I went to see the Ridley Scott movie Prometheus
recently. What struck me -- besides the quality of the acting, direction, amazing sets, and excellent effects -- was the theme of faith.
If you have not seen the film, do not read on, unless you don't care about spoilers.
The weakest aspect of Prometheus, actually, is the script, which is fairly confusing. The title refers to the Titan Prometheus, who in Greek mythology created humankind out of clay with the help of Pallas Athena. After an odd opening scene with a pale-blue, 9-foot-tall humanoid dissolving into a waterfall (presumably to create humankind), the film begins with the discovery by a missionary's daughter, Elizabeth Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace, of the Stieg Larsson trilogy flicks), of a recurring pattern of stars in unrelated ancient petroglyphs and images. Mapping the pattern leads to a faraway star system.
Jump to the starship Prometheus, where we learn that the crew has been assembled by a multi-trillionaire (figure 20 Bill Gates) named Peter Weyland. The last name is no accident, and the first tie of the movie to Ridley Scott's Alien series. (Other scenes are more reminiscent of Brian de Palma's Mission to Mars.) When they arrive at their destination and have been awakened by the android David, the crew watches a hologram of Weyland telling them that he has funded the expedition in the hopes of discovering the race that created humanity. He expects that they will give humans the key to virtual immortality, though by the time they watch the hologram, he will have already died.
The crew discovers inside a gigantic spaceship that the original race had created a monstrous being that seeks to impregnate other species with its young, implanting them inside their bodies. (Of course, these are the stars of the Alien series.) Just like digger wasps do with caterpillars. The infant wasps eat their way out of the host, killing it in the process. Meanwhile, David, the android who takes after Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia, has infected Dr. Shaw's lover, who gets her pregnant with one of these "space wasps." How he knows about them and why he does this is never explained.
Here ensues the scene that interests me most. In a previous scene, Dr. Shaw's father had given her a plain metal cross, which she always wears as a sign of her faith. It is as David's prisoner that she learns she has been impregnated and will soon die. The android tells her that her god has let her down twice: once when her father died of Ebola, and the other now that she is going to die horrifically. Since there is obviously no god, she no longer needs her cross, which he removes and places in a pocket.
Here we learn that Weyland is not dead, but has stowed away, unbeknownst to his daughter Vickers (Charlize Theron), who is the expedition leader.
Then David finds a member of the original race in suspended animation. Weyland goes with the android to awaken the superman and learn how to reverse aging to become immortal. Pale-blue will have none of it, and kills Weyland and rips off the android's head (remember Alien?) Meanwhile, Shaw has escaped and gotten into an automated surgery (Larry Niven's autodoc) and has it remove the alien-wasp baby. While Pale-blue is revving up his ship to carry the Alien monsters to Earth (why?), she convinces the captain of Prometheus to ram the other spaceship. He and his crew courageously kamikaze that ship, which falls back to the planet (actually a large moon, like Pandora in Avatar). While Vickers is crushed by the debris, Shaw escapes to a lifeboat containing, among other things, the autodoc. She is warned by the android's head -- still functioning -- that Pale-blue is on his way. She manages to hide from him, while he opens the door to the autodoc chamber and confronts the now-grown alien-wasp, who kills him.
The android directs Shaw to where his head lies, telling her she can use him to fly back to Earth in other starships still on the moon. She refuses to listen, until he first gives her back her cross. He tells her where to find it, and she reverently puts it back on. Then she informs him, as she drags his body and head along, that she intends to follow the Pale-blues to their home world.
What differentiates each character in the movie is their faith. Weyland has faith that he can find the fountain of youth by asking the original race. Otherwise there is nothing after death. Vickers is watching out for herself and her investment -- her relationship with her father is nil, she cares nothing for him or anyone else. Fifield is in it "for the money." David, by definition, can have no faith. With all the others, they are foils to Shaw and her boyfriend Calloway, whose faith is what gives them hope for their scientific work as well as the rest of their lives. The noble captain and crew sacrifice themselves to save Earth. Calloway lets Vickers kill him rather than expose the others to what has infected him. Shaw carries on, a scientist interested in the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself.
Christianity claims that when we die, no immortal part survives to flit off somewhere else (e.g., Psalm 146). Rather, we are dead as a doornail, until we inherit resurrection like Jesus'. This new creation out of the old is already present in embryo so to speak, and makes this life, the here and now, just as important as what will follow. It is this hope that defines our faith. As Shaw's father explains to her, how this happens is another matter entirely, and it is opaque to us. Shaw as a scientist of faith gives an example of what a person of faith is like. No "magical thinking," no pie-in-the-sky.
Weyland, on the other hand, is the antithesis of a person of faith. He wants to use all that he has so that he can continue to draw breath. In doing so, he gets a lot of people killed, including his estranged daughter as well as himself.
Ridley Scott's parable of faith raises some interesting questions, despite the waywardness of the script and the obvious sequelization at work. There remains the question of our creation by another race. The Abrahamic religions proclaim that God created us. Perhaps we can stretch that to happen by allowing the intermediary of other non-angelic beings. The Pale-blues are certainly no angels! So in the end Shaw is still looking not for the creator race, but through them, the Creator -- the ultimate object of her faith.
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Holloway used more faith than logic on the map excluded most of the stars because one star was more ideal. As if he doubts 'Heaven' would be around a less ideal star.
Shaw never considered the reason for the DNA match, could be that humans were taken from 35,000 years ago, and turned into Space Jockeys. A scientist should ALWAYS explore alternative explanations.
A Space Jockey can run outside in toxic air. The atmosphere created inside is for humans, not the Space Jockeys, humans brought here in the past
Urns spaced to easily fit one human standing by each urn, None of these things occur to her, because she thinks of the bible, and not Mary Shelley's book "Frankenstein - a modern prometheus" (yes that is the full title)
Shaw takes a vague cryptic statement from David, (who she shouldn't trust, as she now knows he was responsible for killing Holloway) and never asks him to state in clear English what he means. She simply jumps straight into "Armageddon, End is Nigh" hysteria, on the basis of which she convinces Janek to commit suicide.
She ignores any indications that the recently awoken "Igor" was planning another run to Earth for more specimens "to destroy in order to create".
She may be travelling the galaxy looking for kidnapping, DNA tampering, monster-making, slave masters, in order to have a philosophical debate with them.
That's not an argument in favour of religion.
And if it has a moral, it is that one should never trust a robot with an English accent.
the Greek story of Prometheus (and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein for that matter) serves as an admonition towards the human pursuit of technology at the risk of foregoing ethics.
In this instance, the Super-humans engineer biological weapons, the Alien, to their own detriment. They have become so God like in their advancement, they spread their genes inter-galactically, to seed planets with life. In doing so, they ignore the ethics of their own responsibility towards what they have created, human species on Earth.
The Super-humans play with technology without thinking of whether it is appropriate to do so. They create the Alien as a biological weapon to destroy humanity on Earth (It is not clear why, presumably the sequel will explain why), thus, the creator stops caring for their creations. Only the last remaining survivor, who carries religious faith, goes to pursue the Super-humans, not because faith is driving her, but scientific curiosity.
Overall, I like the movie, but it has flaws and as far as sic-fi goes, it was fun, thought provoking, and creepy.
Fire, when used improperly, is incredibly dangerous. But when harnessed it is the foundation o our civilization.
The first scene showed the proper use of the goo, to seed a lifeless world with vigorous microbes and terraform it.
Combine with template DNA and **heavily** dilute.
Just a guess... but it works for me and that's the beauty of this franchise - it makes you think and is full of 'hidden' meaning if you want to look for it - I only touched the surface with the similies between characters and scenes - all in all very beautiful
The movie was about a psychopathic robot trying to pick a fight between humans and grey aliens by lying and claiming they were going to destroy us. There is no indication that they are going to destroy us. They've visited earth a gazillion times without destroying anything. And if the pilot was going to destroy us **he'd have started the engines before going into coldsleep**.
It's very simple.
If you are trying to destroy earth you plot a course, start the engines, then get into your travel sleep pod.
If you are calling for help, you send signals towards all the nearby places you think help might be, don't start the engines, and get into your sleep tube to wait for the cavalry to arrive. And earth is dang close + its a place folks stop off at to re-supply so it would be one of the places you send a message to.
The grey alien did the latter. So he clearly had no hostile intentions towards earth. If he had the ship would have lifted off with its cargo of monsters and earth would have been wiped clean a couple thousand years before Shaw was born.
Prometheus denies the existence of God by showing us being created when mortal and fallible aliens seeded the planet with microbes that evolved into us.
It proved they were both mortal and fallible by showing them having an industrial accident and eing killed by there terraforming goo.
For me, the film was about redemption, full circle. Note at the end when Shaw narrates "Year of Our Lord".
If the greys had any hostility towards humans we'd have been dead thousands of years prior to the movie happening. First of all, because the pilot would have launched the ship before entering hibernation. The light show was clearly him sending messages before going into hibernation to wait out the attack. If it was plotting a course, the ship wouldn't be sitting around on the ground. Second of all, because when you decide to do something as big as exterminating all life on a planet, you don't give up just because one measly ship had an accident on board. That would be like calling off D-Day because one ship had engine trouble. The job would have been finished by another ship in the intervening 2000 years.
The only "faith" theme I saw was David's intense fascination with and jealousy of Shaw's faith. It's nice to have absent creators and mystery. David's creators are present and we made him to serve us. Not to live, or laugh, or love, or experience. To be our slave.
Hence his hatred of us and efforts to incite conflict between us and the greys.
Christian Wiman
I think the unacknowledged truth of that quote is that faith is an indispensable part of being human and thus an essential aspect of motivation -- whether your faith lies in science, a career, your sense of style or someone else's is in GOD - makes no difference whatsoever - The difference only exist in the scope of the activity through which you choose to express that faith.
So the argument your making is right but it can be made for any character and any movie -- It's Obvious -- which is why this movie was actually quite shallow in trying to make that so grandiose - without the the characters actions being able to back it up ---
In fact when the "adventure begins" David - is arguably the only character acting on his faith - but he is programmed - so a great metaphor for GOD and his creation. But falls flat in comparison to human potential. Think Vickers - To make a robot more human by making the humans less human is silly.
I personally saw many of the themes from Blade Runner echoed here. Many of the viral videos -- the TED speech by Weyland and the "Happy Birthday David" video, in particular -- add depth to the story. One thing I think you missed was the dynamic between Weyland, David, and Vickers. David in many ways is superior to his human creators, but he shares the same flaw as Weyland, which is no compassion for humanity. In Weyland's case, it is because of his genius and ambition; in David's case, it is because he is a machine and empathy is explicitly not part of his programming.
It is interesting to ponder Shaw's faith as well. She seems to have faith that the Engineers are benevolent, a faith that is shattered. Given the loss of her mother and father, her need to believe in a benevolent higher power is central to her character. Her transformation from that innocence to someone who sees the world much more clearly is that a child putting away childish things.
He was psychopathic and trying to torture her. He took it - on very flimsy pretext given that it is metal and could be sterilized easily - to inflict emotional pain on her.
He knew from the time he spent stalking her dreams in coldsleep for 200 years that it was important to her.
Everything David does screams passive-aggression. He can't act directly because his programming would, of course, forbid it so he has to find loopholes.
It crystallizes when somebody makes a derogatory remark about him and he turns to the speaker and asks them how they'd feel if their creator said that to them. If he were an emotionless robot **he wouldn't care that he is a slave that is treated as a lesser being by the humans**.
But he clearly does. Very much so. Think about it from his perspective. All the crew members took it for granted that their creators would love them and nurture them as parents ... would reward them for reaching the goal with gifts of knowledge, health, etc ..
His creators, on the other hand, value him only for his ability to serve. Nobody cares if he is happy.
A friend of mine has a friend who did some of the CGI and apparently in the director's cut 2000 years ago there was a grey alien born on earth from a virgin woman named Mary who'd been given goo properly called Jesus Christ. We killed him and in retaliation they were coming to kill us all but had an accident along the way.
Now this declares Christians completely wrong about God and also takes the Crucifixion ... the moment Jesus "dies for our sins" and makes mock of it by having it be utterly unforgiven.
It was decided that this was too insulting and the storyline was left on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, you couldn't make a coherent story out of the scraps very easily. So you have disjointed weird crap like the "dead" alien head waking up ( resurrected ) when you run a current through it since Grey's are apparently not really dead when they die. Though they had to cut what it said. And people deciding they'll attack us even though none of the footage used gives the slightest indication that was the intent.
When I saw the movie the only way it made sense was if David was plotting against humanity. When I heard about the cut stuff then I could see how the scenes that were left it were meant to be played.