Some great production design but some massive plot holes. I hold out hope that the B/R will fill in some of those and present a more complete vision. I so wanted to like that film. Really looking forward to seeing Looper.

That was a lot creationsm and religious symbolism for a SciFi movie. Besides that the plot was horrible, the stupid acting characters made it almost unwatchable and not one single dialog was worthwhile listening. By the way nothing was clear in the end, neither the idea of humans (and the whole Evolution) as biological weaponfactory nor what made the engineers. The artwork was marvelous, but not revolutionary. I am deeply disappointed by Scott and his writers. This was no good work.

I thought the monsters and the violence was awesome. The plot however not so much if you try to look at it as a strictly sci-fi, based on possible physics and whatnot story. It came across to me as purposely having mystery school, dogon beliefs and whatnot of that sort purposely put into it by the writer to possibly share his opinion or to help convince people that human beings a fragile, freak of nature creatures that have no place on their own planet and must therefor have been made by aliens, like the Ancient Aliens show. But I dunno, the last part I realize I sound a bit paranoid, and it's probably just a fad to be using that sort of plot device lately but then again there's going to be two other movies so hopefully there's some sort of coherent explanation that isn't just lazy writing. But overall I actually went in expected it to be shit like the overcritical hipster movie nerd friends I have said it was and was very pleasantly surprised. It was entertaining and awesome planets, machines, and creatures so yeah.

hey man, I really liked the movie, it was cool to see the design of such great artists as carlos huante in motion.
for the suicide, I think it was to "impregnate" the earth with DNA, when no life existed there. but to me the engineer looked surprised, as if he thought the stuff he was drinking wouldn't kill him.
my theory is that the engineer race was creating humans to test their weapons on them. they have the same DNA in order to see what their weapons would do to them, if used in an engineer war. why they left marks for the humans to find them is something I don't get. especially when the only reaction, when "we" finally meet them is ripping everybody to shreds and starting the ship to destroy earths population.
also why is this not the planet ripley and her crew are landing on later in "alien", it would fit perfectly: the crashed ship, the single xenomorph laying eggs (or what ever it does lonely on the planet). that is actually something I read somewhere [link] but it is so true.
anyways, the designs, the composition of the shots, the sound, everything was very entertaining, to me one of the best movies (beside "Dark knight rises") of 2012 so far.
Cheers,
Flo

My take on it is, the engineers made bioweapons, they used their own dna in their mixes, they came to earth and provided DNA for humans- so we're bioweapons ,multiplied,near killed the planet, will spread like plague, they realized this, decided to terminate the human program, while creating another weapon(perhaps one meant to go to earth and replace us), it evolved beyond their control.
Be that as it may or may not, I love Ridley Scott, just about every frame in his movies can be printed as poster worth hanging.

There are aspects of the movie I found to be an irresistible pleasure. David and his mysterious agenda, not human and avoiding the cliche of wanting to become one but yet, not entirely devoide of personality and have intentions of his own.
The xenomorph shrine/painting, as if the xenomorphs where holy beings.
The general level and quality of details, I often notice when that aspect is neglected.

"I also liked the partial explaination of the origin of the xenomorphs as bioweapons, which I remember being the plot of several of the Alien books I read when younger."

In the comics and novelization I read, I think the xenomorphs wheren´t artificial, they had their own planet. It got heavily atomic bombed to avoid them being brought to Earth but when the responsible cames back to Earth, xenomorphs have already pretty much taken over it. In the novelization, the xenomorphs escaped thanks to xenomorph-worshippers, which had some sort of mental communication with the creatures and in the comics, thanks to the engineers, who disabled the self-destruction systems in the base where the xenomorphs where held and began to start terraforming Earth to their liking near the end.
Thought, the bioweapon idea certainly is a quiet good idea.

"Additionally, the idea that the engineers had identical DNA to humans seems insane, as humans fit neatly into the web of life on Earth."

Horrible, horrible script! That wasn´t insane, not even bad, that was downright awfull. They could have avoided the identical DNA part. Also, remember how the accident was circa 2000 years prior to the Prometheus? Nope, that wasn´t supposed to be a coïncidence. Space mutant zombies? Really? Why didn´t the engineer bodies come to life too, then?

At least, they didn´ to go all the way with that.

There is the stupidity, the duo getting lost, lack of weaponery beside some sort of rifles and weak-sauce flammers.

A plausible way to go would have been that the human engineers where created from humans on Earth some 50 000 years or so ago by the original, real engineers which where absolutely not human at all.
After all, I think there is a significant difference in size between the engineers in this movie and the one you see in the first, 1979 alien movie.

I like the idea that humans where re-created on some other planets (or even another dimension, like the Labyrinth from Hellraiser) by some visiting entity during prehistoric times.
I write re-created, as in new individuals [link] , in several different, more or less modified versions, not just cloned or imported from Earth.
Even with no visible modifications, the divergence between them an Earth humans would be far enough in the past that you could notice they can´t be from our Earth just at looking at their faces (even if they haven´t nocturnal eyes, silvery skin or something like that).

Then, the xenomorph or rather, the half-aborted excuse of a xenomorph. In all the previous movies, even the AVP ones? No malformed xenomorphs, except in Alien Resurrection but that was because of human-caused interference.