team to capture the life form for further study. He would never have tried to touch it with his hands. Biologists dont do that on earth and a top biologist would never do that to an alien. But even still... the direction of the character directly conflicts in both scenes. One scene he is horrified and the very next scene he is fascinated?!? One scene is a fear reaction, the nex is a comical reaction? wha? They initially got scared when they entered the chamber with all of the vessels of goo. They run away and get lost. The captain tells them there is a possible life form near them (The captain doesnt think this is very important appearantly) and so they do what? They decide to camp in the very same room/chamber with the vessels of black goo that scared them to begin with. Why would they decide to hunker down and camp in the very place they were willing to run away and abandon their team from? doesnt make sense.

I remember when me and my friends watched Alien for the 1st time. We were truly astonished, especially at the Spacejockey. That was a movie that truely made one ask bigger questions. That was the movie that truely challeneged your imagination. (The spacejockey in Alien was about 3 times larger in size and proportion in the original Alien movie. The Space Jockies featured in Prometheus were Dwarves compared to the original.) It is because Ridly Scott decided that the original designs were no good even though that is what partly made the opriginal such a success, for a more human sized antagonist so the audience could relate to the human aspects. Blah Blah Blah . What a bunch of crap. And Giger's original designs for the masks, suits, and sets were far far far more intricatly designed than the clean crispe designs of Prometheus' Spacejockies. If you would look at a picture from the original Alien Spacejockie with that of a Spacejockie from Prometheus, you can clearly see that the original design has far more detail, and artistic integrety than the designs of the Spacejockies in Prometheus.

I felt, for whatever reason, that Ridley Scott hates H R Giger. I think Scott Hates Giger because he is worried that people might think the zenomorphs from Alien movies are cool because of Gigers designs and not because of Scotts ego or direction. I think Scott purposely didnt want zenomorphs in Prometheus because he wanted to prove that he could make an alien movie without Giger's designs. Scott abandoned the xenomorph design for the Lovecraftian squid designs. (like that is anymore original...). Scott discards the design of the Space Jockies elephant mask and suit in favor for giant hairless caucasion humanoids with arian blue eyes. The only ting that felt Alien or H R Giger in Prometheus was the zenomorph mural that was on the ceiling. How could there be a mural of a zenomorph before they evolved into the xenomorphs?


As a moviegoer the film was great. Stunning, even. But as fine film, it's mediocre. And on a personal note, and as an aspiring filmmaker, I look up to Ridley Scott. I want him to grow as a filmmaker, as the Beatles did with their music. Not only that but he should be responsible and hire good writers and craft the film around the script, not craft the script around the movie. He thinks in terms of shots and what will look good on camera in a scene, or the audience response of a sequence of shots. That is all fine, but you shouldn't change the script around. It was like he wanted to make a heavy deep symbolic film, but with cheap gimmicks and shocks instead of a good script. It is a goddamn shame. It is reminiscient of Battlefield Earth or The Chronicles of Riddick or something. Not what I call good filmmaking.

@Keldor - Agree 100% with you. It would be great to finally see a Lovecraf movie done right, but it doesn't bode well... It was rumored that Tom Cruise would be the star of Mountains, and we all know how his movies end (well, all except the Samurai). This movie should end in despair and hopelessness for the human race, not Tom Cruise saving the day, IMO.

Says it all. Freakin Hilaroius, lol

Also...how did David the Android's head function after being severed? A much more advanced android, in the future, needed to be hooked up to all kinds of tubes and wires to get Bishop to work after being ripped in half in the beginning of Alien 3.