If Fox had a dollar for every searching article about the meaning of Prometheus then that industry would probably prove more lucrative than their hit Alien prequel. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi blockbuster has teased us and stirred up passionate debate since long before its release, with an enigmatic marketing campaign and a final film that alludes to more answers than it gives away outright. It’s arguably a topic of conversation first and a movie second. But now it seems the lauded director has gone and spoiled the pontificating for everybody by giving concrete answers (and in some detail) to some of the biggest questions.
In what could be a serious blow to the flourishing “let’s all talk about Prometheus” community, The Playlist have published the following quotes from the Blade Runner legend himself:
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
On the opening scene:
“…[the] sequence at the beginning of the film that is fundamentally creation. It’s a donation, in the sense that the weight and the construction of the DNA of those aliens is way beyond what we can possibly imagine”
But is it happening on Earth?:
“No, it doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. 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, et cetera.”
On whether we made our creators hate us and how:
“We definitely did… 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.”
So Jesus was an alien folks! That and Ridley Scott seems to think people “running around in skirts” is the stuff of apocalyptic nightmare.
Here he is on whether or not there’s a Prometheus 2 in the pipeline (short answer: yes):
“Well, from the very beginning, I was working from a premise that lent itself to a sequel. I really don’t want to meet God in the first one. I want to leave it open to [Noomi Rapace’s character] saying, ‘I don’t want to go back to where I came from. I want to go where they came from. I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see actually is not so nice, and is certainly not God.”
So what is the creature we see?:
“In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at ’Paradise Lost,’ the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God. So boil it all down, and humanity was the offspring of some dark/rogue angels? That would seem to be the gist of it, and we guess that’s where a “Prometheus 2″ would go if/when that should ever happen. Now ‘Prometheus’ is ready to go off in its own direction on its own entirely different tangent that is not going to be reliant on the things we’ve seen a thousand times before.”
Which sounds like a clear way of saying future Prometheus installments won’t be so strongly tied to the Alien franchise.
So assembled Prometheus fans, what do you make of all that then? Has Ridley given you the answers you were seeking or has he ruined it all for you? Let us know your thoughts below.
Want to write about the stuff you're passionate about and have your work read by an audience of over 10 million a month? Click here to become a contributor.
11 Comments
dam i was hoping they would bring the prometheus story full circle with Alien 1 :/
That’s exciting. If there is a Prometheus 2, it might actually turn out to be one of those sequels that actually makes the first film better. I’m wary of what they would do with a third film, though…
Sounds like the sequel would be more of what Ridley Scott wanted, a story even further away from the “Alien” universe.
Which only makes me think even more that the little tidbits of reference to the original “Alien” throughout “Prometheus” was more to put the fan boys in the seats than anything else.
The more i hear about Prometheus post-brain fart, is that this was like pond scum. They let all their ideas and thoughts float to the surface, then scooped it all up and saw what stuck, Much like a semi-enjoyable superhero origin film, their end game all along was to address the whole Alien thing, remove that albatross from their neck and then head for a sequel. By the sounds of it, they will hopefully have ironed out a lot of the creases by Prometheus 2, so fingers crossed.
…and further to that, i don’t think the problem with the film was actually the story so much as it was the unreasonable and illogical actions of the characters. Had there been a more rational set of directions for them, the film would have probably been much better.
It seems to me Scott was weighed down by his big ideas and lost sight of the bigger picture. The bigger picture isn’t whether or not there is tons of religious ideas floating about but whether or not the film works and it fundamentally didn’t. Up till the mid way point it worked well, focusing on the characters. Then after the “birth” scene it lost all focus and the remaining crew (which must have been over 10 people) just get lost in the whole Wayland rubbish, and even that wasn’t well resolved.
The film should have continued on with having the crew diminish slowly and the horror set in. Then at the end, perhaps you could have David revive the white dude. I also think the whole them coming to destroy earth was really poorly handled as in the film it was this big moment but we knew about it already because of the trailer.
Eh, I had gathered a whole different meaning from it. And that is why it doesn’t pay off to try to figure out movies. To me, it was all about a cover up. Sure, the engineers came to earth. They created plant life but they also planted their DNA which from my angle they weren’t supposed to for whatever reason clearly the thing was pretty well destroyed/dissolved after drinking the liquid. Maybe they just wanted to be ‘Dad’s’ for once. They obviously communed with us (the cave paintings) and gave us knowledge. And Dr Grant, well, provided us with the same feelings the engineers (and lots of us) felt. Despair that the gods didn’t commune with them. The scene at the beginning left me with the idea that the engineers were doing the gods bidding but the engineers so wanted a relationship with the gods. But this is as close as it got. So, anyways, it was clear they wanted to destroy us because we were getting more and more intelligent. And that a space fairing species was a threat because we would eventually fly out and find the gods, thus giving up their little secret and making the gods furious (or hungry). So, out on a hidden moon, bound up in a lifeless system to hide it they built their weapons to kill us. Remember, the location of the system was also provided by the engineers. But then covered up. Otherwise thousands of years of geologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, michael douglas’s, Harrison Fords’, etc would have found it a long time ago. Again, they didn’t want us to come and find them for the possibility of being discovered by the gods. Furthermore, they had planned to destroy us before we attained space flight but oops, butterfingers!! The gods just wanted planets made ready for them to inhabit. Not complete with occupants that they would bloody their hands destroying (or eating). This is America and if the gods were anything like us I would assume they would simply not want any competition, and destroy anyone else who would want a piece of the pie. We were to be like pets, until we kept getting smarter and smarter. I mean, its just like our dysfunctional world we live in. If you don’t want to be friends, or no one wants to be friends with you. Make some friends who have to like you! Anyways, they made an oopsie with the weapons and things got a bit out of hand. But they got the weapons by tinkering with alien DNA(aka ‘the GODS’ pause for dramatic breath). The reasons for the picture of the alien mural in the movie. Okay, so…. TADAAAAH. That’s what you get for wasting your time trying to figure out a ‘monumental movie’ that has a simple theme like the one they actually created. I still love you though, Ridley, fo real. Crap, gottuh go to the gym.
Ron Johnson : You really need to see a therapist
He makes a good point though..I thought that was mainly the reason to begin with after I saw the mural in the one room. This movie is actually based off of an H.P.Lovecraft book called, “The Mountain”. Now it has similarities but the plot is based from that book. Basically the Engineers found out something and were scared of it but tried to control it and they couldn’t, something that is older than they are and so they were afraid of it… If you look at the mural closely it shows the Engineers worshiped the Alien/Xenos/whateverthehelltheyare..Also so much of this movie is explained within the movie, you just have to pay attention. The Weyland Company’s slogan is “Building Better Worlds” which just happens to be what the Engineers were doing and was actually the original plot(terraforming) of the movie until Fox told Scott they didn’t like it..So instead they just hinted to the fact instead of engrossing the plot with it. Also in the Alien movies the Weyland Corp. was always trying to capture the Alien, which is why that med bed was there in Vickers cabin. In the first Alien movie, Bishop makes a statement that the facehugger is “the perfect life form”. I personally feel that Weyland has run into these creatures before he launched the Prometheus…why the hell would waste like half a billion dollars for something you know nothing about or just a hunch?? He knows something and isn’t telling. Even Vickers says something to that fact when she talks to the scientists/geologists..They are definitely secrets that Weyland was keeping and David knows what they are and I am sure will be brought up during the sequel.
I for one am pleased that Prometheus wasn’t an alien movie, and that it took off in a different direction, yet still had its tie to that part of the universe. I’d still like to know just how the black goo managed to be so multifaceted, based on its application – very versatile stuff! And I’d also like some more on just how the Xenomorph came into existence; I think it was an accident, but then again, why was there a mural of one in the “head chamber”?
Wasn’t a stellar movie, but good enough for me to see three times. Oh, and the acting was flat.
Can someone please tell me why the earth scientist turned into that monster? I