Try Harder

I have read a lot of threads on these forums and to work this film out most of you will need to "try harder" ;-) Like a magician uses misdirection to make a trick work, Ridley is doing the same so that when he reveals 'The Truth' it will be a surprise. Those that were drawn away by the misdirection wont see it coming. This is deliberate. There are certain things that Ridley wants us to believe and theorise about to keep us from seeing the truth until he reveals it. But at the same time, he has put clues in there for those who "try harder" to work it out beforehand. Those who believe the Engineers created us are in for a surprise. Those who believe the Xenomorph is a bio weapon are in for a surprise. Those who believe the Engineers want to destroy us are in for a surprise. These are all too obvious and, like the characters in Prometheus, Ridley wants us to jump to the wrong conclusions. If you want to solve the mystery, you need to stop believing the above three concepts. Believing any of the above is a bit like watching Blade Runner and coming to the conclusion that it was about a burnt out cop who reluctantly accepts one more mission. Then after a bit of detective work, a few scrapes and an exciting chase sequence, realises that robots can have feelings too and then lives happily ever after with Rachael. Blade Runner goes a lot deeper than that. Ridley has said in the past that Blade Runner could be set in the same universe as Alien. I believe Ridley is planning on connecting the two or at least exploring the same core principle. Essentially, in Blade Runner, the replicants are a threat because they have no soul or conscience. As a result, after about 5 years they become psychotic. The solution was not to program a 'soul' in to them but to give them a short lifespan and ban them from Earth. In the same way that Weyland wants more life from his creator, so did the replicant Roy Batty. It is only when Roy discovers that even his creator cannot help and he is on the verge of death, does he ultimately begin to appreciate his life and experiences and feels compassion and empathy towards Deckard. The meaning of this is repeated in Prometheus when Weyland tells David that he cannot appreciate his immortality because he has no soul. But Weyland is soulless too (eg. the way he treats his daughter etc) because he doesn't appreciate his mortality. Believing as he does, that the Engineers can grant him longer life. Make no mistake, Ridley is aware of the legacy that is Alien and Blade Runner. The Prometheus series, after having thirty years to think it through, is going to be worthy of that legacy and will continue the themes of mortality, the soul and artificial intelligence and it's associated dangers. And the key difference between evolved lifeforms and 'created' lifeforms. "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." (Eliezer Yudkowsky) For more information; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity