Prometheus:Rants & Conjectures

Having had the good fortune of winning 2 tickets for the premiere of ‘Prometheus’ (3D version) in my part of the world (Southern Hemisphere), I attended the event on the evening of 5 June 2012. Like most of the members here, the movie whilst fill of breathtaking visuals left one with a bad aftertaste since the plot was full of holes. The plot failed to lived up to the grandiosity of the ‘Sacrificial Engineer’ scene which I thought would set the stage of the theme of progeny which is prevalent in the characters. (Sacrificial Engineer/Human Race, Peter Weyland/David & Meredith Vickers, Elizabeth Shaw & Holloway/’Proto- Facehugger’ and to a certain extent the Space Jockey/Engineers and their ‘black goo’ ampoules) Rants Prometheus Scientific Survey Vessel/Weyland’s Private Pleasure Yacht – Having your landing gear assembly together with your propulsion/exhaust system seems to be a bad idea unless the operating mechanisms for your landing gear exists in a universe where heat doesn’t matter and there is no such thing as heat related stress and failure. As with most sci-fi vessels, Prometheus seems to have conveniently postulated that the intricacies of gravitation physics are within the grasp of human understanding within this lifetime (contrasts this with the FTL vessel from “Avatar”). Who instructed David to single out Holloway as the subject of experimentation – So Weyland tells David to ‘try harder’ as related to Vickers but why Holloway and is there any assurance that the ‘black goo’ would regenerate the dying Weyland. Note that David had the most amount of contact with the gooey substance that seems to permeate the Engineer’s base and this substance was the basis by which David was able to operate the Engineer’s systems/machinery. Would not therefore this goo have somehow related instructions to David in relation to some prime directive to survive and propagate? Ice cold corporate bitch making out with the crusty ‘old space dog’ – seems to be incongruous with how Vickers had been presenting herself and in the end acquiescing to Janick’s overtures. Conjectures (someone from Fox, please read this and get in touch with me!) The Engineers – despite a fair amount of screen time, there were no suggestions that they were the architects of the human race and I use the term ‘architect’ in the context that the seeding effort was a concerted endeavor since the Sacrificial Engineer scene suggests otherwise. Much of their technology is based on some ‘haptic’ goo technology that seems to leave a holographic visual residual recording. There is the strange white blob like buttons from the Space Jockey’s vessel which would be seem out of place in “Teletubbies” or “Brabarella”. There was also a need to activate the holographic device via a set of flute notes, a jury-rigged bypass to access the system. All in all on the basis of what has been observed, it seems to suggest that the Engineers could have been a bio-engineered species for terraforming or other arduous interplanetary tasks and without the means to procreate (there are therefore no female engineers and engineers looking like pumped-up silicone ‘Real Dolls’). As a drone/slave race, their technology is based upon the ‘goo’ haptic system to access basic systems, a way of limiting their interaction and possibilities of learning and improvising. Perhaps somewhere in their history, they overthrew, broke away from their creators and took the black goo along with them and perhaps had whilst being drone/slaves, worked with this black goo although without the ability and competency of their creators to manipulate it. Unfortunately, the inability of any species to procreate leaves them relegated to oblivion and extinction and the search for a solution begins leads at this point to some mastery over hypersleep/preservation technology. Somewhere along the line, there may be perhaps a breakaway aesthetic group in the guise of the Sacrificial Engineer. The Sacrificial Engineer – Probably the member of a breakaway group who thought that fooling around with the black goo was not the way forward (note that the goo in that scene seems to have crystalline characteristics, perhaps this was the original state that it was in before being tinkered by the rest of the engineers) and begins exploring the metaphysical and aesthetic side of things before coming to the conclusion that the sacrifice was the way forward in which life begets life. Of course this breakaway group was not all that popular with the rest of engineers and when David encounters the Space Jockey, imagine his disgust at looking essentially himself (another drone/slave) albeit in another form. The insult made much worse in that the creators of David were the progeny of the actions of his own species which he never approved and in the form of Peter Weyland whose desires were as banal as seeks immortality. The Xenomorph mural – Appears to hold a place of reverence to the Engineers. The genetic memory of how their creators appeared to them or the matriarch bio-construct that was used to create/birth them? The Engineer Massacre – black goo experiment gone massively wrong in particular ‘chest –busting’ wrong? If that was a case, it would be interesting to note what species in particular the female of that species, was used by the predominantly male engineer species as the vessel for birthing the face-hugger. I take my cue where Holloway saw it imperative to mate with Shaw after being infected. If such an incident happen, could the planned journey by the Space Jockeys to earth, be a final solution to create a massive regression to basic cellular matter as what had been attempted by the sacrificial engineer? Black goo material in Shaw – despite Shaw removing the proto-facehugger, does she still not have black goo material inside here? Would she be therefore be treated as an infected person when she meets the other engineers?