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'Prometheus'

Let us give fangs to God: Ridley Scott's Bible borrowing prequel to 'Alien.'

Dorothy Woodend 23 Jun 2012TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other weekend for The Tyee. Find her previous articles here.

Since Ridley Scott's new film Prometheus has been in movie theatres for a couple of weeks now, we can safely discuss its contents without someone squeaking about spoilers and other assorted boobery. If you haven't seen the film, hie thee to the theatre and then report back here, as I am sure you will have questions. Or maybe just irritations that need to be voiced.

Prometheus, for those who live in a cave under a rock in a bog is the prequel, of sorts, to Ridley Scott's Alien, the film that launched a thousand childhood nightmares of fangs, slime and space.

I must admit that I've been waiting a long while for Prometheus to touch down. I dutifully watched all the trailers and featurettes, read the articles and ogled the photos of the blond vanilla smoothie that is Michael Fassbender. Nothing can ever live up to our memories of the past (Alien and otherwise), but initially Ridley gets a girl's hopes up.

Not in the somewhat goofy opening sequence, where a yogurt-coloured muscleman dissolves into goo and seeds the barren planet. Nor when, however many millennia later, a young science buck and his girlfriend discover a handy road map to the stars inscribed on a cave wall. No, it is only when we're back in outer space, aboard the good ship Prometheus, that you start to feel like you're at home again. Like the Nostromo of old, the Prometheus's mission is not what she thinks it is. Already the seeds of destruction are housed within her great hull -- hubris, greed, jealousy, overweening ambition and plain old pride.

Sexy scientists

But before we launch into space, the basic tenets of the mission must be established. The sexy scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have stumbled upon the one big question that unites human societies across the ages, namely who made us? The clues are helpfully delineated in ancient drawings and symbols that indicate it was some giant dude pointing to the heavens. Actually, pointing to one very particular spot in the heavens, a distant moon named LV-223. That string of numbers and letters may strike a gong of fear in anyone who remembers the fate of the Nostromo in Alien, or the terraformers in Aliens. Stay the hell away from LV-223. But no, humans being curious little dickens, they set off to meet their maker, brimming with good intentions. Space trip to hell in other words.

The crew of the ship are assembled and given ragged bits of personality and character, the better to empathize with them later when all manner of badness begins. There is the sassy Captain Janek, a sour geologist named Fifield, a too-curious biologist named Millburn, and the mission's overseer one Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a sleek corporate shark in gunmetal grey. All are watched over by a machine of loving grace named David (Fassbender), a Pinocchio-like entity with a talent for lies and an unspoken ambition to be better than a real boy. At the centre of the Prometheus mission is an ancient old husk named Peter Weyland who started the universe's biggest corporate monstrosity, Weyland Industries. Once all the pieces are assembled, it's off to the races we go!

On the long trip to LV-223, the crew sleeps and dreams, while David patrols the ship, playing basketball and watching movies. Inside of these moments of quiet and calm, one has time to marvel at the many touches embellished upon the film. From art design to thespian flourishes (the wonder that is Fassbender), there is much to appreciate here, lavished as it is with care and attention to detail. It leads you expect much more than is actually delivered. It is only when Prometheus sets down that the real depths of disappointment become clear.

Oh God!

If the idea of confronting God about the nature of existence gives you pause, no such considerations seem to plague this crew. They gear up in their bubble-headed suits and toodle off on their dune buggies to poke around and see if they can meet their makers. Said makers, dubbed the "Engineers" are the tallish pointing figures who issued the original invitation to drop in for a chinwag. They apparently live in a giant beehive filled with endless dripping corridors, a room full of IKEA vases, and a huge stone head, which calls into question who exactly did the interior design of the place? Piles of dead bodies add a certain piquant note, but other than that, it's all grey immensity, not unlike Arthur Erickson run amok.

Who or what killed the original inhabitants of the place is uncertain, but instead of turning tail and running away like sensible mammals, the humans descend deeper into the bowels of the hive. Upon entering the chamber of vases, their presence triggers black goo to come sliding, warm and syrupy, into puddles on the floor. But even this doesn't deter our plucky band. They forge on, making bad decisions all the way, while David carefully tucks away a sticky vase and Shaw bags up the decapitated head of one of the Engineers. But wouldn't you know it, just as they're about to head back to the ship, a sandstorm strikes, and the biblical overtones get extra heavy. Here is where things begin to go terribly awry, plot wise.

With two crew members stranded inside the dome, the rest of the gang makes it back to the Prometheus. Herein, the seeds of destruction are planted, literally, when Shaw decides to reanimate the dead head and David spikes the celebratory champagne with a little oozy something. Meanwhile, back in the beehive, the expendable crew members get cozy with a slithery something emerging from the primordial goo.

Birthing pains

If you've paid any attention to the discussion forums buzzing with analysis of the film, you will know that references are wadded up thick and fast in the film's final third. For those eager to discern meaning from the proceedings, according to one forum post, "LV-223 is standard Biblical notation for Leviticus 22:3 -- For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings... that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the Lord."

It always comes back to Jesus, don't you know, and here it is as well, with the motif of virgin birth being upended into horror. Unable to have children, Shaw is miraculously impregnated by her scientist boyfriend, and lo a baby is born unto them. This no warm cuddly son of God but a writhing bag of snaky tentacles, a serpent child, unholy and cranky. Like any woman with a grain of sense, Shaw is pro-choice, and the sequence where she undertakes her own cesarean is by far the best in the entire film. One part bodily horror to two parts claustrophobia, it literally had me hiding behind my hands. More a Pandora figure than a Virgin Mary, Shaw pays for her sins (namely the lust for knowledge) in blood and tears. But unlike Ripley before her, who espoused no other interest than pure survival (with a little revenge thrown in for kicks), Shaw still wants answers. 

The film's grandiose climax is more silly than stirring and what ought to be a hoot turns ponderous and sludgy. If the idea behind the entire enterprise was to discover the origin of all life, when one Peter Weyland shuffles out of hyper sleep and puts on his fuzzy slippers, all the film's energy dissipates. Here is yet another in a long line of corporate masters of the universe who wants it all, and never to know the sting of death.

Oh humanity... It's little wonder that the yogurty ones who made us decided that it was a bad investment in the planet Earth. Apparently, we have overstepped our boundaries yet again and like Satan, Prometheus or Peter Weyland, we must be shorn of our pride, have our livers eaten by eagles or our heads ripped from our shoulders. Which is pretty much what happens. It's Old Testament time. No warm and loving God here. It's all smiting and snarling and things torn asunder.

But a funny thing happened on the way back to planet Earth. Even as the Engineers have decided that it's time to wipe out humanity and start over, their weapon of choice turns against them. Who is really in charge here, anyway? As Shaw says, "If they made us, who made them?" And so on.

Pride goeth…

The most maddening thing about Prometheus is that it is also guilty of the sin of pride. The film is not as smart as it wishes to be; all the big questions are sketched out, but no answers are even attempted. There are only clues leading to yet more clues, leading where exactly? The film puts offering any form of resolution by running off once more, promising some future reward, for the price of a ticket to the sequel. A sucker to the end, I will probably buy one.

Even as Shaw heads off to confront the Gods, with head of the boy toy David stuffed in a bag, another birth is taking place. Bursting out of the chest of the remaining Engineer comes our old Alien friend, red in tooth and claw and hot for action. The thing that I kept hearing in my head, while watching the film, was a stanza from William Blake's most famous poem.

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

If you go looking for God, pray he doesn't find you first.  [Tyee]

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