Where's your sense of wonder,adventure, excitement, innocence?? I feel I have to respond the deluge of haters on IMDb for this film, and no, I'm not trolling, I genuinely LOVED this film – and find no fault with it whatsoever! I can't believe such negative opinion and vitriol for this film! I've read and re-read the same criticisms over and over again, and for me they don't hold water.
It looks like 99.9% of people have made their minds up, but he's my thoughts on the film, and if you'll indulge me, I'd like to try and change the world.
The Prometheus mission is classified TOP SECRET. Even the development of the ship would be done without publicity of any kind. Potentially, they are onto the discovery of a lifetime – like Howard Carter didn't broadcast to his competitors that he was going to go looking for Tutankhamun and where he was going to go looking for it. Weyland would not risk allowing their main rival Yutani to get there first. The "Magic Eye" viral posted prior to the film's release supports this, and suggests that Yutani, are constantly using covert means to spy on their competitor, stealing secrets, poaching technology – so as well as this mission being secret, the crew of scientists would NOT be briefed on mission specifics beforehand, or introduced to each other prior to the mission in order to maintain secrecy. Consequently, Weyland would probably not go directly to the scientific community, but rather hire people who could be sworn to secrecy, and their silence bought. Fifield's attitude confirms this, remember the 'scientific mission' is only a smoke screen. This mission is primarily to extend Weyland's life. Period. Science is secondary, it's just that Shaw and Holloway don't know that. That's why the 'scientists' are such a motley crew. Even beyond Weyland's motives, this is a commercial venture, first and foremost – Vickers pretty much spells this out to Shaw and Holloway.
In no particular order
The nature of panic. When Vickers and Shaw are fleeing the Juggernaut, they are in BLIND PANIC – like when you are running away from a foe and likely run straight towards it. They don't have time to look at the orientation, they see the thing falling, see the huge shadow (remember the Jugernaut is B I G! and blindly run. Even if they ran to the side, that thing is falling heavily, they still might not get out of the way cos it's the size of two football fields!
Modern instrumentation in the 21st century When everyone takes their helmets off, they have A LOT of correlating info to support the absence of pathogens, and the presence of oxygen. That's how airline pilots don't need to see out of the window to fly planes. YOU RELY ON YOUR INSTRUMENTS!! So they know they can safely remove their helmets, because the area has been terraformed using engineer technology. Same thing with the head – the instruments indicate no pathogens, and the re-animating procedure would have been successful, but unbeknown to Shaw and Ford, it's the presence of the mutation that causes the head to be in distress and the molecular implosion is the result.
And the Pauling Medi Pod is expensive for a reason – don't compare it to a human surgeon, as well as the cutting being ultra fine and precise, besides the staples the machine sprays several fast-healing/flesh-bonding chemicals into the wound, Shaw does stagger for a few hours, but you're up and walking in a matter of hours.
Ridley decided to use Guy Pierce in old man makeup rather than hire an old actor in order to maintain continuity with the TED Talk Viral. Everyone says how terrible the makeup is, but I think it's because Weyland is VERY old so his appearance will be that more exaggerated.
When Milburn 'pets the snake' he's frightened to death – an analogy would be like when you chance upon a Doberman – you might say outstretch your hands, say "nice doggy" – fruitless, but you're trying to handle a difficult situation under extreme duress.
And this business with accelerated growth. In the original A L I E N –accelerated growth is shown right from the alien birthing from John Hurt, a few hours later it's "the size of a man", so it follows that the Progenitor(s) have this same characteristic. It's also possible that the black goo causes this acceleration/mutation.
And David's motives are for the most part not ambiguous, but rather pretty clear – he is first and foremost programmed to work towards the objective of Peter Weyland, all other considerations are secondary. His deliberate poisoning of Holloway is to use him as a guinea pig to observe the effects of the black goo before he advises Weyland on whether to ingest it or not, what exposure to it does etc.
And the Pauling Med Pod is programmed for the one person on the ship who might need a heart op bypass, this person is likely to be old - there is only one person who fits the bill, (and he's male!), so it's OBVIOUS the unit is set up for Weyland - the notion that it's for Vickers is laughable – she's shown to be tip-top fit with the push ups. It's just happens to be located in her room.
I think Weyland is on Prometheus in secret because no-one would insure a man of his age and condition to go into space, in fact the shareholders would probably forbid it, he would never pass the medical, so the only solution would be to go there in secret.
99.9% of people wanted a retread of Alien or Aliens – I didn't, so I wasn't disappointed.
And for those of you who want to bash Lindelof – read Jon Spaight's original script – everything that you blame Lindleof for is in Spaight's original script!
