Prometheus - What Was with the Alien Flute?
Ati
MemberPraetorianJanuary 16, 2018'Why do the Engineers, a race advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel and unlocked the secret of life itself, have ships activated by the power of tin flute? Is it some sort of allusion to their culture inspiring ours, given that the flute is reckoned to be one of the earliest forms of instrument? Was the flute one of the Engineers’ gifts to us, along with life and language?
Sadly, we combed all three hours and 40 minutes of the disc’s making-of documentary in vain, and Ridley Scott says not a word about it in his commentary track. Jon Spaihts does mention it briefly, saying, “I’m not sure I’m sold on the whistle or the silly putty eggs”. The eggs, of course, are a reference to the fleshy buttons on the Engineer ship’s control console.
Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, we brought the subject up with Dr Anil Biltoo, the language consultant who both created the Engineers’ lingo and also appears in the film as a teacher hologram in a fetching white hat. Did he suggest the idea of the alien ship being powered by a flute?
“That wasn't in the script,” Dr Biltoo said, “and I have to say, I was quite shocked when I saw how they used that.”
The plot thickens. So if the ship wasn’t flute powered in the script, how did it work?
“There were some voice-activated sequences where Fassbender's moving around the pyramid and he reads glyphs,” Dr Biltoo explained. “He reads a writing system that seems to make sense to him. Now, in the script, he utters a sequence of words, and nothing happens. So he repositions the intonation, and something happens. The consoles light up on the craft, because they're speech activated. In the original script, they are not activated by flute.”
Dr Biltoo made it quite clear, therefore, that the flute didn’t spring from Lindelof’s mind, and Spaihts' bemusement on the commentary track certainly indicates that he didn’t suggest it, either. Although we have no firm evidence, the Prometheus Blu-ray does provide a few clues that Ridley Scott himself may have introduced the flute.
In one of the snippets of supplementary footage on the extras disc, we see Scott walk around a large storage room with his filmmakers, choosing various bits and pieces to dress the sets. There are tables absolutely covered in random objects, ranging from Thermos flasks and Christmas decorations to mugs and executive stress toys.
As the camera follows him around, Scott selects certain objects quite rapidly, suggesting that one character might idly play with this item in one scene, and those items over there might look quite nice on a shelf in Vickers’ private quarters.
Given that Scott frequently made snap creative decisions throughout the film’s making, could it be possible that Scott saw the tin whistle in this storage room (along with Janek’s accordion, perhaps), and said, “You know what? This could be the ignition key for the spaceship.”
