Prometheus

Been neglecting the blog, yadda yadda, same old disclaimer, same old apologies.

So let’s do away with the niceties and just accept the fact that I’m not posting nearly as often as I used to – but I don’t want to waste time reminding myself (and everyone else) about that so I’d rather just get right into what I feel like talking about today.

I watched Prometheus the other day and while I think it had a very straightforward/predictable plot – I admit there are things about it I’m not crystal clear about. Largely concerning on the different species “permutations” in it (as well as the ambiguity of the very first scene – and how it tied into the rest of the movie)

I came across a picture on the internet that summarized the permutations – and I believe if it is accepted to be correct (and I think it is) then it does explain a whole lot of “ambiguious” parts of the movie.

So this post will be none other than my interpretation of the Prometheus storyline.

Before I begin, let me clarify some terms I’ll be using as to not confuse.

• The Engineers are what we will [continue to] call (as the movie itself established) the bald, buff, sclera-free ¹ The white part of the eye albinos.
• The Engineers’ black ooze is what I will call an/the [organic] catalyst
• I’ll call the artificial structure they discovered in LV-223, an engineer base
• Snake(s) is what I’ll call the snake-like creature(s) that killed Millburn (Fifield’s companion).
• I’ll call the infected Dr. Holloway, and Fifield ² Remember, the latter wasn’t killed by the snake, but his helmet merely corroded – and thus exposed him to the catalyst reavers because it reminded me of the reavers in Firefly/Serenity
• Squid is what I’ll call Dr. Shaw’s abandoned lovechild (That bitch! How could she!?).
• The last “alien” shown (bursting out of the chest of the engineer) will be called a xenomorph

First scene [while not clearly established] – I believe most people are in agreement was Earth – predating “life” as we know it. It’s a habitable environment and the engineers are there literally to experiment.

The experiment: To see the effects of their “genetic catalyst” (the black stuff) in different environments. While this is a personal opinion of mine – I believe it to be very significant a nuance that can explain a bunch of other things later on.

So in Earth’s environment, the catalyst destroys the Engineers’ physical structure and both mix to become part of the ecosystem – and I guess mutate/evolve to “life” as we know it.

So like the picture said: Engineer + catalyst [on Earth] = life.

Now I prefer to interpret it as an experiment – because of the existence of the common “star map” accross different ancient civilizations. This simply means that the engineers were returning to Earth at different periods – perhaps to observe their experiment’s progress.

Now enter planet LV-223. I believe that the catalyst works differently here. And while it was never established what exactly killed the engineers at the base, whatever the scenario may be – this was obviously BAD for the engineers and resulted in a lot of deaths.

So anyways, here’s what I think:

I think the reason why the Engineer wanted to destroy Earth wasn’t because they intended to destroy it in the first place. The pilot wasn’t hostile (though that could be due to the nausea from the stasis) up until David talked to him – and I would guess the Engineer deemed it dangerous that their “experiment” has evolved so much – that it was only a matter of time that we had the same intelligence and technology as they had/have. Given that they have been observing the Earth for centuries – perhaps they noticed that our most basic instinct is of a predatorial/violent nature – and would abuse such knowledge/power should we acquire it. So ASSUMING that Mr. Engineer really was out to destroy Earth – he probably just decided then and there to pull the plug on us – because we were now perceived to be a threat.

That would explain why they did visit us periodically but never bothered to “destroy” us then (which was one of Shaw’s questions at the end) – perhaps because we were too primitive to even worry about. But now, not only have we been able to get to their doorstep – but also TALK in their language. The implications were probably of Skynet proportions as far as they were concerned.

So that’s basically how I choose to understand the plot – everything else makes sense in that context.

• Engineer + catalyst in Earth = life
• Engineer + catalyst in LV-223 = MYSTERY
• Human + catalyst in LV-223 = reaver
• Human + reaver = squid
• Engineer + squid = xenomorph
• Human + engineer = who knows!

It could be possible that in such an environment, the effect of the catalyst on ANY organism might result in a lifeform, that would iterate in its evolution towards what we saw in the first alien movie.

So for example, the maggots that became giant snakes – while they drastically different from Dr. Shaw’s squid-baby, they do share the same characteristics of impregnation/incubating through intubation. Come to think of it, they did kinda have the same type of head – while the other had a snake for a body where the other one was a squid. Anyways, though it wasn’t established what happened to Millburn when he was intubated, we could surmise the possibility of of such a process culminating with what happened to the Engineer.

For all we know, even a reaver’s reproductive process might’ve changed to that of the snake or squid (or the facehugger in the Alien franchise) Holloway was still in the process of evolving when he had sex.

We also know that whatever the impregnation method (intercourse or intubation/incubation), the result seems to be a chestburster (again, with what happened to the engineer and what might’ve happened to shaw if she hadn’t had an abortion) – so it’s not far-fetched to believe that the catalyist, while having varying effects – would still result in a mutation from a similar family of “genetic dispositions.” This would probably explain why they were curious enough to let us humans live – because the mutation that happened on Earth was nothing like what they assumed/expected.