PROMETHEUS

[brekin]

Burnt Hill wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:
Burnt Hill wrote:

Quote:
The miracle of life and creation are brutal violent disgusting events.
No. Not really.

Hi justdrew.
But I've yet to see a baby born laughing and smiling.

Sex can be pretty good. And, as full on and dangerous as birth is, its also fucken awesome to see/experience. When my daughter was born it was less than 5 minutes before she recognised my voice and smiled at me. Consiodering shes just been dumped from a warm cosy, comfy world where everything is provided (the only world she's ever known in that body) into the cold hard light of day that is kind of cool.

Sex, you still have sex? How long have you been married Joe? Though I do remember it as enjoyable..
Seriously, when my last daughter was born,(by C-section) the doc cuts her out and begins to hand her to me. The he/we noticed the umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck. If she had been delivered naturally she may have died, or worse. When I did get my hands on her, I held her up and danced. Pure Joy.

Spoilers ahead;
I think what resonated most with me after seeing Prometheus this weekend was the lack of drive, passion, curiosity in all the characters.
You would think going to see your creators, and then finding them, would be of some interest to the people on the ship. Nope, not really.
Everyone is just a job now. "I just fly the ship." "I'm just here for the money and I fucking love rocks" "I'm the biologist" (but I want to go back to the ship when their is the possibility of real life).
"I'm the ceo of the company, etc" It felt like everyone was telling everyone else constantly "I'm just a temp, I'm not responsible." If I remember correctly, in the first Alien film the crew was a mining ship and you could excuse a lack of exuberance with them, but I remember there was much more bonhomie and engagement with them.

Even the two archaeologists never sold me really that they were really interested in their mission. The male archaeologist falls into a funk when they discover the temple (two seconds after arriving on the planet) with about a thousand years of alien artifacts because no one was there when he rang the door bell? Hello, they're asleep up in the attic of the temple you haven't even begun to explore and you are already throwing in the towel? It might have been casting but he came across as a disingenuous start up dot commer to me. This and a few other dozen missteps along with the ones jlaw172364 mentioned made it rather boring. There were very little attempts at building mood or suspense through lighting, music, timing, etc. Even in the scary temple I spent more time admiring all the little details in the alien woodwork than feeling any foreboding.

And The Creators themselves are basically monosyllabic albino Right Said Fred/very fit Hellraiser Cenobites? How is it possible they have less personality then everyone on the ship? And the android is the most charming character out of the lot? Everyone from the aliens, creators to crew seem completely mindless. Maybe this was intentional and David the android was used to juxtapose the lack of spontaneity and growth in everyone else? It's a shame because the visuals of the film really were great. I think if they just poured Tangerine Dream throughout the ship and temple it would have been better then much of the dialogue.

For me though the allusions to the Prometheus myth seemed pretty straight forward. The ship Prometheus has one mission with two goals. To find the Creators of humans (this would make them de facto Gods because they made humans) to gain knowledge of our origins (for the archaelogists) and our possible immortality (for weyland). Gaining this knowledge would be taking the power (the fire) the Engineers (Gods, or like Zeus, the king of the gods) have which makes them God-like (the powers of creation and immortality) and democratizing it. The crew of prometheus in their quest to discover and liberate this knowledge from their creators overstep and are punished in as novel and as gruesome ways as Prometheus was.



I also think possibly there are refinements of this with allusions to the quest of self knowledge and the growth of consciousness a variant of the fire taken from the Gods. The ability of being self aware and sentient is what makes humans more then dumb matter and god like. David the robot and Elizabeth the archaeologist are the only ones who survive and also seemed to be the only ones who are interested in exploring their inner and outer-worlds earnestly. This could be a coincidence. But everyone who is single minded in the film: alien, creator, crew member, ends up canceling one another out. (It is also interesting how David, who is mostly all intellect, has his head ripped from his body and Elizabeth ends up dragging his separated head and body around we assume to later make him whole.)

[82_28]

I think what resonated most with me after seeing Prometheus this weekend was the lack of drive, passion, curiosity in all the characters.
You would think going to see your creators, and then finding them, would be of some interest to the people on the ship. Nope, not really.
Everyone is just a job now. "I just fly the ship." "I'm just here for the money and I fucking love rocks" "I'm the biologist" (but I want to go back to the ship when their is the possibility of real life).
"I'm the ceo of the company, etc" It felt like everyone was telling everyone else constantly "I'm just a temp, I'm not responsible." If I remember correctly, in the first Alien film the crew was a mining ship and you could excuse a lack of exuberance with them, but I remember there was much more bonhomie and engagement with them.

This is precisely, right here why all I could muster was "It fucking sucked".

However. . .

Possibly, it was a parable of our time and we're being too clever by half. Our space-faring-ness (as inhabitants of Earth) and quasi out of control pessimistic economy. Perhaps it was saying that "down this path" a trillion dollars will be spent to not give a shit. Kinda like now. Ya know?

[Joe Hillshoist]

I think what resonated most with me after seeing Prometheus this weekend was the lack of drive, passion, curiosity in all the characters.
You would think going to see your creators, and then finding them, would be of some interest to the people on the ship. Nope, not really.
Everyone is just a job now. "I just fly the ship." "I'm just here for the money and I fucking love rocks" "I'm the biologist" (but I want to go back to the ship when their is the possibility of real life).
"I'm the ceo of the company, etc" It felt like everyone was telling everyone else constantly "I'm just a temp, I'm not responsible." If I remember correctly, in the first Alien film the crew was a mining ship and you could excuse a lack of exuberance with them, but I remember there was much more bonhomie and engagement with them.

This is precisely, right here why all I could muster was "It fucking sucked".

However. . .

Possibly, it was a parable of our time and we're being too clever by half. Our space-faring-ness (as inhabitants of Earth) and quasi out of control pessimistic economy. Perhaps it was saying that "down this path" a trillion dollars will be spent to not give a shit. Kinda like now. Ya know?

I was thinking almost the same thing when I read brekin's review.

Mind you I haven't seen it, and probably won't cos the nearest imax theatre is 800km away.

[Peregrine]

Mind you I haven't seen it, and probably won't cos the nearest imax theatre is 800km away.

Dude, I wanna live where you live...

[brekin]

brekin wrote

Quote:
I think what resonated most with me after seeing Prometheus this weekend was the lack of drive, passion, curiosity in all the characters.
You would think going to see your creators, and then finding them, would be of some interest to the people on the ship. Nope, not really.
Everyone is just a job now. "I just fly the ship." "I'm just here for the money and I fucking love rocks" "I'm the biologist" (but I want to go back to the ship when their is the possibility of real life).
"I'm the ceo of the company, etc" It felt like everyone was telling everyone else constantly "I'm just a temp, I'm not responsible." If I remember correctly, in the first Alien film the crew was a mining ship and you could excuse a lack of exuberance with them, but I remember there was much more bonhomie and engagement with them.

82_82 wrote:

This is precisely, right here why all I could muster was "It fucking sucked".

However. . .

Possibly, it was a parable of our time and we're being too clever by half. Our space-faring-ness (as inhabitants of Earth) and quasi out of control pessimistic economy. Perhaps it was saying that "down this path" a trillion dollars will be spent to not give a shit. Kinda like now. Ya know?

Joe Hillhoist wrote:

I was thinking almost the same thing when I read brekin's review.

Mind you I haven't seen it, and probably won't cos the nearest imax theatre is 800km away.

(More spoilers)
I would like to think Ridley Scott was making the subtle statement that these humans are obsessed with finding the origin of life, the prolongation of life, the control of life and its reproduction- but don't even know what it means to be alive and live. Some of the Socratic dialogues with the robot David I think allude to this. As do some of the character types; Weyland's daughter who is so rigid she is mistaken to be another robot, Weyland who refuses to pass on his legacy to his children (robotic or human) and wishes to become inhuman (for all his talk of human's defining trait in having a soul), and all the other crew members who are defined by their jobs or appetites, except David who is not human but seems to enjoy exploring his consciousness and potential.

But this could be wishful thinking. Similar to what 82_82 said about the mission, I think the film could be an example of millions of dollars spent to not give a shit. Really the audience only seemed to perk up during the requisite forced alien deep throat scene and the automated abortion on demand scene, which was very graphic. The constant fear of infection, penetration, and destruction by foreign bodies combined with discovering our creators see us as an unplanned mistake which they were just about to completely eradicate, is not a very humanistic message. It could be a spine tingling dreadful one but the horror that is delivered is mostly dead pan and more intellectual and detached then visceral. Since most of the crew don't care about each other or any greater meaning
the only thing left for them is to die in a interesting manner. No one wants to be an unloved bastard in a hostile environment without empathy (where your creators (parents) want to kill you) but that is the world of Prometheus. Weyland rebuffs his childrens need for meaning, acceptance and purpose and that is what the creators do when he petitions them (Well they kill him.)

I thought it was hilarious that the surviving crew member wants to seek out the creator's home planet, because she wants to know why they "changed their mind about us". It's not enough to be rejected and almost annihilated by your creator, you have to find out why they really abandoned you and want to kill you. The other Alien films, for all their morbid spins on sex, pregnancy and birth made life redeeming just by making survival worth something. It was an achievement just stay alive. This film seems to try hard to make survival have little meaning. But perhaps Scott wanted to make a testament to the human struggle for greater meaning and identity in the face of universal brutality and rejection. I think he does tap into the fear that humans weren't possibly created by more advanced beings, but evolved from lower life forms. The Creators for all their technology just seem like crude military technicians without much depth and they seem to be embarrassed at our relation. Kind of a reverse 2001 space Odyssey.

[Burnt Hill]

Burnt Hill wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:
Burnt Hill wrote:

Quote:
The miracle of life and creation are brutal violent disgusting events.
No. Not really.

Hi justdrew.
But I've yet to see a baby born laughing and smiling.

Sex can be pretty good. And, as full on and dangerous as birth is, its also fucken awesome to see/experience. When my daughter was born it was less than 5 minutes before she recognised my voice and smiled at me. Consiodering shes just been dumped from a warm cosy, comfy world where everything is provided (the only world she's ever known in that body) into the cold hard light of day that is kind of cool.

Sex, you still have sex? How long have you been married Joe? Though I do remember it as enjoyable..
Seriously, when my last daughter was born,(by C-section) the doc cuts her out and begins to hand her to me. The he/we noticed the umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck. If she had been delivered naturally she may have died, or worse. When I did get my hands on her, I held her up and danced. Pure Joy.

Spoilers ahead;
I think what resonated most with me after seeing Prometheus this weekend was the lack of drive, passion, curiosity in all the characters.
You would think going to see your creators, and then finding them, would be of some interest to the people on the ship. Nope, not really.
Everyone is just a job now. "I just fly the ship." "I'm just here for the money and I fucking love rocks" "I'm the biologist" (but I want to go back to the ship when their is the possibility of real life).
"I'm the ceo of the company, etc" It felt like everyone was telling everyone else constantly "I'm just a temp, I'm not responsible." If I remember correctly, in the first Alien film the crew was a mining ship and you could excuse a lack of exuberance with them, but I remember there was much more bonhomie and engagement with them.

Even the two archaeologists never sold me really that they were really interested in their mission. The male archaeologist falls into a funk when they discover the temple (two seconds after arriving on the planet) with about a thousand years of alien artifacts because no one was there when he rang the door bell? Hello, they're asleep up in the attic of the temple you haven't even begun to explore and you are already throwing in the towel? It might have been casting but he came across as a disingenuous start up dot commer to me. This and a few other dozen missteps along with the ones jlaw172364 mentioned made it rather boring. There were very little attempts at building mood or suspense through lighting, music, timing, etc. Even in the scary temple I spent more time admiring all the little details in the alien woodwork than feeling any foreboding.

And The Creators themselves are basically monosyllabic albino Right Said Fred/very fit Hellraiser Cenobites? How is it possible they have less personality then everyone on the ship? And the android is the most charming character out of the lot? Everyone from the aliens, creators to crew seem completely mindless. Maybe this was intentional and David the android was used to juxtapose the lack of spontaneity and growth in everyone else? It's a shame because the visuals of the film really were great. I think if they just poured Tangerine Dream throughout the ship and temple it would have been better then much of the dialogue.

For me though the allusions to the Prometheus myth seemed pretty straight forward. The ship Prometheus has one mission with two goals. To find the Creators of humans (this would make them de facto Gods because they made humans) to gain knowledge of our origins (for the archaelogists) and our possible immortality (for weyland). Gaining this knowledge would be taking the power (the fire) the Engineers (Gods, or like Zeus, the king of the gods) have which makes them God-like (the powers of creation and immortality) and democratizing it. The crew of prometheus in their quest to discover and liberate this knowledge from their creators overstep and are punished in as novel and as gruesome ways as Prometheus was.



I also think possibly there are refinements of this with allusions to the quest of self knowledge and the growth of consciousness a variant of the fire taken from the Gods. The ability of being self aware and sentient is what makes humans more then dumb matter and god like. David the robot and Elizabeth the archaeologist are the only ones who survive and also seemed to be the only ones who are interested in exploring their inner and outer-worlds earnestly. This could be a coincidence. But everyone who is single minded in the film: alien, creator, crew member, ends up canceling one another out. (It is also interesting how David, who is mostly all intellect, has his head ripped from his body and Elizabeth ends up dragging his separated head and body around we assume to later make him whole.)

thanks brekin. That picture-

“The Eagle is devouring the awareness of all the creatures that, alive on earth a moment before and now dead, have floated to the Eagle’s beak, like a ceaseless swarm of fireflies, to meet their owner, their reason for having had life. The Eagle disentangles these tiny flames, lays them flat, as a tanner stretches out a hide, and then consumes them; for awareness is the Eagle’s food. The Eagle, that power that governs the destinies of all living things, reflects equally and at once all those living things.” (“The Eagle’s Gift,” by Carlos Castaneda)

[Bruce Dazzling]

Here's the guy who did the completely awesome Star Wars prequel reviews.

Spoilers...

[Burnt Hill]

From the wiki:
Influence outside of Greek Culture

Aeschylus's works were influential beyond his own time. Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus at Oxford University) draws attention to Wagner's reverence of Aeschylus. Michael Ewans argues in his Wagner and Aeschylus. The Ring and the Oresteia (London: Faber. 1982) that the influence was so great as to merit a direct character by character comparison between Wagner's Ring and Aeschylus's Oresteia. A critic of his book however, while not denying that Wagner read and respected Aeschylus, has described his arguments as unreasonable and forced.[45]

Sir J. T. Sheppard argues in the second half of his Aeschylus and Sophocles: Their Work and Influence that Aeschylus, along with Sophocles, have played a major part in the formation of dramatic literature from the Renaissance to the present, specifically in French and Elizabethan drama. He also claims that their influence went beyond just drama and applies to literature in general, citing Milton and the Romantics.[46]





Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Αισχύλος


During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted the Edith Hamilton translation of Aeschylus on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an impromptu speech that delivered news of King's death to the crowd.[47]
Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at the murder of his brother, President John F. Kennedy and, quoting a passage from the play Agamemnon, said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." The speech is considered to be Kennedy's finest[citation needed]. The quotation from Aeschylus was later inscribed on a memorial at the gravesite of Robert Kennedy following his own assassination.[48]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus

[Wombaticus Rex]

I like everyone's interpretations, but even as the resident hippie, I gotta say I think the script problems we're discussing here are endemic to most of the Damon Lindelhof canon. He's a lot like Beck in terms of how broad and complex his pastiche/homage/collage work is, but Beck managed to write compelling songs later in his career and Lindelhof is still doing cover songs. He's always had a cast of characters that were plot points who incidentally get a lot of speaking parts. He's got a compelling gift for the setup, though: he's one of the best opening 20 minutes technicians in the biz. I've never seen him execute his own premise yet, though.

Not that I mean to totally armchair shit on this cat, executing on your own premise is obviously hard to do -- few writers can pull it off, even in literature.

Edit: "If the ending to this is just going to be the room that John Hurt walks into that's full of eggs, there's nothing interesting in that, because we know where it's going to end. Good stories, you don't know where they're going to end." - Lindelhof

I thought that quote was interesting, since it explains Lost in one fell swoop, but also because I totally disagree. I would have been fascinated by the kind of faithful prequel he's talking about, because that ship was the most compelling part of the original film. Knowing how it ends is exactly what would have given the film such gravity: we have no idea how or why any of this epic and utterly alien shit went down.

I mean, ideally, we still wouldn't know at the end of Prometheus, either, but Lord knows they ain't making movies for me.

[brekin]

Burnt Hill wrote:

During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted the Edith Hamilton translation of Aeschylus on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an impromptu speech that delivered news of King's death to the crowd.[47]
Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at the murder of his brother, President John F. Kennedy and, quoting a passage from the play Agamemnon, said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." The speech is considered to be Kennedy's finest[citation needed]. The quotation from Aeschylus was later inscribed on a memorial at the gravesite of Robert Kennedy following his own assassination.[48]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus

That is some great stuff Burnt Hill.

[Burnt Hill]

Thanks brekin !

[barracuda]

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.

These thoughts, I realize, probably have nothing to do with Ridley Scott's imagining of his film. They were just some of the strategies I used to effectively suspend my disbelief so as to not be overly annoyed by the many stupid things the characters did in the film. I know that many people were awed by the filming of the scenic vistas and alien landscapes, but I was using Bryce 3-D nearly twenty years ago, so that kind of stuff doesn't do much for me. And any sci-fi film that depends upon an actor in a rubber suit for its big monster effect ought to at least come up to the philosophical level of Attack of the Crab Monsters or Not of This Earth, or some other Roger Corman 1950's B-movie epics. I put this film in that category.

[jlaw172364]

@barracuda

That was a pretty thoughtful post, and I agree with the thesis that human stupidity and malevolence is a recurring theme throughout alien.

But the latter films take the stupidity a bridge too far, in my opinion.

For me, it began with the fourth alien film, namely, the part where the scientists have the aliens in containment . . . in a metal room . . . while knowing that the aliens have a strong acid for blood. What the HELL were they thinking? Alien 4 took place hundreds of years after the first movie, yet, the scientists somehow had no clue that if an alien cut itself, its blood would melt through five or six layers of metal? That was literally one of the most unforgiveably dumb things I've seen in a movie, yet Prometheus somehow manages to top that.

In one of the X-men movies, the 20th century human scientists had the wit to put Magneto in a plastic room so he couldn't use his powers of magnetism. Magneto had to out-think his captors by having trace amounts of iron smuggled in. The script-writer for that movie (or maybe for that scene) clearly had brain.

As for the thesis of human stupidity. Humans in general may act stupidly, but human organizations do have something called an institutional memory. It is doubtful than any organization that encounters the alien would behave so carelessly around it. Sure, they might use it amorally, but they'd at least take care to NOT put it in a non-acid-proof room if it has acid blood, so it can then escape and go on a rampage.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I know that many people were awed by the filming of the scenic vistas and alien landscapes, but I was using Bryce 3-D nearly twenty years ago, so that kind of stuff doesn't do much for me.

Ever tried mushrooms?

More seriously, though: why do you suppose it is that the capabilities of CGI technology are so seldom pushed, pulled and taken advantage of? What are the economic problems that keep the CGI flame of the Hollywood Gods out of the hands of independent Prometheus types?

[8bitagent]

Saw it in 3d(what a waste of money, the movie is not 3d at all), and all I have to say is if MST3K ever has a new series...Prometheus should definitely be featured.
I almost want to say the Alien franchise is done, and to many geeks so is Ridley Scott. "F---ing sucked" and "disappointed and underwhelmed" were the sentiments I kept hearing...and I thought...naw. Naw that can't be. This is Ridley Scott returning to his sci fi roots! Surely this must be glorious or at least intriguing.
Yes, Im a big Alien series fan...but I can't even say this film comes even close to even Alien3...I felt like it was on par with Alien vs Predator.

LOL @ Alex Jones. The only shocking revelation or agenda here is a turd of a movie trying to be hailed as a grand experience. From the goofy looking 'engineer', to the slapped together action scenes out of nowhere, to the HORRIBLE score/soundtrack(think soaring patriotic/discovery/western music from decades past that is complete inappropriate here) and completely lack of urgency or cohesion. If you've seen Mission To Mars, The 2001 Planet of The Apes or Alien Vs Predator...youve seen this.

As if the movie wasn't goofy enough, I can just imagine the production art for the sequel