ft podcast episode: prometheus
June 10, 2012 § 2 Comments
Jay Stringer joins Paul and David in a discussion of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Relevant links:
That Live Journal post about mythology and allegory in Prometheus.
Jay’s forthcoming novel Old Gold
A list of Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein screenings around North America
That Neil Gaiman/ Ray Bradbury audio thing Jay was on about
Music:
“A Planet”
Marc Streitenfeld’s Prometheus score
Fuzzy Typewriter 
[This has SPOILERS]
The show brought up a lot of questions for me, I might throw them elsewhere as well since this is a giant post to subject upon a small crowd.
I enjoy the idea of the engineer creating life on earth as a rogue agent. Makes Prometheus that much more meaningful of a name, for the gift to be given *against the will of the gods*. I’d thought about the title and it’s use, but I have to admit I would’ve made that leap myself, because I didn’t realize that creation of life was the take away from that opening scene. I guess it was obvious to most but that was the one thing after the film I was genuinely flummoxed about.
I’d thought about the creation idea, but then my next thought was “Oh wait, that doesn’t make sense. It was a terrifyingly destructive biological weapon. It looked like it was destroying his very dna, why would life come of that?” Is the thought that sacrificing himself and breaking down the building blocks of a humanoid life-form to be spread throughout the water providing something to build life from? Maybe my mind was stuck on the fact that that makes zero sense scientifically (which is fine, it’s just hard to turn off), that it let me miss the poetry of the sacrifice.
But then why do they have hundreds, maybe thousands, of those goo pods, each with four vials, multiplied by however many ships (3?) If they’re so angry with the thought of new life, why do they have the means to create so much of it? Or is the idea of creation of life an unintended use of their nasty biological weapon? But wait… Scott saying that the beginning scene didn’t have to be earth *does* point to them probably populating many planets. I don’t know. The destruction/creation dual purpose of the goo is a beautiful and weird at the same time. Kind of like this film.
I’m also curious why no one seems to be talking about what happened to kill all the engineers there. That’s the mystery I’m curious about, not the “Why do they want to kill us?” line, because that will obviously be served later. There were no loose aliens, there were no dead alien bodies (from engineers defending themselves, or from starvation after their engineer food supply ran out), and why on earth would’ve the headless engineer have been running away from aliens to a room full of alien pods? Also, there did not appear to be any missing pods, and what triggered this all to be recorded?
Last unrelated question: Generally the evolution has been facehugger implants a larvae, who grows at the speed of plot into a chestburster who, post burst, grows into a full size alien. In this movie we see facehugger coming not from an egg, but from goo+human. This makes a giant facehugger, which grew inside of, and took traits of, an engineer to make a full size xenopmorph. This is interesting to me, they have a picture of the full size alien in the pod room, so they’re aware of this incarnation; yet, without any incubation the pods merely seem to produce a chestburster like worm alien. With that in mind, perhaps they wanted to take the goo to earth to experiment with this species, not solely to wipe us out. There’s really no compelling evidence to make us believe the captain was correct about their plan, they just kind of ran with the assumption.
love the cast guys.
just thought this would be of a little interest to you.
kevin smith actually did a slight interview with Damon Lindelof and they talked about prometheus, and a little bit of why it turned out the way it did and from where it began.
kev’s show —> http://www.hulu.com/watch/369061