The best foundation on web to build Ac theories upon
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 10:43 AM Prometheus contains such a huge amount of mythic resonance that it effectively obscures a more conventional plot. I'd like to draw your attention to the use of motifs and callbacks in the film that not only enrich it, but offer possible hints as to what was going on in otherwise confusing scenes.
Let's begin with the eponymous titan himself, Prometheus. He was a wise and benevolent entity who created mankind in the first place, forming the first humans from clay. The Gods were more or less okay with that, until Prometheus gave them fire. This was a big no-no, as fire was supposed to be the exclusive property of the Gods. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver ripped out and eaten every day by an eagle. (His liver magically grew back, in case you were wondering.)
Fix that image in your mind, please: the giver of life, with his abdomen torn open. We'll be coming back to it many times in the course of this article.
The ethos of the titan Prometheus is one of willing and necessary sacrifice for life's sake. That's a pattern we see replicated throughout the ancient world. J G Frazer wrote his lengthy anthropological study, The Golden Bough, around the idea of the Dying God - a lifegiver who voluntarily dies for the sake of the people. It was incumbent upon the King to die at the right and proper time, because that was what heaven demanded, and fertility would not ensue if he did not do his royal duty of dying.
Now, consider the opening sequence of Prometheus. We fly over a spectacular vista, which may or may not be primordial Earth. According to Ridley Scott, it doesn't matter. A lone Engineer at the top of a waterfall goes through a strange ritual, drinking from a cup of black goo that causes his body to disintegrate into the building blocks of life. We see the fragments of his body falling into the river, twirling and spiralling into DNA helices.
Ridley Scott has this to say about the scene: 'That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself. If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.'
Can we find a God in human history who creates plant life through his own death, and who is associated with a river? It's not difficult to find several, but the most obvious candidate is Osiris, the epitome of all the Frazerian 'Dying Gods'.
And we wouldn't be amiss in seeing the first of the movie's many Christian allegories in this scene, either. The Engineer removes his cloak before the ceremony, and hesitates before drinking the cupful of genetic solvent; he may well have been thinking 'If it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me.'
So, we know something about the Engineers, a founding principle laid down in the very first scene: acceptance of death, up to and including self-sacrifice, is right and proper in the creation of life. Prometheus, Osiris, John Barleycorn, and of course the Jesus of Christianity are all supposed to embody this same principle. It is held up as one of the most enduring human concepts of what it means to be 'good'.
Seen in this light, the perplexing obscurity of the rest of the film yields to an examination of the interwoven themes of sacrifice, creation, and preservation of life. We also discover, through hints, exactly what the nature of the clash between the Engineers and humanity entailed.
The crew of the Prometheus discover an ancient chamber, presided over by a brooding solemn face, in which urns of the same black substance are kept. A mural on the wall presents an image which, if you did as I asked earlier on, you will recognise instantly: the lifegiver with his abdomen torn open. Go and look at it here to refresh your memory. Note the serenity on the Engineer's face here.
And there's another mural there, one which shows a familiar xenomorph-like figure. This is the Destroyer who mirrors the Creator, I think - the avatar of supremely selfish life, devouring and destroying others purely to preserve itself. As Ash puts it: 'a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.'
Through Shaw and Holloway's investigations, we learn that the Engineers not only created human life, they supervised our development. (How else are we to explain the numerous images of Engineers in primitive art, complete with star diagram showing us the way to find them?) We have to assume, then, that for a good few hundred thousand years, they were pretty happy with us. They could have destroyed us at any time, but instead, they effectively invited us over; the big pointy finger seems to be saying 'Hey, guys, when you're grown up enough to develop space travel, come see us.' Until something changed, something which not only messed up our relationship with them but caused their installation on LV-223 to be almost entirely wiped out.
From the Engineers' perspective, so long as humans retained that notion of self-sacrifice as central, we weren't entirely beyond redemption. But we went and screwed it all up, and the film hints at when, if not why: the Engineers at the base died two thousand years ago. That suggests that the event that turned them against us and led to the huge piles of dead Engineers lying about was one and the same event. We did something very, very bad, and somehow the consequences of that dreadful act accompanied the Engineers back to LV-223 and massacred them.
If you have uneasy suspicions about what 'a bad thing approximately 2,000 years ago' might be, then let me reassure you that you are right. An astonishing excerpt from the Movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:
Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?
Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.
Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him. Reader, that's not me pulling wild ideas out of my arse. That's RIDLEY SCOTT.
So, imagine poor crucified Jesus, a fresh spear wound in his side. Oh, hey, there's the 'lifegiver with his abdomen torn open' motif again. That's three times now: Prometheus, Engineer mural, Jesus Christ. And I don't think I have to mention the 'sacrifice in the interest of giving life' bit again, do I? Everyone on the same page? Good.
So how did our (in the context of the film) terrible murderous act of crucifixion end up wiping out all but one of the Engineers back on LV-223? Presumably through the black slime, which evidently models its behaviour on the user's mental state. Create unselfishly, accepting self-destruction as the cost, and the black stuff engenders fertile life. But expose the potent black slimy stuff to the thoughts and emotions of flawed humanity, and 'the sleep of reason produces monsters'. We never see the threat that the Engineers were fleeing from, we never see them killed other than accidentally (decapitation by door), and we see no remaining trace of whatever killed them. Either it left a long time ago, or it reverted to inert black slime, waiting for a human mind to reactivate it.
The black slime reacts to the nature and intent of the being that wields it, and the humans in the film didn't even know that they WERE wielding it. That's why it remained completely inert in David's presence, and why he needed a human proxy in order to use the stuff to create anything. The black goo could read no emotion or intent from him, because he was an android.
Shaw's comment when the urn chamber is entered - 'we've changed the atmosphere in the room' - is deceptively informative. The psychic atmosphere has changed, because humans - tainted, Space Jesus-killing humans - are present. The slime begins to engender new life, drawing not from a self-sacrificing Engineer but from human hunger for knowledge, for more life, for more everything. Little wonder, then, that it takes serpent-like form. The symbolism of a corrupting serpent, turning men into beasts, is pretty unmistakeable.
Refusal to accept death is anathema to the Engineers. Right from the first scene, we learned their code of willing self-sacrifice in accord with a greater purpose. When the severed Engineer head is temporarily brought back to life, its expression registers horror and disgust. Cinemagoers are confused when the head explodes, because it's not clear why it should have done so. Perhaps the Engineer wanted to die again, to undo the tainted human agenda of new life without sacrifice.
But some humans do act in ways the Engineers might have grudgingly admired. Take Holloway, Shaw's lover, who impregnates her barren womb with his black slime riddled semen before realising he is being transformed into something Other. Unlike the hapless geologist and botanist left behind in the chamber, who only want to stay alive, Holloway willingly embraces death. He all but invites Meredith Vickers to kill him, and it's surely significant that she does so using fire, the other gift Prometheus gave to man besides his life.
The 'Caesarean' scene is central to the film's themes of creation, sacrifice, and giving life. Shaw has discovered she's pregnant with something non-human and sets the autodoc to slice it out of her. She lies there screaming, a gaping wound in her stomach, while her tentacled alien child thrashes and squeals in the clamp above her and OH HEY IT'S THE LIFEGIVER WITH HER ABDOMEN TORN OPEN. How many times has that image come up now? Four, I make it. (We're not done yet.)
And she doesn't kill it. And she calls the procedure a 'caesarean' instead of an 'abortion'.
(I'm not even going to begin to explore the pro-choice versus forced birth implications of that scene. I don't think they're clear, and I'm not entirely comfortable doing so. Let's just say that her unwanted offspring turning out to be her salvation is possibly problematic from a feminist standpoint and leave it there for now.)
Here's where the Christian allegories really come through. The day of this strange birth just happens to be Christmas Day. And this is a 'virgin birth' of sorts, although a dark and twisted one, because Shaw couldn't possibly be pregnant. And Shaw's the crucifix-wearing Christian of the crew. We may well ask, echoing Yeats: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards LV-223 to be born?
Consider the scene where David tells Shaw that she's pregnant, and tell me that's not a riff on the Annunciation. The calm, graciously angelic android delivering the news, the pious mother who insists she can't possibly be pregnant, the wry declaration that it's no ordinary child... yeah, we've seen this before.
'And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.'
A barren woman called Elizabeth, made pregnant by 'God'? Subtle, Ridley.
Anyway. If it weren't already clear enough that the central theme of the film is 'I suffer and die so that others may live' versus 'you suffer and die so that I may live' writ extremely large, Meredith Vickers helpfully spells it out:
'A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.'
Vickers is not just speaking out of personal frustration here, though that's obviously one level of it. She wants her father out of the way, so she can finally come in to her inheritance. It's insult enough that Weyland describes the android David as 'the closest thing I have to a son', as if only a male heir was of any worth; his obstinate refusal to accept death is a slap in her face.
Weyland, preserved by his wealth and the technology it can buy, has lived far, far longer than his rightful time. A ghoulish, wizened creature who looks neither old nor young, he reminds me of Slough Feg, the decaying tyrant from the Slaine series in British comic 2000AD. In Slaine, an ancient (and by now familiar to you, dear reader, or so I would hope) Celtic law decrees that the King has to be ritually and willingly sacrificed at the end of his appointed time, for the good of the land and the people. Slough Feg refused to die, and became a rotting horror, the embodiment of evil.
The image of the sorcerer who refuses to accept rightful death is fundamental: it even forms a part of some occult philosophy. In Crowley's system, the magician who refuses to accept the bitter cup of Babalon and undergo dissolution of his individual ego in the Great Sea (remember that opening scene?) becomes an ossified, corrupted entity called a 'Black Brother' who can create no new life, and lives on as a sterile, emasculated husk.
With all this in mind, we can better understand the climactic scene in which the withered Weyland confronts the last surviving Engineer. See it from the Engineer's perspective. Two thousand years ago, humanity not only murdered the Engineers' emissary, it infected the Engineers' life-creating fluid with its own tainted selfish nature, creating monsters. And now, after so long, here humanity is, presumptuously accepting a long-overdue invitation, and even reawakening (and corrupting all over again) the life fluid.
And who has humanity chosen to represent them? A self-centred, self-satisfied narcissist who revels in his own artificially extended life, who speaks through the medium of a merely mechanical offspring. Humanity couldn't have chosen a worse ambassador.
It's hardly surprising that the Engineer reacts with contempt and disgust, ripping David's head off and battering Weyland to death with it. The subtext is bitter and ironic: you caused us to die at the hands of our own creation, so I am going to kill you with YOUR own creation, albeit in a crude and bludgeoning way.
The only way to save humanity is through self-sacrifice, and this is exactly what the captain (and his two oddly complacent co-pilots) opt to do. They crash the Prometheus into the Engineer's ship, giving up their lives in order to save others. Their willing self-sacrifice stands alongside Holloway's and the Engineer's from the opening sequence; by now, the film has racked up no less than five self-sacrificing gestures (six if we consider the exploding Engineer head).
Meredith Vickers, of course, has no interest in self-sacrifice. Like her father, she wants to keep herself alive, and so she ejects and lands on the planet's surface. With the surviving cast now down to Vickers and Shaw, we witness Vickers's rather silly death as the Engineer ship rolls over and crushes her, due to a sudden inability on her part to run sideways. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps the film is saying her view is blinkered, and ultimately that kills her. But I doubt it. Sometimes a daft death is just a daft death.
Finally, in the squidgy ending scenes of the film, the wrathful Engineer conveniently meets its death at the tentacles of Shaw's alien child, now somehow grown huge. But it's not just a death; there's obscene life being created here, too. The (in the Engineers' eyes) horrific human impulse to sacrifice others in order to survive has taken on flesh. The Engineer's body bursts open - blah blah lifegiver blah blah abdomen ripped apart hey we're up to five now - and the proto-Alien that emerges is the very image of the creature from the mural.
On the face of it, it seems absurd to suggest that the genesis of the Alien xenomorph ultimately lies in the grotesque human act of crucifying the Space Jockeys' emissary to Israel in four B.C., but that's what Ridley Scott proposes. It seems equally insane to propose that Prometheus is fundamentally about the clash between acceptance of death as a condition of creating/sustaining life versus clinging on to life at the expense of others, but the repeated, insistent use of motifs and themes bears this out.
As a closing point, let me draw your attention to a very different strand of symbolism that runs through Prometheus: the British science fiction show Doctor Who. In the 1970s episode 'The Daemons', an ancient mound is opened up, leading to an encounter with a gigantic being who proves to be an alien responsible for having guided mankind's development, and who now views mankind as a failed experiment that must be destroyed. The Engineers are seen tootling on flutes, in exactly the same way that the second Doctor does. The Third Doctor had an companion whose name was Liz Shaw, the same name as the protagonist of Prometheus. As with anything else in the film, it could all be coincidental; but knowing Ridley Scott, it doesn't seem very likely.
QUICK EDIT: Just noting down some of the other Christian symbolism I missed, with thanks to those who pointed them out: David washes Weyland's feet, and I'm told that when Janek and his co-pilots sacrifice their lives to save the Earth, they apparently stand in the form of crucifixes, their arms held out. ('Hands up'?) So you have three 'crucified' guys, one in the middle higher up, the other two on the sides, lower down. All a bit Calvary. However, I don't remember that bit very clearly myself, so I'll have to go see it again.
Ok guys,this is a spot on interpretation of what lindelof and riddley scott left for the grabs in prometheus.
That is exactly what the movie wants to show and what they want it to be,now the chalenge is ;
Considering all this facts build a suitable theory of how ac can follow through considering what you learned after reading this wich excludes a bunch of previous theories,cross it with the trailer and make ur assumptions and present them.
This is witouth a doubt the best foudation and interpretation on the whole internet crossing lindelof and ridley statements aswell as books,deleted scenes ,cutscenes ,that we can take as absolute facts for the movie we saw on screen.
To avoid drama, and misinterpretation of the tittle the accurate text was written by http://cavalorn.livejournal.com
It is the best and trully masterpiece spot on interpretation of ridley prometheus.
A L I E N 4 2 6
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 11:38 AMYou don't need to defend Prometheus on here. It has plenty of fans on this site
ninXeno426
MemberPraetorianJan-28-2017 11:44 AMVery well researched Tiago.Very well done.
Nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 12:08 PMIm not defending.
This is the best foundation i have found..trully spot on after numerous hours of data crossing.
As i said upon this i would like you guys to come back with what ac can be about considering this text gives a lot about david
Damon Lindelof: I'd say that the short answer is: That's his programming. In the scene preceding him doing that, he is talking to Weyland (although we don't know it at the time) and he's telling Weyland that this is a bust. That they haven't found anything on this mission other than the stuff in the vials. And Weyland presumably says to him, "Well, what's in the vials?" And David would say, "I'm not entirely sure, we'll have to run some experiments." And Weyland would say, "What would happen if you put it in inside a person?" And David would say, "I don't know, I'll go find out." He doesn't know that he's poisoning Holloway, he asks Holloway, "What would you be willing to do to get the answers to your questions?" Holloway says, "Anything and everything." And that basically overrides whatever ethical programming David is mandated by, [allowing him] to spike his drink.
Logan Marshall-Green [The actor who played Holloway]:My definition of a robot, or at least a self-sustained robot, is to put together information. As much information as possible and data. To build on data. The only way they're going to grow is to build on data. You meet David collecting data instantly. I think he probably hit a wall (so to speak) with this mission. They all hit a wall, at first, with this mission. And going back to his father, Weyland, and he's told to "try harder." I think he understands that he will have to sacrifice a human life in order to achieve that collection of data.
Now taking all this in consideration all of you can debunk a much more sustainable theory of what ac will be about interpreting the trailer and ridleys ac interviews to date.
I read everything ,analysed the movie on a pause rewind fashion and the best foudations were this one along with couple more..this one was the only that survived when i crossed the others with blue ray interviews of the writter and director themselfs.this is trully spot on.
Bigdave come to papa and start it.
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 12:13 PMOnly one critique. If dying to give life is an ultimate good, how was sacrificing Jesus in opposition to that? Wasn't it just a continuation of the theme? Especially given the widespread belief in his resurrection at the time.
I'd have to say whoever you think sent Jesus, based on your own logic, he fulfilled the highest purpose of any being. Especially since he called himself a king and heir of heaven. They even wrote king of the jews on his cross.
He even says "I came so that you could have life and more abundantly" dying to make that happen must have been part of the plan based on this logic.
The fact is Jesus doing exactly what he was sent to do caused the ruckus on LV-223.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
ninXeno426
MemberPraetorianJan-28-2017 12:16 PMI'm going to give this some thought.I'll get back to you on it Tiago.
Nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for
dk
MemberTrilobiteJan-28-2017 12:25 PMMyrrdin365- good point. He knew what was going to happen all along as the story goes.
Goddamn Tropics in here
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 12:42 PMReally enjoyed this, lots of food for thought and a perfect tonic on the day we lost such an integral cog from the original film
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 1:39 PMSm dont need credited as i talked with him on skype. And he autorised it as we discussed the accuracy of his views for 2 hours .
Also he had comfirmation his view is 99,9% accurate in present time with people close to projects.
As the title says clearly.
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 1:44 PMMyrrdin jesus was not suppose to be sacrificed.
We murdered him.
We create servants ( androids) as engineers created servants ( us)
Android is turning against us as we turned against them.
Jesus was not a sacrifice.
How will ridley continue his view on covenant. Ac will touch mortality and immortality according to him.
This might give him redemption after all,he might not be the bad guy..we are! He just carrying the thoughts of engineers and playing god.
If his father is not around anymore this could mean hes free he can be evil for us regarding his actions but in fact outside the box he might not be evil at all because theres something going on greater then humans being killed and that might be only a consequence to a greater good.
We might be the true monsters with our selfish nature,our way of living, we destroy our world..we eat our animals...we fight nature
The goo might be the extent of us and..with them it creates life..with us it creates monsters..we are corrupted..they arent...but with the jesus engineer event..we corrupted them..and it triggered a chain of events that wiped them out.
We can work this out hence why i want everyone view and contribution on what ac will touch..david is key.shaw is key.
We can build a very cohesive thesis with this accurate base on the posted text.
Bigdave come here
S.M
MemberXenomorphJan-28-2017 1:55 PM"
Sm dont need credited as i talked with him on skype. And he autorised it as we discussed the accuracy of his views for 2 hours .
Also he had comfirmation his view is 99,9% accurate in present time with people close to projects.
As the title says clearly."
If that's the case you probably should correct others who are under the mistaken belief you wrote it.
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 2:06 PMInstead of derailing the purpose of the thread and witchhunting you should contribute to it if you want...if not then dont do nothing at all.
The tittle is very clear and my above statment is also clear.
I didnt see anyone who posted assuming this text came from my writting but by my RESEARCH of the facts and theories everyone on the web wrotted.
At this point since im on the forum everyone knows my gramatics are limited to writte such a masterpiece but that doesnt take credit of my research wich i can in fact confirm with 99,9 % accuracy this is the view lindelof and ridley left for the grabs for the fans and the most spot on interpretation in the whole internet based on what i said above this all.
So sm, instead of bitching about it witouth knowing i even talked with the person for long time...contribute or move on if its no interest for you.
Thanks.
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 2:12 PMI must add the purpose of this is making fans who didnt dig deep and took other interpretations of the movie thus making theories who go against prometheus and ridley ideas,or clash at different levels, could be more enlightened and find reason and a better base to build upon their views..possibly nailing ac plot and ridley thinking with efficiency.
I was myself building theories that after being enlightned were rapidly thrown in the garbage section.
S.M
MemberXenomorphJan-28-2017 2:12 PM"I didnt see anyone who posted assuming this text came from my writting but by my RESEARCH of the facts and theories everyone on the web wrotted. "
dk and ninXeno appear to be indicating otherwise. A simple link would've shown everyone you weren't trying to credit for someone elses work.
The only research you've done is to copy and paste someone elses research, and some acknowledgement would've been appropriate.
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 2:21 PMI didnt credit myself. Title is clear. My statments are clear.
And ur wrong..and still whining. I researched countless interviews interpretations and texts and talked with most of the possible authors and youtubers who were close i could, in fact i have too source of 100% trust who can give me confirmation regarding prometheus but wont disclose future things obviously. But i never bragged about it. Maybe someday ill post here a photo of my girl working with him in the studio when i feel like it..if im saying this text is accurate i know what im talking about. I can even go further and tell you shes even featured in their website. But this is not a bragging thread and not even the place to be mentioning it so cut the intellectual right or wrong how to do things crap.
End the drama, you seem to like it too often.and if you have any problem send me pvt message.dont derail a thread.it would be much more simple and drama free ;)
Edit: to avoid possible confusion sm mentioned i added to the thread text the source of this spot on interpretation of ridley prometheus.just because why not,im currently waiting and working a possible conjecture with him for ac and will post asap
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 2:51 PM@Tiago that is a very ignorant statement you made. Even in your article it describes Jesus continuing the theme of the dying god. The first thing John the Baptist says when he sees his cousin Jesus is "Behold the lamb of God." In Jewish culture that is a very unambiguous foretelling of his eventual sacrifice.
In every account of his crucifixion, Jesus ALLOWS himself to be crucified. His eventual sacrifice was a repetitive and central point of the mission he himself said he was here to complete.
You can't look at what Jesus said about himself and argue that he was anything but a willing, though reluctant, participant in his crucifixion.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 3:02 PMTrue myrddin it is trully ignorant from me to say that
But we are seeing it by the bible.
But if we analise this disregarding what the bible told written by humans and keep it ss it was a murder sounds still ignorant?
It wasnt his purpose to die,he was not choosen to be sacrificed but he accepted it and embraced his faith however that was by the hands of the corrupted,by their choices and disbeliefs.
Jesus didnt jump to the cross and freewilling sacrificed himself.
Sounds fair? Or im not understanding your point.
If we see david as humans, and us as engineers he is doing to us what we did to them but what is the difference?
BigDave
MemberDeaconJan-28-2017 4:12 PMI am gonna have to pass on this one for a bit Tiago...
Very tired lol and so doubt i could concentrate enough to do justice a reply... But i will say a very well thought out and researched and well written Topic.
Certainly the undertones was intended like you suggest i am not sure how much they are toning these down, have we gone from the On the Nose Space Jesus was a Emisary... to a more narrow simply route that Mankind had started to be totally against the wishes and intentions of the Engineers at this point?
Its a whole tale of Rebellion.... the Engineers likely did the same with their creators/hierachy and we see similar starting to happen with David... it touches upon the Paradise Lost aspect as far as Satan against God... and even Satan being Prometheus to a degree also.
I hope to go into detail more, and i do hope maybe to not so much go off Topic or turn things away from theories you lay so much... as in part i agree, but in part i arrived at a different conclusion as far as the Sacrificial/Black Goo... which latter when Spaights draft was out and looked at the Scarabs in connection made my view and interpretation add up.
But i dont want to go into that difference here... as its covered before..
And so while who knows how the Goo worked.. you are not the first to bring up the whole does the Goo act depending on the Morality of those Exposed... and regardless if its the case or not... i think its a pretty interesting idea to discus.
Once again a truly great Post Tiago...
I will get back with some more debates about different elements and then try and see how it could connect to AC.. but for now..
Im off to Bed... only had 30 min sleep in 30 hours lol
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 4:22 PM@Tiago it's just a flaw in the logic of the article's premise. Every other king/god sacrifice is noble and honorable, except when Jesus agrees to be sacrificed, then it's a murder worth planetary genocide.
The Sanhedrin and Romans thought they were murdering Jesus, but Jesus explicitly stated that he was sacrificing himself for the betterment of mankind.
So it makes more sense that LV-223 happened because he succeeded, rather than we failed. Another reason Ridley probably left it out of the script. It doesn't follow logically that, based on the above premise, Jesus purpose was undermined by his crucifixion.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 4:23 PMBig dave make sure you come back to this foudation and evolve it with your thinking.
The post you made on ac first scenes thread is very intersting and i think your the right person to give this a better development forward as i think you are the one closest to ac plot.
The opening scene seems to be about right.
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 4:25 PMMyrdin
Intersting point indeed. Good thinking
So could we assume the engineer was corrupted by us ?
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 4:40 PMWell when the premise is flawed, it's difficult to carry out the logic of the conclusion that they draw.
I would propose a different conclusion. If the goo triggers on intent or moral character, The engineers on LV-223 were morally corrupt and the goo turned on them when they sought to rebel against the self sacrificial ideals set forth by the Engineers guiding earth's development.
The morality goo doesn't sit well with me, though. It feels too fantasy for sci Fi. Especially sci-fi as grounded (generally) as Ridley's.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 5:18 PMMyrdin but that is what ridley scott statments hint and screenplay launchs for the grabs as explained.
I rad the bible and for me jesus didnt sacrificed himself willingly. We killed him,was murder for Christians.
We did it and he embraced it,i would understand your point fully if he jumped to the cross on his own terms but he didnt, we put him there and he embrassed it but thats different if you grab a black goo cup and drink it free from corruption ,selfishness for the good of others for evolution and for life.
Movies.com: We had heard it was scripted that the Engineers were targeting our planet for destruction because we had crucified one of their representatives, and that Jesus Christ might have been an alien. Was that ever considered?
Ridley Scott: We definitely did, and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it." Guess what? They crucified him.
The symbolism its still on the movie just not too on the nose,but the basics are all there,he might changed how he presented but its still the ssme premise...the 2000 years pld carbon dating its still there still a clue..the xeno in christ position still there still a clue and on and on.
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 5:53 PM@tiago. While I understand that you have interpreted the Bible in a certain way, it has been my long standing belief that Christ was both murdered by the Jews and Romans AND sacrificed himself for all mankind. It was always part of his plan. He mentions it repeatedly.
I also understand what Ridley said in the interview, but it was left out of the script for reasons. One, it was too "on the nose." Two, possibly, it doesn't follow logically after scrutiny. There is really no way to describe Jesus' mission as a failure in the context of this article.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
Tiago_miami_la
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 6:34 PMMyrdin consider this
Lindelof: That's an excellent question and one that I'm not going to answer. But I will say that there's something fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an invitation. You look at a cave wall, there's somebody pointing at some distant planets, and one interpretation is "This is where we come from" another is "We want you to come here." Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that's interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon the land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the right place? And how close are they to the place that these aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just extrapolating "This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life." So there's a lot of guesswork. There's a small line in the movie where David and Holloway are talking about David's deconstruction of the language based on Holloway's thesis, and he says "If your thesis is correct" and Holloway says "If it's correct?" and David says "That's why they call it a thesis Doctor." And the reason we threw that in there is that we're dealing with a highly hypothetical area in terms of who these beings are, what, if any invitation they issued, and who is responsible for making those cave paintings. And did something happen in between when those cave paintings were made — tens of thousands of years ago — and our arrival now, in 2093, 2,000 years after these things have perished. Did something happen in the intermediate period that we should be thinking about?
Lindelof: Ridley definitely had very specific answers to those questions and we talked a lot about how we wanted to put those answers into Prometheus. And whether or not we wanted to hold any of them back. It's a little bit obnoxious to say, "well if you like this movie, we'll give that stuff to you in the sequel." So you have to have a fair shot at being able to extrapolate based on the information in this movie. But I do feel like, embedded in this movie are the fundamental ideas behind why it is the Engineers would want to wipe us out. If that's the question that you're asking. The movie asks the question, were we created by these beings? And it answers that question very definitively. But in the wake of that answer there's a new question, which is, they created us but now they want to destroy us, why did they change their minds? That's the question that Shaw is asking at the end of this movie, the one that she wants answered. I do think that there are a lot of hints in this movie that we give you quite and educated guess as to why. But obviously not to the detriment of what Shaw might find when she goes to talk to these things herself.
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerJan-28-2017 7:13 PM@Tiago I get all that, it's just that "you killed Jesus so we're gonna kill you!" Is a very illogical and badly thought out motivation. Even if that is exactly what Ridley wants, it doesn't make sense in context of what eyewitness accounts report Jesus saying.
It also doesn't make sense in context of the historical impact Christ had. Regardless of your faith (or lack thereof) it is undeniable that his message spread like wildfire, and changed the course of history.
It also doesn't make sense in context of the article you presented. As I've said earlier. I'm gonna chalk this up to Ridley got it wrong if that's the direction he takes it.
It's also far more interesting to me if they wanted to wipe us out because Jesus succeeded, rather than because we failed him. Here's why:
Veneration of self sacrifice to aid or create life sets the foundation for us to eventually be willing hosts for Xenos.
The spread of Christianity coincided with the largest human population explosion in recorded history. Correlation is not causality, but let's just say that was the Engineer's goal when they sent him. In fact, it was a statistical certainty when he completed his mission to be sacrificed.
This would set up a perfect harvest for the engineers who seeded life, but the engineers on LV-223 wanted to stop the population explosion in order to avoid another multi-billion unit crop from coming under the seeders control.
The only issue with that is it makes Jesus arguably a bad guy.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
