And I don’t mean that one guy who gets his liver eaten by an eagle every single day. I, of course, refer to the somewhat newly released science fiction movie by Ridley Scott. I recently saw it this past Saturday, and while that was a few days ago, I seem unable to stop thinking about it and asking so many questions. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the film; I did…when I was watching it. Ridley Scott is really great with building very realistic visuals and probs and alien worlds that are believable, but over time the movie’s many plot holes seem to pop up and take away from enjoying it as much as I would have wanted to. So here’s a big ‘ol bulleted list for the sake of this blog having something other than games on the front page. I know I’m late to the party, but let’s get this started.
Oh, and I guess spoilers…
- If the cave painting with the giant pointing to the planets found in Scotland is 35,000 years old (and predates all the others they found) does that mean the engineers were still watching over the place?
- Or did the engineers interact with humans before then?
- But if the painting was only 35,000 years old, then humans weren’t really engineered, or did the engineers just check up on us every so often so that they visited a really long time ago?
- If so, why did they stop?
- What about the dinosaurs? Did the engineers…engineer those too?
- If life on Earth was engineered, wouldn’t every creature share similar DNA?
- Why would people agree to a 4-year mission they know nothing about until the actual start of the mission?
- Why was the biologist so afraid of the dead engineer that’s been there for thousands of years (and headless) but wanting to be super-friendly with the white alien penis in the black goo? Seems a bit backwards.
- If the black goo is the weapon, is it only usable when it enters a being who can produce offspring?
- How did David know that the black goo would make a squiggly line in Holloway’s eye and that he would have sex with
RipleyShaw, which in turn would make Shaw pregnant with a space squid? - Why does David know so much about everything?
- Why would Millburn and Fifield, after becoming stranded in the engineer weapon base and making their way back to the giant head chamber, not notice the leaking black goo and report back? Oh wait, I guess they did…
- Why would the captain with two stranded people on an alien world leave no one to monitor communications with the two? Just to get laid?
- Why did Weyland pretend he was dead?
- How did holo-Weyland know where to point and look like he was actually there when describing the mission? What if it was a live hologram? Nah, that’d be stupid.
- What lead Weyland to believe that the answer to eternal life was on the planet? Was it David? David seems to know a lot…
- What was the point of the revelation of Vickers being Weyland’s daughter?
- Was everyone blind or stupid to the whole ordeal Shaw went through with her baby space squid?
- Or was everyone ignoring it because Weyland/David told everyone the real reason to be there?
- Why did no one care about Weyland being alive and on the ship all of a sudden?
- What was the sparkling green crap on the control panel?
- What was the non-sparkling black goo?
- WHY DOES DAVID KNOW EVERYTHING? Did he read the script?
- Why was the engineer’s weapon storage facility a central point on their star maps?
- What sort of crab-zombie-man did Fifield return to the ship as? What was the point? Is that the weapon? Crab-zombie-men?
- In the security holograms of the engineers, what were they running from? If they were running from their own weapons, why would they try to run into a giant room with a bunch of canisters with the black goo weapon?
- Why were Shaw and Vickers running in a straight line in the direct path of a rolling circle ship…thing?
- Why would Shaw, after learning that the engineers were wanting to destroy humans (whom they created) still seek them out?
- Were humans a mistake? Is that why the engineers wanted to kill humans?
- So, in one of the chambers, there’s a sort of shrine or something depicting a xenomorph, recognizable from the Alien movies, but at the end of the movie, we see a full-size xenomorph that looks like an earlier evolution of the species. So how was there a shrine depicting the latest evolution of the alien?
- So is this an Alien prequel or not?
- Why was this movie so convoluted? Who wrote this? Damon Lindelof? OH! He did….
Oh…
I guess that explains everything. Stay lazy, xenomorphs.
Header image by EuropaMaxima
Most of the answers, so Damon Lindelof says, will be in the extended editon blu ray release. He did make a comment that everything in the movie was put there on purpose by Ridley Scott. Hopefully, answers will be forthcoming….. Watch Momento, then you’ll understand confusion.