The Folly of Progress and Its Unchecked Pursuit

wow you said a mouthful- I don't think even a proboscis could mash its way past this supposition. Seriously though, the speech clearly sets the arc of hubris that will be the backdrop of the film- Man's need to dominate his reality through whatever means available, technological or otherwise. 1000 generations of man's collective greed for more, better, newer, easier leads Weyland ( vicariously humanity as well) to the prometheous launch and the unknown to come. I'm SOOO excited..du da dant... and just can't hide it...dum dum dum dum daa.. I;m about lose control and I think I like it oooh yeaah!

Pretty much the code of human progress since time immemorial - you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, (ahem, no pun intended, lol) war, progress, discovery, bloodshed, no pain, no gain etc.

He does seem a rather arrogant f*%ker doesn't he? :-P

Match -> Minding the Pain -> Fire -> Prometheus A work of genius!">Craigamore I'm with you... The cleverness of Weyland's speech is remarkable...you'll notice he said 'we are the gods now' after he said the bit about his company creating cybernetic individuals... In the Prometheus myth, Prometheus creates humans...then steals fire for them...so I'm thinking Weyland sees himself as a 'God' because he's creating these cybernetic individuals...which he deliberately says will be indistinguishable from humans in a few short years... that statement alone is sure to upset a few people in the year 2023... but there must be a need for them... How about if these cybernetic things are needed for the dangerous Terraforming missions? One way to get government approval is to say 'listen, I'm Building Better Worlds for humankind and Weyland needs these cyborgs to complete the mission'.... I believe the whole reason for starting with the Lawrence of Arabia (LoA) bit is that it is documented that Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof spent quite a bit of time talking about director David Lean and how he was able to convey to the LoA movie audience the 'vastness' of the deserts ... From Damon Lindelof: "The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ [b]We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces[/b], That connected to the larger themes we were talking about — that we’re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet.” So I think this is a way of one director acknowledging the contribution of another...and connecting the Prometheus dots very well...like only Ridley can... LoA -> Match -> Minding the Pain -> Fire -> Prometheus A work of genius!

You guys get it...that's got to be the theme here.........In 'Alien', it was corporate indifference and malevolence, man's inhumanity to man. In 'Prometheus', it's corporate arrogance, carelessness and man's reckless push beyond the bounds what our species can handle.

I have to agree with what all here have said. The arrogance of man and his thinking that he is sooo smart maybe the cause of the downfall/deaths of the Prometheus crew. In fact it may just be that the real threat in the movie is man, and the SJ's and any other intelligent beings view us as that way. I mean one of our favorite pastimes throughout history has been warfare. In other words... we really seem to enjoy killing and conquest.

Here’s a bit of a big what if, and I’m not sure if anyone else on the forum has made any reference to this, so apologies if I’m repeating something mentioned elsewhere. What if Weyland is a cybernetic individual ? Has anyone looked at the viewpoint of what if the gods are cybernetic in nature. Suppose man has been genetically engineered over millennia to become the tools that enable the creation of gods. Is man the disposable asset that aids the cybernetic individuals not to meet their makers, but designers. After all there is a big difference between maker and designer. If you watch Weylands speech again from this angle, it does get you thinking about the whole thing in a completely different light. I could well be wrong, but give it a go.