Ridley Scott's
Prometheus is a big, beautiful film (an especially artful use of 3D) but it contains surprisingly few shocking moments, and surprisingly many science blunders. It has been described elsewhere as a horror film, but either the audience has become inured to this type of horror, or the parts just never quite clicked. I think a bit of both, actually.
[Warning: this review contains spoilers. If you want the virgin experience, stop reading now and come back later.]
Viewers looking for an adrenaline rush would be wise to look elsewhere. But Prometheus gives us plenty to think about, reflect upon, talk about and argue drunkenly with our friends about, so it's a definite must-see. The film is set in the universe we first glimpsed in Scott's iconic 1979 film Alien. If you haven't seen Alien (really? go do it NOW!) unlike Prometheus, Alien is a terror machine. I won't review Alien or its sequels here, except to make a couple of points.
First,
Alien was a living nightmare - full of techno-biological forms envisioned by Swiss surrealist artist
HR Giger. Readers of science fiction/science fact/futurism in 1979 were already familiar with Giger from the covers and pages of
Omni magazine. In 1979, though, movie audiences were not yet bored with these nightmares come to life. After all, this was the pre-CGI era. CGI is so commonplace now that I don't even have to explain what CGI means. This was the era of
Jaws (1975), a summer movie made classic monster story because the mechanical sharks failed to cooperate during filming and had to be half hidden through much of the film; and
Star Wars (1977) with its unprecedented visual effects shot with miniatures and puppets.
Alien the movie fairly quickly settled into the Big Bug Monster movie genre, and I remember seeing it in the theater for the first time and feeling cheated a bit that we didn't get to know more about the mysterious "pilot creature" and the ecosystem that could have spawned the Alien creature. Prometheus is largely that back story, although a peripheral one.
The central theme of Prometheus is the search for human origins, and it presents a number of interesting premises. Much is made of the "religion versus science" dichotomy - are we created or evolved? However, the film largely drives between the horns and suggests both - that we were "engineered" by a humanoid species at some distant past. This, by the way, is not a very original idea, even within the science fiction world. The Star Trek universe is peopled with humanoid species that share a common origin, although there are also non-humanoid intelligent species cohabiting the galaxy.
Had Scott and his screenwriters been a bit more diligent with the science, this theme could have been more compelling. The opening sequence of Prometheus shows (presumably) Earth devoid of life. We follow the river upstream to the watershed that for my money is meant to be Victoria Falls in Africa, where humans arose. We see a lone figure, humanoid but not human. This figure (is this Prometheus? An Engineer? A metaphor?) ritually drinks a fluid that quickly deconstructs his body, which washes into the river, spreading DNA and (again presumably) originating life on this planet.
Now, as a vignette, this is a compelling sequence. However, in the science of the film, it has several flaws. Was this individual a god or a physical being? (Physical, and mortal, as we see a spaceship leaving as he takes his ritual potion.) So the mythological Prometheus is out. Prometheus in Greek mythology was a Titan, who in an attempt to elevate the humans, brought fire (and with it, technology and civilization) to humans, and was tortured by Zeus for his treason. Was the figure at the outset of the film being punished for some unknown breach of protocol? Perhaps. Was he acting alone, a rogue Titan? Perhaps, but then who was piloting the ship? Was he the genetic precursor to humans on Earth? That is the implication.
The Breakdown of Intelligent Design
However, this is where science rears its ugly head. One thing we know about life on Earth is that, so far, everything we have studied - single-celled creatures, plants, animals, what have you - shares the same basic structure of DNA. That is, of all the molecules that could have been used in DNA, all life on Earth shares the same four (guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine). This knowledge is a strong argument for common descent (evolution) and against special creation - after all, if each species were created from scratch, rather than being slightly different copies of its ancestors, why wouldn't other perfectly good nucleotide molecules have been used instead? (Of course, right now we have a data set of 1. If and when we identify unambiguous life other than on Earth, one of the first questions will be, Does it have DNA and if so, which nucleotides does it use?)
We can accept that the scene happened four billion years in the past, before single-celled life emerged on Earth, and that the event marks the beginning of life. That does not explain how, later in the film, we find that we have a 100% match with the Engineer species, since life on Earth would have to go through four billion years of evolution contingencies to arrive at the EXACT same DNA sequence for Earth humans as extraterrestrial Engineers. There is also the problem that when the first life arose on Earth, Earth was not very "Earthlike." That is, the composition of the atmosphere would have been extremely hostile, not at all what we breathe (nitrogen, oxygen, argon and not much else) and not the composition of the distant moon where we find find another living Engineer. We see the Engineer on the "presumably" young Earth AND on the moon breathing without assistance of a helmet or other device, so that's a disconnect.
Rather than proto-Earth, let's assume that the early Earth found by the Engineers was not four billion years ago, but maybe 600 million, when complex multicellular life arose here. Let's posit that the Engineers had found a way to take the basic building blocks of life, single-celled organisms, and "infect" them with a way to organize into complex multicellular forms. A wide range of sciences - chemistry, biology, cosmology - are finding that the conditions for simple life are common, both in our solar system and elsewhere. It seems almost a mathematical certainty that simple microbial life has arisen independently countless times throughout the galaxy. Whether that life has learned to organize into complex forms is another question, and seems far less likely. For four-fifths of the life of Earth, there was only simple, microbial life. What conditions or forces caused the explosion of complex lifeforms 600 million years ago? It is this organization of simple forms into more complex ones that differentiate plants from animals from algae from fungus from slime molds. However, here we are again at the common descent problem. If the Engineers introduced DNA to create complex life that eventually led to humans, there should be a clear genetic break. There isn't.
Perhaps the Engineers introduced not DNA but a new strain of RNA, which is the molecule that contains information about how cells can synthesize proteins, including DNA. The common descent problem rears its head again, though, because not only would the Engineers have to have perfectly predicted what human DNA would ultimately be, but would have to have predicted it for every other complex species that has ever lived on Earth.
When the crew of Prometheus sampled and sequenced the DNA of an Engineer and found it to be a 100% match with humans, it was a moment intended to increase our sense of wonder but one that took a lot of life (no pun intended) out of the film. If the DNA match would have been 100%, then we would BE Engineers, and they us. We would look effectively the same, not roughly similar. And more to the point, the common lineage would have to be quite recent. Studies of DNA among populations of humans ("races" although that term means nothing from a genetic perspective) shows mostly local, individual variation, rather than distinct populations. A human is a human is a human, despite skin color, height, hairiness, facial structures, and so on. But the Engineers are distinctly different - in stature, build, superficial appearance, and presumably intelligence. They are at least as different from humans as modern humans are from, say, Homo erectus (after all, humans and chimpanzees are about 96% the same, genetically speaking, and our common ancestor is more than 5 million years old). The DNA of humans and Engineers may be 99.5% the same, but rounding up to 100% was a clunker moment. It is not trivial - it makes the premise less plausible, and less expansive.
How interesting it would be to contemplate the possibility that the Engineers in fact arose on Earth as a human species a million years ago (Homo ingenium?), developed technology and science, lived alongside their weaker and relatively primitive cousins Homo sapiens for the better part of a million years, maybe even "domesticated" the smaller species, taught us to farm and tend animals while the Engineers were off exploring other worlds, and then mysteriously, as most species do, the Engineers died off, at least here on Earth, leaving behind only fragments of their existence in the cultural memories of humans. That would be the truly Promethean story line.
Who Created the Creator?
In the "science versus religion" debate, the discovery of the Engineers on the distant moon prompts one character to challenge the believer to abandon her cross, to admit defeat of the Creationist position. But she quickly retreats to the infinite regression gambit - OK, so we know how WE were created, but who created the creators? When Intelligent Design proponents claim that they are not promoting religion because the "creator doesn't have to be God," they are begging this question. It is disingenuous to admit a known materialistic sequence with poorly understood origins and say, "there, that part we don't yet understand is evidence of intelligent design." That is called the God of the Gaps argument, and it can retreat infinitely. At the end of the movie, a door is left open to discover the origins of the Engineers, but then who created them, and those before, and on and on and on? How much more interesting if, in searching for the Engineers' origins, the way pointed back to Earth!
If You Can't Stand the Distance Stay Out of Space
I don't understand why filmmakers have such a hard time with time and distance when it comes to space travel. Stanley Kubrick had it figured out when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) although he had help from Arthur C. Clarke, who knew a thing or three about science stuff. There are a couple of nods to 2001 in Prometheus, from the android David, "Good morning, David" sounds an awful lot like "Good morning, Dave," spoken by HAL9000. And the scene of the unnaturally old man in the bedroom is a clear homage.
But Charlize Theron's character says "we're half a billion miles from Earth" as if that's supposed to impress anybody. That's approximately the orbital distance from Earth to Jupiter (perhaps another nod to Kubrick? Doubtful.) The crew were put into cryogenic suspension for
two years - which seems hardly worth the effort. Interstellar travel (and we know this is significantly interstellar because the "star map" stars are not even individually distinguishable from Earth without a really really big telescope) is, even assuming travel at near-light speed, a generational thing. Without a
Star Trek warp drive or a
Star Wars "hyperdrive," we can't get anywhere interesting in two years, except maybe Jupiter or Saturn. (And if the spaceships of
Prometheus do have some magical faster-than-light drive, why bother with the cryogenic suspension?) The closest star to us is more than four light years away. From the looks of the star map in
Prometheus, the target system is somewhere in our vicinity of the spiral arm, so let's be gracious and say it's a close neighbor at 250 light years away. The harsh reality of interstellar travel is that to embark on that journey is to leave everything you know behind forever. Even if you somehow survive the journey, cryogenically suspended or
twin-paradoxed or whatever, everything and everyone you left behind will be gone when you return. And if you have committed to that adventure, and things go badly, you don't just break camp and go running back home.
Ignoring the one-way nature of interstellar travel is to ignore a deep question of the exploring psyche - would you seek the answer even if it meant you could never personally share it with anyone? It is not inconceivable that an advanced technological species has explored, colonized, even re-engineered planets throughout the galaxy, but it is unidirectional. These populations may become established on habitable planets or moons, but then begin to diverge from the progenitors. Humans could have been such a colonized species, if the evidence for common descent on Earth had not been so overwhelming. However, what's to say there is not another, non-human colonized species, patiently gnawing away beneath our feet or just out of sight under the ocean, one who's DNA is distinctly different from other earthly species? The Prometheus Engineers could be here, and from there, but they cannot also be human.
What's My Motivation?
What made Alien so terrifying (as with Jaws) was the feeling that the creature was irresistibly motivated to kill humans. This drive was animalistic, but also darker, evil. They didn't want to kill us just to eat (or procreate, in the Alien case) or for any human reasons like love or money - they wanted to kill us, HAD to kill us, because that's what they do. The Alien monster and the Jaws shark were frightening because we could not see into them. While we could sense agency at work, their motivations were wholly alien and non-human.
In Prometheus, we are asked to consider, "Why would they [the Engineers] want to kill us [humans]?" Why indeed. Was Earth an experiment gone wrong? Was it the result of actions by a rogue Engineer, a mad scientist breeding life in his own image for his own ends? Did we threaten the Engineers by becoming technological beings capable of space travel?
It has long been a curiosity that our more distant primate cousins survive (if barely) while our closer ones, Neanderthal, et. al., are extinct. Was
Homo sapiens threatened by the too-clever, too-similar relatives? When we get freaked out by robots or CGI characters that look and act a bit too human [the
uncanny valley], is that awaking the ancient fear? Did we hunt them down and kill them off before they could out-compete us? It is a dark shadow in our species' dawning, and an answer we will perhaps never know. How compelling, though, and how Promethean to ponder the possibility that the Engineers allowed us our time and space, until we encroached upon theirs. Was their weapons stockpile, if indeed it was that, insurance against an invading cousin? Was the moon a honey trap, set to trigger only when humans from Earth arrived to muck things up by asking unpleasant questions? If so, then why the star maps? Are we to accept that they were daring us to show up, and then ready to exterminate us upon our arrival? That seems cruel and pointless.
Evolution Bombs
In the film we are teased with the possibility that the Engineers had created a munitions dump of sorts on the moon, and then were about to leave when something went wrong. At the center of this are cargo bays full of canisters full of "evolution goo." Whether they are alien eggs or some sort of "evolution accelerant" is not entirely clear.
One scenario is that the Engineers selected the moon thinking it was lifeless, and therefore a safe place to store the stuff. However, the "evolution accelerant" accidentally (or not) was contaminated by native or introduced microorganisms, and hyper-evolved into killer space nasties, including the Alien creature.
If this scenario sounds familiar, it is because it was exactly the same in
Star Trek II; The Wrath of Kahn. The
Genesis device - essentially an evolution accelerator, was coveted as a weapon of mass destruction (just as the
Prometheus pilot presumes the goo canisters are WMDs), and, once activated, micro-organisms rapidly evolve into macro organisms.
It may be that Scott intends us to consider that the originators of the evolution bombs created them as terraforming instruments, as was the intent of the Star Trek Genesis device. That a powerful force for creation is also a powerful force for destruction is a big theme, and one that resonates throughout religion and mythology, including the original Greek Prometheus story.
From Life, Death. From Death, Life.
A theme that ties Alien, Blade Runner and Prometheus together in the Ridley Scott universe is that life inevitably begets death, and that through death, life is reborn. Any attempt to cheat the system results in disaster.
Consider Weyland Industries in the Alien universe and the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner. Both are unimaginably wealthy, with effectively limitless resources to do whatever their eccentric genius namesakes care to do. Each is concerned with the business of creating artificial life: David in Prometheus; Bishop in Alien; the Nexus-6 replicants in Blade Runner. Each draws comparisons of his technological progeny with The Creator. "We are the gods now," Weyland says in a future "TEDTalks" session included as part of the Prometheus marketing campaign. "More human than human is our motto," Tyrell says in Blade Runner. Naked hubris all around.
The voice of Roy Batty, Blade Runner's most introspective and therefore dangerous Replicant, resonates throughout Prometheus. When a crew member releases his "pups" - scanners that explore the Engineer's pyramid - he lets out a long and mournful howl. It is the same howl Roy wails in pursuit of Deckert in Blade Runner. Roy says to Tyrell, just before killing him in a gruesome and personal way, "Not an easy thing to meet one's maker." The ancient Weyland, secretly stowed away aboard Prometheus, says he came on the journey because he was convinced he would "meet his maker." What would Weyland demand of his maker? No doubt the same thing Roy Batty demanded of Tyrell: "I want more life."
David, the cybernetic crew member of Prometheus, draws more from Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data than from the Nexus-6 Replicants. Both David and Data understand they are artificial, and they acknowledge their limitations ("He [David] can never have a soul.") References to Pinocchio are common - the humans see the artificial ones as somehow desiring to be "real boys," even while accepting that they do not have feelings - or desires - in the human sense. David and Data are curious, but seem comfortable with it. Blade Runner's Replicants, though, at first only dimly sense their manmade nature, and the more they are aware of it, the more dangerous they become. For the Replicants, artificiality is a death sentence; David and Data transcend human mortality, and even survive what would be life-ending injuries for any organic being.
The Mother and the Other
Weyland and Tyrell are father figures, patriarchs of great corporations and creators of artificial life forms. However, it is the women in Prometheus and Alien who generate the evil, alien births. Motherhood is a powerful and terrible force for Scott. In the original Alien, the ship's biological computer was addressed by the crew as "Mother." The iconic scene in which the baby alien creature bursts forth from the chest of the crew member is a gruesome and fatal birth motif.
The facehugger/chestburster (rape and violent birth) image is so iconic that Scott is trapped by it. He feels in
Prometheus he must somehow explain the origins of this bizarre reproductive method (although equally gruesome strategies exist in the animal world right here on Earth, and for real), but knows the audience can't be shocked or surprised by it. So pervasive is the
Alien imagery, everybody
knows the monster is inside there, growing, waiting to burst forth in blood, bone and gore. Hyper-evolved parasites burst forth from Engineer skulls, from crew members, are extracted by a robotic surgery machine, and so on. None of this shocks us. It's barely gross anymore. No one who has ever seen the
parody scene from Spaceballs can even take it seriously. So why is it here?
Because in Ridley Scott's universe, birth is the first step toward death. Only through death can life exist. And the more clearly connected the act of life with the act of death, the more he makes his point. Roy Batty is not truly alive until his death is imminent: "All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." It is also evolution in extreme fast forward. In the Prometheus world one form goes in, another comes out. Perhaps Scott is making allusion to the vast number of species that have come and gone on Earth, most of which we will never know. It his own Cambrian Explosion, literally this time, from one form to another in a generation.
Yes, Questions
Ridley Scott is at his best when he presents complex and confusing issues, and doesn't lay down pat answers. Will Shaw ever find out where we ultimately come from? Will humans be destroyed by the ones who created them? Is Deckert a Replicant, and will Rachel die? Prometheus does this, if not entirely satisfactorily. Sloppiness with the science is one issue, and for me a big one. Getting the science right would have made this a better mythology, not a documentary.
The film also seems a bit rushed. If ever a film needed to be three hours, not two, it is this one. In 3D, audiences need time to scan not only left to right but front to back. We can, of course, anticipate many versions of Prometheus, as we saw with Blade Runner. Perhaps one will be a director's cut that restores some footage. The tension is rarely given time to build, and we rush from big question to big question without pausing to reflect on the implications of what the answers might be.
