Dear Sir Ridley Scott

Dear Sir Ridley Scott The odd thing is for the most part Prometheus is good as a standalone science fiction movie. The problem is it’s not a standalone science fiction movie. It’s a companion piece to the Aliens saga. While not a direct tie in to the events in ‘Alien’, the gears are supposed to mesh. With that being said, my first statement to you, Sir Scott would be, “Just tell me to my face, honestly that when you constructed the Space Jockey set piece on Alien that you viewed it as a suit with a humanoid inside.” If yes, then why does it have sunken eyes and a gaping jaw with teeth? While watching the Prometheus extras, the writer stated that he felt it was necessary to make the Space Jockey into something humanoid in order for the audience to connect to it. This statement grated on me. Did he forget what the entire feel of…the entire purpose, the definition of Alien is? You aren’t supposed to connect; it’s supposed to be strange and frightening. Yes, I understand that the name ‘Alien’ more specifically pointed to the zenomorph, but you can’t deny that the Space Jockey, the derelict and his cargo qualified as alien. In life there are many things you can spend in order to show what causes you support, what corporations you buy into. These are the things you care about. The most commonly understood is money. You spend it on things you want and you can run out of it. Voting on a president; you have one vote to spend every four years, so make it count. But, another thing humans can spend is time. Time is finite for humans. We only have so much. So when we spend it following your stories, you may want to think better of us. It seems silly to assume that as movie goers you expect us to follow the bread crumbs of information you lay out in the Alien movie…only to tell us that they weren’t bread crumbs at all, but gummy bears. This kind of mind game creates a situation where all the previous effort spent pondering the details you placed in the movie is wasted. It can disappoint and dishearten a fan like nothing else. Why waste time studying Prometheus when you can just make Prometheus 2 and tell us that the Engineers weren’t really the Engineers. The Engineers were just a suit with another creature inside of it. Silly. Regardless of my dissatisfaction with Prometheus as an Alien companion piece, I have still tried to ponder what it means; the black goo, the sacrifice at the beginning, the deacon, etc. The problems with these aspects and how they mesh with Alien are many in my opinion. I always pictured the zenos as a naturally occurring aberration that happened to have an insatiable desire to kill other species. It also had an even more insatiable desire to reproduce when presented with a valid living vessel. Oh, and by the way, the reproduction cycle still kills the living vessel. It was all very primeval. Now it’s by design. It’s not the creatures tenacity at survival that makes it mean. It’s design to do those things. It’s now understandable, a designer zeno. In the original Alien, the derelict and the Space Jockey were delivered as being ancient. You sold me on it. I felt as though this craft was lost in time. At least time as humans see it. Perhaps this species lived thousands of years? Either way it felt old. Now, the writer (in Prometheus extras) stated that the Deacon alien was a pure viral form and that the zenomorph in the Aliens movies were a polluted strain. If this is so, then the Alien movie zeno’s were products of a polluted reproduction method; the eggs, facehuggers, chestbursters etc. Therefore, they couldn’t s exist, in that form, before the events in Prometheus. This means that the Space Jockey, with cargo of ‘polluted’ eggs crashed within 40 years from the events in Prometheus. Why forty years? According to the Aliens saga timeline the Prometheus launched in 2085AD and the Nostromo picks up the derelict signal in 2122AD. Not a lot of time for the Space Jockey to fossilize as supposed in ‘Alien’. Now, taking Sir Scott’s bread crumbs (against better judgment) and pondering at what the goo might be…I developed a theory. If these Engineers created humans, and engineered the black goo, it seems silly to use the black goo to create creatures designed solely to kill humans or any species for that matter. Why kill a planet off with creatures like the deacon when you’ll only have to rid the deacons later, in order to terraform. It’s a bit like the soldier monkeys skit on Saturday Night Live. So, I theorized that perhaps the Engineers view themselves as perfect; perhaps they have their own self righteous inclinations. Perhaps they are so autocratic in their decisions that they decide to create a lateral race to themselves that are less than pure, but can choose their own destiny (a bit biblical.) Maybe the black goo is the genetic form of pure evil (at least in the Engineers eyes) and the Engineers themselves are the “pure form” of righteousness. It would technically also re-introduce the sexuality that the Engineers, by the writers own words, have risen above and discarded. It would be a watered down sexuality compared with that sexuality which drives zeno biology. When the sacrifice happens, it’s the destruction of the “pure form” DNA by the “evil form” DNA and ultimate recombination of both that is held out as the origins of man. This “evil” DNA alone turning creatures into mindless killing machines matches with Prometheus events…however, if all of this is true, the Deacon will essentially need to be far more “evil” that its "polluted" zenomorph kin. Again, the movie viewed as a standalone is good. However, simple logic mistakes were still made. Much of it was bad writing. The first was the Fifeild and Milburn team. Once they are confronted with the first alien, dead and decapitated, they both agree that aliens are bad and getting the hell away is good. Later this behavior is confirmed by their response to the captain stating there is an intermittent life form blip. What is there response? It’s to go the other direction. But, they take a terrifyingly wrong alteration in logic when confronted by a living alien hammerpede. Milburn all but, courts and marries it. It gets to first base with him too! I digress. Then there is the issue with the scientists taking helmets off in a breathable space. Hmmm. Breathable spaces don’t mean safe to breathe. Every day on Earth, in real life, diseases kill humans that were transmitted by inhalation. Why on a far away planet would you risk this behavior? Didn’t you see how War of the Worlds ended? It should have been penned like this…Scientist 1, “Wow, the scanners are reading this is breathable air in here. It points to terraforming activity.” Scientist 2, “Good information, keep your damn helmets and let’s keep moving.” Here is one last one. When the Engineer leaves the freshly crashed ship looking for revenge, he’s not wearing a helmet. Now as discussed in the previous paragraph, they breathe similar air. Then how did he make it from the crashed ship to the escape pod with no helmet? He held his breathe? Ok fine, how did he know the escape pod had air? Why risk it when you can suit up and clearly get off the planet using other available ships, should you manage to kill that tiny little human female? Prometheus is good. But, it could have been great. My advice towards saving Prometheus, it’s sequel and its ability to mesh with Alien is to continue with the Engineers, but make them a slave or cultish sect of humanoids that do as the real Space Jockey tell them (this can also explain away size issues with the two creatures. i.e. from Alien to Prometheus, the “Space Jockey” Engineer got shorter). The Engineers dress and emulate the elephantine race and even co-use technology. Continue with the idea that the black goo is “evil” DNA, but the zeno’s themselves are naturally occurring. The Engineers, following the whims of the Space Jockey race, have learned to break down the aggressive/”evil” nature built in the Zenos and distill it into black goo. This prevents the zeno’s from being put in a cage, from being boxed in and manufactured. It makes the eggs and the Space Jockey corpse on the derelict ancient again. Most importantly, it also keeps the jaw gaping corpse on LV-426 NOT an Engineer, but it keeps the engineers in the universe. (Why would the Engineers want to create humans using the black goo? Maybe they are aware that they are hopelessly in servitude and wish to create a progeny that can resist.) Thank you, regardless of my opinions. Take care Sir Ridley Scott. Sincerely a fan, Sabot And Heat