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Fictional Science: 100 Glaring Logical Issues With Prometheus

With Ridley Scott's Prometheus arriving on Blu-Ray, we look at 100 glaring logical issues that consume the film in a swirling sea of plot holes.
This article is over 12 years old and may contain outdated information

Part 8 – Flight of the Engineer (1:34:30 – 1:48:30) 

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80. Why is everyone so sure the Canisters are weapons? Yes, they killed some crewmembers who messed with them, but why does that automatically make them weapons built to destroy humanity? There is no clear evidence to support such intent.

81. How can David actually speak the Engineers’ language? What roots would he be able to study to figure it all out and then speak in a way the Engineer, a being thousands of years older than him, could fluently understand?

82. Why does Shaw assume and assert that the Engineers hate them? Yes, a lot of bad things happened to the crew, but almost all of it was because the so-called ‘scientists’ took stupid, destructive actions, or because David enjoyed messing with things. Yes, we find out later that the Engineer does seem to have bloodlust for them, but at the point Shaw asks him why he hates them, everything that happens has still been their own fault.

83. Why was Weyland in this movie? He dies with absolutely no fulfillment of his arc, no one mentioning how weird it was that he was on the ship the entire time, or any clear reason for his existence.

84. Why does the Engineer decide to just go to Earth by himself? We saw that this ship had a crew. How could he fly it all alone, and why would he want to?

85. Why does everyone know the black goo is bad? Since David was the guy who infected Holloway with the black goo, and Holloway is so far the only character to directly die from it, David should therefore be the only one who knows what black goo does. So why does everyone else know it’s dangerous, and then assume it’s been weaponized for use on Earth?

86. Why does the crew assume that the Engineers are A – going to Earth – and B – going to Earth to kill all the humans? There has been no evidence for this conclusion, especially to characters like Shaw, who are just making massive logical jumps at this point.

87. At the point where Shaw is running and jumping over massive holes in the Earth as the big plates come apart, they have just abandoned the idea that she just had horrible stomach surgery, haven’t they?

88. When escaping, why does Vicker not use her big lifeboat she prepared for this sort of scenario, and instead jump into the little escape pod? For that matter, why does the Captain eject and destroy the lifeboat?

89. Why do Shaw and Vickers start fleeing from the big rolling alien ship by running in perfect tandem with the length of the ship, instead of moving a few meters horizontally and being perfectly safe?

90. Why was Vickers in this movie? You literally remove her from every single scene she’s in and the movie would not be different in the slightest. She did nothing over the course of this film, and in the end, was killed for a brief ‘shock’ moment. Totally unnecessary character.

91. How is the rock that saves Shaw strong enough to hold a massive, city-sized alien spaceship at bay?

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Author
Image of Jonathan R. Lack
Jonathan R. Lack
With ten years of experience writing about movies and television, including an ongoing weekly column in The Denver Post's YourHub section, Jonathan R. Lack is a passionate voice in the field of film criticism. Writing is his favorite hobby, closely followed by watching movies and TV (which makes this his ideal gig), and is working on his first film-focused book.