"In some way, Shaw became the Alien Queen."

Oh, like Queen Elizabeth, get it, the virgin queen? Time to start a blog about how Prometheus is all about Tudor history and how the Engineers were basically not happy with Henry VIII having six wives. And Ridley is english after all. 

+2 informative, I want to have your alien parasite babies.

Some good answers there, especially about David and Weyland.

Cheers, although I'll admit there are plenty of areas that I'm still fuzzy about.

A few that still stand out.

Engineers proud of Aliens....hmmm okay so maybe the temple is a shrine to their bio-weapons??

I don't know what the exact role of the temple was. It could have been where they engineered/manufactured the goo before it was transfered to storage in the ships (remember in the flying croissant ship they had thousands of goo canisters packed densely together). It could have just been a display room. Who knows? Ultimately the exact purpose of that room is unimportant to the story. The giant head and the murals do appear to be decorative though, and a sort of celebration of the life they create.

I still don't get the large variety of xenos from squids to Aliens themselves?? Unless the squids are the original precursor and anything Alien-esque is depend on the species they have impregnated...

The "squid" was just a big prototype facehugger, and facehuggers are basically just the reproductive organs of xenomorphs, existing independantly as a very specialised organism. Xenomorphs looke different depending on the host, because they obviously get some of the host's dna. I guess in some way this allows them to be optimally configured for killing the host species (e.g. the engineer-born xenomorph was very big, and when fully grown could probably kill an engineer easily. A human-born xenomorph is smaller and can kill a human easily, but maybe it wouldn't be so good against an engineer).

Why was the "squid" facehugger a giant lumbering beast, whilst regular facehuggers are small and start in eggs? I'm guessing here but maybe because the squid is like the starting point for a xenomorph colony it has to be very big and aggressive and independant. It needs to aggressively hunt down a suitable host in order to seed the first xenomorph (which I'm assuming will be a queen). Once the queen is born, then I guess the queen can do a lot more of the heavy lifting (i.e. capture the initial hosts), and it only needs to produce small facehuggers from then on, to impregnate already captured hosts. Just my theory.

Are you sure the cute cock wasn't trying to impregnate Millburn?

I don't know to be honest. It was still alive after it was done with Milburn, which was inconsistent with the behaviour of more traditional facehuggers, which die after impregnating something. Could just have been a simple killing machine.

Will try to tackle your other queries later... 

Surely Shaw would suspect something was up with David when he refused to help her abort the Squidien?? And surely she would be a bit suspicious about WTF is going on and why was that thing in me??

Firstly, wasn't David trying to put her in cryosleep so that they could deal with the squidien back on Earth? Perhaps he thought it was too risky to go dicking with the squidien whilst on the ship right now, with limited knowledge of just what the hell they were dealing with. Sounds like a pretty rational and sensible approach but of course Shaw wanted it out of her right now.

As for being suspicious about why it was in her? She knew it came from the infected Holloway, and she thought Holloway got infected by accidental exposure in the caves, and she did not at any point suspect David's shenanigans, or other foul play.

AFAIK the other female doctor was one of the people trying to put Shaw in quarantine, and yet she is there with Shaw on Weylands trip into the Engineer ship, without any questions??

I dunno maybe the "sorry for trying to freeze you" and "that's ok, sorry for hitting you" conversation took place off-camera :}

(I am assuming that David would have liked to have had more control over Shaw after her failed gestation, but at that time he had to focus on serving Weyland more??).

Yes absolutely, at that point in the story it was "all hands on deck, let's get Weyland to the engineer before he dies of old age", and any other shit would have to be dealt with later. 

For shambler:

http://youtu.be/-x1YuvUQFJ0 

Thanks.

The giant squid explanation was a good one :).

My girlfriend is STILL complaining that she shouldn't have given birth to a squid and that it should have been something more human-derived, but to be honest I am happy with your theory that squids/facehuggers are sort of reproductive organs and the squid style one is a primitive pre-cursor to more specific xeno ones.

One more thing....Shaw being strangely unsuspicious....I get how she might have been unsuspicious of David, although he is pretty fucking creepy in that scene, he is in general so perhaps she didn't suspect him. But my point was more, why was she not more wary of going back in the temple given that it just terminally infected her boyfriend who then caused her to gestate a squid. Avoiding the temple like the fucking plague might make more sense?? 

yeah ricky Dagon is a good horror. finally a decent lovecraftian movie with the right atmosphere! 

I liked it. Spoilers? Film's at least a few years old anyway. The mermaid girl was a bit much / conventional, and it was clearly based on Shadow Over Innsmouth not Dagon, but they totally captured the degenerate village feel and the threat from the sea. One of the better Lovecraft films.

Too bad del Toro's At The Mountains of Madness is never coming. 

If this is supposed to be the Engineer dissolving himself to produce human life, why does the planet look like LV-whatever and why does the fluid look like their black fluid later on?

I think I read shortly before watching it that it was shot in Iceland so I was just thinking "ok here's an alien dude in the past on Iceland". The pre-alien intro Iclandic footage was very nice in any case.

Random annoying part from the movie: arriving at an unknown planet (planets are huge, mkay?) looking for something unknown and just descending to the surface and going "hey let's go down this canyon" and landing in just the right place. 

Kinn's link was hilarious and it only covered a few of Shambler's questions. The other guy's confused facial expressions contributed awesomely to the humour. I'm fine with things being unexplained as in Alien, even all the way up to the Twin Peaks level, but Prometheus's script was really just messy and incoherent. I've never seen Lost but apparently the guy who wrote that and Prometheus, tends to do that.

Also happy to see Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter is getting ripped on. Oh, OF COURSE Tim Burton produced it. I'm starting to worry that he might actually be a zombie/vampire/etc and never retire. Though it is enjoyable to read critics coming up with creative ways of slamming people, like calling Johnny Depp Burton's "enabler." A few months ago a friend said, if you just killed five people in Hollywood, the ratio of good films would increase.

And yes, landing in exactly the right place WAS RIDICULOUS, I thought that instantly. 

Well, this wasn't very good. Not completely terrible I guess, but I was very very tired when I saw it and I would have had a better time if I'd been asleep I think :-) 

Saw this again on TV recently, forgot just how good it is. I remember it as a standardly entertaining Arnie sci-fi action thing, but I'd forgotten about all the plot twists (pretty good for an action blockbuster) and the one-liners and humour and stuff. Just a great film all round.

Now then....I know it's cool to hate on remakes, but....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx_9uxohMTI#ws

....I think this looks pretty good. Sure it's derivative of everything, ever, including the original, but I actually think the fights / stunts / action look good enough on their own to warrant a cinema view?? 

so I'm pretty fucking wary. Doesn't look nearly as FUN to me. I know it's not necessarily a big deal, but they don't even go to mars. 

its directed by the guy who did underworld and the worst die hard movie.

The only thing that really has me excited is Bryan Cranston. 

the new one looks just like generic scifi, whereas the original could almost be a cronenberg movie the tech is so rank and weird, plus it really captures Phillip K Dick's style of paranoid mindfuck.

hopefully I'm not the only one who finds this Arnold tribute band awesome: lol
SEE YOU AT THE PARTY RICHTER
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woh6axk-0Kw&feature=relmfu
COME ON COHAAGEN, GIVE DEEZ PEOPLE EHYAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykNy4WV6yzw&feature=relmfu

SCREW YOU, BENNY is another one based on Total Recall but I think these two are the best.

Hard to believe that The Dark Knight Rises is so close now. The Dark Knight was such an intense film to see in theatres. 

How can they NOT go to mars? That was the whole point of the big setup.

Unless they do go to mars and this is all just one big mind fuck... 

I watched American Reunion the other day and it was not bad. Quite liked it actually. 

The story it's based off of, 'We Can Remember it for You Wholesale', takes place entirely within the confines of the memory-generation office. It's more of a dark comedy piece than anything else. 

It just won't be the same without Arnie. TR is a classic in the scifi/action genre, one of the best. 

 

I caught the Arnhold era, he was the best of the 80's action stars, and those movies were so ridiculously macho, and often retarded. And as males we still buy into that ridiculous shit, however subconsciously, and that fact is socially destructive I'm sure. But it seems like there will never be another ARNOLD. Maybe that's even a good thing. heh.

Colin Farrel? seriously!! 

has been quite good in his last few movies (actually Tronyn, I think you will like In Bruges) but the problem with the Total Recall remake isnt going to be him, it will be Len Wiseman.

As for Arnie, he made a few good movies and the original Total Recall is definitely one of them, even though I think Paul Verheoven's demented humour had more to do with me liking it than Arnie.

Cannot believe there is a band called See you at the Part Richta, love that line. 

The Artist (2011)
Excellently done homage to the silent film era with many charming scenes and some meta stuff. Unique in these times of constant blockbuster BS. Well deserved Oscar. The only other new production in this style would be the Call of Cthulhu short movie.

Love (2011)
A somewhat indie-like exploration into the theme of isolation, lonliness and the value of human experiences. An astronaut gets stranded on the ISS for years and slowly gets crazy over it. Then some 2001ish abtract ending resolves the dilemma.

The Mill & The Cross (2011)
A movie based on and taking place inside the painting "The Way to Calvary". Picturesque scenes and imagery which I found to be quite Kurosawarish at times. It's basically an imagination of how the artist (played by Rutger Hauer) envisioned and realized his work within the context of his time and the belief system.

This Must Be The Place (2011)
Only adding this because Spirit mentioned it in GA. It's a comedy/drama about an excentric aging rock star (think Ozzy), played by Sean Penn, who goes on a journey through the USA in order to come to terms with his problematic relationship to his late father and his own belated coming to age, some of which remotely reminded me of The Straight Story. I thought it was funny in parts and overall light watching, that's why I recommended it to Spirit - knowing about his very own problematic relationship to movies and taste - but he rejected it for some preposterous reasons and had the audacity to call me out on it here, the little cumstain. 

didn't disappoint. not quite as dark as its predecessor but satisfying nonetheless; bale summed it up best when he said it was like a cross between the first two movies. hathaway certainly adds to the fun factor (which may not be to everyone's taste admittedly)

i guess a few ideas felt borrowed from elsewhere, nothing to the detriment of the story though 

Just watched it today as well, I think I liked it the best of the 3? TDKR, BB then TDK. I really liked Bane, [spoiler] wish they gave him a better death scene though.

The problem with TDK was that Joker was too much of a main character, whereas Batman/BW was kind of dull and not that likable. TDKR has BM/BW as the main character as he should be - it's about him again. Not about Heath Ledger as the Joker.

Bane's stupid accent was the only downside. Why in the fuck would you base your characters voice on an Irishman when that's got absolutely nothing to do with the characters past?