So...Prometheus.

ministrations · Post by **ministrations** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:29 pm

POSSIBLE SPOILER****

Does anyone who has seen this movie believe Vickers is not a robot? Thoughts welcomed.

rickdrat · Post by **rickdrat** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:33 am

****SPOILERS BELOW****

Even though the film sets up that possibility up to, and including, directly confronting her with that question, I'm going to say she is not.

Vickers is motivated primarily by self preservation and fear. While the former could certainly be attributed to a robot, fear is not something we typically associate with them, at least not in the Alien universe. I think the desire to protect her own ass and get the hell back home is all too human.

Likewise, when it's revealed that Old Man Weyland is her father (not much of a surprise there), it was very clear to me that they had a whole mess of father/daughter issues going way back. David, the artificial creation, had become the most favored "offspring" and she was insanely jealous of that relationship. He preferred the manufactured child who was smarter, stronger, and generally more superior in every way. One that could do his bidding and help him meet what he believed to be his creator.

So for all her frigid, hard ass behavior in the first act, I think there are plenty of indicators that she is entirely human.

And damn attractive in a space suit if I do say so myself.

ministrations · Post by **ministrations** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:05 am

Yeah, I know that she's too-transparently written to be ambiguous (kind of a trite Scott hallmark).

The dead giveaway for me (the origami unicorn, if you will) is when she calls Weyland "father" in the same fashion as David. But it's hard for me to ignore the Cain-Abel, Lore-Data aspect of her relationship with David, that their father prefers him because he supposedly lacks the human drives and emotional failings that she's been programmed with.

Plus, Weyland would have been something like 90 if he conceived her naturally, and no one who looks like that is going to come from 90-year-old sperm. Sorry.

But emotion has never been a big problem for the robots in Alien. Both Bishop and the Winona Ryder robot specifically expressed fear, but almost as a catalog entry, like they recognize this would be the normal human reaction but weren't hampered by it. This is very similar to Vickers' reactions throughout Prometheus.

Wishful thinking? Yes. But I'll take my wishful thinking one step further and hope she makes another appearance in the sequel, perhaps having been mass produced upon the death of her "father."

barakuda · Post by **barakuda** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 2:59 am

Has I was Watching the film I thought Vickers was the only logical character. The main hero scientist chick cared more about finding are creators then the actual cause. Vicers realized that if we did find are true creators that there was chance that they would try and kill us for doing so. I knew from the opening why the old man paid for the whole misson. Vickors was the only character i liked in the whole film. And even her character was stereo typical so has to make her seem cold. Just all around to many stereo types to make this a great movie. Its like i seen it before on the scifi network.

rickdrat · Post by **rickdrat** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 7:48 am

I would also hope a robot, if it were truly imbued with the notion of self preservation, would have enough sense to know that if a giant, horseshoe shaped, space ship is rolling towards you, the most logical method of evasion would be to run perpendicular to the axis of motion, not parallel with it!

Sorry. I loved the film, but I couldn't help but say it out loud in the theater as I was watching that scene.

ministrations · Post by **ministrations** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:47 am

rickdrat wrote:I would also hope a robot, if it were truly imbued with the notion of self preservation, would have enough sense to know that if a giant, horseshoe shaped, space ship is rolling towards you, the most logical method of evasion would be to run perpendicular to the axis of motion, not parallel with it!

Sorry. I loved the film, but I couldn't help but say it out loud in the theater as I was watching that scene.

Yeah, that was pretty silly. But I still believe the death scene was a setup to her coming back in a sequel, to surprise everybody. "Oh wait, she can't die, because we can build them wholesale."

Also, nothing prevents her from coming back as a synthetic even if she was intended to be human in the original film.

barakuda · Post by **barakuda** » Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:58 am

Do you think she was a prototype. And David was the 2nd try after she was created with flaws. Kinda like Data and his brother Lore. The more I think about it . It makes sense. Mabey she was programmed not to know she was a android. Or she was built logical to run the logistics of corperation after he died . While David was built to be the opposite and more of the creative side. To her the old man just holding the company back with his wild goose chase. So he grew closer to David has his son. Lots of possabilities.

spider_silk_skin · Post by **spider_silk_skin** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:11 am

I think you guys are reaching. And yes, I did kind of hope she was when I watched it, but its made clear that she isn't. After all, Vickers' entire motivation in the movie was to wait for her father to die so she could take over the company. It doesn't really sit right that a machine would inherit the family business, particularly when they are shown to be more or less property in all the other films. The whole "sex with the captain" line is a throw back to a deleted scene in the first film where Ripley asks Lambert if she has had sex with Ash as she is starting to become suspicious of him. The implication being that the androids are not-in-fact, fully functional, or at least not interested. Vickers passed the sex test, Ash, apparently, didn't.

And the age thing isn't really an issue since we already know that technologies like cryo-sleep can perfectly preserve a person for 57 years without them aging a day. Depending on how many business trips Vickers made to various star systems she could have very easily retained a youthful body while her father aged in real time. Perhaps she even did it on purpose to accelerate his death (from her perspective).

ministrations · Post by **ministrations** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 7:54 am

I think everything's going to be a reach, including what we both said, because there's no actual evidence. I don't think it's made clear by any means that she isn't.

We know they can have sex because Bishop and Annalee mention it specifically; Ash purportedly had a family. (There might be some emotional/empathic problem that makes it a dead giveaway that it's a robot having sex, but like everything else, that's just my speculation.) As we've discussed here many times, sexual ability will probably drive robotic production at some point, not the reverse, so while it could be possible that later models can and David and Vickers can't, I think the chances of that are low.

Also, Vickers may have been serving the crew from a false position of superiority; she may not have been able to deny the captain, only demur for a while. I think it's also still perfectly reasonable to read that scene as Vickers maintaining her cover.

And it seemed clear to me that she wasn't going to take over the company. Weyland was going there to try to extend his life; he specifically hid things from his "daughter" (who had a different name, and despite being a high-level Weyland executive, seemed to have no problem with a bunch of grunts calling her by her last name). As I mentioned earlier, her personality could be a mix of traits designed for maximum effectiveness in the boardroom, and her impatience with her father delaying his death could be completely fake or it could be a genuine reaction to being in service for so long. (It would certainly be bad from a profit standpoint to have a fatally demented 110-year-old CEO freeze himself for years and spend a trillion dollars on a goose chase, and that might be her only driver: protect the company at all costs.)

(Completely off topic, I wish Lance Henriksen had been able to come back one more time as a Weyland, instead of retconning the whole Weyland back story. I think they owed that much to him, given that Guy Pearce made barely a cameo in the final film.)

Finally, age-wise, she could have been sleeping for all those years, or she could have been conceived when Weyland was 80-something, or she could have been a 75-year-old robot for all we know, unable to age. I love debating this, but they give us so little that I don't think we can ever definitively state anything one way or the other. (Case in point: there's far more evidence that Vickers is a robot than there was that Deckard was a replicant, but we found out some years later that that was Scott and Fancher's intention with Blade Runner.) I think a sequel, or a director's cut -- because you know that's coming -- will shed a lot more light on this.

ashleyfires · Post by **ashleyfires** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 12:06 am

I just saw Prometheus in 3D and although I liked the 3D effects, I was overall disappointed with the film. Bad script, mis casting (charlize theron totally under used) and even the acting was dreadful. I liked the look of the film and production design and felt like it was a Ridley Scott film but seems like he just didn't have his heart in it.

Why is it that robots that are not so nice have English accents??? Hmmm

It was not a horrible film by any means just wanted it to be so much more!

blond111 · Post by **blond111** » Tue Jul 03, 2012 9:40 am

Just a thought..... since Ashley posted. Vickers acted like a well built robot also not to mention the hair pulled back tight in the bun was the perfect robot look. If we are left without answers in Prometheus we could raise some money to have our questions answered through an Ashleyfires production.

Rotwang · Post by **Rotwang** » Wed Jul 04, 2012 1:11 am

My guess ? She may have been a robot in an earlier draft, but changed at the last minute. Chances are better than average that at least one of the special editions that we will be bombarded with every so often will have more ambiguous scenes and Ridley proclaiming that she is really a replicant though that doesn't mesh with the rest of the story. Check Bladerunner for more info.

Karel · Post by **Karel** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 8:01 pm

Well, having finally gotten around to seeing Prometheus, I am able to weigh in with my considered opinion. Vickers: not a robot. Artificial? Possibly.

Massive Spoilers, by the way.

Why do I think Vickers is not a robot? If she were, why would Weyland, in his first appearance, simultaneously heap such praise on David and deride him for not having a soul? David, as an individual, clearly has a number of profound emotional limitations; Vickers does not. If Vickers is a robot she is clearly more advanced; so again, why would Weyland put forward that David is "the closest thing he has to a son"? I just don't think that's the sort of thing he would say if he had another "child," male or female, who was also a robot and who he also cared deeply about.

If David and Vickers were both robots, and Weyland has this special affection for David, why is David subservient to Vickers? David's subservience is a function of his nature; the special affection Weyland feels for him is in spite of it. Were Vickers of the same nature as David then Weyland would, I think, be hard put to override his obvious affection for David in making him subservient to Vickers. Emotionally, it doesn't jive. Note that Weyland's affection is not just represented in his dissembling speech to the crew at the beginning of the film but at the end as well, in his reaction to David's decapitation; so we have every reason to believe it is genuine.

David is not quite on an equal level with the rest of the crew. Vickers is not only in a position of authority over the rest of the crew, but she rebukes the revived Weyland by saying (I paraphrase as best I can recall): "Did you really think I was going to sit on a Board for seventy years debating what to do while you were off chasing some miracle?" Why, if Vickers was a robot, would she have any standing whatsoever on the board of directors of the Weyland corporation?

That, and the fact that she obviously lacks David's peculiar emotional and social defects (if possessing a few relatively minor ones of her own), leads me to the conclusion that she is not a robot.

Why do I think she may nevertheless be artificial? Well, there are those moments of ambiguity as discussed earlier. Physically, she is of a kind in her resemblance to David (and possibly a younger Weyland?). There is Elba's pointed question (to which she responds, if not directly, then at least in a fairly unandroidlike way). And, of course, she contemptuously refers to Weyland as "Father."

That use of that word has one obvious potential meaning: Vickers is Weyland's natural biological daughter, heir apparent to his fortune but estranged from the old man. But if Weyland is both willing and able to father biological children; and he really wanted a son; and, forgive me, he is richer than God and more powerful than the government on a future Earth that has been racked by environmental and social catastrophe; then why wouldn't he simply divorce his wife when she wouldn't or couldn't provide him with one, and remarry someone who would? Or, if he really loves his wife, sire bastards with mistresses and claim one of them as his son?

Ah, but suppose Weyland is a perfectionist. He doesn't just want a child, he wants a perfect child; and perhaps one who will not have as much reason to fear mortality as he does. Assume that choice of gender does not figure greatly in his decision making (at least at first); what might the first attempt of such a megalomaniac be? Cloning or genetic engineering. Vickers is his effort at a "perfect" daughter; and while, from the look of her, it is obvious that a high degree of physical perfection has been achieved, and probably a high degree of intellectual perfection as well, other defects have resulted (sufficient to turn her into a cold, selfish, neurotic, high-strung, high-powered, icy Queen Bitch). Disappointed in the outcome, he lowers his sights... to David.

That, to me, is the most logical backstory. I might be willing to grant that things may have gone really wrong with Vickers, and that she may have artificial implants in her brain as a result, to improve her memory or regulate her mood or otherwise compensate for defects or grant special abilities; but which at the same time render her more "robotlike" (hence Elba's query). But that's as far as I think I can honestly go. With David as her foil, I just can't buy that she's a robot.

Sorry guys. Better luck next time.

ministrations · Post by **ministrations** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 4:32 pm

Karel wrote:Well, having finally gotten around to seeing Prometheus, I am able to weigh in with my considered opinion. Vickers: not a robot. Artificial? Possibly.

We aren't going to know for sure until Scott tells us, and even if Vickers were a robot she'd be a poor depiction compared to some of the others we now enjoy (thanks Ashley, Evangeline, Diana, etc.) But the Abel-beats-Cain story is such a tired cliche here that I'm surprised you dismiss it.

Karel wrote:Why do I think Vickers is not a robot? If she were, why would Weyland, in his first appearance, simultaneously heap such praise on David and deride him for not having a soul? David, as an individual, clearly has a number of profound emotional limitations; Vickers does not. If Vickers is a robot she is clearly more advanced; so again, why would Weyland put forward that David is "the closest thing he has to a son"? I just don't think that's the sort of thing he would say if he had another "child," male or female, who was also a robot and who he also cared deeply about.

Vickers is clearly older than David (he's new, according to movie promo materials). Clearly, she's out of favor. I didn't really think that he was deriding David for not having a soul, although that is what we are led to believe. I think it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion that she was created to be an executive, to uphold Weyland's best interests on the board above all else.

As we know David does develop emotions, and Vickers is older. She might have developed her acerbic personality in response to Weyland ignoring her at every opportunity. Weyland, equally dismissive of Vickers becoming his schoolmarm, developed David with a totally different skill set. He never (or no longer) cared for his Cain the way he did for his Abel. Besides, turning your last point around: if Vickers were biological, would he say what he says about David and ignore his actual daughter? It precisely appears as if Weyland "threw away" his "daughter" when she wasn't convenient for him anymore.

The Outer Limits episode "Mary 25" is a perfect illustration of this. The man programs his wife to put the kids first, but gets sick of her precisely for putting the kids first, so he moves on to Mary, who's simply designed to do whatever he says. Like Vickers, the wife develops emotional responses that are against the husband's best interests, because of her programming, which only hastens his discarding her.

Karel wrote:If David and Vickers were both robots, and Weyland has this special affection for David, why is David subservient to Vickers? David's subservience is a function of his nature; the special affection Weyland feels for him is in spite of it. Were Vickers of the same nature as David then Weyland would, I think, be hard put to override his obvious affection for David in making him subservient to Vickers. Emotionally, it doesn't jive. Note that Weyland's affection is not just represented in his dissembling speech to the crew at the beginning of the film but at the end as well, in his reaction to David's decapitation; so we have every reason to believe it is genuine.

David is not quite on an equal level with the rest of the crew. Vickers is not only in a position of authority over the rest of the crew, but she rebukes the revived Weyland by saying (I paraphrase as best I can recall): "Did you really think I was going to sit on a Board for seventy years debating what to do while you were off chasing some miracle?" Why, if Vickers was a robot, would she have any standing whatsoever on the board of directors of the Weyland corporation?

Exactly. David is programmed to be curious and subservient, which makes him Weyland's perfect companion for this mission. Vickers is instead programmed to ensure the completion of the mission, the safe return of Weyland, and the return of extremely expensive company property. Also, you know she's already on the board. So it would be natural for everyone to assume she was in charge, although I don't remember that being made totally explicit at any time.

Social constructs being what they are, the viewers are only really creating a gestalt that puts Vickers on top and David on the bottom. Think about it: was there a single command Vickers gave that the crew followed against their will, including David? They did whatever the hell they wanted. And fucked her too. That is a strange lapse of protocol for a grunt (even a ship captain) to ask a No. 2 or No. 3 exec to sleep with him, especially so cavalierly.

And we know David is clearly not completely subservient to the crew. He killed the lead scientist, went off into the caverns despite the massive breakdown occurring upstairs, and hid crucially important information despite the high risk of everyone's death (including his and Weyland's). So that's false subservience. Who says Vickers is not imbued with false authority?

Karel wrote: And, of course, she contemptuously refers to Weyland as "Father." That use of that word has one obvious potential meaning: Vickers is Weyland's natural biological daughter, heir apparent to his fortune but estranged from the old man. But if Weyland is both willing and able to father biological children; and he really wanted a son; and, forgive me, he is richer than God and more powerful than the government on a future Earth that has been racked by environmental and social catastrophe; then why wouldn't he simply divorce his wife when she wouldn't or couldn't provide him with one, and remarry someone who would? Or, if he really loves his wife, sire bastards with mistresses and claim one of them as his son?

Ah, but suppose Weyland is a perfectionist. He doesn't just want a child, he wants a perfect child; and perhaps one who will not have as much reason to fear mortality as he does. Assume that choice of gender does not figure greatly in his decision making (at least at first); what might the first attempt of such a megalomaniac be? Cloning or genetic engineering. Vickers is his effort at a "perfect" daughter; and while, from the look of her, it is obvious that a high degree of physical perfection has been achieved, and probably a high degree of intellectual perfection as well, other defects have resulted (sufficient to turn her into a cold, selfish, neurotic, high-strung, high-powered, icy Queen Bitch). Disappointed in the outcome, he lowers his sights... to David.

Well, no, because he's a robotics man, and has been for roughly a century at the time of Prometheus. It seems strange that a man who becomes a trillionaire making robots appear human would suddenly switch fields to genetics when making the perfect heir. It would suit his megalomania far more to build them using his own machines. And everything you say could apply to a robot as much as to a clone. In fact, it's possible she was always designed to be a woman because he never had any intention of conflating his feelings for her with those for his "son," David.

And if she were really his biological child, I think she could have raised much more hell with his business than passively "sitting on the board for 70 years." She would have had rights, even in this supposed corporatocracy, that would have made it far more personally rewarding to stay off the Prometheus and spend four years in hypersleep while he likely died on his goose chase. I think both that she had no such rights, and that she really wasn't meant to look out for herself, were much more likely drivers here.

tdlsn · Post by **tdlsn** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:03 pm

Judging from the first Alien and barely remembering anything beyond the reactivated male android scene in it,I'd wager that David is the only android in the film. Even if she were,by the discussion above the film's asfr value from my p o v is not worth seeking. Seems though,Scott loves to decapitate his male-bots only to show a talking head during later scenes. Nowhere in moving pictures is there a comparable scene (and never will be) involving a fembot as it is in that 1979 film (perhaps it would be too unacceptable with audiences).

King Snarf · Post by **King Snarf** » Thu Jul 12, 2012 10:52 pm

ashleyfires wrote:Why is it that robots that are not so nice have English accents??? Hmmm

Because English accents are Hollywood short hand for "And THIS is a bad guy!"

Saya · Post by **Saya** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 4:44 am

UNLESS there is a guy with a French accent. Then he is the bad guy.

UNLESS! There is also a dude with a Russian or German accent. Seriously, first time you hear one of those, you know who the villain is gonna' be.

Stardust · Post by **Stardust** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:09 am

something logical ive found somewhere:

Think like a writer..not like the story is real as one post did.

SHE IS WITHOUT A DOUBT A ROBOT. We know this through the writing technique used. There is no point in having David expound so heavily on the fact that he was wearing the hazard suit for "show" if there was not another character also wearing one for show. You write this dialog in the script only to explain ALL of the hidden robots behavior--which is obviously Vickers. Your not suppose to know this---but you are suppose to recall what David said when Vickers is exposed and you object. The audience will recall the pretending to be human lines and it will explain why you didnt see it. It extremely common technique in mystery. In fact as soon as these lines were spoken I knew there was another robot and no more than a minute went by when she was called a robot by the captain. I am almost certain there were scenes cut at the end that show it. As soon as our star's hazard mask broke --I think Vickers broke too and she was going to be able to survive but it was saved for the next movie. Either way, that scene is coming as all dialog and actions point to it.

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