georgec said:
I saw this today and was satisfied. Not the best sci-fi movie, but a good one. Flawed, most likely due to the script, but entertaining nonetheless.
Some people started leaving when the film faded out as Shaw was heading off the planet and leaving her message. As the final scene began, they were still walking out. I kept thinking, "Don't people want to see the whole movie?" Apparently not. These same people probably later complained that Prometheus didn't have the Xenomorphs (even if it's just at the very end).
There is apparently a pirated version doing the rounds where the pirate did the same leading to loads of comments from Americans before it was out there to that effect of "Why did the octopus stop eating the borg guy?"
Using the same sets and actors and much of the same set pieces here are my thoughts on how it could have gone.
The opening was beautiful, the scene on the Isle Of Skye was not needed but it didn't break the mood (it could have cut straight to Prometheus and lost nothing). The whole sequence with David awake while the crew sleeps is perfect.
I would have David launch probes to learn as much about the planet and the building as possible before waking anyone.
The moment Guy-Guy Pearce turns up in his Hologram breaks the film.
The make up is unconvincing and the sequence only exists to show us what Weyland looks like so we recognise him later, it could have been done with corporate artwork (paintings in the mess hall and Vickers quarters etc).
The briefing exists only for us.
The science team should already know what they are doing, the audience should have been teased into figuring it out with very little exposition.
The scientists should have been cautious and the suits including David should be the ones getting in the way of their sensible caution (not the other way around).
It would have made more sense if Fifield and Milburn are dismissed for being too cautious (perhaps there should be questions asked as to why they were included in the crew when David seems to be better capable of doing their jobs) and become lost because the building reconfigures itself to trap them.
The attack on both men should be partially represented only by sound (they are being closely monitored back on the ship but the crew are powerless to help them because of the storm).
This would build tension and make the few flashes of what we do see seem more horrific.
The creature that attacks Milburn should implant something in his body which escapes to return later in the film (this could be our Xeno-variant instead of the thing inside Shaw).
David infects Holloway but the worm eye shot should happen unnoticed by either party towards the end of their sex scene (this would turn a tender moment into a horrific moment).
The team investigates what happened to the two men when storm ends they find Milburn's corpse but not Fifield.
They have to return quickly because of Holloway's infection.
Fifield, horribly mutated by the black goo and has climbed onto the top of the bus and kills a number crew members.
Shaw runs over his head but he is ultimately destroyed by Vickers who noticing Holloway kills him too.
David finds the alien ship but all the Engineers are dead.
It's not a weapons lab but a biological research centre but something they were working on killed them all.
He finds however that their technology is fully functional and an Engineer's suit can be adapted to fit Weyland.
He is inserted into the suit and it rejuvenates him, but then begins to alter him.
It's always been a bugbear of mine that evil schemes are always thwarted instead of reaching fruition only for the schemer to find it's not the best thing in the world.
Take for example Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs.
He almost makes his woman suit but is thwarted near the end of his twisted scheme.
It would have been much more interesting if he got the whole suit only to find he didn't emerge as a transformed being but ended up as man in drag wearing bits of dead women.
Were does such a twisted mind go when it's anticipated power backfires?
If Weyland got the power of a God he would still have the vanity and intellectual frailty of a twisted old man.
That's why I'd have given him his moment of glory only to have the appendix of his vile form of humanity be his undoing. He gains telepathic powers absorb the empty unknowable mysteries of the cosmos and goes utterly insane (the engineers have no concept of a personal ego so they can wield the powers their technology gives them without danger to themselves). Weyland starts to twist the minds of the people in the room Lovercraft style.
David being a machine is beyond his mental control so Weyland decapitates him.
Shaw uses the confusion to escape his influence.
We would still see the 'ghosts' of the real engineers (and boy would I keep that flute, love the flute) but their motives and demeanor would remain mysterious because the ones that were there were as dead as the one in "Alien".
His egomania prompts him to wish to return to Earth and assume his role as God but as he straps himself into the controls of the ship the creature that emerged from Milburn crawls into the suit and infects him.
After the crash he begins to mutate like Fifield coming to resemble a giant form of the traditional xenomorph.
The transformed Weyland attacks the survivors but is defeated by the creature removed from Shaw both creatures are killed.
David and Shaw take a ship to discover what is left of the Engineers.
The idea of the space jockey's ship originating from the same place makes perfect sense so a passing reference to a missing ship would be welcome.
Oh and someone should have words with the sound editor and get him to switch the music off now and then it was more distracting than mood building.