Anyone else thinks the world in this movie is not the Engineers homeworld but rather just a colony? I mean from what we see it seems the Engineers only had one city built on this planet, which is just weird if this is really the Engineers homeworld. Considering the Engineers are a spacefaring species, I seriously doubt David killed them all.
okay, I have not seen the movie (and I don't really care to, honestly), but:
They just needed that plot to go away. Here's a fridge logic moment for you: if the engineers were trying to kill humanity but crashed / failed on that planet where Prometheus takes place, how come their homeworld didn't check up on them? Did they forget?
Or did the plot conveniently needed a spacefaring civilization to conveniently forget to actually kill their creations because they realize it was a shitty idea to begin with? It's the latter btw, don't bother wasting your energy on that one. It's literally a 'fuck this plot' type scene that happens when a show or sequel needs to get rid of something set up previously (this really does happen a lot in TV shows, and occasionally video games too).
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Additionally, I feel like I've pitched the Weyland to David as creator thing a few times here a long ass time ago already, so it's oddly satisfying to see people calling that the best part as vindication by proxy. And yes I know that's all in my head, but I'm interested in what works in a (movie) story, not really in the franchise at this point. I can't explain why it suddenly feels tired now though. It didn't feel tired six months ago, but now it suddenly does, and I feel it's not because of this movie either. So I don't know what that is, but I'm sure potus 45 is somehow to blame.
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Also, ALIEN (Starbeast) was definitely written and made to be as hard sci-fi as possible for the times it was made in, following the literal and spiritual footprints of Ib Melchior, as exemplified in most of the actual movie being present in Planet of the Vampires (1965), written by Melchior. Other parts were inspired by It! The Terror From Outer Space (1958), in particular the air duct segment, but that movie doesn't have the scientific willingness that Ib Melchior put in his scripts and can be immediately seen on page one of O'Bannon's ALIEN script in the form of a star map to show the setting (I've written most of this already in the 'movies you watched' of April, where I went on a '50 movie spree).
Honestly the only jump in logic is the growth spurt within an unknown time window from chestbuster to mature form, but that might actually be accomplished by assuming it grows by combining atmosphere CO2 into its own structures like a terrestrial plant does. Considering breathable air needs its products to be held at a relative constant, the influx of material for the spawnling to grow rapidly is only limited by the generator of those resources, that is the air filters of the ship itself. (and yes, I've spent a bit too much time thinking about this)
Everything else can be basically explained by the splicer mechanism, which comes from a genetic freak among plants that creates hybrids around itself by mixing with other plants, effectively cockblocking the competition. Dutch botanist
Hugo de Vries then wrongly assumed this was the process of mutation and that's where that concept comes from.
(I learned this from the BBC documentary What Darwin Didn't Know, specifically 17 minutes into it,
which I can demonstrate by this flimsy youtube link, but there's no guarantee that will stay up) It's since been adjusted to 'gene damage' which is all bad, but the idea of mutation as category shifting (from say, radiation) is still lingering today. Hell, it's what X-Men is literally based on. (
dududu dudu dududu dudu... wait what? Oh right, post)
The same 'splicer' mechanism is used by his film studies buddy John Carpenter in his assigned remake of The Thing, so the use of that by the two is intentional.
There is also the design of the information and safety labels on doors (like hazard symbols) and so on which were NOT part of general safety culture outside of heavy industrial facilities (invented only in 1966, according to wikipedia). ALIEN didn't just use them in its design, but it probably popularized it way outside it to the point where you now no longer even noticed that was ever even new. I know there is a youtube video on that, and it related back to Jodorowski's Dune because O'Bannon specifically brought that engineer with them to the ALIEN project, but I don't recall the actual video... and I can't relocate it either.
Also, as a key part of it being a more realistic take on the 'alien monster movie' concept (see 1950's), the improvised dialogue making the crew sound like regular space truckers is definitely a way to make it far more realistic than it perhaps needed to be, but that's why we love it. You can relate to their sense of dread of having no idea wtf is going on with that little shit
THING bursting from a colleague and then specifically finds them instead of the other way around (it's not trapped with them, they're trapped with it).
But seriously, short version: it's hard sci-fi as fuck. Especially for a 1979 movie.
