Prometheus and God
Eek! It's after us!
I saw Prometheus the other day and agreed with most of the viewers’ comments I’ve seen: amazing to look at, too diffusely plotted to really smoke, but includes one scene of sci-fi horror bound for the sci-fi horror Hall of Fame beyond a doubt.
But what anyone paying any attention to the dialogue will notice is that the entire film is essentially a meditation on the presence of God and the efficacy and humanity of faith (specifically in Jesus Christ) as opposed to the destructive dead end of scientism, materialism and their underlying nihilism.
These are rich themes for science fiction or any fiction. They bring drama to art because, whether you believe in God or not, French guy Blaise Pascal was right about people having a God-shaped hole inside them (though, okay, he didn’t put it that way exactly). And Leo Tolstoy, in his extremely cool book What is Art?, points out that when the elite lose their faith in God, the arts have nothing left to talk about but ennui and sex — which sounds pretty much like the crap we’ve been watching on screen for a lot of the last forty years.
So the yearning for Christ deepens the motivations and vivifies the scientific curiosity of Prometheus‘s heroine scientist Elizabeth Shaw, played wonderfully by Noomi Rapace. (She’s the Swedish lady from the original Dragon Tattoo movies and makes herself an American star here, I think.) And her ongoing religious clash with Michael Fassbender’s witty and sinister robot, cold at heart and envious of humanity, provides the soul beneath all the big metallic special effects and gives some purpose to the squishy monsters bursting in and out of various people’s various orifices.
I did wish the picture could have gone just a little deeper. It didn’t need any more dialogue or exposition, just something a little more concise. Shaw justifies her faith by repeating her father’s phrase — something like, “This is what I choose to believe,” as if theism were based on a sort of feel-good whim. Surely as thoughtful an artist as Ridley Scott can come up with something a little deeper than that. I’m not expecting the action to stop for a theological disquisition but look, while both faith and atheism require a leap of faith at the end, both are based on a series of reasoned steps. In faith, trust in the moral instincts of humanity leads us to conclude we were created purposely for love in the image of transcendent love. In atheism, you get a job as a mainstream journalist and conclude no one could possibly be smarter than you… or something. It’s all too deep for me.
Anyway, it was nice to go to a big, gooey summer picture and have something to marvel at other than the SFX. I’ve seen two of the summer’s big pictures so far — this and The Avengers — and both engaged with issues and expressed points of view normally repellent to the shallow leftists who’ve dominated the entertainment industry far too long.
Is this a good sign for our culture? I would say yes, for sure. And more to come.
Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture.
I must quibble slightly.
Prometheus is unutterably brilliant, a true piece of visual fiction for the thinking man. Virtually every performance is first-rate, and the script never misses a beat. But to argue that the religious motifs and thematic undercurrents should have been strengthened actually fails to appreciate that their power in the movie derives from the delicate way they’re handled.
Faith is always a matter of choice. In recent years, that choice has been derided by so many voices, and at so many outlets, that to profess Christian belief has become something of an act of bravery. The script suggests that that trend has continued in the Prometheus era, at least among persons who deem themselves intellectuals. From the way the relationship between Dr. Shaw and her lover is depicted, it’s a matter that sometimes generates tension between them — especially given her barrenness, the revelation of which is one of the high points of her performance.
In a militantly secular era, which is implied as the “backstory” for Prometheus, they who choose to believe will often restrict their expressions of faith to very modest ones. Dr. Shaw’s cross pendant, which she never mentions (except at the end, to demand that the android tell her where he’d stashed it) but which is the subject of comment by other characters, is about as far as the typical Christian would go. The movie showed a true appreciation of the interpersonal dynamics pertinent to religious faith in such an age.
Francis, I’ve heard this film is a 2001: A Space Odyssey wannabe regarding the question of our origins, But I’ve always appreciated your posts- so now I’m resolved to see Prometheus, on yours (and Andrew’s) say-so.
However, could someone advise me when exactly THE epic scifi horror scene occurs? Because I am really a pansy. I’ve walked out of violent movies before (Braveheart comes to mind).
I must say I really miss this kind of scifi. It’s one of the reasons I love Babylon 5, even given the cheesy aliens and over-acting. At least Stracynzki dared to ask the questions, and treated religion with respect. And 2001 is my favorite all-time movie for the same reason (which the proprietors of this site would know since there’s a quote from Dave in my email address).
I’m guessing the ‘home surgery’ scene is the one under discussion. Just after Dr Shaw climbs into the do-it-yourself caesarian (etc) machine and the the little robot arms start whizzing around, sizing up the situation, I would look away for a minute, at least until the stapling sounds at the end of the surgery stop.
Oh, well, that’s what I do in real life. Odd, isn’t it? I can handle all kinds of controlled trauma, it’s the unexpected disruption of the human body I can’t stand. Thank you for the heads up.
You might also want to avert your eyes for a few minutes when you see a large, alien snake-like creature rising up out of black goo.
Spoiler Alert:
It wraps itself around a scientist’s arm, snapping it off at the elbow. It then proceeds to make good use of that new opening in his pressure suit by slithering up the stump of his arm into his helmet, where it crawls down his throat.
Ugh. Will make mental note of black-goo creature, thanks.
Nope. That won’t be long enough. The horror of the moment is the claustrophobia-inducing situation she is in. That doesn’t end with the stapling….
F.W.Porretto “to profess Christian belief has become something of an act of bravery”
That’s not what it has become. That’s what it always was.
Well, Professor, it wasn’t an act of bravery for Americans until rather recently. This country, until the rise of militant anti-theism after World War II, was a vibrantly Christian nation.
However, if we take the global-historical view, you are more correct than not.
“Salvation is free…but discipleship will cost you your life.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer
My review comes closer to your opinion, though I find that the editing could have been better. Nevertheless, it is one of Ridley Scott’s finest:
http://plbirnamwood.blogspot.com/2012/06/prometheus-review.html
Insisting a movie is for “the thinking man” smacks of elitism. It’s the same garbage I endure when I try to explain what a horrible movie The Thin Red Line is. I get all manner of apologist telling me it transcends the narrative, and the ever prevalent “thinking person’s war movie.” No, it was a horribly paced, historically inept, fragmented narrative shoe-horned into a national geographic film about the Samoan islands that had no passable resemblance to James Jones novel, save the title and a couple of character names.
In one sentence you’ve convinced me that Prometheus’ detractors are probably right. I can walk around all day speaking in Military jargon, but it doesn’t make me any smarter that non-military people wouldn’t understand what I was saying. Science Fiction should be about educating the masses by asking the question in a way they understand, not obfuscating secret meanings in language only understood by a certain subculture.
Well, you have your “shoulds,” and I have mine. I’m uninterested in movies that rely entirely on gee-whiz visual effects. I prefer movies that require the viewer to pay attention and think about the implications of the plot. As for your “secret meanings” jibe, feh! Who said anything about secret meanings?
Oh, did I mention that I write science fiction? So sorry if that disturbs your Weltanschaaung.
I think The Thin Red Line is a fine film. It has great performances and a great cast. The film isn’t specific about the military actions but I think showing the fact the battle for Guadalcanal in the SOLOMONS was far from over when the Marines left is accurate. I’ve read soldiers say that WW II was comprised of long stretches of boredom interspersed with moments of terror. I don’t think the quieter moments of the film were boring but it is an analogy.
As for those masses, let them enjoy surface idiocy like Independence Day. If all SF was like ID I’d throw the genre in an artistic ghetto that was the fate given to the genre by those same mainstream audiences in SF’s early days.
If I came across suggesting in any way that I think of Independence Day, or the like is either a good movie, or in any way science fiction, I apologize profusely. I’m a huge hard science fiction buff, to include most of the classic authors, and many movies that my friends don’t like. If my point that educating the masses should be the goal, I believe movies like Independence Day cater to the masses, not educate them. My point was merely that, as I’ve read it, Prometheus is filled with screen time that is only understandable to a select subculture of Alien nerds, rather than using the art form to tell the bigger story is a succinct way, which from I read, the film did not. Guess I have to go watch it now.
As far as TTRL. I should be, as Amos said, considered alternate reality, because it has no connection to the Guadalcanal campaign, nor to Jones’ brilliant novel. Many of the novels scenarios were changed, deliberately in my opinion, to fit an agenda. Sean Penn is always a great litmus test for the political leanings of a movie, and he didn’t disappoint, though his portrayal of Welsh was again, nothing like the novel. Welsh in the novel hated his captain because he was Jewish. Notice that didn’t come up in film?
It rankled me from the opening by invoking the Noble Savage trope on the Melanesian natives. The same natives that in real life where so incensed by Japanese mistreatment that after the Americans arrived they would ambush Japanese patrols and trade their dead bodies to the Marines for candy. The film tries to show the same natives that Witt had lived among are becoming more hostile because of the arrival of “the war” when the war had been going on 4 months when the Army arrived.
Then the portrayal of Colonel Tall, starting with a non-canon scene of him having some stupid discussion with John Travolta, where the general appeals to Tall’s victim hood in order to turn him into a classic liberal agenda Hollywood villain evil commander who sends his men to die no matter what the cost. In the novel Tall was very young, had never been passed over, and was much more aware of the cost of battle. In the film he makes some stupid statement about artillery only being used to bolster the troops to make them think “they were giving the enemy hell” but in the novel Tall rightly uses artillery for its designed function, and never suggests it isn’t an important part of the combined arms methodology.
I could go on for days, but it isn’t the right forum.
‘Educating the masses’
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
That’s because the “Thin Red Line” film is only nominally about Korea. You could do the same movie in an alternate universe, though its points would be less easy to understand.
If you have a hard time appreciating Terrence Malick, there’s one thing to know: he is concerned chiefly with one very slippery idea: beingness.
ALL of Malick’s stories are built around or deeply consider what it means to be THIS person in THIS world and THIS person in THAT world. Hell, he says it in “The New World.” The point of choosing the way of grace or the way of nature in “The Tree of Life” is choosing how we will live in this world.
Do yourself a favor: re-watch TRL with that idea in mind and I think you’ll see it very differently. It’s free for streaming on Netflix.
I would say it’s less than nominally like Korea since it takes place on the island of Guadalcanal at the end of 1942 and beginning of 1943.
“Elitism”? “The masses”? Science fiction challenges us to consider ideas outside our experience & has always been an incentive for me to learn. In this respect, this is a great movie (as well as for other reasons). Your ‘elitist’ attitude suggests that the ‘masses’ are incapable of understanding a different concept & don’t want to know. What you’re looking for is fantasy.
Though I must agree (versus Fail Burton) that the Thin Red Line is pathetic, an absolutely horrible film. I’m not sure how you came to conflate the two within this review. It seems a bit of a bolt out of the blue.
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with your entire premise here – as a woman with a Mensa membership, I feel I have the right to disagree with you “thinking man” statement.
I’m a big fan of discussing layered meaning in films, purposeful mystery and that sort of thing, but this was a muddled, poorly-designed mess of a story in my eyes. But my entire family (which includes a certified geneticist and two business professionals with IQs above 140) walked out of this movie talking about what the film-makers were thinking of while conceptualizing the ship, what the board meetings discussions must have contained, the obvious tie-ins that were crafted to provide links for a reboot of the franchise, how religious imagery was shamelessly and stupidly exploited as a substitute for a real mediation on what constitutes faith, the connective tissue of discovery being removed as a ploy to elicit audience reactions, and so on. We had a very in-depth conversation about it. Just… not in the way most people seem to have.
This to us, a group of “smart” people, was something to be picked apart as a product, not as a story. To us, this film had failed to establish that reality which would be worth playing within, and was so obviously trying to manipulate this kind of response from its audience. So, as a group of gifted people are often wont to do, we chose to look at it in an entirely different way.
I realize that everyone’s experience of a film is different, and this may not be the case for others. I don’t say this to be arrogant or elitist, either. But to claim that everyone at a certain IQ threshold looks at something the same way – or finds value in it, or must find value in it in order to validate their intelligence – is rather ridiculous.
WHAT! I haven’t seen Prometheus yet, but I have seen Thin Red Line. The last is an entertaining movie, I am a man and thus easily amused, but the last war movie I saw that conveyed any realism is Saving Private Ryan. I have been in combat many times so I know what it looks like up close and personal. Beyond that, does anyone here just go to the movies to see the movie and not read any profundity into it, eat popcorn and drink a large coke with ice sharing it, in my case, with my wife? You’re missing the fun if not.
Agreed. I’m not especially religious myself, but I was glad to see a religious character (the MAIN character, in fact) in a major motion picture who wasn’t treated like some kind of a loon. Spirituality was a natural part of her character. I don’t think Scott would have made it so important if he didn’t have something deeper in mind. Have to check out the sequal(s), if any.
I noticed, also, that Christianity wasn’t used as a horror-movie gimmick – an excuse for the filmmakers to drag in angels, demons, ghosts, devil-children, vampires, the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, the Holy Grail, and other sensational fringe nonsense.
Still thinking about the movie. The minor characters could have used some more development, as in Cameron’s “Aliens.” I wasn’t especially moved by their deaths. But I guess the movie wasn’t about people – it was about One Big Idea. Maybe that’s why it didn’t feel as satisfying as we might have wished.
As a Young Adult/College Student Bible Study leader, I often point out to my students that there is an amazing distance between a Christian who believes in God and one who knows God.
A Christian who believes in God is someone who is in effect saying that God’s existence in their life is a choice they have made. It may be a choice based on cultural values and pressures, or it may be a personal choice based on the idea that it’s better to be safe than sorry. That kind of Christian can also choose to stop believing in God, or may be convinced that their belief is false or inappropriate.
A Christian who knows God understands that reality is not based on their whim, but on God’s purpose. Convincing them that God is not real would be as difficult as convincing them that their mother is not real.
The “Christian” we see in Prometheus is not one who knows God, which is why she needs to go seeking the creators at the end of the movie.
Like our Dana here above, it’s too easy for me to get scared, so I will not watch the movie, but your observation is of capital importance.
The first victory of the nihilists has been transforming “Faith” in the side of a coin whose other face is doubt. Many think that this is inevitable. Truly the “faith” that can be subverted by doubt is no “faith” at all.
Faith is knowledge, indeed.
Blind faith is only the one of the nihilists, who stupidly assert that something can come out of the sheer nothing.
Not only am I easily scared, I have nightmares. I watched Bladerunner two nights ago and dreamed that one was sent to get my kids. He was coming through the curtains at the window when I woke up.
I can watch true crime all day long, though, and sleep like a baby.
I’d suggest that you not keep loaded weapons at home.
Pains me that these stories are only told in fiction, or expressed as faith. Nobody on this planet seems to know the facts and can talk about them openly.
Could you please explain what you mean ?
Your comment could be read in many different ways, some of which could be truly interesting.
Most sci-fi is true. These writers are not speculating but giving straight revelations about our world. To believe this, however, yields the most vicious attacks from both science and religion – two institutions which (in their present form) are entirely deserving of each other and all their resulting misery.
Still, it’s fair to ask where writers like Clarke and Bradbury were getting their information. Both men came close, but never fully revealed their sources to my knowledge.
Prometheus is an odd duck of a film but in the end that will be its legacy and not an excuse to dislike it. I agree if it’s looked at only as a straight plot-driven film it comes up perhaps a little short. The characters react in boredom to amazing or tragic events or do inexplicable things and for a 2 hour film it’s pretty sparse.
However, plots are often compromised when one is trying to layer in multiple narratives at once and on that level I don’t think the film is a failure, although it still needs a bit of a push or benefit of a doubt. The fact one needs so much information from outside interviews and canon is not helpful but in a cross-platform info driven society it’s becoming par for the course.
The wonderful thing about Prometheus happens if you judge it on all the levels conspicuously and purposefully put into one’s purview, and there are many.
The biggest expectation of Prometheus was that it would bring us to that place in the original Alien and the derelict spacecraft and it does that by instead showing us a scenario that explains Alien in parallel rather than specific facts. We come to understand what KIND of thing happened and not WHAT happened.
There are very important visual and vocal clues in the film that are tossed off rather quickly but for those paying attention to the chamber with the giant head you will be given backstory aplenty.
Scott throws in clues almost unbelievably obscure which range from a character named Liz Shaw who encounters flute playing aliens in an old episode of Dr. Who to an original Giger face-hugger concept drawing for Alien shown in the chamber of the giant head and shown in real life at the end of the film.
With the number of self-referential and larger pop culture references Prometheus is a multi-layered artwork that will go down in history as an utterly unique, if somewhat flawed SF film. But that’s exactly what they said about Blade Runner too, perhaps the most layered SF film ever made. No surprise, there are faint references to Blade Runner in Prometheus too. Maybe more than faint if you think about the identical Engineers and whether they are masters or slaves. There was another Dr. Who episode called Tomb of the Cybermen and Scott was a designer for the BBC.
To say one needs one’s wits about them when watching this film is accurate and Jesus Christ and virgin births are very much in play. I read one review that headlined Prometheus as “hollow on the inside.” Well, it’s not.
33 years after Scott created a perceptual trap into which people fell headlong, he’s done it again, and with much the same result. Scott keeps saying there’s no intrinsic sophistication attached to wine as opposed to soda pop and people still disagree and are blind-sided. Welcome to the “intellectual ghetto” of SF and monster movies. Prometheus’s characters discover a cave in a prequel to a film released 33 years ago and 33 years after that cave is entered the crew of the Nostromo is awakened by a distress signal. There are plenty of mysteries in Prometheus but not as many as you think.
Dan O’Bannon, the man who created and wrote the story of “Alien” for Ridley Scott, said that “Alien” is about man’s fear of male rape and sexual penetration and how man must learn to accept that gradually. He even went far to declare that he wanted to sexually assault the audience with “Alien” the movie. I wonder if the director Scott was trying to completely deviate from O’Bannon’s preference for psychosexual/male rape premise in “Prometheus”.
Well, Scott pays lip service to it but the centerpiece is ‘who are we, where did we come from and where are we going?’ This is not a claustrophobic film about being trapped with a black leather motor cycle with with arms, legs and exhaust pipes and a phallic head but an expansive vision of what it means to be human or alien.
You’re missing the forest for the tree.
Dear Mr. Klavan:
Well said indeed. I too detect the elements about which you write, and am glad to see them in this, and other, recent films. It’s always nice to see a movie that doesn’t take snide swipes at most of those paying admission. Perhaps there is hope for at least some of Hollywood after all.
You may be interested in a review I did of The Avengers: https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/movie-review-the-avengers-aka-hulk-smash/
Thanks for the Tolstoy steer – cheap on Kindle!
And thanks for calling atheist materialist scientism a dead end – it’s a tautology, but a worthwhile one!
Hate to quibble, but Pascal was only paraphrasing what Augustine said much better a millennium earlier: “You [God] have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” (“Confessions,” Book 1, Chapter 1.)
I shall have to wait until the movie “Prometheus” makes it to Germany in order to see it. However, Klavan’s review awakens in me my long lost junvenile Promethean illusions. At my current age, to feel silly, viz., young again is, indeed, a marvel. What a trip! But something does NOT ring true mentioning Prometheus and God, let alone Christ or a symbol of the Cross, all that on the same page, except be it in contradictory opposition (which was not the case). Whatever, I doubt the movie will be as profound as the first “theological” text that I ever read that promoted conviction in me, a work of art read some years before my mother kicked me out of the house and I took up a truely Promethean trek of 17 years in 4 countries at endless universities.(Heck, I am an intellectual and I did not want to work. If dear old mom would not pay any more for my lustful days on the beaches of San Diego, study at universities would have to suffice to save me from the misery of work. Ask Obama, he certainly would understand such a trek. I became a professor and he became a president. Both socially useless.) The deep text I am thinking of is a Tarzan comic book. What? Yes! During the entire story Tarzan, sort of a jungle version of Prometheus, goes around asking plants and ever more formidable animals who created them. All reply: “Not I, not I. Look elsewhere. Look beyond!” That “beyond” turns out to be God, not Tarzan himself. Man does not create himself! This is the lesson Tarzan learns. (A reminder of a similiar trip that St. Augustine took centuries before.) I repeat, it finally dawned on the jungle man of brawn, that the creative power could only derive from transcendence. Such a term was beyond my comic book mind. So Tarzan revealed his discovery of who is the creater and it was God! It was a masterful work of art and I jest not (particularly for a young man just entering into his Arnold Schwarzenegger phase – my arms became only a couple of inches smaller than Arnie’s). Alas this “masterpiece” is long since out of print. Whether the comic book is “theologically” more stimulating than the film, is a decision I will make at a later date. But, what does this have to do with my puzzlement mentioned above.
For my second book on the mytho-poetic structure of Karl Marx’s “scientific thinking” I posted in the preface a drawing of Prometheus bound to a cliff and being hacked at by a vulture–and for eternity. This specific image had appeared in Marx’s very youthful pre-marxist days in his journal the “Rheinische Zeitung”. Marx, whose knowledge of Ancient Greek was formidable, well knew that Prometheus for the Ancient Greeks symbolized a revolt against the gods insofar as man himself, viz., Prometheus seeks to create himself, even at the cost of eternal punishment. For that reason Prometheus is bound and tortured. The Ancient Greeks were wise. (Indeed, here is the origin for part of the title of my study, i.e., “Prometheus Bound”.) I just cannot grasp how anyone seeking Prometheus is affirming anything else but a revolt against God, particularly against the Cross. Prometheus does not surrender his self-creating acts in his castigation admitting his weakness, rather freely remains bound forever in revolt. And that is Promethean salvation. “L’homme revolté” of Camus finds a forerunner in Prometheus. The Cross, on the other hand, is a symbol of surrender to God unto death leaving salvation to God, the Creator. Nailed to the Cross is not a act of self-glorification as being bound to a cliff was for Prometheus! Christ was to be demeaned by the Cross by being nailed to to it (and it is well known that crucification was conceived by the Romans as a demeaning way to die). Prometheus (at least the way Marx saw it) glorifies himself in his eternal rebellion against the gods. The more pain, the more creative glory. I would like to illustrate this attitude by another Russian thinker as a counter weight to Tolsoy cited by Klavan, namely Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky, like Tolstoy, wrote a book on art, namely “Literature and Revolution” (1924). Trotsky at the end of his study reflects in a truely Promethean manner. He writes:
“The present distribution of mountains and rivers, of fields, of meadows, of steppes, of forests, and of seashores, cannot be considered final. … Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. … In the future … man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers. … In the end he will have rebuilt the earth, if not in his own image, at least according to his own taste. … Through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety. … He will change the course of rivers, and he will lay down the rules for the oceans.”
Trotsky’s Prometheanism does not end here. One more short blurb: “Man will … will extend the wires of his will to the hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane … or, if you please, a superman”.
Trotsky in my view shouts to the heavens human creativity as, yes, a “superman” who is the re-Creator of nature into the very image of man. This is Prometheanism par excellence and totally in opposition to the Ancient Greek vision. Klavan expresses the wish that the film had been a bit deeper. If the use of Prometheus was such as described by Klavan, I wish that the use had been historically correct or, better, that another symbol had been found. However, if the film is in someway similar to my Tarzan comic book, I can forgive a symbolic mix up. Klavan is right, it is a step in the right direction.
Huh.
Prelapsarian Adam was a superman who got stripped of his preternatural powers. But his mission–and that of his progeny–was to fill the earth and subdue it. That is what we have done magnificently in our wounded fashion. It is our divine-human mandate to transform our piece of creation in our image.
The question for each individual will he or she do it as God’s creature or as a pseudo-god?
The “Prometheus”-type like Trotsky is not “wounded” because he has extended the “wires” of human understanding into the depths of human-being and re-wired such BEING such that it has no blemishes. The re-wired man is superior to any “imaginary” prelapsian Adam who is, afterall, dependent upon God–there is no God as Marxists have said. This prelapsian state is all divine work. Under Trotsky’s vision there will only be human work, human intelleigience, human creativity and there will only be, to stay with the symbol, a human Proemtheus. Man will not only alter nature “magnificiently” though in a “wounded fashion” (an absolute contradiction in the Promethean model), man will set down the laws for nature, re-register the rivers, control the tides, etc. I have my doubts how well humans alter nature with success. Whatever, I do not believe humans lay down the laws for nature. The belief in the technological mastery OVER nature according to Marxists, such as Trotsky (and he murdered for it) leads to the self-florification of man. This is, in extreme form, the Promethean symbol–for such reasons such self-glorification was a flaw for the Ancient Greeks and ended in punishment. My objection is to the use of “Prometheus” as a symbol pointing to some sort of a turn towards God. I think that is a poor symbol, historically misused, and a self-conceit we humans have. Prelapsian Adam, be he real or mythic, was aided by divine power. His fall led to his condemnation to work in a “wounded” manner on the world–he had to earn his own living for a change instead of relying upon a prelapsian welfare state (of affairs). This is the Prometheanism that I see in such as Trotsky–and I could offer remarks from other Marxists showing their dreams of grandeur. My respondent says we humans should “subdue” (sic) nature in our image, but forgets man is created in God’s image. It is just this reflective image that is mankind that Prometheus rejects in his revolt. So, I do not find your objection sustainable.
The first gods were the 7 planets and they ruled the 12 Zodiac constellations, these Babylonian and Egyptian astrological beliefs and practices made their way into Judeo- Christian systems. The Name for God in early Hebrew text, El, is derived from Phoenician planet – god Saturn, king of the Planets which was denoted as a 6 pointed star and ruler of the Universe.
Prometheus pays homage on several levels to this lineage that stretches back ten thousand years and more, when we believed planets
( wandering stars ) were divine in their own right and merited our special attention. We travel to the stars not only because we are explorers, but also because that is where our gods once lived.
And your sources for this are…?
Interesting that the massive icon in the aliens’ ship was a colossal image… Of them. Graven image, indeed! And yet, they appear to hold what they “created” in such utter contempt that they sought to destroy it.
Dr. Shaw seeks to know why, and flies off in the end in search of an answer. Having seen the beginning of the film, as she has not, I think I know what it is: We are not like them. They sought to create something “in their own image,” and the experiment failed. Hostility toward “the other” (magnified by self-worship), and an overweening sense of superiority are my explanation. =’[.]‘=
Raycheetah, your conclusion is exactly what I came up with, too. Thanks for sharing.
Discussion of this with my adult son led to talk of how we humans treat other, “lesser” primates, e.g. medical experiments, indifference to their suffering, extermination, etc.
Interesting that religion was a major part of the movie’s story-line and to find our “creators” so hateful towards us, when we’re such a cruel species ourself… I’m no fan of PETA, but IMHO, compassion for the weak, regardless of species, does somehow make us more, and a better, human. Maybe that’s tied somehow to our ability or inablity to overcome the “us vs. them” survival instinct, or the ability to compromise with “other” humans for the greater good of all.
Good on Mr. Scott to give us something worth seeing and to think about and discuss! Kudos to Mr. Klaven for his fine article on the religious angle of the film!
It occurred to me while watching that scene, that the awakened Engineer did not seem hostile until the android, David, began speaking to him in the Engineer’s language. He then reached out a hand to touch David’s head, and seemed to suddenly become hostile.
Do you suppose it is because he recognized David as an artificial being, created by humans, who had themselves been created by the Engineers? Did the Engineer think that humanity, not content with being a creation, had usurped the role of gods so as to become creators themselves?
The Engineer realises that their creation has come to them, & they have failed in the mission on which they were to have set out. Mankind was not destroyed — quite the contrary.
But what anyone paying any attention to the dialogue will notice is that the entire film is essentially a meditation on the presence of God and the efficacy and humanity of faith (specifically in Jesus Christ) as opposed to the destructive dead end of scientism, materialism and their underlying nihilism.
Riiiiight. Next you’ll be telling us that the only options we have in politics is to meditate on socialism as “opposed” to fascism.
I mean, there’s no trap being set or third option being carefully excluded there either. /sarc
while both faith and atheism require a leap of faith at the end
Rejecting the arbitrary out of hand is the first and most important BS filter the human mind has. It involves no faith whatsoever, and without it a mind just gets clogged up with credulous junk, promiscuously granting possibility to any passing BS, whether made up 2000 years ago or just last week.
Are there any serious arguments on this point anywhere that pass epistemological muster, or will its wielders just keep stamping their feet and repeating it again and again? It’s getting to the point that I can’t read it without hearing it in the trilling voice of a red-faced angry child.
I think I agree with you. No I don’t. Well, maybe I do. The problem is I am not sure what you said. And I had to go look up “epistemological”.
But what I think about your referenced phrase is that these are not the two choices that a logical mind has. In fact it seems that those who believe in a man-defined god are always comparing their beliefe system against atheism in much the same way that Obama is always presenting ridiculous straw men to strengthen his talking points (“some say that we should push granny off the cliff, but I say . . . . ). But any of the world’s anthropomorphism-based God descriptions and the tenants of Atheism are equally improbably.
While it isn’t very dramatic or exciting (and certainly does not result in enough holidays), Agnosticism is really all I can support with any intellectual or emotional honesty.
While this isn’t really the best forum for a debate I would just like to point out that atheism is just as arbitrary as any theism could be – at most you could opt for agnosticism as atheism is the assertion of a universal negative…good luck proving that.
Although you surely won’t agree, Christian theism is not simply an arbitrary belief (by which you appear to mean one without supporting evidence) – again, this is not the forum to go into any detail about it but there is much evidence, historically, philosophically, and in other fields as well in favor of Christianity – again, you cannot *prove* any faith in the mathematical sense (especially atheism with its’ universal negative assertion) but there is one out there with a lot of evidence suggesting its’ truth. It is not improbable or ‘arbitrary’ at all.
Contrary to what you seem to think, all beliefs (irregardless of the observable evidence in favor of or against) rest upon axioms which cannot be proven so your attitude of smug superiority to those who have beliefs that they cannot prove 100% is uncalled for as you cannot do the same either. If you reject anything that you dub as ‘arbitrary’ then you cannot believe anything at all about anything. This is a very common skeptic’s mistake – perhaps with a little more humility and examination of your own biases and assumptions you could see these issues a bit more clearly.
Prometheus is the tragic result of a director growing up without rigorously studying religion or science while trying to maintain an air of generalized appreciation for both. Not surprisingly, it comes off as highly patronizing to anyone who knows actual scientists, or religious people, or even mercenaries and other paramilitary personnel (they’re usually far more circumspect and thoughtful than the ones in movies, especially if they’ve seen real combat.)
Ridley Scott’s movies are not science fiction, they’re supernatural thrillers for comfortable agnostics, with his aliens taking the place of the demons and angels (the man was probably ticked that he never got picked to do an Exorcist movie, it took James Cameron’s hard-nosed scientific vision to come up with a plausible life cycle for the Xenomorphs, a narrative for their takeover, their ambush and swarm tactics, and a balls-out conflict that audiences could relate to.) Now advances in CGI mean the magical mystery Engineer goo can do whatever he wants it to-spawn super-snakes, create superpowered zombies, create new fetal parasites that mysteriously grow to elephantine proportions without visibly ingesting anything, confer immortality, and reanimate dead tissue after 2000 years.
As with George Lucas, the lack of adversity in his art ruined the mojo and focus that his original piece had. If you’re not personally passionate about science, religion, and technology for its own sake, the only disciplinary force that keeps your narrative from going off the rails is going to be fiscal. That’s why James Cameron, Joss Whedon, or Brad Bird could get a billion dollars to do a movie tomorrow while I wouldn’t give ten cents to Scott until he shows evidence of not being utterly confused about his direction in life.
DING DING DING
We have a winner.
I think there is even more of a Christian link in the movie. The head found severed was aged at 2000 years. Noomi said that she believed even more as a result of the experience. Others wondered what happened that change the minds of the engineers. Noomi wanted to ask them why? I think that the implication here is that 2000 years ago Christ was crucified and that was the turning point in the engineers’ minds towards humanity. Just sayin’.
It’s science-fiction. The argument that plausible but phony as opposed to implausible is really different is dumb. They’re both phony. They’re frickin’ monsters in an imaginary future and you’re concerned about the fact they don’t seem real? It’s science fiction. SF with real science is just real science. One man’s framistat that propels the space drive is another man’s thingamajig.
Don’t ever read Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wrote a knuckleheaded book where a guy drills to a center of the Earth filled with prehistoric monsters and wild women who like outsiders and his drilling machine is filled with errors.
Cant wait to see it down here in South Africa
You give the film more credit than I would, Klavan.
I was impressed by the symbolism of the cross pendant, but it seemed a peripheral theme. Why would film makers who think of faith as a mere whim make it a central theme? More attention was paid to the theory of seeding than to faith. And the only nod to faith was a vague suggestion that the heroine should not have given it up. If there were any deep questions, I must have missed them.
And as a film? Some scenes, like “Aw, it’s so cute!”, were simply ridiculous. The geologist’s rampage is unexplainable, as is his long journey in a crippled position only to suddenly stand up when it’s time for an action scene. Did the “Father” line add anything? Did the audience really need that relationship spelled out for them?
Prometheus is a good film, but not an excellent film.
By the way, the seeding theory makes me laugh because the same people who swear by Occam’s Razor casually toss it aside when God enters the picture. It’s so much easier to believe in a cycle of intelligent species zipping around the universe, seeding worlds and uplifting primitive civilizations than to believe in a divine Creator, right?
Have not seen the film, and most likely will not. (Not my chosen genre. Give me a good, old fashioned western. Or a rip-snorting comedy.) But I would like to comment on one thing Andrew said.
“In faith, trust in the moral instincts of humanity leads us to conclude we were created purposely for love in the image of transcendent love.”
From my perspective, the moral instinct of humanity is to lie, cheat, and steal. It is, and always has been, the fear of consequences that keep us on (or near, anyway) the straight and narrow.
This is evident in the actions of very young children. Smacking each other around, in selfiish anger, comes natually. No, these little squeeze pillows need to be TAUGHT how, and why, to be good. We also see this sinful instinct as we, as a society, move further and further away from santioning inerrant behavior. The less we punish the criminals, the more criminals we seem to have. And ask anyone what they would do, if they could do anything – ANYTHING – they wanted without any repercussions. Inveriably you will hear things like, “rob a bank”, steal a car”, etc., etc.
While I cannot speak for anyone else, it was recognition of this human nature, verses the righteousness of God, that lead me to faith. I realized that what God was saying – that man is a fallen creature, incapable of saving himself – is true. The evidence was all around me. And within me.
Dunno ‘bou anyone else here, but I were asked what I’d do if I could do ANYTHING without repercussion — I’d be 40 lbs lighter tomorrow
I don’t doubt that many women would agree…and many men would be on pro sports teams tomorrow. I also don’t doubt that many persons (of either sex) would want to pay off their mortgage and/or their student loans tomorrow!
I suspect Michael’s contention that everyone would wish for something criminal is sheer projection on his part. But then again, like Dennis Miller, “That’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.”
We don’t really get much information about Shaw’s faith. She’s obviously not an every-word-in-the-Bible-is-true fundamentalist. But she also doesn’t appear to give up her faith when the expedition finds “proof” that humans were created by aliens.
True, she could have become an atheist. Or she could have retreated into the hills, read her Bible and prayed and tried to pretend everything that happened to her was some kind of big mistake. Instead, she seemed to maintain her faith in God and to follow where God appeared to be leading her. At the very least, she needed to save Earth from the Engineers. But she also had mysteries to solve. For a scientist who believes in God, God has to be the source of all mysteries.
She could be a bit Job-like. He had it all sewn up, perfect life, perfect faith. Then catastrophe happened, his life was ruined, and all the assumptions he held about his relationship with God seemed to be wrong. Everybody had theories about why it happened, but he would accept nothing less than God’s personal explanation. Shaw’s world and her beliefs are likewise trashed and she wants to know why. Job didn’t get the answer he expected. Neither will Shaw. But she believes God will answer her, in his own way, if she pursues the question with faith.
I could be wrong, though…
Remarks on the side regarding Prometheus. His brother, Epimetheus, was the guy to whom Zeus gave Pandora – and her container full of evil. I can’t help thinking of all the jars on the Engineer ship, the contents of which do various nasty things to whoever opens them.
Ummmm, Andrew. I believe it was Viktor Frankl (“Man’s Search for Meaning”) who made the statement “inside each man is a God-shaped vacuum.”
I’m probably flying my geek flag a little too high on this one, but I was mightily perturbed by a significant change in “Alien universe” lore near the end.
In the first film, “The Navigator” is discovered in his cockpit by the crew of the Nostromo with his chest burst open by…something. But at the end of “Prometheus,” he ends up someplace else, in what was apparently an effort to provide the same kind of double ending we saw in both “Alien” and “Aliens” where, just when you think everybody is safe, suddenly they’re not. I felt it was completely unnecessary.
“Alien” took place on LV426. “Prometheus” took place on LV223. Same race of Navigators/Engineers. Same class of spaceships. Different story from same future universe.
Slavery by Consent Pt.4 (The SIN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=47jqtTMkZWc
In the end, I simply conclude that anyone who hires the Lost writer to do his screenplay isn’t that serious about making a coherent narrative. Ridley Scott and Damien Lindelof are probably trolling and trawling through every fansite possible to get new ideas for the sequel from the breathless fans who invnt 10 different justification for every plot point that doesn’t hold together.
Had he any shame, he’d quietly hand the directorial reigns over to Christopher Nolan, Brad Bird, or Andrew Stanton, and the writing duties to anyone not named Damien Lindelof.
Male Rape. It’s largely about male rape.
And the hatred of father for son.
The Christian religious angle is window dressing, as a counterpoint to the hatred of father for son / creator for his creation.
Visually stunning. Great characters.
Minor hole in the movie:
They describe ancient drawings from different human cultures all pointing to the same constellation of stars where the engineers are to be found.
When the Prometheus gets there, however, it turns out the planet is just a military base where the Alien weapon is being engineered for the destruction of humanity.
Why would the ancient engineers transmit to ancient humanity the location of a military base where humanity’s destruction will be planned in the future?
It can’t be a test to see if humanity was ‘smart’ enough to get there and somehow stop the destruction effort before it got underway, because the base was operational at the time of Jesus, and was destroyed from within by their weapon going wrong and destroying the engineers at the base.
Or am I missing something . . .