5. The Nature of the Soul
What is the nature of the soul? One common definition is that the soul is an ethereal embodiment of the self that makes you who you are, and that it will persist after your death. That it is what differentiates us from animals. Does man have one? And does it even matter?
Prometheus asks these questions... questions that man has struggled with since he became intellectually capable of pondering such notions, and of course there is no clear answer provided by the movie. What
Prometheus does though is indirectly raise some pertinent questions about the abstract notion of the soul. If, as Weyland assumes, Fassbenders David cannot possess a soul because he is the product of mankinds own attempts at creation, what does this mean for us? After all, we were effectively artificially created by the Engineers in a similar fashion to the way in which we created David. We were not part of a puzzle in the schemes of God- do we even have a soul? Is the soul inherent in all things? And is it even necessary? And there are also the interesting points, studied and debated at length by philosophising heavyweights such Descartes, Locke & Hume at what point does a creation become truly self-aware and sentient? At what point could Davids programming make the leap into true consciousness? Is he already there? There are many interesting nuances with David that are thrown into the mix to make us question just how aware he is as an android. He eats, he grooms, he has what might be termed 'likes' and 'preferences' (shown with his comment about the desert when the Prometheus is pulling in to land on LV-223, when he explains to Ford that its just something from a film I like). Yet at the same time he says want, not a concept Im familiar with" But theres always the ominous undertones that David may have already outgrown his Weyland Industries programming constraints. A scene that stays with me and that I loved in the movie is when he walks the remaining crew members to the last sleeping Engineer in the 3rd and final act of the movie. Brimming with confidence he says a superior species no doubt! and you wonder about the fiendish subtext: is he talking about the Engineers, or himself? Holloway contends to David at one key point in the movie that its a good job you cant be disappointed and, though David agrees, the audience is left wondering. After all, weve already seen him register what appears to be disappointment when the holographic representation of Weyland says that one thing David will never possess is a soul. The audience is led to question: is this 'twitchy' programming? Or is David actually making the leap to the next level?
Key line: Charlie Holloway to David - I guess it's a good thing you can't be disappointed, huh?