Can Prometheus 2 work without Elizabeth Shaw?

[whiterabbit]

As an atheist myself I didn't think it was pushing any pro-belief or anti-atheist agenda. Shaw thinks she's looking for God, instead she finds hell. She still chooses to believe, (the arrogance of self denial) what she finds next in her search for paradise is what Prom 2 should be about. Hopefully more hellish.

When watching the film, I simply felt that the whole story was built on stereotypes; from the dying atheist against the living theist and even to Weyland being portrayed as the villain when it was Shaw who behaved unreasonably.  When you think about it, Weyland funded the mission in hopes of saving his life and Shaw just chooses to interrupt his one moment with the Engineer, completely unappreciative of everything he has done for her mission/research.  Shaw should at least have had the decency of letting Weyland complete his last attempt at staying alive and honestly, with a gun to my head, I would have threatened Shaw's life as well if she cared more for her own self-interests than my life.  Despite her claims of religious belief, Shaw chose to forget the one concept that almost all religions are based on; life is sacred.

Oh OUCH! But absolutely right. Shaw is the villain of Prometheus and a rather rude villain at that. I wonder if that was the point though, that the one who chooses to believe something that is beyond reason, will always be the most selfish.

[Born Of Cold Light]

Saying that Shaw is the villain is absolutely crass; she was the only one with her head on straight.  Do you honestly think that the Engineer would have acted any differently if she hadn't been there?  He had utter contempt for the humans and was going to complete destroy the human race.  Weyland was an egomaniac who was willing to risk everyone's lives and awaken a dangerous alien life form in the pursuit of supposed immortality.

[Nightmare Asylum]

she was the only one with her head on straight.

And at the end of the film, the only one with her head on at all!

[predxeno]

Saying that Shaw is the villain is absolutely crass; she was the only one with her head on straight.  Do you honestly think that the Engineer would have acted any differently if she hadn't been there?  He had utter contempt for the humans and was going to complete destroy the human race.  Weyland was an egomaniac who was willing to risk everyone's lives and awaken a dangerous alien life form in the pursuit of supposed immortality.

It doesn't matter how things turned out, it matters what the intent was.  For example, Burke from Aliens locked the others out of Medical during the Alien assault and went in by himself only to be assaulted and captured by an Alien while Newt led the others to safety.  Does this make Burke a hero?

Furthermore, Shaw had no evidence at all that the Engineer was hostile, otherwise she would never have gone back to awaken it.  Weyland may have been an egomaniac but he had absolute right to make just one simple request before he was killed and Shaw had no right to try to take it from him.

[NetworkATTH]

Saying that Shaw is the villain is absolutely crass; she was the only one with her head on straight.  Do you honestly think that the Engineer would have acted any differently if she hadn't been there?  He had utter contempt for the humans and was going to complete destroy the human race.  Weyland was an egomaniac who was willing to risk everyone's lives and awaken a dangerous alien life form in the pursuit of supposed immortality.

It doesn't matter how thugs turned out, it matters what the intent was.  For example, Burke from Aliens locked the others out of Medical during the Alien assault and went in by himself only to be assaulted and captured by an Alien while Newt led the others to safety.  Does this make Burke a hero?

Furthermore, Shaw had no evidence at all that the Engineer was hostile, otherwise she would never have gone back to awaken it.  Weyland may have been an egomaniac but he had absolute right to make just one simple request before he was killed and Shaw had no right to try to take it from him.

That is really, really dumb. That is such an out of left field character change. And it's obvious that the Engineers are bastards. Like, even nobody so far is accurate gauging their motives, they clearly don't care about committing the occasional genocide.

[predxeno]

Shaw apparently thought differently, otherwise why would she put her own life in danger to confront a being she supposedly knew wouldn't have qualms killing her?  Did she really think such a hostile being would answer her many questions before killing her?

[NetworkATTH]

Shaw apparently thought differently, otherwise why would she put her own life in danger to confront a being she supposedly knew wouldn't have qualms killing her?  Did she really think such a hostile being would answer her many questions before killing her?

Why not? I mean there are plenty of questions you can ask about Prometheus. For example, why the hell would you take your helmets off, bad idea. How did they manage to get cannabis on board, and why would you smoke it in such a professional environment inside a chamber full of urns oozing black material when you've seen the corpses of Engineers' piled on top of each other. There are just, questionable things going on, all the time in it.

It's not a huge jump to just assume Shaw was in a bit of a panic and overwhelmed, in a crisis of faith, and asked, questions like, why did you want to kill us, if you made us. The intent isn't exactly an assumption that the Engineer is benevolent, but that it's capable of answering that question. It's one of the less stupid scenes in the film.

I mean, you could ask any fascist in a white pride rally "Hey, why do you believe moronic shit?" and they would answer "Because I believe I am the best". It's really no different here. If you could talk to a being, you would assume it could answer a question. And it was before it ripped David's head off she asked it, of course. After that, it was a bit different.

[predxeno]

Shaw being in emotional distress doesn't excuse her for caring more about her own interests than in possibly saving a man's life.  As I said, if my life were in extreme jeopardy and someone was willing to push me over the metaphorical cliff for their own agenda, I wouldn't hesitate to put them in the ground.  I'd think the same would hold true for everyone else here.

[NetworkATTH]

Shaw being in emotional distress doesn't excuse her for caring more about her own interests than in possibly saving a man's life.  As I said, if my life were in extreme jeopardy and someone was willing to push me over the metaphorical cliff for their own agenda, I wouldn't hesitate to put them in the ground.  I'd think the same would hold true for everyone else here.

I still don't see how this could make Shaw nefarious.

[predxeno]

I never called her nefarious, that was someone else; I just said that Weyland was unfairly stereotyped as a "villain".

[NetworkATTH]

I never called her nefarious, that was someone else; I just said that Weyland was unfairly stereotyped as a "villain".

I could go along with that. I mean, it was obvious he wasn't the best person, a bit of a sociopath, as most people like that are, but that's more a fault of the script not selling it well enough. It's more evident in the TED Talk that his personality and ideology, are really not so different than most billionaires. An ideology that fuses the aspects of Nietzsche and Rand together. "I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all". Straight from Thus Spake Zarathustra. And, the Engineer's are inspired by Nietzsche as well, specifically, again, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

What they were trying to imply is that Weyland and The Engineer, are, like Father like Son. Both can be seen as immoral, but they see themselves as amoral. The film just didn't evoke it well enough.

[Born Of Cold Light]

It doesn't matter how thugs turned out, it matters what the intent was.  For example, Burke from Aliens locked the others out of Medical during the Alien assault and went in by himself only to be assaulted and captured by an Alien while Newt led the others to safety.  Does this make Burke a hero?

Ripley could have taken down any Aliens in their way.  If anything, Vasquez and Gorman might not have died; that situation is so far removed from what happened in Prometheus since Burke was a madman who wanted Ripley and the rest to die while Shaw was trying to prevent more death.

Furthermore, Shaw had no evidence at all that the Engineer was hostile, otherwise she would never have gone back to awaken it.  Weyland may have been an egomaniac but he had absolute right to make just one simple request before he was killed and Shaw had no right to try to take it from him.

Out of everyone who was still alive, she knew how dangerous everything was on that planet.  It does not take a genius to figure out that the Engineers were not nice.  The whole planet was riddled with bioweapons that killed people in the worst ways possible, and judging from the artwork and colossal heads, the Engineers were quite proud of everything.  Anyone with sense would not have woken up the last one without several heavily armed soldiers at their side (not some yahoo with a pea shooter).  It's simply a matter of deductive reasoning; from their artwork and the fact that absolutely everything there could and would kill you, it was clear that the Engineers reveled in their ability to to cause death and destruction to an almost religious extent.  It doesn't matter that Weyland had a 'dying with;' his wish did not supersede the safety of everyone else there.  Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut for safety reasons but she was the only one standing there with any real idea of what the Engineers were all about.  David himself said that they were leaving to go to Earth, which should have been a major warning sign for everyone else.  Check out the extended scene where the humans and the Engineer meet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhPVVFiQdE0#ws

There's absolutely nothing here to indicate that Shaw was what set off the Engineer.  He merely saw the humans as bugs and then proceeded to try to destroy their planet.  Also, look at the expressions of Vickers and Janet; they weren't surprised at all.  Anyone with any common sense would have radioed in the military and had the whole planet quarantined, including the Engineer.  Weyland had an absolutely retarded idea that an ancient astronaut was going to give him immortality and was willing to ignore all available evidence that said being was a genocidal monster.

[predxeno]

The fact that the Engineers had bioweapons does not mean they are evil, the US and various other national powers possess nuclear weapons but does that mean these countries are evil as well?  While the bio-weapons went out of control, it is no indication to the true motives of the beings who created them.  To claim otherwise would suggest whoever owns any form of WMD is evil, and that's something too disturbing to contemplate because it implies radicalized groups like ISIS are in the right.

[Born Of Cold Light]

Ever since WWII, no nukes have been used in open conflict and there has been a serious effort to limit their spread.  As for biological weapons, they have not been used by any major power since WWI and anyone who did would become an international pariah (e.g., Saddam Hussein after gassing the Kurds).  The Engineers appear to have no such scruples and bio-engineered monsters from one of the most dangerous life forms in the universe that have the potential to render whole planets dead.  Also, it's again clear from their artwork that they were quite proud of their creations.  The equivalent would be if the US had a dirty bomb factory right in the middle of Michigan with a giant statue of George Washington on top holding a cross in one hand and a bomb in the other, with murals on the inside of the factory elaborately detailing the deaths of people who had been attacked with the bio-weapons.  Outside of terrorist organizations and North Korea, no government today revels in death and destruction to the extent that the Engineers did.  And even if judging the Engineers from what we saw is unfair, the second it was clear that dangerous biological weapons were present, the responsible thing to do would have been to take off and radio in the authorities, not to act like they were in the Land of Oz and that the Engineer was the Wizard.

[predxeno]

You're projecting onto the Engineers traits they we don't even know they have; there is no proof that they got the ooze from the Aliens as you seem to be implying.  Furthermore, the "artwork" you are referring to wasn't an attempt to celebrate or honor their weapon; they are more likely instructions warning of the dangers the weapons possessed.  Engineers are a different species from humans and in none of the stories they are in is their any suggestion that they use conventional paper and pencils.  If you look at the hieroglyphics of Alien's concept art, you can see that these "artworks" are actually the primary form of written communication the Engineers used, similar to the Predators' hieroglyphs from the first AVP movie.