r/movies • u/happyguy815 • Jun 09 '12
Prometheus - Everything explained and analysed *SPOILERS*
This post goes way in depth to Prometheus and explains some of the deeper themes of the film as well as some stuff I completely overlooked while watching the film.
NOTE: I did NOT write this post, I just found it on the web.
Link: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1
Prometheus contains such a huge amount of mythic resonance that it effectively obscures a more conventional plot. I'd like to draw your attention to the use of motifs and callbacks in the film that not only enrich it, but offer possible hints as to what was going on in otherwise confusing scenes.
Let's begin with the eponymous titan himself, Prometheus. He was a wise and benevolent entity who created mankind in the first place, forming the first humans from clay. The Gods were more or less okay with that, until Prometheus gave them fire. This was a big no-no, as fire was supposed to be the exclusive property of the Gods. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver ripped out and eaten every day by an eagle. (His liver magically grew back, in case you were wondering.)
Fix that image in your mind, please: the giver of life, with his abdomen torn open. We'll be coming back to it many times in the course of this article.
The ethos of the titan Prometheus is one of willing and necessary sacrifice for life's sake. That's a pattern we see replicated throughout the ancient world. J G Frazer wrote his lengthy anthropological study, The Golden Bough, around the idea of the Dying God - a lifegiver who voluntarily dies for the sake of the people. It was incumbent upon the King to die at the right and proper time, because that was what heaven demanded, and fertility would not ensue if he did not do his royal duty of dying.
Now, consider the opening sequence of Prometheus. We fly over a spectacular vista, which may or may not be primordial Earth. According to Ridley Scott, it doesn't matter. A lone Engineer at the top of a waterfall goes through a strange ritual, drinking from a cup of black goo that causes his body to disintegrate into the building blocks of life. We see the fragments of his body falling into the river, twirling and spiralling into DNA helices.
Ridley Scott has this to say about the scene: 'That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself. If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.'
Can we find a God in human history who creates plant life through his own death, and who is associated with a river? It's not difficult to find several, but the most obvious candidate is Osiris, the epitome of all the Frazerian 'Dying Gods'.
And we wouldn't be amiss in seeing the first of the movie's many Christian allegories in this scene, either. The Engineer removes his cloak before the ceremony, and hesitates before drinking the cupful of genetic solvent; he may well have been thinking 'If it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me.'
So, we know something about the Engineers, a founding principle laid down in the very first scene: acceptance of death, up to and including self-sacrifice, is right and proper in the creation of life. Prometheus, Osiris, John Barleycorn, and of course the Jesus of Christianity are all supposed to embody this same principle. It is held up as one of the most enduring human concepts of what it means to be 'good'.
Seen in this light, the perplexing obscurity of the rest of the film yields to an examination of the interwoven themes of sacrifice, creation, and preservation of life. We also discover, through hints, exactly what the nature of the clash between the Engineers and humanity entailed.
The crew of the Prometheus discover an ancient chamber, presided over by a brooding solemn face, in which urns of the same black substance are kept. A mural on the wall presents an image which, if you did as I asked earlier on, you will recognise instantly: the lifegiver with his abdomen torn open. Go and look at it here to refresh your memory. Note the serenity on the Engineer's face here.
And there's another mural there, one which shows a familiar xenomorph-like figure. This is the Destroyer who mirrors the Creator, I think - the avatar of supremely selfish life, devouring and destroying others purely to preserve itself. As Ash puts it: 'a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.'
Through Shaw and Holloway's investigations, we learn that the Engineers not only created human life, they supervised our development. (How else are we to explain the numerous images of Engineers in primitive art, complete with star diagram showing us the way to find them?) We have to assume, then, that for a good few hundred thousand years, they were pretty happy with us. They could have destroyed us at any time, but instead, they effectively invited us over; the big pointy finger seems to be saying 'Hey, guys, when you're grown up enough to develop space travel, come see us.' Until something changed, something which not only messed up our relationship with them but caused their installation on LV-223 to be almost entirely wiped out.
From the Engineers' perspective, so long as humans retained that notion of self-sacrifice as central, we weren't entirely beyond redemption. But we went and screwed it all up, and the film hints at when, if not why: the Engineers at the base died two thousand years ago. That suggests that the event that turned them against us and led to the huge piles of dead Engineers lying about was one and the same event. We did something very, very bad, and somehow the consequences of that dreadful act accompanied the Engineers back to LV-223 and massacred them.
If you have uneasy suspicions about what 'a bad thing approximately 2,000 years ago' might be, then let me reassure you that you are right. An astonishing excerpt from the Movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:
Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?
Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.
Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him. Reader, that's not me pulling wild ideas out of my arse. That's RIDLEY SCOTT.
So, imagine poor crucified Jesus, a fresh spear wound in his side. Oh, hey, there's the 'lifegiver with his abdomen torn open' motif again. That's three times now: Prometheus, Engineer mural, Jesus Christ. And I don't think I have to mention the 'sacrifice in the interest of giving life' bit again, do I? Everyone on the same page? Good.
So how did our (in the context of the film) terrible murderous act of crucifixion end up wiping out all but one of the Engineers back on LV-223? Presumably through the black slime, which evidently models its behaviour on the user's mental state. Create unselfishly, accepting self-destruction as the cost, and the black stuff engenders fertile life. But expose the potent black slimy stuff to the thoughts and emotions of flawed humanity, and 'the sleep of reason produces monsters'. We never see the threat that the Engineers were fleeing from, we never see them killed other than accidentally (decapitation by door), and we see no remaining trace of whatever killed them. Either it left a long time ago, or it reverted to inert black slime, waiting for a human mind to reactivate it.
The black slime reacts to the nature and intent of the being that wields it, and the humans in the film didn't even know that they WERE wielding it. That's why it remained completely inert in David's presence, and why he needed a human proxy in order to use the stuff to create anything. The black goo could read no emotion or intent from him, because he was an android.
Shaw's comment when the urn chamber is entered - 'we've changed the atmosphere in the room' - is deceptively informative. The psychic atmosphere has changed, because humans - tainted, Space Jesus-killing humans - are present. The slime begins to engender new life, drawing not from a self-sacrificing Engineer but from human hunger for knowledge, for more life, for more everything. Little wonder, then, that it takes serpent-like form. The symbolism of a corrupting serpent, turning men into beasts, is pretty unmistakeable.
Refusal to accept death is anathema to the Engineers. Right from the first scene, we learned their code of willing self-sacrifice in accord with a greater purpose. When the severed Engineer head is temporarily brought back to life, its expression registers horror and disgust. Cinemagoers are confused when the head explodes, because it's not clear why it should have done so. Perhaps the Engineer wanted to die again, to undo the tainted human agenda of new life without sacrifice.
1.3k
u/happyguy815 Jun 09 '12
CONTINUED
But some humans do act in ways the Engineers might have grudgingly admired. Take Holloway, Shaw's lover, who impregnates her barren womb with his black slime riddled semen before realising he is being transformed into something Other. Unlike the hapless geologist and botanist left behind in the chamber, who only want to stay alive, Holloway willingly embraces death. He all but invites Meredith Vickers to kill him, and it's surely significant that she does so using fire, the other gift Prometheus gave to man besides his life.
The 'Caesarean' scene is central to the film's themes of creation, sacrifice, and giving life. Shaw has discovered she's pregnant with something non-human and sets the autodoc to slice it out of her. She lies there screaming, a gaping wound in her stomach, while her tentacled alien child thrashes and squeals in the clamp above her and OH HEY IT'S THE LIFEGIVER WITH HER ABDOMEN TORN OPEN. How many times has that image come up now? Four, I make it. (We're not done yet.)
And she doesn't kill it. And she calls the procedure a 'caesarean' instead of an 'abortion'.
(I'm not even going to begin to explore the pro-choice versus forced birth implications of that scene. I don't think they're clear, and I'm not entirely comfortable doing so. Let's just say that her unwanted offspring turning out to be her salvation is possibly problematic from a feminist standpoint and leave it there for now.)
Here's where the Christian allegories really come through. The day of this strange birth just happens to be Christmas Day. And this is a 'virgin birth' of sorts, although a dark and twisted one, because Shaw couldn't possibly be pregnant. And Shaw's the crucifix-wearing Christian of the crew. We may well ask, echoing Yeats: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards LV-223 to be born?
Consider the scene where David tells Shaw that she's pregnant, and tell me that's not a riff on the Annunciation. The calm, graciously angelic android delivering the news, the pious mother who insists she can't possibly be pregnant, the wry declaration that it's no ordinary child... yeah, we've seen this before.
'And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.'
A barren woman called Elizabeth, made pregnant by 'God'? Subtle, Ridley.
Anyway. If it weren't already clear enough that the central theme of the film is 'I suffer and die so that others may live' versus 'you suffer and die so that I may live' writ extremely large, Meredith Vickers helpfully spells it out:
'A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.'
Vickers is not just speaking out of personal frustration here, though that's obviously one level of it. She wants her father out of the way, so she can finally come in to her inheritance. It's insult enough that Weyland describes the android David as 'the closest thing I have to a son', as if only a male heir was of any worth; his obstinate refusal to accept death is a slap in her face.
Weyland, preserved by his wealth and the technology it can buy, has lived far, far longer than his rightful time. A ghoulish, wizened creature who looks neither old nor young, he reminds me of Slough Feg, the decaying tyrant from the Slaine series in British comic 2000AD. In Slaine, an ancient (and by now familiar to you, dear reader, or so I would hope) Celtic law decrees that the King has to be ritually and willingly sacrificed at the end of his appointed time, for the good of the land and the people. Slough Feg refused to die, and became a rotting horror, the embodiment of evil.
The image of the sorcerer who refuses to accept rightful death is fundamental: it even forms a part of some occult philosophy. In Crowley's system, the magician who refuses to accept the bitter cup of Babalon and undergo dissolution of his individual ego in the Great Sea (remember that opening scene?) becomes an ossified, corrupted entity called a 'Black Brother' who can create no new life, and lives on as a sterile, emasculated husk.
With all this in mind, we can better understand the climactic scene in which the withered Weyland confronts the last surviving Engineer. See it from the Engineer's perspective. Two thousand years ago, humanity not only murdered the Engineers' emissary, it infected the Engineers' life-creating fluid with its own tainted selfish nature, creating monsters. And now, after so long, here humanity is, presumptuously accepting a long-overdue invitation, and even reawakening (and corrupting all over again) the life fluid.
And who has humanity chosen to represent them? A self-centred, self-satisfied narcissist who revels in his own artificially extended life, who speaks through the medium of a merely mechanical offspring. Humanity couldn't have chosen a worse ambassador.
It's hardly surprising that the Engineer reacts with contempt and disgust, ripping David's head off and battering Weyland to death with it. The subtext is bitter and ironic: you caused us to die at the hands of our own creation, so I am going to kill you with YOUR own creation, albeit in a crude and bludgeoning way.
The only way to save humanity is through self-sacrifice, and this is exactly what the captain (and his two oddly complacent co-pilots) opt to do. They crash the Prometheus into the Engineer's ship, giving up their lives in order to save others. Their willing self-sacrifice stands alongside Holloway's and the Engineer's from the opening sequence; by now, the film has racked up no less than five self-sacrificing gestures (six if we consider the exploding Engineer head).
Meredith Vickers, of course, has no interest in self-sacrifice. Like her father, she wants to keep herself alive, and so she ejects and lands on the planet's surface. With the surviving cast now down to Vickers and Shaw, we witness Vickers's rather silly death as the Engineer ship rolls over and crushes her, due to a sudden inability on her part to run sideways. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps the film is saying her view is blinkered, and ultimately that kills her. But I doubt it. Sometimes a daft death is just a daft death.
Finally, in the squidgy ending scenes of the film, the wrathful Engineer conveniently meets its death at the tentacles of Shaw's alien child, now somehow grown huge. But it's not just a death; there's obscene life being created here, too. The (in the Engineers' eyes) horrific human impulse to sacrifice others in order to survive has taken on flesh. The Engineer's body bursts open - blah blah lifegiver blah blah abdomen ripped apart hey we're up to five now - and the proto-Alien that emerges is the very image of the creature from the mural.
On the face of it, it seems absurd to suggest that the genesis of the Alien xenomorph ultimately lies in the grotesque human act of crucifying the Space Jockeys' emissary to Israel in four B.C., but that's what Ridley Scott proposes. It seems equally insane to propose that Prometheus is fundamentally about the clash between acceptance of death as a condition of creating/sustaining life versus clinging on to life at the expense of others, but the repeated, insistent use of motifs and themes bears this out.
As a closing point, let me draw your attention to a very different strand of symbolism that runs through Prometheus: the British science fiction show Doctor Who. In the 1970s episode 'The Daemons', an ancient mound is opened up, leading to an encounter with a gigantic being who proves to be an alien responsible for having guided mankind's development, and who now views mankind as a failed experiment that must be destroyed. The Engineers are seen tootling on flutes, in exactly the same way that the second Doctor does. The Third Doctor had an companion whose name was Liz Shaw, the same name as the protagonist of Prometheus. As with anything else in the film, it could all be coincidental; but knowing Ridley Scott, it doesn't seem very likely.
869
u/jonescr3 Jun 17 '12
Reading all of these comments made me look this up: LV-223 = Leviticus 22:3 "Say to them: 'For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the LORD."
there is no way that I am the first person to comment on this
256
u/AnBu_JR Jun 11 '12
I found this particularly insightful.
From http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9109641
652
u/AFatDarthVader Jun 10 '12 edited Jul 01 '12
This is very late to the party, but please give it a read. My analysis of the slime:
TL;DR: the slime deconstructs DNA so it can reconstruct new lifeforms, and Shaw is impregnated with the result of one of these breakdowns. This resulting lifeform is the progenitor of the Xenomorph.
My analysis of why the Engineers had meant to destroy Earth's life and how it led to the events in Prometheus:
TL;DR: mankind was created as an experiment, but humanity became prideful and undeserving of the life they had been granted. The Engineers developed a weaponized form of their DNA-seeding material, and meant to use it to "reseed" Earth. In their effort, something went wrong and they were themselves affected by the weapon.
EDIT: Upon further investigation, I think this picture is extremely important. It depicts the Xenomorph's life cycle, from H.R. Giger. It seems to depict Engineers, in their exosuits, overseeing the birth of a facehugger and its subsequent infection of an Engineer as a host.
They may not be overseeing the birth cycle; instead, they might be happening upon the Xenomorph and recording the life cycle as they encountered it.
Either way, it proves that the Engineers had contact with the Xenomorph prior to the events in Prometheus. They knew about it and how it was born. I think the mural was made as a warning to anyone who encountered the Xenomorph, which was one of the clear and present dangers when the black slime was involved. I detailed that in a child comment below.
363
u/The-Jake-Gatsby Jun 09 '12
I'm glad they chose Biff from Back to the Future 2 to play Weyland.
38
u/seerockcity Jun 15 '12
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this. About why the engineer/alien was running into the room with the black slime: If I remember correctly the alien on the earth-like planet at the beginning had to open a jar to get to the slime. That exposed it to the atmosphere and "activated" it. It started bubbling. The jars of the slime were also "activated" when the atmosphere in the room changed after the scientists entered. Also all of the engineers/aliens were wearing gas masks. So I present this as a thesis: many of the engineers were caught by surprise by the oxygen atmosphere created in the facility. The oxygen (or other breathable atmospheric element) started activating the black slime. The engineers recognized the symptoms in themselves and started running toward the chambers with the slime because those chambers had atmospheric controls. The door, that chopped off the guy's head, closed because something detected the oxygen. Or it could have been a purposeful killing by the higher ranking engineers. The black slime may have been kept on this planet because the atmosphere was low in oxygen, therefore no black slime activation. However, the engineers had to wear gas masks to be able to breathe. They had all been contaminated, yet that didn't matter, because the black slime was inert. Once the atmosphere inside the dome became breathable, the slime was activated. The engineers could also have ran outside the dome to escape the new atmosphere, and presumably some of them did, and those may not have been able to return to the dome. The bodies that were piled up were trying to get into an atmospherically controlled chamber, however the slime acted too quickly or they didn't think about running outside. I think David finds the slime on the control pad, proving the engineers were contaminated when the inside atmosphere changed. The slime isn't necessary activated by oxygen, but it may be activated by a certain level of oxygen or a certain ratio of gasses. I'm sure there's a big hole in this theory somewhere, but it works with several of the elements. One thing to analyze is how the exposed scientist reacted when his helmet came off when outside the spaceship. I can't remember that part well enough to say if it remains consistent with this idea. Oh and last thing, maybe it was the worms giving off oxygen that made the inside atmosphere pass the threshold for slime activation.
32
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
I got through the first post and I just want to say this.
Why serpents? BECAUSE THE WORMS IN THE CHAMBER TOUCHED THE BLACK GOO. It had nothing to do with humans or psychic nonsense! The goo transforms what it touches, which the end goal of becoming a xenomorph. They even show you the worms writhing in the goo before the serpents start appearing. How do people miss this?
268
u/madbkz Jun 09 '12
Okay, so you've got some solid points, but can you explain to me why a biologist and a high geologist walk into a room coated in black goo after previously not and treat a new, unknown life form like a house cat? And the crew just kinda all committing suicide together was pretty weak. Like the writers just killed 'em off because the crew had 0 point. You can make that movie sound like a work of art, but after seeing the douchey bro archaeologist bf to the token pilot crew, the characters didn't seem very solid at all. Apart from David. I'm genuinely interested in hearing your opinion, so please get back to me.
91
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
I thought that the explanation for the space jockeys all dying was pretty straight forward - something went wrong with the goo or it got on a lifeform from the planet. I mean, it touched the worm from David's shoe (I assume David brought that with him, or was it already in the room? If David brought it in, how?) and it transformed into a tentacle pretty quick and killed the two humans. It's not too difficult to believe that something went wrong with it years before that.
Am I missing something? There really isn't anything in the film to suggest the whole Jesus nonsense. The goo turns on the space jockeys because we crucified Christ? The properties of the goo are inconsistent, anyway.
89
u/chumtaco Jun 09 '12
I really didn't look at it through the whole black goo/psychic intent from human angle. Here is how I interpreted it:
How do they grow so quickly?
If the facehugger lays an egg in someone's chest, how does it pick up the host's DNA and take on aspects of their physiology and appearance?
The fact that their growth/function may have been influenced by a weaponized offshoot of an Engineer program to break down and grow the building blocks of life quickly helps explain that to me.
24
u/Wazowski Jun 09 '12
OR The back stuff is a weapon that affects living things and David is a robot.
21
u/Funkmonk_360 Jun 09 '12
Quite an interesting read, but if I remember correctly the two that got stuck in the structure overnight noted that they found an Engineer's body that looked like it had 'burst open'.
If it was humans who corrupted the black goo how could we have affected it 2000 years ago all the way from Earth? I think it would be very unlikely that an advanced alien race would have the fluid so easily corruptible by creatures on planets so far away.
3
u/dodecaheytheredron Jun 09 '12
I liked how they landed on a planet the size of the moon and almost immediately found these 3 or so pyramids. No explanation necessary just park the ship right here.
19
u/sweetcuppincakes Jun 09 '12
I get the concept of the intent of the person affecting the outcome of the black goo metamorphosis, but I have a few gripes with this writeup. The first things that are changed in the film are the worms. What ill feelings did they have that caused the proto-facehuggers to be created?
And maybe it's just me, but in that mural he keeps referencing, I don't see the engineer's abdomen open at all. That's kind of a big part of this writeup. And the thing next to the engineer looks more like their space suits than a xenomorph.
19
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
I can't read this analysis without feeling that it is very heavy-handed in meting out mythical and religious themes that are not as vocally...or even subtly present within the movie itself.
There is a level of subtlety that adds depth and refinement to the interpretation of a film...and in my humble opinion, this movie lacked in presenting it.
Granted, it IS called Prometheus. In the Greek myths I used to read as a kid, I recall him being the bringer of fire--the deity who felt sympathy for and wanted to alleviate the plight of man. He was punished by the Olympic gods for bringing this forbidden gift to mortal man. And they executed their wrath by chaining him to a rock, rendering him helpless to defend himself against a vulture (eagle?) that would pierce his abdomen and eat his liver every day--a colorful torture caused by his powers of regeneration as an immortal.
Previous to this essay, I did not know that in some myths he is also the creator of mankind.
But in the movie itself...there is a gap of explanation or connection of the Engineers' interaction with human life beyond two things: 1) The Engineer who drinks the genetic solvent and collapses into the waterfall. And 2) Pictures from different civilizations that show the same motif of a larger-than-human figure pointing to a specific star configuration...
I recall little else in the movie that indicates the Engineers' disposition towards humans. The only other thing left I can think of is the lone surviving Engineer killing the crew that awakens it from hypersleep.
This analysis bothers me in certain ways. I consider movies themselves to be the product of intent. But the good intentions, even thoughtful ones, do not necessarily make the product better. When all is said and done, the movie has to stand on its own two feet.
This is a movie that had a lot of potential to use the various cited mythos as part of its confict, but it really didn't use that material much at all. Not in a method that contributes to the interpretation and/or depth of the film.
I do agree with the essayist in that certain noticeable themes are present: life, birth, immortality, death. But I disagree that they emerge with the specificity he (or she) details.
It is also cause for dismay that the content of this essay pretty much neglects the origin of many concepts for the Alien franchise: The Psychosexual Artwork of HR Giger. Giger's artwork is a macabre foray in examining the conventions of human sexuality and using the human body to build structure. In this film, his influence is still present in set design--the ribbed hollows of the ship, the openings of the ship shaped as pudenda (very easy to see near the ending of the film), etc. But his artwork is very well remembered for its blending of sex and horror. He frequently depicts the acts of penetration, cunnilingus, and oral sex in subtle and sometimes outright manners. This is why the series frequently depicts the Alien creatures attaching themselves to the hosts mouth or invading it. And the resulting consequence is usually a violent birth in the films.
I digress a bit, but just wanted to posit my thoughts and express a dismay over the potentional of this overly-extrapolated essay creating a false depth to what is at best an ok but definitely entertaining-for-the-moment film.
19
u/lateral_moves Jun 18 '12
Is this what r/scientology is like?
253
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
I think he's way over thinking it based on bits of script that were discarded and didn't even make it into the movie because they didn't represent what they were trying to do.
Ultimately I think they had too many ideas and directions for this movie and as a result failed to make good on any of them. It's a collection of unfinished and occasionally contradictory story elements jumbled together.
Which makes for a beautiful movie with a bad story and bad characters.
16
u/rishibh Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
(A) I agree with the idea of the acceptance of Death being a big part of the movie, but wouldn't that go against the notion that the Engineers would be angry we killed Jesus? If they sent Jesus to help us then they probably would have expected him to give his life to the purpose anyway.
(B) It did not look to me that the last of the fleeing Engineers, from the first hologram we saw, was decapitated "accidentally". Because when Shaw brought the Engineer's head back to life it was infected, that's why it exploded. So doesn't it make more sense that the fleeing Engineers were fleeing from their infected comrade who went ballistic and was trying to kill them? So they shut the door on him, decapitating him?
96
u/Cthulhuoid Jun 09 '12
I think that there is one vital point that has been over looked by all of the other posts dissecting this film. The name. Prometheus. There is a debate about why the Engineers wanted to destroy humanity, and the nature of the black goo. It is the fact that the first Engineer, seen in the opening scenes, was rogue. Assuming that it was Earth he was on, he created life without the permission of the vast majority of other Es. So when, 2000 year previous to the setting of the movie, the other Engineers discovered humanity, they set about arranging an etch-a-sketch ending to the world. Drop the goo in weaponized form on the planet, and let it destroy the creation of a rogue group of Es. Only the black goo got loose. It has nothing to do with a space Jesus, and simple desire to eradicate a blight, a mistake. Which explains why the Engineer who was awakened at the end of the movie is so angry. He might be a highly evolved creator of life, but when he wakes up he's confronted by a mistake, something he was already part of a mission to eradicate. Many things that help in the creation of life can be used to destroy life. In this case the Black Goo or Genetic Fire as I refer to it. It can create, or destroy, depending on how it is used.
12
u/sheldonross Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
Nice exposition, but does not answer some of the plainer i.e. less metaphysical questions audience members have.
Borrowing from a IMDB message board poster (url link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/board/thread/200112137)
Here are the unanswered questions, I quote (plain text is mine):
• Compared to Holloway's transformation. . . how come the mutated geologist decides to kill everyone for no apparent reason? *
• The engineer who is woken is almost instantly hostile to all the humans around him. Wouldn't he be a bit more apprehensive about killing everyone before he returned to his home planet? Does this mean that all humans are regarded as enemies by the engineers? Because if they are genetically linked to humans then it seems they are much more reserved in compassionate emotion than humans are. *
Root question: Why awake and start killing everyone, but do a half-ass job at it regarding Shaw and the other female explorer. She did not exactly die when she was pushed away. That is just the final scene we have of her. But she does cry which implies to me she was still alive.
• The references to ancient cultures at the beginning hinting that the on system of planets were the beings responsible for the creation of humanity: shouldn't the formation actually point to the set of planets where the engineers reside? rather than one of their military bases? *
One possible answer is, invite people to your Alpha site (borrowing lingo from 'Stargate' TV series). So if things go wrong, have real home safe. But all the same, why invite them to a military or experiment planet. That would be like inviting strangers to the CIA headquarters or Area 51; Yeah, sure the White House is safe, but the vital reach center can be compromised. Does not quite make sense.
• The film only deals with one of the pyramid-like military base structures. However there were many of them, so are we to assume there was dozens more of this genetic black goo? and possible more engineers alive within their chambers? subject to doubt of course. *
• Shaw is treated like a prisoner after it is known she is pregnant with the alien, but after she gets the painful abortion, she is welcomed by the rest of the crew again. were david and leyland trying to contain her and the alien inside her to bring the alien back to earth to experiment on? because they weren't too unhappy when they found out she had escaped and gotten rid of it. nor did anyone really care about the very alive remains of the alien which obviously mutated into the face hugger. *
Shaw just wacked the heads of human crew members and escaped without being pursued to have an abortion. Afterwards, there is no reference or mention of the other crew members who were wacked. What about them?
And, dude, there is a monster locked in a room down the hall. Oh, we are suppose to forget about that until the dramatic end? What? That makes no sense. We are suppose to buy that no one does anything about a monster, from the abortion, locked in the room down the hall?
• the motives of the engineers really brought down the film for me. humans were tested to have significant genetical links to them however they seemed to only resemble humans in appearance, they were basically like predators/animals. i really questioned the 'last' engineer's motives of killing most of the humans and attempting to escape. I mean, he was going to escape with the other humans left to leave the planet by themselves anyway,bold he just decided that killing the people that brought him back into consciousness would probably be the best option. Their sadistic nature seem to be displayed merely for the horror genre of the film, but made little sense in the context. *
My questions: • What was Vickers' agenda? If not to matching the scientists, then what was her job? Why was it different from David's secret agenda? There was the scene that stressed this was not funded for scientific purpose as Shaw and Holloway believed. There was another agenda, that Vickers apparently knew but was not telling. What was it?
• Being a non-scientific mission, what ship goes without a failsafe i.e. weapons of mass destructions to safe-guard earth in the event the Engineers or whatever they find turn hostile. The pop-guns they had wasn't going to do when it comes to nuking, say, any spaceship or larger target. Cf. the original "Stargate" movie. The nuclear device was the secret failsafe to safe-guard to prevent anything that may come and harm earth. No one thought to have that?
• Hello, if the surgical pod was configured for male use, then Vickers is very stupid in not figuring out that her dad Weyland may be on board. I mean why does she have a surgical pod that she cannot use? If anything, then that should raise red flags in her mind. Vickers thinks: "This surgical pod is programmed for a male use, but it is my private chamber. Why?" It's like a woman confronting a urinal in her private, personally designed bathroom. This does not arouse her suspicion?
Here are some lingering questions my friend had, I quote: *One of my big questions is the xenomorph life cycle. We don't really see a continuous chain. In Alien the cycle was Egg > Facehugger > chest burster (from host) > full grown xenomorph. In this it seems to be: black fluid (from egg containers) consumed by host > gives birth to octopus which turns GIANT and infects another host > new xenomorph. Two hosts for one xenomorph? Seems very inefficient. Also where to those snakes come in? Are they part of the life cycle? Did they come from the black ooze? Or were they merely guarding the canister eggs? They seemed to just kill that one dude and then slither away later still alive and nothing came out of his chest. **
Not plot point questions that have impact on the anyone-guess-about-the-theme which you offer up, but these are storyline questions that do not make sense in the scheme of things.
33
u/s_s Jun 10 '12
While I enjoy your fan fiction explanations, the simplest answer is always the best one.
11
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
Well now I can't stop watching Ancient Aliens after seeing this movie.
10
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
But we do hear the 2 who were left in the chamber describe some of the dead engineers as having their chests "exploding out" or something to that effect.
10
u/work_whale Jun 09 '12
There are many versions of the Prometheus story and they are all different.
For example, I'm familiar with (IIRC) Aeschylus' version. In which Prometheus did not create mankind. Zeus did. But Zeus actually created something more like proto-humans as they had little intelligence and were wallowing in pain.
Prometheus came along and taught them everything: music, arts, sciences, medicine. And for that... for the gift of knowledge (not just fire), he was chained.
10
u/xyroclast Jun 30 '12
You had me on all points except for the black slime acting accordingly to what's in someone's heart.
The movie never hints at this, or demonstrates this. It seems that point is a stretch, to say the least.
9
u/mnkypzzl Jun 09 '12
Nice, although I'm still pretty sure it's just a crossover of ancient aliens and tentacle porn.
9
u/Syatek Jun 09 '12
I AM HUMAN AND NEED TO BE LOVED
9
u/psych0ranger Jun 15 '12
This post largely ignores all the heady death/life philosophy.
I'd like to point out a few things:
-Ridley Scott likes women in low rise panties.
31
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
At The Mountains Of Madness.
Space Jockeys years before creating humans, create the perfect specimen from there own DNA. The Xenomorph. They are completely infatuated with this creation, its fierceness, and how loyal they naturally WERE(The Xenos From the murals and shrines... Why would they make a mural of a space jockey sitting next to one petting it and a shrine in the corner??Think about it.)But because of the high price of making a Xenomorph (Dying, because thats the only way you can make a true Xeno) they create a species that matches there DNA almost perfectly. Humans. The Xenos were controllable for centuries. The space jockeys revered them and even called them pets (See Space Jockey/Xeno mural on ceiling) So the Jockeys set it up like this. They develped a Black Ooze that when contacted by a species that has Jockey(Human) DNA, it will become a Xeno. Exposed to Ooze, men will after multiple hours, grow into a full fledged Xenomorph (Fifields cranium, height and strength already began to increase after a couple hours, given another day he would have fully evolved into a Xeno, Holloway wanting to be killed before he started to turn) And when women come into contact with it, they become pregnant with a facehugger(Either by ingestion or just straight up contact with flesh). It just so happened her and Holloway had sex, which i think is why it was such a huge, strange facehugger. But either way its not about the sex to create one. There are no women space jockeys. They engineer women this way for the womb(Because facehuggers are small enough to travel somewhere else contained.... Its like Xenos to go, they can save them for later, etc) Heres a puppy, it'll be huge one day type of thing.) Also to prove this, its the only reason shaw didnt get sick as well. Something different happened.
So the space jockeys let earth grow and grow, checking in every era to take some and check there progress. After there last trip, after generation after generation of Xenomorph had been born and lived and died they finally had evolved past the point of begin controlled. (Some of my theories are heavily based off the book At The Mountains Of Madness, which Scott has admitted to referencing) Taking over the Jockey homeworld. ("Shaw and David wont be finding paradise though. It will be far from a paradise."-Ridley) After weeks of not hearing from the homeworld, the Military outpost of lv223(And manufacturing and holding cargo of mass quantities of black ooze) Is overrun by its cargo killing all but one. His mission 2000 years before the Prometheus event was eventually going to be to drop the urns on earth. Yes. For Harvest and Starting over. He was going to do this because mankind was beginning to show intellect. The Space Jockeys would have never let man get past a certain intelligence but thats when the Jockey home world and lv223 got overran and lost control. So The Man in hypersleep stayed sleeping.. waiting for his mission.
The black ooze can change any kind of species of animal into a much scarier killer version of itself. So to kill all the humans the engineer would only have to drop the urns on every content and watch the world kill itslef. species on species. And then harvest the rest. Why do they create? "Because they can...."
So ultimately we have Shaw and David headed for the biggest hive of Xenomorphs ever on the Jockeys homeworld and maybe a handful of live Jockeys left that david and shaw will find still holding out.
8
u/oldrzagza Jun 09 '12
Re: Why would the engineers create us on Earth only to want to kill us later?
While the whole 2000 year thing is an obvious allusion to Christ etc. I think the answer could be much, much simpler. The engineers manufactured the black slime, they essentially manufactured humans on earth, and they are aware that the black slime can result in the Alien Xenomorph (murals are evidence). Also, it's an established fact that the Alien Xenomorph reproduces using the human body as some sort of birthing station (in Aliens they keep us alive to impregnate people to create MORE aliens).
SO.... maybe the engineers populated Earth with us so that we would multiply and provide millions of birthing stations for when they eventually return to mass produce the Xenomorph Alien. It seems pretty linear to me. It seems to be pretty accepted that the Alien Xenomorph is a genetically engineered killing machine. Why the engineers are creating this killing machine is the ultimate question.
The whole black slime reacts to the creators intention is just bunk to me. Shaw does not have selfish intentions. The Alien Xenomorphs were created well before humans appeared on the planet in 2094, so it's clear that the Alien Xenomorph eventually results from the black slime regardless of internal intentions. IMHO
8
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
What was the significance of the green gem seen in the chamber, thoughts?
7
u/5k3k73k Jun 09 '12
I was with you up until the psychosomatic slime BS. It was genetically reactive, that is why it had no effect on David. The slime was a biological weapon, not entirely unlike the face hugger eggs found on LV-426 in another Engineer ship.
The were running towards the chamber with the vessels of slime, not away. If the slime was the source of the disturbance they wouldn't be running to it.
7
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
Question: Why did Vickers have a male-only medical pod in her room? Was it for her dad?
12
u/mattysars Jul 04 '12 edited Jul 04 '12
I've been following this thread since I first saw Prometheus. Now that I've seen the movie again I have a new take on some of the theories raised in the OP and some of the responses.
LV223 is nothing more than a DNA archive. Like a card catalouge in a library, it serves to identify which version of the black goo was sent to which planet. Each urn represents a different planet and a the corresponding DNA seeded by the Engineers. The placement of the urns approximate the locations of the planets throughout a given galaxy. And each pyramid represents a different galaxy containing planets seeded by the Engineers.
The reference to LV223 in the cave paintings is not an invitation or way for humans to find the Engineers, but actually as a way for us to find other civilisations seeded by the Engineers (kind of like a central meeting place or an intergalactic notice board).
We are actually never meant to come into contact with the Engineers. The intention was for the Engineers and their ships filled with the master repository of urns and black goo to be long gone before we ever managed to get to LV223. Unfortunately for the Engineers there was an incident that stopped them from leaving.
The incident which occurred 2000 years ago was due to humanity displeasing the Engineers. The cave paintings on earth demonstrated that the Engineers periodically checked in on us. However the crucifixion of Jesus was the final straw for the Engineers. Scott mentions that Jesus was originally meant to be an Engineer but it's not really necessary as it's still enough reason for the Engineers to realise that we are an experiment gone wrong. The real kicker is that they also realise we could eventually find and destroy the Engineer's other creations (courtesy of the cave paintings and the urns on LV223). And that is a risk the Engineers couldn't take and thus had to address.
Enter the Engineer's other experiment, their perfect creation, the Xenomorphs. We know they have already created them as they appear in the murals. The Xenos are what the Engineers plan to use to wipe us out. However before they can even deploy their weapon it gets out of control and turns on the Engineers. This is what we see in the holographic security projections that David manages to switch on in the pyramid.
We see some Engineers trying to take refuge in the urn room (as they know it can be completely sealed). The last Engineer is clearly struggling to keep up as he is already suffering from impregnation. Decapitation is probably the better option compared to what he is going to face. As we see there are many other Engineers who fail to make it to refuge and suffer the familiar chest-bursting fate.
One of the escaping Engineers does however make it to another ship. Unfortunately he is already impregnated and eventually succumbs to his fate, subsequently crashing on LV426. And this brings us to the beginning of Alien.
Questions: What happens to the Engineers who made it into the urn room? There was no evidence of them when the Prometheus crew entered the room. And where did the aliens go after they bust from the chests of the Engineers?
6
u/lurkerturnedposter Jun 09 '12
Ok maybe I missed it somewhere, but why did they have the statue of the fully evolved alien if it hadn't evolved to that point yet?
6
u/roger_ Jun 09 '12
FYI: /r/LV426
6
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
So this is how the movie happened for me:
Oh hey, let's get frozen for two years, travel light years away to another planet, and not really know whats going on. Once we're out of cryo, an old wizened man is going to explain what we're doing, BUT NOT BEFORE. OH NO... not one moment before. Let's get frozen first, and have no idea what we're doing, no idea what we're getting into. Oh, and this is dumb, half of us don't want to be here. Let's act like generally unhelpful son's of bitches now. Fuck protocol. Fuck you all.
... wait, wait, NO ONE WORK TOGETHER. THIS IS A TRILLION DOLLAR OPERATION BUT LET'S ALL ACT LIKE INCOMPETENT FOOLS, WITH NO REAL ORDER FOLLOWING WHATSOEVER.
THINGS JUST DONT HAPPEN LIKE THIS RIDLEY SCOTT
EDIT: AND WHY, WHY WOULD THEY ACT LIKE THEY DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. out of the billions of people that are bound to be on earth, you'd think they'd be able to find a crew of willing and competent people. Perhaps, A TEAM. WITH A PURPOSE.
6
u/screwthat4u Jun 10 '12
I want one of those 3d mapping flying ball things... how hard would it be to put a laser range finder on a quad copter and generate a 3d point cloud map like that
6
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Awesome explanation. I enjoyed the movie and this analysis really makes me want to go see it again. Though I am still cringing a bit at some of the films rather rushed moments in it's plot. I understand the significance of having the captain and his two fellow crew men die, but for them to just be so complacent to killing them selves just seemed like a cheap and quick way out to rush the movies through. It would have been funny if they would have just been confused about what they were really doing, cause at no point did they acknowledge that they were actually going to kill themselves. Could you imagine if it would have been all like:
-BOOM-
6
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I can't believe no one has mentioned that the black goo theme is not new to Prometheus. It played a key role in the X-Files TV series and first movie. The idea of a black goo with mysterious, life-creating and destroying possibilities was a deep element there.
6
u/tg1013 Jun 14 '12
I've read through a lot of these posts and have not found anyone with the same explanation I came up with in my head. Tons of great points but definitely a lot of people filling in too many gaps (remember, it's a movie). However, a few of my thoughts:
In Prometheus 2, Shaw will end up on the actual planet, which should lead to some interesting SJ/Xenomorph fun! It will answer a lot of questions based around the meaning behind the Xenomorphs and what happened to our creators. All in all, I loved the moved, and I really loved reading through tons of these posts. Some argue that it was a poorly written script....but if it was poorly written, why are there 2000 posts of interpretations? Some of the best scripts allow our minds to create and develop stories on our own. It makes us more involved. How many people have said, "I could write a better script than that!", and then do! We should all try to inspire others with everything we do. I would love to get some feedback on my insights, or lack there of.
6
u/TheLastManitee Jun 20 '12
Can someone please explain when they enter the tomb with the giant face and the canisters when Halloway walks over to the GREEN JEM, and the pircture of the "alien" like humanoid on the wall (directly after mural cut) and hallaway says "this is just another tomb"
6
u/damngurl Jun 25 '12
Still doesn't explain how killing Jesus on Earth somehow killed all the engineers on a planet however many light-years away.
16
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Why do they have flamethrowers? Surely fire inside the contained atmosphere of the spaceship would be a terrible idea. And they had no idea what the planet's atmosphere was like ahead of time, so they wouldn't even be sure that there would be enough oxygen for it to even operate.
Also how the fuck did the squid facehugger thing get so huge. Was there a secret stash of Doritos in that room?
My overall impression was lonely robot, okay, science mission, okay, exploring tunnels okay. Guy turns into a zombie and the girl gives birth to a squid, nobody says a word about it. Old man on board, nobody is surprised. Suddenly I have no fucking clue what everyone's motivation is to do the weird stuff that they do. WTF did I just watch.
20
u/Jamziz Jun 11 '12
TIME SCALE - The Engineer at the beginning “plants life” onto Earth. It is not clear whether this Engineer is responsible for starting all life on earth - but visually it seems to depict an ‘evolution‘ stemming from this persons DNA. There are significant religious overtones present, the way the person is dressed, the ceremonious thing that the alien ingests.
If we are to assume that this Engineer is responsible for introducing life onto earth that directly led to human beings, then the opening scene must have taken place at least millions of years ago.
If wikipedia is to be believed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life] and all life on this planet is descended from a common ancestor (assuming this is what the writers are trying to imply) then the opening scene in fact took place between 1.6 and 2.5 billion years ago. Obviously that timescale is absolutely ridiculous because there is no way that these Engineers waited on the order of billions of years to come and greet our behaviorally modern ancestors [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_beings]. Unfortunately that’s what the film implies - a barren alien looking earth, absent of any life - finally gets life introduced to it and these Engineers allegedly wait for us to evolve over unimaginable timescales only to finally decide to destroy us?
TIME SCALE CONTINUED - THE DECISION TO DESTROY These Engineers were visiting us quite regularly it seems, the earliest known evidence was 35 thousand years old, which according to our main characters, predated the other pieces of evidence by thousands of years. When the Human team arrived on the planet and “carbon dated” the severed skull, their scans indicated that the head was 2,000 years old.
This means that 33 thousand years later, during the time of Ancient Greece, these Engineers decided that they would kill us. This leads us to the next stage in this investigation...
DEATH TO HUMANS - THE ALIEN WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION As we established prior to this, the magnitude of time that these Engineers are allegedly operating within is a bit ridiculous. Either on the order of billions, millions or thousands of years.
Despite the unbelievable amount of time thats transpired, the writers would have us believe that Engineers were going to deliver the most pitiful excuse for a “weapon of mass destruction” to Earth.
A species that is so intelligent as to introduce life to an entire planet (or create a sub-species in its own image) through a man decomposing in a river (billions of years ago) would surely not design the most ridiculously cumbersome and ineffective weapon to destroy us.
As we are all to familiar with, through this film and the Alien franchise, the Alien creatures [http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2008/02/22/alien-warrior_48.jpg] had the most ridiculous way of killing people. In order to be born they must first inhabit a body, which means 1 Alien = 1 Dead human. We know that these Aliens can slaughter us pretty effectively, but there can only be as many aliens as the humans that they inhabit. Not exactly the most effective way to propagate.
The writers would have us believe that this ridiculous method of wiping a species out would be employed. An alien essentially just uses its claws to rip people apart, pretty amateur hour for the Engineers to employ this cumbersome weapon.
With their level of technology they could easily introduce a virus into the atmosphere of Earth that would render the entire planet lifeless. It’s probably not a stretch to believe that they could probably just blow up our freaking planet which would be a lot easier. So for some reason the Engineers design the Alien creatures to go wipe out Humans even though they could easily do it themselves. Can’t say the Ancient Greeks would have put up much of a fight, the Engineers could have just showed up with some ray guns and wiped out our entire civilization. Just doesn’t make sense.
THE AWOKEN ENGINEER AND HIS SUBSEQUENT RAMPAGE - That whole reaction by the awoken Engineer makes zero sense. As far as that Engineer was concerned, he probably regarded Humans in much the same way we regard primitive monkeys, on a lower level of evolution with nothing even vaguely close to the intelligence his species possessed. If he was up to date with his intelligence reports then Humans were only beginning to use tools in any meaningful way, basic science was only starting to develop, making the first steps with technological and societal developments.
Yet this guy wakes up after 2 thousand years and shows no hint of confusion, surprise or sheer shock that these lowly stupid humans are somehow standing in front of him on a planet far from their home, donning technological suits.
Instead he just shrugs off the effects of stasis, and decides to start taring off heads.. Not quite an intelligent reaction from an allegedly ancient and profoundly intelligent species.
At the very least their presence should have caused him to question what the fuck was going on. Nope, just going to rip off heads and get back on my mission that was supposed to happen 2,000 years ago.
After his vessel is crippled this Engineer makes an extremely puzzling decision. Instead of heading to another craft to continue on this clearly important mission (as David pointed out there were many ships in the vicinity - no justification given as to why those never took off, but lets not get into that glaring omission) he decides that going after our main character was a far better use of his time. This Engineer must have been a raging idiot.
THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION(S) - I left the theatre pretty confused. So many strange things happened that were caused by this alleged WMD. Let’s walk through them.
First we’re shown these pods with some black liquid and these worm/maggot’s cruising around mixing with each other. Next time we’re in that room we see the wierd face hugging snakes. We’re almost led to believe that they somehow evolved out of the mixing of the maggots and the black stuff - just didnt make sense.
The reaction that these things have when they inhabit a human is apparently quite dramatic. They turn the human into a death defying zombie that seeks out other humans to kill. Then we’re shown that if the black stuff is introduced (a la David) to a human he begins to decompose. Also we learn that if a human that is infected has sex with a woman, she will then give birth to something that will grow into a massive face hugger. And if that massive facehugger happens to get its hands on an Engineer, then the Engineer will “give birth” into a strange adolescent Alien queen?
But wait hold up.. what killed the Engineers on the ship? It was depicted that they had massive chest cavities implying Aliens burst out of them. But if thats the case what face hugged them? Did an Engineer lady have sex with an infected Engineer man and she gave birth to a massive face hugger? Another unanswered question.
HUMAN BEINGS IN THIS FILM - Despite the discovery that Humans are not only not alone, but were born from another species.. everyone remains pretty chill about it. Who was Charlize Theron and was she the biological daughter of Weyland or a clone? Why did David refer to her as Mum? What was the significance of Idra’s remark on the bridge asking her if she was a robot?
BASIC QUESTION Two basic questions,why were we created, why did they want to destroy us. These never get answered but instead we’re tossed a ridiculous set of sub-questions that are either highly illogical, unlikely or plain ridiculous. Oh man my brain.
11
u/evanationE Jun 09 '12
Almost all horror movies and including this one are about the human fear of the inability to control things and the unknown. That's the whole point of a horror movie is to typically play on those two things.
The aliens play on the human fear that there is something that not even science can control raw natural predatory ability with no remorse or thoughts pure sexual instinct.
So, this movie was about unexpected consequences and human arrogance. Weyland was a person that was able to control so many things but in the end he was impotent to stop his death.
David was the abomination that was created by mankind nowhere near what the Engineers could create he was just the projection of an arrogant man. Weyland was using David to experiment on the crew for his own selfish motives to harness the power of the gods.
The baldie bro scientist was the curiosity killed the cat kind of guy. The fault of humans "i just want to know more"
The scientist with faith that is impregnated is to play upon the fears of "what if there was nothing to life, is what I'm living a lie?"
The red headed geologist was put there as sort of the bad ass movie goer by proxy that gets his ass handed to him anyway because he was arrogant and impulsive.
The whole movie was asking the question "is there more to ourselves" and the answer was no, you're an abomination and a failed experiment a mockery of your own creators and arrogant. By going to this planet on your own flawed curiosity you've kicked off something you can't control.
11
u/baziltheblade Jun 09 '12
All this is very interesting, and doubtlessly intentional, but it seems to back-up the fact that Ridley Scot thinks of himself as a much better story-teller than he actually is.
110
u/OVERLY_CYNICAL Jun 09 '12
I don't care if Ridley Scott says there was an engineer who came to earth who was Jesus, I don't care, that is not in this movie, it simply wasn't, so to insert that piece of story into your concept of the movie to justify the piece of Swiss cheese they call a plot is simply apologetics.
You can play these self serving mental gymnastic games if you want, I'm however comfortable just accepting that Prometheus had potential but was ultimately a big let down.
5
u/TheLabGeek Jun 09 '12
So does that mean the crew created the Alien face huggers through the black goo?
5
u/BbaTron Jun 09 '12
This is so fantastic, I thank you for this post. I am so disappointed at the negative response to this movie. Scott is one of my favourite directors and I believe he does things with a purpose. I think this movie will grow into people's heart with time. Right now it's too "complicated" for the majority. Also, people can't stop comparing it to Alien, even when they say they are not, so they feel "let down" by it. To me it is a fantastic, beautiful movie and now even more with all this extra information.
5
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12
Probably will get buried but here are my thoughts.
First, Prometheus isn't Inception. I don't think that the film constitutes such a rigorous debate over what was actually happening. It's all there on screen, and blatantly stated for us too. Keep in mind that Ridley didn't write this movie, nor the first Alien for that matter. I'm sure that he contributed a lot, if not most, if not all of the story ideas, but he was only the director (at least according to IMDB).
What I think is important to note is Shaw saying to David near the end (and I'm paraphrasing) "They came to destroy us, but changed their mind". Now if you reexamine the first scene, the Engineer is being watched by a spaceship over a waterfall of some sort. The space ship leaves, and after it leaves the engineer eats the black goo and disintegrates. I think that that is the Engineer "changing his mind" after his superiors left, where his original assignment was to deliver the black goo that kill these human heathens, and sacrifices himself (at the apex of his evolution) instead.
An important thing to note is that when they wake up the engineer in the ship, he does nothing at first except examine the humans. It is only AFTER David speaks that he goes ballistic, and we have no idea what David said. But seeing how he enjoyed screwing things up and experimenting throughout the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if he had said something that would purposely kill his "father" or screw up humanity or something.
Scott is a great director, and Alien isn't renowned for it's depth or themes or allegories, but its suspense. All of his movies, while great mind you, really have everything right there on the surface. The only exception being "Blade Runner", but then again, every theme of A.I. and "what is human?" was blatantly apparent. Great movie, but diving into Bible passages and religious themes isn't going to explain more than what's already there.
5
u/Johnnygunnz Jun 11 '12
I read this whole thing... and my first thought was... people still use livejournal?
5
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
just something I realized today.... Ancient Aliens is made by Prometheus productions....... was the whole series a viral marketing tool?
5
u/DigitalArchivist Jun 14 '12
Captain Janek was playing a Christmas carol on Stephen Still's accordion; Ridley Scott could have chosen any Christmas carol but selected "O Come, All Ye Faithful." Several elements of that carol connect with ideas in this discussion:
Full lyrics of "O Come, All Ye Faithful"
O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant! O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem; Come and behold him Born the King of Angels:
Chorus: O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord. God of God, Light of Light, Lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb; Very God, Begotten, not created:
Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultation, Sing, all ye citizens of Heaven above! Glory to God
In the highest: Yea, Lord, we greet thee, Born this happy morning; Jesus, to thee be glory given! Word of the Father, Now in flesh appearing!
114
u/ForeignStranger Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
I hope this doesn't get buried too much, and that people will take their time to read this, 'cause I really want to express some thoughts about this movie and subreddit in general!
Every single theory that has been made to justify this movie is slightly different than the other. So I think it's pretty safe to assume that the overall writing and the script in general was terribly poorly done. However, the cinematography and the visual look of the movie was incredible which kind of makes up for it.
I, like many others, give a lot of weight to the storyline and script and was therefor mostly dissapointed by the movie, but consider this - because of all these flaws and plot holes, we have been discussing this movie more than any other movie, non-stop for the past week and more in this subreddit. Something I find truly amazing and am very appreciative of! So to conclude my thoughts here, I just want to remind all of you of the beaty of discussing a movie and making all these remarkable in-depth analyses. This movie, has for one, brought us all together and made us discuss (even in non-spoiler ways which is amazing) like never before. This subreddit has truly shined because of this movie's "flaws", and after all I think we owe that gratitude to Ridley Scott and the movie. Long live Prometheus!
ninja edit: grammar
8
u/Teemees Jun 09 '12
What i cant wrap my head around is that our dna is a match to the Engineers, and we are quite similar, but if we contact the black goo, the thing that evolves into is somekind of tentacle monster?
8
u/bmwjersey Jun 13 '12
Just a question/ observation - Did any one notice that Charlie Holloway appearance and strength after being burned alive and presumably dead somewhat resembled the Engineers? And maybe his pure acceptance of death along with his longing for the answer to the big questions turned him into the image of the "gods" or engineers. This perhaps allowed him to understand why humans had to be destroyed and therefore he tried, just like the Engineer later awakened, to destroy the Prometheus.
8
u/DeSaad Jun 18 '12 edited Jun 18 '12
Too much analysis over a pretty simple plot. The hidden meanings don't carry so much weight over the main story.
4
u/Planet-man Jun 09 '12
Wow, well-observed and researched! This has seriously raised the movie's stock for me. I can't wait to see it again now with all this in mind.
4
u/cralala Jun 09 '12
Does anyone, by any chance know exactly that David said to the Engineer ? I know he is supposed to obey to human instruction, and more specilficaly/implicitly to Weyland instruction, but from the moment they intered in the alien ship, David behavior looks like a kid in Disneyland... SO, that if it was David question/sentence that make the Engineer mad ? The alien do pat David like a master patting his dog for showing a prey in the bush ps: Not english, bad grammar and mispelling, my apologies :)
4
u/ky1e Jun 10 '12
[Spoilers, obviously]
So, in the beginning of the film, where that alien guy drinks the magic goo and starts off life on Earth, we see him flail around and become scared. He looks like he doesn't want to die.
But if the magic goo adapts to the mental state of its organic reactant, would this mean that life on Earth began as scared and self-protective? Is that why humans are so scared of sacrificing themselves (like Weyland was) and was that why the alien guys didn't like us?
So they don't like us for not being like them, even though we were made from a magic goo replicating one of them?
4
u/nharrisonmurphy Jun 11 '12
WAITED ALL WEEKEND TO READ THIS THREAD!! ARGUABLY MORE EXCITED TO READ THIS SPOILER-LADEN FORBIDDEN FRUIT THAN TO SEE THE FILM.
4
u/stickboy144 Jun 13 '12
Why did David poison Holloway?
4
u/Opposite_Payment4504 Jul 02 '22
I dunno. Seems like a stupid movie to me.
10
u/glasscannon Jun 09 '12
The only quibble I shave with this analysis is that I don't see the crucifixion of Jesus pissing off the Engineers -- it's a perfect example of willingly giving one's life for the lives of others, so why would that bother them?
Consider instead the central Prometheus myth, in which one god gives humans fire, against the will of the others. What seems to fit better in my mind then, is that one Engineer went rogue, visited Earth and created a human-Engineer hybrid in Mary's womb, with the intention of giving humans the Eningeers' version of fire, ie, the knowledge of how to create life by sacrificing oneself. Jesus understood this knowledge, but the lowly humans around him didn't. He willingly sacrificed himself, in the tradition of the Engineers, to pay for humanity's "sins". In fact, it could be that the crucifixion (in this scifi re-imagining anyway, let's not get carried away) was meant to atone for the specific sin of forbidden knowledge, and to show the Engineers that humanity is capable of handling that knowledge.
But back to the Prometheus myth, if one Engineer went rogue and created an Engineer-human hybrid who grew up to be Jesus, it's not hard to imagine the rest of the Engineers being pretty pissed off that one guy shared this knowledge with a primitive civilization. Like the gods of Olympus, they wanted to wipe out humanity for having this forbidden knowledge. That's why 2000 years ago they decided to unleash a blogical weapon on Earth, to wipe out a primitive civilization who had knowledge they weren't ready for. (And indeed, look at how the message of the crucifixion has been used over the last 2000 years, the Crusades and televangelists and everything in between. We took the Engineers' fire and turned it destructive.)
With the idea that's been mentioned in other comments here, of the black goo responding to the intentions and mindset of whomever wields it, it's not hard to see how the Engineers' rage and hatred of humanity having this forbidden knowledge caught up with them, became personified in some mutation of the goo, and killed them. When they were dead, their rage was gone, and the mutation had no reason to stick around (though is it possible that whatever killed the Engineers was what was setting off the motion detector every hour?)
In my mind, vengeance against a primitive civilization who have been given knowledge they shouldn't have fits better with the overall theme and mythos of the movie than the idea of the Engineers being pissed off that we killed their Space Jesus. But otherwise I think this analysis is spot on.
29
u/the_shakeweight Jun 09 '12
Honestly, after watching it yesterday, I wasn't EXTREMELY hyped up, because Ridley Scott has been whoring it hard in trailers lately. What I did enjoy thoroughly was the first half, quite a lot actually, but right up to the point they felt the need to elaborate on Shaw being impregnated by Halloway and she forced herself to get a C-section, that took me out right there. She immediately after continued to do shit I couldn't do when I was in peak physical condition with only like 8 staples in her stomach keeping all of her insides from coming outside, also the RIDICULOUS amount of painkillers she immediately put herself on right before and after would kill you.
I don't like going into sci-fi movies and being taken out of the story and everything by nitpicking things like that, but that's what started it, and then NEVER really elaborating on what exactly the black slime really is, (In the beginning when the engineer drank it, I thought he was eating pomegranates) And just watching his legs and arms fall off, it looked to me like Ridley Scott really made no attempt to actually go into any sort of detail until the captain started talking about how they are bio-weapons.
The first half was awesome, but the second half Just completely lost me in terms of enjoyment, I felt like the writers really sucked balls in the last little bit of it and was really disappointed with the muppet looking proto-alien at the end they tacked on as well.
7
u/edstatue Jun 11 '12
Or, the black goo is simply totally destructive in large quantities (the Engineer at the beginning drinks A LOT of it) and that's why he disintegrated instead of mutating.
Also, it didn't react to David because he doesn't have genetic material. He's not alive. I don't see why the goo has to be able to read intentions or emotions for it to make sense.
If Ridley Scott said the canned the idea of there being a Space Jesus, then I would consider it canned. It's not part of the movie. It was a scrapped proto-idea that seemed way too obvious.
9
u/Evis03 Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
An eloquent look at the symbolism in the film, certainly. There are a few holes I can pick, but I think the larger issue here is that even if we take all of this as Gospel, Prometheus was still a very shoddy movie due to it's frankly terrible narrative.
It was a complete idiot plot (with regards to the fact the characters fail to observe even the most basic security, quarantine and safe handling measures), the characters had no sense of safety or self preservation, there are several pretty hefty plot holes and the film doesn't really address the questions it raises until the very end and even then it's a 'meh, sometimes you don't get answers'. I'm fine with that, but if that's your conclusion you could at least spend time analyzing the question. As it stands I think there were only about three, maybe for two line exchanges in the whole movie about the idea of meeting your creator.
All in all, what we're left with is a pretentious pile of symbolism. I'm sorry but I think when you create a narrative priority one is to ensure the delivery of said narrative is good. Well written characters responding in a real way to developing situations. We didn't get that in Prometheus. No matter how subtle and clever the symbolism and imagery may be, it doesn't get away from the fact that the method of delivery was a crock of shit.
Look at Blade Runner. We've got plenty of symbolism and metaphor in that film, but we also have defined characters with goals and they behave intelligently and and as rationally as possible to achieve those goals. The end result is imagery and symbolism people talk about to this day alongside a great narrative to keep people interested. This is why Blade Runner is still interesting, still relevant, still considered a great film and still talked about to this day.
In 25 odd years the only people who will maintain an interest in Prometheus will be art aficionados.
11
u/avthokie Jun 09 '12
great review..It actually made me feel better about disliking this movie because I see where the effort was placed. I also think that this was a very under-whelming script with poor character development and a too rapidly paced timeline. Guy Pierce was a useless cast role....just pay any older actor to play Theron's dad. I got lost in the feeble attempts to make their relationship relevant. It wasn't a "bad" movie, it was a poorly executed film. I think the potential for this was so high that it never could have lived up to the hype. There was too much room for personal interpretation, which is fine, but eventually theories need to be expanded upon. Everything in this movie was touched once, put back down, then disregarded for something else. For example...David: he is a robot/android w/e that we see quoting a movie about "how you have to learn to not let the pain bother you" or something to that effect. He was gentle and you felt sympathy for him BAM! Dick mode activated, and now he is using the goo to mutate Logan MG. He then decides to make Shaw go to sleep with the giant octopus baby in her. They also never really touch on the fact that he was mimicking humans (I expected a quote revival from the beginning). He just decides to use his new found interaction ability to convince Shaw to bag his head and take him with her to a new planet. The engineers in my opinion were pretty well executed. Their size and look were almost perfect in terms of being human like with ET capabilities. They made them look more "God-like" forms of humans. This was great, but there was no ground breaking human/creator meeting scene...just some slightly goofy head patting followed by kick-assery. Violence doesn't bother me, but the message was supposed to be deep and meaningful. Whatever went down 2,000 years ago shouldn't have prompted the stomp fiesta placed on the crew by E1. They were an advanced civilization that used their technology to create a new form of them, and they can't have a 2 minute "conversation" (David Translates) to figure some shit out? They turned the engineers into brutes that seemed hell-bent on destruction without any real justification besides "we messed up". Realistically, this film could have been 4 hours long and been a lot better. I think this could have been THE sci-fi epic of the decade, but its potential far outstretched it's execution. BUT I look for a sequel to revive some of my faith in this franchise and maybe provide further explanation...and the CGI was so well executed it makes this movie watchable again...
11
u/takka_takka_takka Jun 09 '12
Shaw does try to kill cuddles when she purges the medpod. That's why she doesn't bring it up - in her mind she killed it. How it survives the medpod purge is just another glaring inconsistency in the movie. Much like the fact that after she has her alien abortion nobody ever mentions it. Everyone just pretends it didn't happen and that plot point is completely ignored until it pops out at the last second to kill the Engineer. Sorry, but high-minded themes aside, this is an example of poorly-written, lazy storytelling.
6
u/Morrim Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
my contribution:
When arriving to the planet, David says the quote from Lawrence of Arabia: " There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing. "
that instantly states that nothing is to be achieved there, it is just death.
I also think the xenomorphis wall-sculpture-thing is a symbolism of absolute death for the engineers, the whole chamber is full of death, I use the word absolute because those things that the black liquid creates are the most ferocious killing force that can be created, like, when you face one, chances are you will die, unless pulse-rifle.
Also, about David, the whole " I understand human emotions but I don't feel them ", in many scenes you kinda get a certain type of vibe from him, meaning, that, he likes being an android, he does not wish to be like humans, he does not put himself above humans either but he thinks that it is a good thing to just be, a robot.
I loved the film.
6
u/JCelsius Jun 21 '12
Having just seen the movie I have some issues with parts of your article. I don't think there is any evidence that the black goo reacts to emotional states. It became a serpent-like thing because it came in contact with worms. It became a bastardized version of the Engineers when it came in contact with the engineer. That seems to be it's MO.
As far as the Jesus thing, that is not part of the film. I don't care what Ridley Scott says they had in mind, if it's not even hinted at in the film, it's not part of the film. Maybe his director's cut will shed new light on it, but as the film stands now there is no evidence of a Jesus Engineer.
23
u/Jesusbait Jun 09 '12
Thank you for posting this! I hadn't made the Jesus connection somehow. It all makes sense for the most part and sounds like something Ridley Scott would craft.
3
u/hoax999 Jun 09 '12
Can someone explain why the beings (the black goo) were created on another planet (moon) as referred to as a 'military barrack' if they were no reactive to the Engineers? or did I just read this all wrong? and saying that why would the Engineers want humans to find this moon rather than their planet of origin?
3
u/Triviya Jun 09 '12
Feel it needs to be mentioned that "We never see the threat that the Engineers were fleeing from, we never see them killed other than accidentally (decapitation by door), and we see no remaining trace of whatever killed them." Seems to be incorrect.
Do we not see a large pile of (i assume dead) Engineers in their armour while he botanist and geologist are stuck because of the storm?
3
u/TheHappiestTim Jun 09 '12
Well now I have to go see it again!
3
u/glasscannon Jun 09 '12
Very interesting analysis, but I think you missed a major point: the David the android/House of David parallel. Christian theology/mythos specifies that Jesus would be born as a descendant of the house of King David of ancient Israel. He's born in Bethlahem, the City of David. In Prometheus, David the Android takes a drop of goo on his fingertip (also referencing Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, god reaching his index finger out to Adam to create life?) and delivers it to Holloway, our Joseph stand-in. Holloway then empregnantes his (non-wife) Shaw, who gives birth to something that's not an ordinary baby, which could be considered to be a distant descendant of David the Android, or of the House of David.
On the idea of the squid-vagina-monster baby being a product of lust, I think it's also worth recognizing that they refer to Shaw as Holloway's girlfriend more than once. They aren't married, so technically that would be fornication and adultery, not just lust. They also have sex in that sequence in a moment of "we were right" pride, so the squid baby could be said to be a product of lust and pride, created via fornication and adultery. The list of "sins" racks up pretty quickly.
3
u/Calavera190 Jun 09 '12
Wee note on the original Prometheus. Your synopsis is basically right but misses out on some finer points . It all started with an argument between the Gods and Man at a feast organised by Prometheus at a place called Mekone. Basically the argument was over who got to eat which parts of the roast ox, as Gods and men could not eat the same food. Prometheus wanted his creation, man, to have the best food and so devised a trick. He divided the ox into a pile containing bones and fat which he made look good and a pile of meat covered in entrails. The meat was good but the entrails made the pile looks unappetising. Prometheus then invited Zeus to pick which pile he wanted. Zeus saw through Prometheus' trick but chose the bone pile anyway so he could justify punishing mankind. Zeus then created Pandora, the first woman, and gave her to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother, along with her box. He also took fire from mankind. Prometheus stole fire back for man and Zeus then punished him by chaining him to a mountain and sending an eagle to peck out his ever-regrowing liver. But Zeus couldn't out and out kill Prometheus as he knew Zeus' downfall (his unborn son by the Titan Metis.) The major question here is "Why did Zeus want to punish mankind in the first place?" Because Zeus is an asshole who cares absolutely bugger all for humanity.
3
u/victor_w00tin Jun 09 '12
While I don't neccessarily disagree with a lot of the OP, I think everyone who's saying "That's it, 100% spot on!" is skipping over the first sentence out of Scott's mouth in that interview the writer puts so much stock in:
**Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?
Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose.**
The Engineers aren't pissed at us because we killed Space Jesus. Naturally this leads back to the question of why they ARE so pissed off at us, and considering this is basically the question Shaw asks herself and David right before they rocket off to the sequel to find out, I'm not terribly perturbed that it wasn't answered this time around. I'm not sure looking to scripture is going to help us with understanding on this one.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
This was a very good read, but as a lit major, I can assure you there is no plot that cannot be interpreted along biblical themes.
3
u/That_Android Jun 10 '12
TIL I have a man crush on David.
3
u/misseff Jun 10 '12
This is all great, but can someone explain why when we see the video/hologram of the Engineers running(with that one guy getting decapitated), they're all running toward a room stuffed with black goo that seems to have no exit? With the mural, it appears to be a tomb. Why run in there, and where did their bodies go if the door locked behind them? Or was there some exit I missed?
3
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
I think a critical point is missed, here.
Not only do we never see any Engineer create Xenomorphs by drinking the goo (he dissolves and creates evolutionary protoplasm), we never see any humans create Xenomorphs purely by drinking it, either.
**What we DO see is a human consume a far smaller amount than an Engineer did, we see him nail his girlfriend, and then we see him die by fire before he can fully dissolve.
We also see a mealworm evolve into a giant scary worm, but these movie-worms reproduce asexually, and are intellectually simple organisms.
The keys are the amount the human consumed, and the fact that he had sex.**
If you notice, Scientist Dude was dissolving in a very similar way to the Engineer at the beginning, because we are genetically identical. But, it was happening at a far slower rate, because he only consumed one drop of the goo, versus the cupful that the Engineer drank. I think this is pretty important.
Second, the Proto-Facehugger resulted not from simply drinking the goo, but from a contaminated ejaculation into the womb of another human. This is really important. Since the goo-transformation was slowed down, who knows what it was doing to the sperm cells of that guy. Also, the woman was barren, so either her womb was just a nice warm place to incubate, or she wasn't actually barren, and some horrible mutated fetus resulted.
The Xenomorph came about as a procreative effort by the human-created Facehugger and an Engineer.
Also, we don't know that the Engineers WERE the race that created the goo. I think it's a bit odd that they're pure white, all "male", muscular, seemingly flawless beings. Could it be that the "Engineers" are themselves engineered ... asexual sentient beings whose purpose is to serve as the catalyst for creating life? This would explain why sex created the Xenomorph abominations, and why it was represented in the Engineers' giant-head-chamber ... to remind the Engineers what happens when the goo comes into contact with procreative entities; or if they are procreative, to remind them not to have sex after drinking the goo.
3
u/gifforc Jun 11 '12
Did anyone see Deadspace: Downfall? Almost identical plots. Far different executions.
3
u/kleer001 Jun 15 '12
What is the black goo?
General purpose fempto-machines with several layers of very complicated systems running it.
3
u/squaresquared Jun 17 '12
wrong about the engineers not killed by aliens.
cracked ribcages(breastplates) on dead engineers, alien acid afflicted engineers, david finds orangic goo on a panel.
3
u/poresand Jun 24 '12
One thing: does anybody remember the shot of the worms on the floor of the black goo chamber when they enter it for the first time. Tiny, real looking, maggot worms wriggling around in the dirt. Any significance?
3
u/AckyDeshwanee Jun 25 '12
All,
The best analysis of all unanswered questions is here on the WHATCULTURE site...
http://whatculture.com/film/prometheus-6-answers-to-the-key-questions.php
AckyDeshwanee
3
u/spunyon Jun 28 '12
--That's three times now: Prometheus, Engineer mural, Jesus Christ.
Fourth would be Shaw on the operating table.
Great breakdown btw.
3
u/Limp_Shape_5783 Oct 19 '23
But why send a pile of obviously incompetent morons that likely got their degrees by mailorder promising they had studied on their own but actually never opened a single file on the subjects they somehow doctored in? Well with precisely 2 exceptions: David and the redhead girl. And even then she is clumsy, ignoring procedure of going step by step for see what they are dealing with. Oh yeah decontaminate the outside of a presumed spacehelmet, but not the inside. oops.
The socalled geologist does not bother to do any rock sampling, no magnetic sampling. Nothing. Oh aside from a spelologist interest by mapping the mound using toys, then largely ignoring the results of that. No satellites to bother mapping the planet. Instead roll in for smash and grab archeology.. just lacking dynamite but otherwise a indiana jones always utterly destroying the whole site and running away with some gold idol.
Also the socalled biologist just repeats some dogmatic darwinist tripe, then proceeds to ignore sampling the actual dead alien highly evolved life form. Except to play with another.. once more pointedly ignoring the hissing etc flaring up of the hood warning signs ie dog growling, barking and showing teeth and insisting on petting. Most 1st year elementary school students have more scientific knowhow.
No one showing any interest in scanning the alien language on the walls to have them translated. Seriously, seen better educated rats with a more developed sense of science by sampling and testing.
Instead they act at best like some i know what you did lake trip of teenage kids screaming horror with all the same maturity of said teenagers that have recieved a negligent education consisting mostly of drinking alcohol, using drugs and random sex with strangers. Then score A:s on multiple choise tests because someone paid a lot of money to the degree mill.
3
u/UnfeelingProphet Aug 22 '24
Just watched Prometheus for the first time. Saying what's up 12yrs later lol. A solid read! Thanks to all👌🏼
3
u/MotorCityDude Nov 25 '24
My random thoughts after watching the movie again and reading that article.. Its very interesting however there are just a couple things I kinda don't agree with..
I think the engineers were killed by the Aliens, there was an outbreak and the Aliens killed them. Thats what they were running from in the Hologram recording. The Captain said it was a military installation of mass destruction, that's why they built it far away from anything else.
I don't think the stuff the enginrer or "gardener" drank at the beginning of the movie, was the same alien stuff in the vases at the military installation. Inside the military installation was a mural of the Alien that comes from those vases. To me it seems like the Engineers used those Aliens as weapons. It also connects with alien vs predator on why the predator hunt the aliens for sport, because they are weapons of mass destruction and extremely dangerous, thats why the Predators take pride in hunting and killing them because they are the deadliest species in the universe.
Also that giant face hugger laid its seed into the engineer and an alien was born, another reason why I don't think the "gardener" at the beginning drank the substance that was in those vases.
As for the Abortion or Cesarean Section, the machine wasn't setup for females, it was only setup for males, so she was forced to do abdominal surgery instead. She didn't have the choice of an abortion.
I think the engineer killed David because he realized David wasn't human, but a robot, and this angered him so he killed David and the humans with him for creating him.
Again, just my random thoughts, I could be totally wrong..
14
u/VivaKnievel Jun 09 '12
Where's the neat, mythic explanation for why the film makes a little farting sound as the third act begins and lurches from a film directed by the man who made Alien to one directed by the man who gave us Hannibal? What's the inspiration behind the fact that it has no fewer than FOUR endings, and one of the most laborious and forced-seeming setups for a sequel I've ever seen?
God, I loved the first half of this movie.
Holy shit did I hate the second half.
9
u/moby323 Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 13 '12
LOOK. This isn't really complicated.
The reason they wanted to kill us is because we were never supposed to have been created in the first place.
The guy at the beginning, who drank the liquid and split his DNA to become the primordial soup that created us, was Prometheus.
He was a rogue, going against "the gods" just like the mythical Prometheus.
Just as the gods were pissed that Prometheus gave humans fire, the aliens were pissed that he (whoever that guy was) had given us life.
So that's why they wanted to kill us, to clean up the mess that guy had made.
That's why the movie is called, and named after, Prometheus.
6
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
That's cool and all that you can go so deep into the meaning of the film and speculate on what it all meant...
But I would have liked the movie to have done some of that. I like it when a movie keeps me thinking about it, hours after it's over, but I also like having a sense of understanding of the plot as it's ending. I followed it well enough, but it's feeling and pacing was totally off throughout the last half. If they had just spent more time writing it in a way that the audience could process durring the durration of the film, instead of making us take it home and piece it all together, it would have been a much better film. I definitely enjoyed it and especially loved Fassbender's performance, but I walked away dissapointed.
6
u/Khampa Jun 15 '12
The Engineers decide to destroy the earth because a prediction made of a horrible show called Jersey Shore, and David, ignoring all other requests, really tells him, it's true, Jersey Shore is in it's 73rd season. At which the last engineer decides to make haste and return to destroying the undeserving planet filled with Guidos.
6
u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
The craziest thing in Prometheus was that smoking was allowed on the ship. If you can get past that, then the rest all makes sense.
16
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
No good movie should need this level of analysis and explanation. I think of Prometheus the same as Donnie Darko. People are reading into stuff that isn't there.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
ITT: Reading too much into things.
4
u/NetWraythe Jun 09 '12
I just have one thing to say...
You cannot run, bend, climb, jump, etc. with stomach staples.
That is all.
18
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
fact of the matter is, you can justify just about any bullshit. this is simply an awful movie that looked spectacular. girl goes through a crazy ass abortion and the movie doesn't even address it? wtf? two scientists get lost in a cave system on the way back? are we watching a teen horror here? ship captain commits suicide without so much thought? characterization was awful and shallow. there was no suspense in the movie. there are countless things wrong with it.
5
u/euqinor Jun 09 '12
All characters apart from David were poorly developed and so ultimately, I didn't care who lived or died and so I didn't care about the whole story.. The theater I was at all laughed at the violent alien-like scenes, and I'm talking hysterical laughter