PROMETHEUS

[brekin]

Skunkboy wrote:
Alright... I hate to beat a dead horse, but my twelve year old and I, went and saw Prometheus over the weekend. We loved it. Even armed with eleven pages of RI info about plot holes big enough to fly starships through, I enjoyed the hell out of it. That said, I want to point out something that hasn't been brought up. Ridley Scott loves strong women. Be it Ripley in the original Alien movie, or Dr. Shaw in this, the women are at the center of the action, and the whole movie revolves around them... and that is as cool as hell. You can see it in a lot of his movies, be it his Thelma and Louise characters or Maid Marian in his version of Robin Hood. They are the fulcrum that the story revolves around. In a culture that treats everyone like morons, any movie that makes people think about their reality, and makes women, the heros of the story, is OK by me. Just sayin...

JackRiddler wrote:
Yes, it was notable that the two final (human) survivors were women and just running hard to get out of the way of the crashing mega-ship.

On the strong female tip Ridley is going to cast a female protagonist for Blade Runner II. In an interview he talks about his mom being a strong person of influence
raising three sons because his father was away so much.

Confession: I had two hours to kill and I ended up going to see Prometheus again but in 3D at an Imax theater.
I ended up leaving 3/4 through. I just went for the visuals this time because I knew from last time the story and
characters weren't going to rock me. But I just couldn't sit through it. Sadly the 45 second self promotion spot of
why 3D Imax is so incredible before the film started was better then all of Prom I saw. Honestly I think now more
about those 45 seconds then the film.

Ridley Scott Opens Up About 'Prometheus,' Kick-Ass Women, and 'Blade Runner 2'
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ner-2.html

You’re often credited with giving birth to the modern Hollywood female action hero with the Ellen Ripley character in Alien. She was a new breed of woman onscreen—an androgynous ass-kicker.

Scott: Ripley was androgynous, and she didn’t emerge until she shouted at Yaphet Kotto to “Shut the f--k up!” and that was well into the second act. This rather pretty woman who everyone assumed in the first act was going to be one of the first ones to cop it gradually starts to take up the mantle, and the weapon. To me, it’s always organic and not a specific decision to make her female, but afterwards, there’s always 20/20 hindsight, isn’t there? I read with slightly raised eyebrows the surprise and the power about having a female lead instead of a male lead, and it refocused my awareness about what we’ve done. It was a calculated risk as well in a film that’s fundamentally a traditional “who’s going to be the last one standing in a big, dark house.” In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was significantly frightening for me at that particular point cause I looked at it just prior to making Alien, that girl was still standing at the end covered in blood, but she’d survived rather than won. The difference with Ripley was that she had won and survived.

What draws you to these strong female protagonists?

I’m used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo. I think there are a lot of men who feel they’re being emasculated by having the woman be in charge; I’ve never had that problem. All the relationships in my life have been with strong women, from childhood. The relationship I’ve had in my life for the past 30 years is with a very strong Costa Rican woman. Oddly enough, I find it quite engaging to be working with a female when I’m directing. It’s kind of interesting.

There’s such a rich history of female leads in your films, from Alien and Thelma and Louise all the way to G.I. Jane and Hannibal.

The evolution of taking the side of the woman, as far as my career’s concerned, is epitomized by Thelma & Louise. The budget was very slender—about $15 million—because nobody wanted to make it. I first came on as producer, and I was selling the notion to four or five male directors—this was made over 20 years ago, so there weren’t many female directors to do it—that the movie should be an epic about two women on their journey for freedom. One director who turned me down said, “I’ve got a problem with the women,” and I said, “Well you’re meant to, you dope!” So I thought that I should direct it myself.

Have you found it more or less difficult to get a project green-lighted with a female lead these days?

It’s far more considered normal to have a female in the lead, and yet, studios will always look at the bottom line and the value of a female lead versus a male lead globally, because none of the budgets for these films are getting any smaller, so they have to take into account the bottom line from a business standpoint. For Prometheus, it was already written in there that the lead probably ought to be female, and that the two central characters in it would have a relationship—Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall Green. They have two headsets in terms of the way they look at life and evolution, in that: one believes in God and the other doesn’t and one believes we were a petri dish at some point in time, and another believes we were somehow created. That’s the yin and the yang of it.

And your next project, after the Cormac McCarthy adaptation, The Counselor, also boasts a strong female lead.

I’m working on a project with Angelina Jolie called Gertrude Bell, which is a very interesting period piece of a woman in the 1900s whose tramping ground was very much part of Mesopotamia, which we now know of as Iraq. She’s involved with a person called King Faisal, and she was partly instrumental in seeing him to the throne of Iraq. She’s an important political figure.

What about the rumored Blade Runner sequel?

Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week. We have a very good take on it. And we’ll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.

[vince]

Sadly the 45 second self promotion spot of
why 3D Imax is so incredible before the film started was better then all of Prom I saw.

That opening promo IS a fun ride!

[Luther Blissett]

The Cavalorn stuff from page five of this thread is sort of one of the best things about Prometheus. The text hadn't been posted, so I wanted to provide it here. It really made me appreciate the film.

Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About
This blogpost contains many and frequent spoilers for Prometheus, so if you're planning on seeing it, I recommend you don't spoil yourself.



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.

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.

QUICK EDIT: Just noting down some of the other Christian symbolism I missed, with thanks to those who pointed them out: David washes Weyland's feet, and I'm told that when Janek and his co-pilots sacrifice their lives to save the Earth, they apparently stand in the form of crucifixes, their arms held out. ('Hands up'?) So you have three 'crucified' guys, one in the middle higher up, the other two on the sides, lower down. All a bit Calvary. However, I don't remember that bit very clearly myself, so I'll have to go see it again.

EDITED 10 JUNE 2012: I'm amazed that so many people are reading and discussing this. I'd like to make some sort of response to your various comments here and elsewhere, but it may take a while as there are loads. Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Cavalorn) and tell me your thoughts in the meantime, if you like.

EDIT 11 JUNE 2012: Here's a brief reaction to some of the responses I've received. Thank you all.

EDIT 13 JUNE 2012: Cleolinda Jones has done a M15M Prometheus post! Go and read that instead of this. You won't regret it.

EDIT 18 JUNE 2012: FILM CRITIC HULK SMASH PUNY ARTICLE. HULK ALSO TELL AUTHOR HE RAISE GOOD POINT DESPITE HULK DISAGREE, WHICH NICE OF HULK.

ANOTHER EDIT 13 JUNE 2012: Obligatory viewing, y'all.

[brekin]

brekin wrote:
Sadly the 45 second self promotion spot of
why 3D Imax is so incredible before the film started was better then all of Prom I saw.

Vince wrote:
That opening promo IS a fun ride!

Yes indeed. It makes me realize that if some text flipping around in front of my nose can
create a near religious experience where Prom, The Green Lantern, Priest and a few other
movies I've seen in 3D are merely cool then I don't think anyone really has committed to taking
3d as far as it can go in a feature film. Maybe there is just such a high level of time investment
that won't be recouped in dual 3D - 2D release to warrant it at this time?

[Joe Hillshoist]

This movie is a KWH of a RAWilson book isn't it...

[Skunkboy]

From Chris Knowles website.


http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2012/07/a ... f-sci.html

Alex Jones, Prometheus and the Death of Sci-Fi

SPOILER ALERT

Superheroes have taken pole position in the tentpole box office derby, in front of the sci-fi blockbuster. Even an ostensible sci-fi film like Avatar was actually a classic superhero origin narrative. I bet that John Carter would have been a success had it been marketed as a superhero story (which in fact it is) than a sci-fi extravaganza, which modern audiences are a bit weary of.

I saw Prometheus and it was exactly what I knew it was going to be all along- a slick, well-made, and utterly emotionally-empty experience. It was a dazzling display of the latest technology that left me as soon as I took off my 3D glasses. It was rife with X-Files lifts, not surprising given its cowriter. All of the characters were unlikable, with the female lead being only somewhat less unlikable than all of the others.

The mission ends in tears, as all such incursions into the halls of Olympus must. The ultimate message of the film- which I'll get to at the end of this piece- is in fact the ultimate letdown, though it might have escaped most people's notice.

The takeaway of the film is the disappointment and the inevitable backlash it inspired. The film was a hit, but nowhere near the mega-hit you'd expect given the avalanche of hype that preceded it. The danger in the kind of massive pre-release pimping we see these days is that you'd better deliver. If people are left anything less than breathless, you're dead in the water. Read this:

20th Century Fox's "Prometheus" earned $51 million over the weekend with the help of a social media campaign that featured content not appearing in the film -- but the online chatter took a turn for the worse once people actually got a chance to see the movie. Facebook users largely called the movie a disappointment, raising concerns that early social buzz might have created unrealistic expectations for the movie. "You can't build the hype too much. Some fans were so excited about 'Prometheus' that nothing could live up to the movie they already directed in their heads," said Phil Contrino of BoxOffice.com.
The fact that the film has been attacked from every piss-stop on the modern ideological superhighway proves that the reaction to the film is a symptom of a kind of existential malaise, once that can be laid at the doorstop of the movie moguls themselves.



PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CAMERA

Hollywood destroyed the magic of movies by making us all a bunch of mini-moguls. We know now how all the illusion is created before the film is ever released so we unconsciously search for the seams. We go online and check the weekend grosses and determine the value of a film, a near-Kabbalist ritual once the exclusive province of agents, producers and studio heads.

With comedies and romances and kid movies, it doesn't really matter. But with science fiction movies-- the most vulnerable to the laser-beam focus of the overeducated movie-goer-- it makes all the difference in the world. We've lost our innocence and even the most impressive films never leap from the screen and into our lives, like they did in the pre-Internet, pre-hype overload days.

Sci-Fi faces an uphill struggle anyway- its books are hard to write, its films are hard to make and no one believes in Tomorrowland anymore.

Sci-Fi fandom is atomizing into sects, driven by identity politics and scientistic fundamentalism. A lot of the more prominent SF writers escaped into the more forgiving precincts of Fantasy, while are others are toiling away doing movie adaptions or writing for video games. TV sci-fi is a mess, a cultish world of silly X-Files and Lost ripoffs with little or no cultural cache left in the chamber.




Of course, Ridley Scott had the temerity to remind moviegoers that the Alien franchise- like almost every single major sci-fi franchise on Earth-- is based in Ancient Astronaut Theory. This isn't news of course, it was established a couple sequels ago. But you're not supposed to say such things out loud anymore.

"Skeptics" pretend to dismiss AAT but in fact they are terrified of it (and don't believe any different). It's been almost 50 years since it first raised its head in the popular consciousness with Morning of the Magicians, and skeptics are still struggling to explain away all of the growing gaps in the Victorian-era theories of evolution and archaeology they vociferously defend on YouTube but never actually study.

And since being a "Skeptic" is a popular as super-sizing and exercise avoidance with Millennial geeks, reminding them that everything they love is AAT propaganda was not going to go over well.



A MAN CALLED JONES

Scott's little faux pas might have fed into the backlash, but I think the uninspiring script he was saddled with deserves the lion's share of the blame. But born-again Bill Cooper imitator Alex Jones did his best to ignite a preemptory backlash against the film, though I'm not sure he was quite certain why he wanted to do so.

Maybe he wasn't certain if he wanted to do so, or was simply trying to bolster his declining audience by hitching his wagon to a well-publicized Hollywood horse. Given Jones' unfortunate reversion to revival-tent hyperventilating in the past year or so, there are only two possible conclusions we can draw from his Prometheus rant; he either didn't actually read the script as he claimed or he's pimping some other agenda we can only guess at.

Jones thoughtlessly assigns "occult" motivations to the scientific overclass, who have been downright Maoist in their drive to annihilate any thought contagion outside of their rationalist/reductionalist orthodoxy, and have been using fronts like CSICOP (with its links to the international pedophile underground) and the JREF (whose co-founder was recently convicted of fraud in Federal court) to stamp out any traces of occultism since the early 70s.

Jones also dredges up old USENET chestnuts like "Revelation of the Method", an imaginary doctrine invented out of whole cloth by a neo-Nazi of distinctly contemporary vintage, "Illuminati mystery religion", (a ridiculous misnomer given the only significant group we can confidently identify as having called itself the Illuminati professed rationalism) and "Externalization of the Hierarchy", a scare-term from the 70s-vintage conspiracy-theory catalog inspired by the toothless Lucis Trust.

I can't help but wonder who is really pulling Jones' strings these days, because at the same time he's fulminating against that all-powerful, sexy, sorcerous, quite-enviable Illuminati (who has nothing in common with the miserable, workaholic materialists pulling the Globalist stops) he's pimping pure, unalloyed Ancient Astronaut Theory, making special care to let his Fundamentalist Christian fanbase know the Bible itself is ripe to bursting with ancient astronauts (which, of course, it is).

Jones also fails to dismiss or debunk AAT, a major no-no with his predominantly religious following.

He then goes on to let his followers know that those rich, powerful geniuses from the glory days of the British Empire bought into AAT whole cloth, a dubious claim if ever there was one. If this isn't a classic case of reverse psychology, it sure looks like one.


Do androids crap their electric pants?


UNFORTUNATELY...

However, the problem is that this movie is typical anti-elitist, anti-scientist Hollywood popcorn fodder, just like previous blockbusters such as Avatar, Scott's Blade Runner, and the Jurassic Park films. The message is that man's attempt to play God will always end in ruin.

The "Illuminati" is embodied here in the person of Peter Weyland and David, his android son (why Weyland would use a middle-aged man as the model for an android rather than a 20 year-old is a mystery to me). Of course, they are instantly and unceremoniously dispensed with once they meet the sole surviving Engineer, their reward for spending all their time and treasure in search of their alien makers.

The sole survivor of the mission is the good Christian girl, who's next order of business is zoom to the Engineers' homeworld and kick some ancient astronaut ass.

So Jones's so-called "Illuminati" are shown to be fools and dupes, whose goal to equate themselves with the gods is that oldest of sins, hubris. And just as you see in the old Greek tragedies, nothing is more offensive to the gods than hubris. David deigns to speak the language of the gods and has his head ripped off as punishment for his presumptuousness (something many Frenchmen dream of when confronted with American tourists, surely).

Weyland-- who Jones features so prominently-- dies in utter despair. His biological daughter, Meredith Vickers, is crushed under the crashing Engineer spaceship. It's the working class heroes-- one black, one Asian, one played by an actor of Middle Eastern descent-- who destroy the Engineer's ship.

An interesting bit of symbolism, given that the Engineer's are white as ivory.

So everything that Jones is claiming about the film's message is totally debunked; not by me, not by a skeptic or atheist, but by the actual movie itself.

HIGH TECH EXORCISM

The other religious objection to Prometheus is the scene in which Elizabeth performs a caesarean section on herself to extract a xenomorph that her infected boyfriend had impregnated her with. That scene went viral with this news story:

A man named Jorge who attended a recent showing of Prometheus got a politically charged spoiler alert from the employee who was tearing his tickets. "I have to warn you," Jorge recalls the employee telling him and his guest. "Halfway through the movie, the main female character will perform a self-induced abortion."

This happened at Regal Cinemas Thornton Place Stadium 14 in Seattle. "I asked some other people entering the same auditorium if the same guy had warned them about the contents of the movie, and they said he did," says Jorge, who asked that we not use his last name.

Of course, what we are really seeing in the film is not an abortion- the xenomorph was viable and grew to monstrous proportions later in the film-- but a high-tech exorcism.

Elizabeth's boyfriend was possessed with the demon seed which he implanted in her womb. She cast the demon out, and enjoyed a remarkably quick recovery-- but the demon then remained to haunt the "house" (Vicker's sumptuous private pod) of the film.

FINALLY...

What needs to be said about the film is that what's being put onscreen isn't Ancient Astronaut Theory per se, but simply directed panspermia, a considerably more respectable theory.

This distinction goes a long way in explaining why the Engineers want to destroy humanity- they want the planet for themselves. That's the message of the film being told onscreen, despite whatever other interpretations you want to draw from the film.

They seeded it with life for their own purposes and the rise of the human race was probably an unfortunate development in the terraforming process. We are basically the Asian carp in their Mississippi River and the xenomorphs are a kind of antibiotic for the infestation.

I know that interpretation doesn't really lend itself to late night contemplation, but I have to credit Lloyd Pye with putting the idea in my head- and quite possibly the makers of Prometheus' heads- in the first place.

[vanlose kid]

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full ... .115...78S

*

[geogeo]

Thanks for all the insightful comments! I have a few observations/questions of my own. Or ramblings, whatever.

--I didn't get the idea that the film was shallow, but rather that it was mechanical and intentionally hollow and banal; almost everything said seemed to have a point, double entendre, was said for a specific reason, etc. There was nothing remotely humorous about the film, for some reason. No humorous dialogue that I can recall. These were just humans as automatons. The folks in this film reminded me of a lot of people I know, but only know a little and don't want to know more. I think there's a lot of those out there.

But in terms of symbolism, reminded me a lot of LOST. Enormous amounts of visual symbolism, much more than in the earlier Alien movies (loved the first two, disliked the third, neutral on the 4th). I am partial toward art that allows polysemy, and I do think Prometheus is enormously polysemous. I think that, at least at this point, multiple interpretations were desired by the movie-makers. In terms of their profit motive, this certainly allows the possibility of much greater anticipation for the prequel sequel. I think the reason it really hasn't made the kind of money that, for example, Avatar, made is that on one level it is banal, empty ( I think by design) and moviegoers want movies they can understand, with easily likeable or hateable characters, but ambivalence? In a weird way, it reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Syriana.

--plot holes and logical inconsistencies. It's a myth, fiction, not possible in the first place. The entire thing is allegorical. Plot holes matter in detective thrillers, perhaps. Not a big issue for me here. Seemed more like a dream, anyway, and who worried about the impossibilities in one's dreams?

--on panspermia, Engineers, Prometheus. No mention yet of the Olympians? In this universe, humans would be the Olympians? Or are the Olympians another race? The SHIP is called Prometheus, not the Engineers. Why would the ship be called that? Many, including me, have assumed the Engineers are supposed to be Titans, but will this be born out in the next film? We will be looking at the timespan of what, close to a century between when Noomi sails off with the android, to the first Alien film. Time enough for her to be transformed into something else, time enough for the corporation to come up with their eternal idea that they want to smuggle back the alien to earth as a bioweapon (isn't that like in every Alien movie?). So, I doubt Rapace simply finds the Engineer planet and hijinks ensue. There is a strong possibility that there is some sort of 'life force' or what-have-you to be encountered that is greater than the Engineers. It occurred to me while watching the film that possibly the black stuff was stolen, again from some 'superior' species, or the creators of the engineers, or something.

Also, whatever type of DNA was seeded on whatever planet, humans ended up looking like engineers--created in their image, not happening by chance. That's absurd, if we are talking about the creation of life on earth, and if we're talking about ancient astronauts, at what point in the hominid lineage do you intervene? Wait--the hominid lineage itself would have to have been created? THAT'S the plot hole I can't deal with, unless we use more exotic mechanisms such as time travel or at least precognition. Seems to be that engineers may be in the business of panspermia, but that humans and engineers might come from a common source, unless we're going to throw out evolution altogether. Perhaps engineers are simply remnants of an Atlantean race, cousins of humans, who escaped from earth in the distant past.

But if we stick to the Engineers-engineered-us idea, then we went and created androids, which in the original Alien, plus this film, were very dangerous and creepy individuals--remember what happened to the android in the first Alien--he was ripped apart. He also got ripped apart in Aliens, even though he was 'good.' I see the android as the central character in Prometheus, representing a 'more perfect' version of flawed humanity.

I think Ridley sees himself as a trickster, probably conceives of himself as godlike, and this statement made so much of in the Livejournal review where we have Ridley basically saying that Jesus was one of the engineers, I think that was meant to be misleading. I remember that with all the speculation about this being a prequel, Ridley and company went out of their way to mislead us by seeming to say that it WASN'T a prequel, but that it had 'strands of Alien DNA.' I took this to be a metaphor, but he actually meant it literally.

Another thing I noticed--the 'end product' baby alien at the end is certainly not identical to the aliens beginning in Alien. But we have the Weyland Corporation already, and we KNOW that they are keenly interested in getting their hands on an alien, and also in alien-human hybrids, and so forth. And now we have this idea about aliens and eternal life. I would assume, furthermore, that the Weyland daughter who got squashed was a replica, or already had a clone, or whatever. The Alien franchise managed to recreate Ripley, so why not her?

FULL DISCLOSURE: Raised a Luddite, Alien was basically the first movie I saw on the big screen, at the impressionable age of 9. I think the tagline was 'in space, no one can hear you scream.' The horror, to me, was overwhelming, but I immediately emphasized with the Alien monster in that kind of 80s-generation Freddy-obsessive way. Given what happened at the very beginning, I always assumed that future films would explore 1) the aliens' home planet, 2) what happens when aliens are unleashed on earth (HUGE disappointment there, after eagerly awaiting AVP. christ.) The second was great, but rather shallow, seemed like a straightforward adventure film. Typical James Cameron. 3 and 4 did nothing to explore the alien's origins, so I basically gave up. But I think buried in my psyche is some sort of twisted faith in an insect-like being that is capable of completely destroying humanity. To keep us from, perhaps, unleashing the types of excesses we visit on each other, on the rest of the galaxy. I've always been a fan of the Earth-quarantine idea.

[JackRiddler]

Great comment geogeo, I'm on board!

SNIP

--I didn't get the idea that the film was shallow, but rather that it was mechanical and intentionally hollow and banal; almost everything said seemed to have a point, double entendre, was said for a specific reason, etc. There was nothing remotely humorous about the film, for some reason. No humorous dialogue that I can recall.

Well, maybe the foreplay between Stringer Bell and Aileen Wuornos: "Are you an android?" This line and her reaction got the most laughs in the theater.

--plot holes and logical inconsistencies. It's a myth, fiction, not possible in the first place. The entire thing is allegorical. Plot holes matter in detective thrillers, perhaps. Not a big issue for me here. Seemed more like a dream, anyway, and who worried about the impossibilities in one's dreams?

I think so, too. When I was younger, I was more prone to judge fiction by a standard I mistakenly thought was "realism." Also, to know the full lyrics before I could fully love a song. Often misses the point. You've paid to watch humans like yourself travel hundreds of light years at FTL while in suspended animation, and you're worried about plot holes? No science expedition is going to leave the ship as soon as they land, they'll spend 30 days sending out drones and taking samples. (The guy who ordered this didn't know Space Rockefeller was on the ship with only hours to live.) Except it's a movie about archetypes, myths, drives, ambitions, folly, not the proper rules of science expeditions.

.

[2012 Countdown]

The sequence of events, allegories, plots, etc affect the meaning, no? So do the religious and mythological tappings.
To the extent they do or don't follow (or follow up on), 'holes' and inconsistencies emerge. Unless you want to just absolve them from all of that. Okay then, it dissolves into meaninglessness.
...and a several months' long project is like a dream? Not to be looked at for internal inconsistencies based on the very things/devices they introduce? Okay.

[JackRiddler]

To the extent they do or don't follow (or follow up on), 'holes' and inconsistencies emerge. Unless you want to just absolve them from all of that. Okay then, it dissolves into meaninglessness.

Well I wouldn't go so far. It comes down to whether you're enjoying it as a sensory experience, and whether it's engaging your mind in an interesting fashion - and whether the stupid in it is so much that it overwhelms that. It was good on those three points for me, though it wasn't the greatest anything. This was the kind of movie I could watch from a distance (no particular stakes in it) and still have fun.

[vanlose kid]

read this before i saw the new installment and think it pretty much captures what the deal is perfectly. the same sort of questions are asked in Blade Runner.

...

The humans in the universe of the Alien films are consistently weak, stupid, or evil. This is a binding thread through the series. The presence of a person like Ripley or Shaw is anomalous and rare. The vast majority of the human characters are either actively pursuing horrific intentions or punching the clock to facilitate those intentions as little Eichmanns: the barely competent crew members of the first film, the callous and cowardly jarheads of the second, the prisoners and warders of the penal planet for the criminally insane in the third film, the evil scientists cloning deformed duplicates of Ripley and their errand-boys trafficking stolen cryo-suspended bodies in the fourth film, and the heinous corporate capitalists searching for a payday from the biological weaponization of a dangerous species throughout the series. In this light, the incompetence and stupidity of the crew of the Prometheus is simply a consistent and expected iteration of this premise - humans are generally low animals, acting always upon animal instincts and reacting always with fear and stupidity. If something can go wrong, it will - it always goes south.

Combining these base impulses with technology never raises the moral level of the humans within the universe. Rather, the interface of humans with their machines brings out the lowest qualities of the humans. The ultimate signifier of this relationship is the android: the banality of human existence seamlessly welded to the uber-abilities of the machine becomes the archetypical sociopathic cipher.

In the latest film, the recurring leitmotif of the disembodied head which the director returns to again and again speaks to this idea: the decapitated head of the god-alien, the giant head encountered in the labyrinth of the mound structure, the head of the android torn off by the god-alien, the heads of the crew suspended within their helmet-globes. In each case, the head must be enclosed, put in a sack, placed in containment - this is the act of removing and hiding the higher qualities of morality and intellect.

The so-called maker, or engineering god-alien is just another human. He reacts to the crew with the same disgust, fear and violence they consistently treat each other to. The opening line delivered by the tattooed geologist is in some ways the key to the engineer's role in the film: I'm not here to be your friend.

The Greek Prometheus molded man and gave mankind fire. The god-aliens in the film molded man and gave him the xenomorph. The xenomorph is not really an alien, despite the name it carries as titles to the films. It it the black soul of man, living secretly within his breast, growing its evil life with his heart and finally bursting forth in acidic violence and mindless procreation. It bites you, then its mouth has another inner mouth that bites the bite again. It carries you off and implants its hatred in your belly over and over.

...

for me Prometheus and Alien connect, and bypass what came between altogether, even though one could argue that Prometheus riffs on ideas found in 2, 3, 4 -- e.g. bicycle basketball. but where did 2, 3, 4 get their stuff from if not Alien? -- so between Alien and Prometheus all the ideas laid out in cuda's precis are taken care of.

it's a fairy tale more than anything.(no, Disney do not do fairy tales. they're un-american.) a Grimm one at that. so i like this:

...

--plot holes and logical inconsistencies. It's a myth, fiction, not possible in the first place. The entire thing is allegorical. Plot holes matter in detective thrillers, perhaps. Not a big issue for me here. Seemed more like a dream, anyway, and who worried about the impossibilities in one's dreams?

....

reminds me of a discussion between some western animators talking plot with some japanese anime dues and at one point the japanese propose something like "and then x happens" and the western dudes are like "that doesn't make sense!" "but why?" "how can that happen?" and the japanese guys look at them uncomprehendingly and say "it just does." which reminds me of one of Raymond Chandler's rules of thumb: "When in doubt, have somebody enter the room with a gun."

i heard Scott say somewhere that one of the reasons he wanted to go back was to figure out where the space jockey came from. he's trying to explain how the man came to walk into the room with a gun. and to do that... well, Prometheus.

then again, i kind of saw the film as a yarn for the most part except for one sequence of shots, not even a scene. near the end where the live space-jockey comes to get Salander he get's caught by the huge facehugger. in the doorway at the first reveal of the facehugger a thought just leapt at me: "Bosch! that's a demon out of Bosch."

which reminded me of what 'cuda had written. here it is again:

The xenomorph is not really an alien, despite the name it carries as titles to the films. It is the black soul of man, living secretly within his breast, growing its evil life with his heart and finally bursting forth in acidic violence and mindless procreation. It bites you, then its mouth has another inner mouth that bites the bite again. It carries you off and implants its hatred in your belly over and over.

it is, they are, basically morality tales, allegories. Grimm ones certainly, but that's what they are. to me anyway.

which again reminds me of something else Chandler said:

“...down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”

that hidden truth is not, however, the clue or solution to the mystery, but rather the answer to a very simple question of ethics or of life: What am I to do?

such men are rare. which is probably why i love such stories.

now i come to think of it, Philip Marlowe is pretty un-american.

*

[Wombaticus Rex]

So I watched this again in an altered state and I have notes.

First of all -- Michael Fassbender. Pinocchio. Caliban. The camera is in his face for at least half the running time of this film. The introduction by his holographic zombie father is the core of this film. The all around alienation -- I know a lot of RI folks have actually had jobs like this, and I know I have, and I feel like it gives me a whole different appreciation for this film.

I felt similarly about Being John Malkovich, if that helps orient where I'm coming from. I've had NDA's for the last 30 jobs I've had, at least. I've had training binders full of WTF for at least 25 out of those 30. So much of gainful employment in 2012 is just humoring the pathologies of these ruling class parasites...an education unto itself. I have often evoked my work experience in the mental health field, mostly because it was so eye-opening, humble-izing, and brutally shocking. In recent months I have come to appreciate how much it prepared me for the opposite side of the food chain: attending to the mental health needs of "successful" Americans, you know....job creators.

Anyways, in that light, I have to say so many of the "obvious" plot holes and dumbass moves in this film made way more sense. It was last night's viewing that helped me realize what a vengeful geek I am when I watch sci-fi, how high my bar is set. My dad was the one who pointed out the reason Alien was so good was that it was a slasher movie, taken out of context and given a mythic resonance but basically still just entertainment with teeth. I really think Prometheus stands up to that.

One thing that's been left out of the conversation here is all my dumbass -- no offense guys! -- but my totally dumbass friends who fucking love, and re-watch, this movie. This is gory spectacle on par with Saw except the horizon is cosmic and the motivation is not sadism. I think both of those points represent a net win for humanity. DVD sales are doing great. Overall ... this movie might be a net win for the species.

Despite being really, really, really shitty. Gloriously, high-def shitty.

Oh yeah: second of all -- that employee orientation: A/B that to the entirety of Zeitgeist and/or Thrive. There will be businesses built off these fever dreams, every bit as fundamentally successful as Enron.

[vanlose kid]

... There will be businesses built off these fever dreams, every bit as fundamentally successful as Enron.

thanks.

[JackRiddler]

.

When I saw it in the theater I missed the start - specifically, the "seeding" and then the discovery of the "signs" by the scientists with super-corny music. Instead I saw it starting from the ship already on its way, Fassbender doing his rounds while everyone else is asleep.

So I saw the beginning recently on a plane. Totally superfluous. Nothing in there you need to see. Including the "seeding." It would have been much more effective without it. The hologram of the "Harriman" Robber Baron character (Anyone remember Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon"?) was exactly the exposition this film needed.

WR, brilliant comments.