They're Remaking 'Alien' -- the 'Prometheus' thread

there is a ton of hard (and yeah, you could argue about what this means all day) sci-fi with religious themes

Childhood's End to name one pretty famous example

spaceships doesn't equal science, using DNA as a macguffin doesn't equal science, aliens doesn't equal science, i'm not sure what theoretical framework is being violated anyway

if you want to take that tack then lindelof-style-insert-messiah-reference != religion

is he actually christian btw? i thought this was just a thing he did because Symbolic Relevance Is Clever

he's Jewish

{dramatic sting}

i wd take that tack tbh thomp, using imagery or setting to tell a story isn't really being "about" something, as isn't Symbolism when it becomes a game of reference for the hell of it

stand by my original impression that this is mostly "about" linear movements and helmet placement

i dunno, i'm pretty formalist about stuff, the themes are probly there but i don't buy into that subject/expression dualism that wants to explain what some stupid badly-written daydream is "about"

he's Jewish

Oh. I assumed he's Christian, since someone upthread mentioned he's writing a series about the Rapture. Still, doesn't change the fact that he put pointless Christian symbolism to his script for Prometheus.

it's only pointless if there's a point. if there's no point then none of what happens is pointless as such.

or put it another way, if the point is "cool-looking shit happens" then everything that feeds that is valid

But my point was that there is some interesting non-religious themes in the movie (which I tried to outline in the big post above) which are needlessly distracted by the religious stuff. (The Engineers were planning to destroy humanity because we killed Jesus? Why do they care about him? The main scientist couple treats the aliens as if they are gods? Why? The mural in the cave has a picture of an xenomorph in a crucifix pose, why? Etc.)

maybe the non-religious themes are distracting from the religious ones

maybe they turn a corner on the engineer planet and see the statue of liberty

this still isn't out, huh. i've had so many opinions about this movie i keep forgetting i haven't seen it yet

wait, so this thread is some kind of mass hallucination?

maybe the non-religious themes are distracting from the religious ones

Maybe, but the parent-child theme at least made a lot of sense to me (as I tried to explain upthread), whereas the religious stuff is just puzzling. Like, if crucifying Jesus is the reason the Engineers want to destroy humanity, why do they care about one religious leader? Or is the implication that Jesus really was the son of a god, and the Engineers worship this same god?

i don't go to cinemas. the sordid mass of humanity revolts and repulses. xp!

tuomas maybe the religious theme is the parent child theme

as christ was the son of god, damon lindelof is the son of man

yeah, or the religious theme of the father and the son is just an iteration of the parent-child archetype. hey, maybe themes can't be nailed in place.

Or is the implication that Jesus really was the son of a god

so weary of talking about this worthless piece o crap. but the implication is that jesus was an engineer, no?

Eh? There's absolutely no clues towards that conclusion in the movie itself, it's just something Scott said in an interview.

he was a carpenter iirc

carpenter is like a primitive version of an engineer

before the carpenters came the origamists

Lao-Tzu was the chief origamist, he came to earth earlier

When I watched the movie I hadn't read that interview, so the idea of Jesus being an Engineer never even crossed my mind, I don't think there's any hints to that direction in the text itself. Also, that idea just raises more questions... Why did an Engineer pose as a religious leader? How come none of the historical documents on Jesus mention that he was a hairless eight-foot albino? Why did him getting killed make the Engineers think the whole human race should be exterminated?

(xxx-post)

tuomas i think it is possible you're not taking this seriously enough

so sorry i yet again fell into the trap of trying to make sense of of the deranged ramblings of an idiot.

fwiw all the parent/child stuff in yr original post that makes so much sense to you is only your own kind of wild speculation.

I don't think it's just wild speculation, I'm pretty sure the "every child wants to kill his parents" and the "a king has his reign, then he dies" lines weren't in the movie for no good reason at all. The latter one was even used in the trailer, IIRC.

ok i retract the 'wild'.

And pretty much every important scene of death/violence in the movie involves a parent killing/trying to kill its children, or vice versa (except for the first scene where a parent dies for its children). I mean, this is a movie in whose most memorable scene the main character, who's explicitly said to be unable to have kids, gives herself a Caesarean to get out a mutant kid that she then tries to kill. So I'd say parenthood is a pretty important theme in Prometheus.

(x-post)

hey guys, i have this cheeto we could be discussing instead. I think it represents the hunger for greater representation, both politically and socially, by all the children of god. Let's talk about that.

What's a cheeto?

accept the mystery

Actually, I'd like to retract what I said above... I guess an extended cut could explain all the irrational behaviour by having the opening scenes on Earth, where we learn that no respectable scientist would take a 5 year trip to a planet they know nothing about, for a reason that can't be disclosed to them, so Weyland has no other alternative but to hire wackos and stoners desperate for money. But I suspect such a scene was never scripted or filmed.

I kind of like it as a comment on leader-driven companies, particularly those where the leader has enough of a hold that he can both keep it until he dies, and give it to his kids (hi dere News Corp). The scientists aren't there to be the best, they're there because Weyland liked them, and it's Weyland's company paying for the mission, and unfortunately Weyland is a stupid dying fool.

Yeah, actually everything goes wrong specifically because he's a parent who won't let the children grow up and decide things for themselves. I don't think Tuomas is flailing wildly to come up with this theme, especially given that all the Alien pictures have attempted to thematized parent-child stuff (in various directions with various degrees of success). It's just that Prometheus doesn't do it well, or coherently. As with The Dark Knight (which I did like much more than this), the lack of competence in delivering basic story mechanics and characterization makes me less willing to give anybody involved credit for purposeful thematic ambiguity. It just looks like a mess on multiple fronts.

I think right after I saw it I was still riding the entertainment factor of the parts that worked, but man, relative to the excitement provoked by the trailer, this had to be one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen.

i recently rewatched alien (and alien iii) but even in alien it was kind of hard to follow what was happening, but maybe in alien you could ascribe that to only showing as much of the alien as was prosthetically feasible at the time. we're not given much character motivation in alien either. maybe it's just a much better movie for its constraints rather than the director's abilities?

He did have some wacky ideas even then

Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed that the Alien had to die at the end of the film.

yeesh!

a lot of the effects hold up really well, especially the organ dissection stuff (that apparently used real organs), but the part where the chestburster wheels off is so puppet-like, it reminds me of the parody scene in spaceballs.

even in alien it was kind of hard to follow what was happening

haha waht

i think tuomas readings are spot on but they're not very deep (movies' fault not tuomas') and they're not executed that well in the movie and they're pretty obvious on top of that

i think the third one is the most religious and the most thematically inscrutable

alien3 = most religious and inscrutable

re: hard to follow -- well for example, without looking for model photos, can you draw what the nostromo looked like? what was ripley's job -- was she a navigator or something?

What does drawing what the Nostromo looked like have to do with following the plot of the movie? Do you mean, like, the interior spaces? Yeah, I could probably come up with a reasonable approximation, but what relevance it has is beyond me.

Ripley's job is clearly akin to a kind of XO or CPO job in the Navy. (She identifies herself as "Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley" at the end. Based on what's seen in the movie she supervises the engineering staff and serves as ranking officer when the Captain and First Officer are not on board.

how did the alien grow from chestburster to hunter -- does it actually eat the humans? the scene where veronica cartwright is stunned between yaphet kotto's flamethrower and the alien, why can't yaphet kotto move around her, was there something blocking movement?

the relevance re: being able to draw nostromo is that it's emblematic of the rest of the movie where they don't show in clear enough detail what is going on in order to have a grounding (which might be a horror movie move but still)

i also don't remember seeing jonesy in the initial hypersleep wake scene -- was he just mousing about for 8 months or whatever?