Last night I did something I haven’t done many times before
in my life. I attended the pre-premiere of a movie whose release I have been
eagerly anticipating—Ridley Scott’s
Prometheus.
The film’s official release date in Norway is today, June 1
st. But
the Colosseum movie theater in Oslo showed the film last night (9pm showing
only) to a packed house, which in and of itself was an enjoyable experience. The
film was introduced by a young man who apparently works for an American company
in Norway involved in the film’s promotion. At one point he asked for a show of
hands for how many women were in the audience. I guess because men outnumber
women when it comes to liking sci-fi films? Anyway, there were a lot of women
in the audience. Never occurred to me before that sci-fi might be a genre
dominated by men, since I personally know more women than men who enjoy sci-fi
books and films. But never mind—I want to tell you about the film.
The story is somewhat intricate and uneven; the film opens
with fantastic footage of what is supposed to be prehistoric earth; the 3D
effects give the viewer the experience of actually moving over the planet in a
low-flying spaceship. An alien human-like figure stands on the precipice of a
huge waterfall, and drinks some kind of strange liquid in a pod. He is alone. Above
him a spaceship hovers, apparently the ship that brought him there. After
drinking the liquid, his body reacts violently, transforming into some
strange-looking creature that falls off the cliff into the water; as he does, his
body explodes, releasing the DNA that will be the precursor DNA to our own. Cut
to 2089, where a group of scientists (among them Elizabeth Shaw played by Noomi
Rapace, and Charlie Holloway played by Logan Marshall-Green) interested in the origins
of humanity discover cave paintings on the Isle of Skye in Scotland that
resemble cave paintings from other archaeological digs around the world. All of
them ‘point’ to the stars; the patterns seem to be an invitation to visit that distant
world, which is exactly what these scientists are dreaming about—finding the
origins of man. Four years later, they are traveling in space on their way to
this world, in a spaceship called Prometheus. They land on this new world, and all
hell breaks loose, literally. That’s the point of these films, and also the fun
of watching them. You know something bad or evil is lurking in the wings, just
waiting for its chance to break free. I will definitely not spoil the film for
you by describing what happens; it is well-worth seeing and you will be
impressed beyond belief at the special effects and the 3D experience. I felt
like I had traveled to that world after being in the theater for two hours. I
found myself wishing the movie was longer, the effects were that good. The
images of that deserted, barren, dark world will haunt you for hours
afterwards. The fact that the plot has a few loopholes, or that there are some illogical
occurrences, was not a problem for me, although I know it is for some others
who have voiced their criticisms on IMDB. I am more interested in the atmosphere
that these kinds of films can create, and Prometheus delivers. It manages to create the world it set out to
create, just like in the Alien films.
Mythological and biblical references are prevalent in this
film. What can the story of Prometheus in Greek mythology tell us about the film’s plot? Prometheus was a Titan god who was given the task of creating mankind out of clay. Prometheus ended up in conflict with Zeus, who had given him this task, because he liked his mortal creations very much and wanted the best for them, a feeling that Zeus did not share. Zeus became angry at Prometheus for a number of things—among them that Prometheus had tricked the gods into allowing man to keep the meat from sacrificial offerings to the gods, whereas the gods got only the animal bones. As punishment, Zeus withheld fire from man; Prometheus decided to steal the fire back and deliver it to mankind, which he did. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a stake on a mountaintop where an eagle fed upon his liver, which grew back each day since Prometheus was immortal. In the film, the very idea that the scientists could obtain the knowledge of their origin can be seen as a ‘transgression’ against their divine ‘creators’ (Engineers). At the risk of over-interpreting the meaning of the film,
I couldn’t help but think of the story of Adam and Eve. Like Adam and Eve in
the garden of Paradise, who ate of the fruit from the tree of knowledge that
ended in their being banished from the garden, the scientists are ‘punished’
for trying to seek and attain the knowledge that will place them on the creative
level of their creators. The ‘gods’ are jealous; they and they alone wish to hold
the keys to (knowledge about) the creation of mankind. The gods of Greek
mythology were not all perfect gods—they could be angry, jealous, and
vindictive—just like their creations; there were any number of wars in the
heavens. The universe was thus both orderly (good) and chaotic (evil). Christian
mythology describes how Lucifer the archangel, whose name means ‘light bearer’
(interestingly enough when talking about Prometheus and his bearing of fire to
mankind) defied the will of the divine Creator and was banished to hell along
with his followers. Lucifer and his followers are the bad angels whose sin was
pride and thinking they were better than God. It is clear in the film that the
distant world that harbors so much chaos and evil for the space travelers was a
repository of ‘life’ guarded by alien humanoids that were tall, strong and
violent. Are these the bad angels? One gets the feeling that this dark world was
more like hell, where transgressors against the gods, as Prometheus was, would
have been banished.
So where then is the world of our creators? Where do
they live, since they do not live on this dark barren world? This is the question Elizabeth
Shaw has at the end of the film. How come our creators were so unsatisfied with
their creations that they relegated them to a hellish world? What was the
transgression committed by the original creations? Did they attempt to trick their
creators or to steal something of value to them, like Prometheus did with Zeus?
Did they try to become the creators? Why did the creators choose earth as the
place for their creations? Why did the alien humanoid in the first scene die
such a violent death in order that his DNA would be spread in the waters of
earth, as a precursor to our own? When did this happen, before or after the
settling of the world on which the spaceship Prometheus lands? Why did things
go so horribly wrong on this world? Why do the Engineers on this world want to
destroy earth as is the plan when the giant spaceship attempts to take off
toward the end of the film, and what stopped them up until this point? These
remain unanswered questions at the end of the film. Perhaps they will be answered
in a sequel, or perhaps not. In any case, the film opens for different
questions and interpretations. And in the final analysis, it is perhaps not so
surprising that as we (viewers and movie directors alike) age and approach our
mortal ends, that the questions of where we come from, how did we get here, and
where we (might) end up after death, preoccupy us. We would prefer that our
lives had meaning and that it is not the emptiness of the abyss that awaits us.
We would prefer heaven to the barren, deserted and dark world that the
Prometheus found.
