Prometheus Ending

Dear Theusprom, As I expressed in my previous post, it is obvious that the company knew about the Space Jockey’s signal/message prior to the Nostromo departing from Thedus...with it’s new replacement, android, science officer. Once again, it is NOT a question of whether or not the company and Ash knew about the twelve second, extra-terrestrial message…THEY DID! The question is: WHAT EXACTLY DID THE COMPANY GLEAN OR EXTRAPOLATE FROM THE STRANGE AND APPARENTLY INDECYPHERABLE ALIEN TRANSMISSION? According to the original ALIEN film, we the viewer, can assume that after Ash had time to study at least the Facehugger, and perhaps even the behavior of the Chestburster and the adult Alien, he secretly communicated his findings to the company. Who in turn responded to him with their intentions and further orders for him to carry out. It could be that Special Order 937 was issued prior to Ash’s departure from Thedus…or after the crew encountered the Alien organism after entering the Derelict spacecraft. In either case, I don’t think that the company was privy to the HOSTILE NATURE of the Alien organism. They just knew they had picked up the transmission/SOS/warning of unknown and probably extra-terrestrial origin. So, like any good businessmen, Weyland-Yutani saw a potentially profitable and unprecedented discovery too tempting to pass up…even at the expense of the human lives serving aboard the Nostromo. Thus, they dispatched Ash, a true “company man” or company android asset. The bottom line is, the Nostromo must have been the closest company vessel available to investigate the source of the transmission. Otherwise, why would they send a space tug crewed by “space truckers” to investigate a potentially intelligent alien life form…in lieu of a better equipped science team and vessel. I think that the company was on the dark in regard to the dangerous and deadly aspects of the Alien until Ash communicated it’s nature and behavior to them. Now, it could be that the new film PROMETHEUS will render everything I’ve just written above…as a bunch of hooey…by adding a newly written history that brings in new information that changes things. However, after following the ALIEN franchise for about 32 years, this is at least my personal take and understanding of these science fictional events. I hope and think that my understanding is accurate…at least as far as what Dan O’Bannon and Ridley Scott originally intended the audience to understand about the story…back in May of ’79. In the end, this is FICTION, and the filmmakers are free to do whatever they feel might be more entertaining and profitable from a 20th Century Fox/Weyland-Yutani perspective. What do you think? ~Neurion

"ya- rrright!?"

Dear Neurion, Of course alot of what you say could be the case, but also some of your statements are based on deduction and not fact.To me(imho), it is clear that the company knew of the Xeno's capabilities as a weapon(from Ash's comments).Is it in the novel where Ash meets the Alien?, I am not sure I might even be imagining it.(but Bishop definately does in Aliens and they ignore him because he is an android) Anyway, I think a big part of Prometheus movie (s) will explain the Derelict on LV-426 and how we knew of the existence of the Xeno, hope so anyway!!!

I agree the company already had data on the alien and knew exactly what it was capable of. Prometheus is going to give us the back story on how this 'data' was aquired.Perhaps the Prometheus crew manage to steal an alien sample and take it back to earth? Who knows? I believe Ridley Scott is the only man who could have Directed this film, Mr.Cameron, you stick to Terminators please!

I have to say I agree with Neurion's take on the company's intent/knowledge prior to the Nostromo's arrival on LV-426. But We'll see what happens... Quote: "[i]I believe Ridley Scott is the only man who could have Directed this film, Mr.Cameron, you stick to Terminators please![/i]" Completely agree.

The entire core question to all the Alien films is...How did the company know of the existence of the Alien? What is very interesting is dialogue from the almost final Alien script, which is completely different from the final product: Revised Final 1978 Script RIPLEY What is Special Order 937. ASH You know I can't tell you that. RIPLEY Then there's not point in talking to you. Pull the plug. ASH Special Order 937 in essence asked me to direct the ship to the planet, investigate a life form, possibly hostile and bring it back for observation. With discretion, of course. RIPLEY Why. Why not tell us. ASH Would you have gone. PARKER It wasn't in the contract. ASH My very point. RIPLEY They wanted to investigate the Alien. No matter what happened to us. ASH That's unfair. Actually, you weren't mentioned in the order. LAMBERT Those bastards. And in an earlier script: [img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oLPxM7_4Cf0/TLdTRngus3I/AAAAAAAABSQ/A3WZyt2bBW0/s400/picture014-6.jpg[/img] ASH See it from their point of view. They didn't know what the Alien is.

The earlier script above puts a completely different spin on the movie. It indicates the Nostromo crew was sent out as guinea pigs to test the Company's weapons. This would mean that the company is in control of the weapons to a certain degree. Which does not appear to be these case in he final script/film. Also, why would any company send a group of guinea pigs to what will most likely be their deaths when those pigs are sitting on a s__tload of company assets (i.e.: the Nostromo ship and its cargo)? Why not send a less valuable crew/ship under the guise of a "top-secret research mission"? The tones in the earlier script do not jive with those of the final script/film. The final script/film makes it seem as if the company knew there was a potential alien asset on LV-426. I think its safe to assume that any company's procedure for dealing with new alien life forms would probably dictate a measure of general caution. (Hence Ash's conversation with Ripley noted in the post above.) But I don't think the company new the exact hostile details of the xenomorph as seen in "ALIEN". If they did, why not just directly tell Ash: "[i]as soon as a specimen and/or infected host is on board, FREEZE IT/HIM/HER![/i]". Why risk loosing the cargo and more importantly, the specimen?

The earlier script above puts a completely different spin on the movie. It indicates the Nostromo crew was sent out as guinea pigs for the Corp's weapon. This would mean that the corp is in control of the weapons to a certain degree. Which does not appear to be these case int he final script/film. Also, why would any corp send a group of guinea pigs to what will most likely be their deaths when those pigs are sitting on a s__tload of company assets (i.e.: the Nostromo ship and its cargo)? Why not send a less valuable crew/ship under the guise of a "top-secret research mission"? The tones in the earlier script do not jive with those of the final script/film. The final script/film makes it seem as if the company knew there was a potential alien asset on LV-426. I think its safe to assume that any company's procedure for dealing with new alien life forms would probably dictate general caution. (Hence Ash's conversation with Ripley noted in the post above.) But I don't think the company new the exact hostile details of the xenomorph as seen in "ALIEN". If they did, why not just directly tell Ash: "[i]as soon as a specimen and/or infected host is on board, FREEZE IT/HIM/HER![/i]". Why risk loosing the cargo and more importantly, the specimen? Its not like they can just sit there and say : [i]Hey we know exactly what this thing can do so let's let it just run around the ship and kill the crew if it wants to. I'm sure the last surviving crew member will leave the ship intact and on an auto-pilot course for Earth before he/she is murdered[/i]." Just my opinion...

It could have been that other ships or even countries back on earth were picking up the same signal or it could have been relayed from a deep space satellite. Could have been that the Nostromo was the closest ship but, you know what that doesn't hunt either because they switched out science officers just before they set out so why not stop at LV-426 on the way to pick-up the payload instead of on the return trip? That causes for pause about the signal on the derelict. Does anyone know if the script says crew were also thrown together at the last minute as well? Why else would Ripley ask Dallas about Ash and if he's set out with him before. Maybe there's something behind the crew's DNA that the company may have wanted to see combined with the Alien DNA

Ok so with that said. How does the company know? Obviously the signal I am sure there was other carrier data piggybacked on the SOS/Warning we are talking the Jockey's a supposed Engineering Race, so that begs the question why didn't they stop before picking up the payload? An Ore Processing Refinery and a billion tons of ore is a huge payload to possibly lose.

And that's the core question to ALL the Alien films...how did the company know what was on LV-426? They knew there was a speciem there. But if you look at it from the company point of view... Only long haul ships are going to travel those routes between M117 and Earth. As Parker says "this isn't a rescue ship" so the company knew that the Nostromo and her crew would be perfect for bringing the Alien back undetected. None of the crew have any combat experience, there really are no weapons, etc. It wouldn't make sense to divert Nostromo and her crew on the way out to M117 (or whatever that planet is) because you want to bring the creature back to Earth. Also, think about it...you really don't need a crew going out. You do need a crew coming back to protect the cargo in case something happens to the ship. You can let mother auto pilot the ship out, and it is possible that the entire crew were coming back to Earth after being out there for years and this was their first trip together. The one thing that bothered me was about having weapons. Dallas says before leaving the ship "break out the weapons" Then later they don't seem to have any except a cattle prod and a flame thrower.

Draekus- to answer your question about freezing the alien. The answer is simple. The alien would not look at Ash as threat or food, most likely the Alien would just ignore Ash and as long as Ash wasn't making any hostile move towards the Alien he could spend the rest of the trip home studying it. How it develops, how it hunts, its defenses, etc. Ash would then stay out of stasis for the rest of the trip home and study the Alien, and he most likely would find some way to either trap it after the crew died, or just keep it away from him. Ash could even download all the data he collected into mother he could deactivate himself, and mother could then divert the ship away from Earth to a place where the company would meet the ship and get the Alien. The most logical thing for Ash to do (if the company really wanted the Alien that badly), once he knew that the Alien was on board, would be to kill the crew himself immediately, but the company probably wanted Ash to study it.

First the title, symbollic. Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Just from the leaked photo's, you see the intent focus on something contained in that cylinder. The chamber with the Urns, a correlation to the egg chamber on the crashed vessel on LV-426. The principle difference being the Urns are constructs while the Eggs are biological containers. It's a Pandora's box event in the making. Though I'm not exactly sure how the material in the cylinder interacts with living tissue that's undoubtedly going to occur. If the installation and the urns belong to the Space Jockey's species it would be like leaving a loaded gun on the table for a baby to play with, Intentional? As for how it ends, in this genre, and observing the track record of the films as a series I'd say not favorably.

Arrgy - Interesting theory on why Ash did not immediately freeze the Alien. That could definitely be it. I'm just not so sure it would have left Ash alone. Sure Ash is a synthetic, but how do we know the Alien can't cocoon Ash and turn his synthetic body into an egg like it tried to do with Dallas and Bret? How do we know it can't use Ash's body as a food source? I know that may all sound silly since ash is a robot, but for all we know the alien could potentially get by on ingesting/digesting almost any substance if it needed to. After all it is a " [i]perfect organism[/i]". Can the synthetic parts used to create Ash be enough to sustain the alien's life cycle or at least certain parts of it? Also, I'm not so sure the alien cares about threatening vs non-threatening life-forms. After all, how was Bret a threat? its not like he accidentally cornered the thing. It came down and pulled him up. Later on it seemed not to care too much about Ripley in the escape ship. Not until she annoyed it enough to get its attention. (Maybe at that point in the movie the alien was not interested in Ripley because it had just fed off Parker and Lambert...maybe its hostility is partially motivated on hunger?)

Theusprom wrote - "We already know that some of Prometheus is set millions of years in the past, so maybe that is where the Space Jockey on LV-426 will be wrote into the story.Either that, or god forbid, it has time travel in it." Didn't Ridley mention something ominous about the frightening effects of faster-than-light travel (i.e. time dilation?) as part of the horrific charge of the project when he was still working it up a year or so ago? Given the limited wiggle room between the new film's human time-frame and that of 'Alien', with all the latter's hard-to-reconcile loose ends over W-Y's knowledge of LV-426 (nicely catalogued by other contributors here) might the 'Prometheus' crew end up lost in VERY distant space-time?

Hey guys. I just popped the DVD in and took a look at the movie. Something came to mind. LV-426 looks more like a moon to a gas giant instead of an actual planet itself. Check out the back ground as the Nostromo approaches the planetoid.

Draek-my theory is this. Anything that is flesh..animals or man the alien can sense. We know it has a heightened sense ability from Alien3 when it didn't kill Ripley because it could sense a queen. The alien therefore probably would not sense the same thing that it would need from Ash or Bishop or any other robot. Now, as to the Alien not immediately attacking Ash. I believe in the novel for Aliens there is a scene where Bishop is making his way down the tube to the terminal, the tube somehow gets broken and he has to enter a room, and of course in that room are a bunch of aliens that do not bother him. Bishop then crosses the room and reenters the tunnel. This is something that J.C. left out when he did the movie. And I totally agree with you about Brett and Ripley, the Alien had just left the chestburster stage and is now a full fledged adult, and I agree with you that he didn't attack Ripley because it was full and want to get some shut eye. That mean Ripley had to go and wake the poor critter.

[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_8sv9gYsuLwc/S90YzfObSaI/AAAAAAAAALs/XkTBvdQwQv0/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-05-02+at+07.13.48.png[/img]

Watch the movie again. The Alien toys with it's prey, it approached Lambert slowly letting her fear paralyze her. It takes it's time killing it's victims. I think this film as any is open for interpretation. I myself never thought the xenomorph ate Parker or Lambert. There wasn't time, Ripley came tearing down that corridor from the bridge and found their bodies. It's just my interpretation but with the entire [i]Nostromo[/i] available for it to lurk in why did it immediately go in the [i]Narcissus[/i] afterwards? Though there isn't any evidence to support the conclusion that it knew it had to get off the Nostromo, that's the impression I've always had.

Wouldnt it be a unique twist if the Alien knew that the ship was about to self destruct? That it is infact an intelligent lifeform and not simply running on instinct?