Logan Marshall-Green, Noomi Rapace, and Michael Fassbender in Prometheus
So I’d spent that June 1985 afternoon laying parquet in the future dance-rehearsal room of our Montmartre theater — a quixotic and doomed venture that consumed me and my compadres for two years. The parquet tiles were affixed to the concrete floor by a particularly noxious glue, and I foolishly wore no mask; after two or three hours, my nausea had built up to the point of copious vomiting. So I headed home, expecting the effects to dissipate with rest.
But the nausea continued, for the next three days. I was not only unable to hold down food, but water as well. On the afternoon of the third day I staggered into a clinic, hoping for some healing nostrum to take home — and was immediately hospitalised, with surgery scheduled for the next day; I had appendicitis, which had led to peritonitis and sepsis; my body was poisoning me.
That night, as I lay in bed with a saline drip attached to my arm to reverse my extreme dehydration, I experienced for the first time delirium. It was by no means unpleasant. A haze of uncertain time and odd sensual waves, and curious mental fugues rippling through my consciousness.
And then suddenly that consciousness focussed. I was living the life of a soldier in the Napoleonic period, seemingly cursed to face across the years a mad adversary in duels, wielding rapier, saber, pistol…the intensity of the hallucination was incredible.
Of course, it was no hallucination. The hospital room’s TV was showing director Ridley Scott‘s first feature film, The Duellists, and my fever had thrust me into it.
Ridley Scott directing Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel in The Duellists (1977)
But how is it that my fever dream never delivered me that same hallucinatory re-incarnation via any of the other TV shows and dramas I watched that night?
Well, ‘fever dream’ is the answer, because fever dreams are what Scott creates at his best, what he seduces us into.
Ridley Scott has always been among the most visually-oriented directors; he studied at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London, and began his career as a set designer for the BBC. An excellent draftsman himself, he exercises over the art direction of his films an almost maniacal attention to visual and aural detail.
Storyboard drawings by Ridley Scott for Alien
This was apparent from his days as an extremely successful director of commercials; nobody who lived through the seventies in Britain (such as I) has forgotten his series of ads for Hovis bread. (Click through for video.) Observe the lushness of the photography and the thorough recreation of a period, hear Dvorak’s 9th Symphony hypnotise you into sentimental yearning. One of these ads was recently voted Britain’s all-time favorite television advert.
At the same time, the bullshit quotient of these commercials was high (what– bullshit in advertising? Stop the presses). Hovis is an admirable and healthful wholewheat bread, but it is, and has been from the start, an industrial product, not the loving fruit of the local artisanal baker’s craft. The golden glow of nostalgia radiating from these commercials is rooted in an imaginary past: the Depression-era North and Midlands of England were grim places indeed; besides, working-class and lower-middle class Englishwomen traditionally baked their own bread well into the sixties. A loaf of Hovis factory bread would’ve been regarded as a luxury.
Still, we willingly let ourselves be lulled by Scott’s dreamweaving. And I maintain that this holds true not just for his ads, but also for Scott’s most successful films. They are often riddled with logical and narrative incoherency, leave questions unanswered and mysteries unresolved– we don’t care. We want the fever dream.
Scott’s great talent is for the creation of plausible worlds. Note: I say plausible, not realistic or even believable. He can create a romanticised Napoleonic age (The Duellists) or an outrageously baroque Roman Empire (Gladiator); an exoticised techno-Orientalist modern Tokyo (Black Rain); a fairy-tale land (Legend); the science-fictional Earth of Blade Runner and Space of Alien; and we are there with him. Because we want to be!
From Gladiator. Note the dust; Scott uses (abuses?) dust and mist lavishly for visual oomph
As a sample of this world-building prowess, consider his famous 1984 Superbowl commercial introducing the Apple Macintosh computer. (Click through for video.) Although it only ever aired once, its impact was extraordinary and resounds down to this day. What we note, behind the rather perfunctory and obvious allegory, is Scott’s skill at implying an entire imaginary world in so brief a span of time.
Scott’s breakthrough film was, of course, Alien in 1979.
It manages a) to show one of the most believable science-fiction worlds ever presented on the screen, and b) to be one of the most frightening movies ever made.
The first is due to Scott’s aforementioned obsessive attention to detail and visual talent. The second is due to his genius for emotional manipulation.
Alien benefited hugely from Scott’s discernment of artistic talent. It’s been said dismissively of him that as a director, he made a great art director; but an art director’s brilliance made the film.
His great coup was to recruit the artist of the grotesque, H.R.Giger, to design the alien monster and the extraterrestrial ruined spaceship.
H.R.Giger building the alien
Other marvellous talents were recruited for other aspects of the film, cast like actors; Ron Cobb designed the Earthling spaceship Nostromo, and Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud designed the spacesuits.
Above: Giraud’s spacesuit design. Below: the suits as seen worn among Giger’s set.
Scott’s gift for manipulation — his dark side, as it were — told him the most effective ways to induce fear and horror. Alien features a nightmarish view of the body’s flesh and fluids. In addition to the usual directorial tools of suspense and pacing, the whole Hitchcockian array, Scott very consciously reaches for the visceral and the subconsciously somatic gripping to create his nightmare.
After Alien, Scott’s science-fiction follow-up was Blade Runner (1982), an adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This was another visual triumph, with Scott again partnering with a design visionary, Syd Mead.
Storyboard from Blade Runner, drawn by Ridley Scott
At the time, Scott declared that the science-fiction film needed its John Ford — that is, a director who could be to the SF genre what Ford was to the Western. And Scott could have well fit the role.
But thirty years passed before he made another science-fiction film: Prometheus.
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Scott’s career during this hiatus soared, creating gems (Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) and duds (Someone to Watch Over Me, G.I.Jane.) The initial box-office failures of Blade Runner and of Legend may have caused him to shy away from the fantastic. He was also vocally displeased with the rather ham-fisted exploitation, by other hands, of the Alien franchise. However, for the past ten years he has been working on a prequel to Alien — only to shy away from that notion in recent years, at least in public.
His and the studio’s coyness about Prometheus has exasperated fans. Is it or isn’t it a prequel?
To answer that question, I was, in the evening of June 1st, Prometheus bound. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
So the answer to “is this an Alien prequel” is…?
Yes.
And no.
Yes, for it fits perfectly into the Alien universe, Giger designs and all. No, because the film works perfectly well as a stand-alone. Scott has his cake and eats it; good for him.
Is it a good film? Yes — but only if you are willing to embrace the fever dream — the nightmare. By which I don’t exactly mean the old cliché “check your brain in at the box office and enjoy”.
Science fiction is the most cerebral of genres; but it also works with the unreasoning emotions of awe, wonder and horror — with the sublime. The latter are this film’s strong suits.
Now I want this article to be relatively spoiler-free, so I won’t go into plot details. But, for any savvy SF aficionado, there’s nothing conceptually new on offer here. Von Daniken and Lovecraft seem to be the main inspirational motors. (Lovecraftians will understand this allusion: where Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey has been called a shaggy God story, one could call Prometheus a shoggy God story.) The old SF trope of mankind having been seeded on Earth by extraterrestrials has long since run into the problem of Homo Sapiens‘ close genetic kinship with other primates such as chimpanzees and gibbons; to my knowledge, only the writer Larry Niven has worked his way around this inconvenient fact, in his novel Protector. The film ignores this.
There are numerous logical lapses, not just in concept, but in motivation and continuity. The strong, simple storyline of Alien here is complicated by a larger cast and fussy mise-en-scène– people go from ship to ruins to ship to ruins to ship and from chamber to tunnel to chamber to tunnel until the viewer has no sense of place. Many of the characters are stereotypes.
But, you know what? None of these objections amount to much. Let your reptile brain take over, give in to the Scottian dream.
The nightmare works more powerfully than ever off our deep revulsions for the flesh, our imaginative perversions of sex, birth, death, and animality. We are fed one particular abomination that is the ultimate in vaginadentatatentaclepornhermaphroditicmisogynist monsters: it makes the cosmic squid in Watchmen look like a wee twee fairy. This she-he-horror fights its opposite number, an extraterrestrial superphallic Uebermensch, and succeeds in raping him in true classic Alien style. With the usual, unholy, parturient result.
But the most harrowing sequence has one of the female characters, impregnated with an atrocity waiting to burst through her abdomen, racing to have an automated robot surgery pod operate an emergency caesarian/abortion. The extracted monster is a squealing, squirming betentacled mass of boneless flesh, held in the sterile metal grip of the robosurgeon.
Beyond the hideous delights of this sequence, I find it well encapsulates the genesis of Prometheus. We, the audience, are the woman. Inside us resides the secret monster of our Id. Ridley Scott is the robosurgeon, who clinically, mechanically extracts the creature and shows it to us: the creature being, of course, the film.
Some final random notes: the acting level is uniformly above par; great pleasure is derived from Michael Fassbender‘s alternately childlike and malevolent android Dave. He provides an incarnation of the Superego– sandwiching the humans between himself and the Id of the monsters.
This is definitely a star-making turn for Noomi Rapace, as protagonist scientist Elizabeth Shaw. Strength and vulnerability, emotion and will to knowledge, are complexly communicated by her wonderfully expressive features.
Charlize Theron plays yet another ice-queen bitch. Disturbingly, the trailer before the film was for Snow White and the Huntsman, where she plays yet again another ice-queen bitch. Lady better watch out for the stereotype patrol.
The visuals are predictably stunning, and this is one of the very few 3D films I’ve seen that justifies the extra price.
So: welcome to his nightmare, and to yours. Go see it.
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Scott is not alone in this club of visualists/dreamers. I would group him with Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (all four being graphic artists originally) as cinematic visionaries who triumph over weak story to enthrall us with their worlds; the distant children of Georges Melies.
(In comics, I place Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Rick Griffin and Jean Giraud in the same family.)
Still, it should be pointed out that these directors do their best work with quality scripts: The Fisher King for Gilliam, Alien and Thelma and Louise for Scott, Beetlejuice and Big Fish for Burton. And other visualists, such as Jean Cocteau, Stanley Kubrick or David Fincher, have always worked both hemispheres of the brain — investing just as much energy into the writing as into the dreaming. Scott himself has evolved in this direction.
May he continue to do so; he is currently developing a sequel to his other SF masterpiece, Blade Runner. And Prometheus ends with the possibility of a grandiose sequel.
Perhaps science-fiction will have its John Ford, after all.
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Silly P.S. # 1:
Noomi Rapace was discovered as the star of the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in which she played Lisbeth Salander. The American version stars Rooney Mara.
Those are three cool names!
Silly P.S. #2:
In 1977, I clipped a pretentious review of ‘The Duellists’ and sent it to the Pseud’s Corner column of the satirical magazine Private Eye. They sent me back a cheque for five pounds sterling, enough for a nice dinner at Hamburger Delight.
Thanks for the burger, Ridley!
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I’ve read that Giger was actually brought on board at the insistence of writer Dan O’Bannon, who also provides a connection with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. The story goes that in film school O’Bannon and Carpenter met and talked about various sci-fi ideas, including a dingy “blue collar schlubs vs. space alien” remake of The Thing From Another World, but they had a falling out after making Dark Star. Meanwhile, Alejandro Jodorowski was impressed enough by Dark Star to recruit O’Bannon to join him and his team (including Giger) that were working on his unmade Dune film. When Alien was later made it was O’Bannon who insisted on Giger’s involvement, but he himself was later banned from the set after falling out with Ridley Scott.
That’s the narrative on Jason Zinoman’s book (Shock Value), anyway.
I’m looking forward to seeing “Prometheus” — thanks for the insight.
Regarding the science fiction concept of interplanetary or interstellar seeding, the similar genetic make-up of apes and humans is not a show-stopper.
Life on Earth has shown that it is remarkably resilient and adaptable — in ways that just 25 years ago scientists would have deemed as highly improbable, or even absurd.
Bacteria, or higher-level life such as tardigrades, have shown that the temperature and chemical extremes in which life can survive are remarkably vast, up to and including outer space itself.
Couple that with the fact lunar and Martian meteorites are frequently found here on Earth — ejected from their original source by past asteroid impacts, and later gravitationally captured here after their long journey through space — and it becomes clear that such interplanetary or interstellar “seeding” is a distinct possibility.
And such seeding does not even need to occur at the asteroid level — it can even occur at the planetary level. If you think “rogue planets” are some science fiction writer’s fantasy, talk to any astrophysicist and you’ll soon find out such planets are not only possible — it’s very likely they are quite common, as any number of events could blast most or all of a planet out of an orbit and away from its parent star. And if such a planet or large moon has a molten core (such cores are common), it can hurtle through space for billions of years with life living quite comfortably below its rocky or icy surface.
So, if one accepts the theory that life in the universe is commonplace, whether through seeding or whatever, life on these billions and billions of planets would evolve differently and at different rates. And since it’s highly unlikely we would be the first beings in the universe to develop into a sentient race, if a more advanced race bopped on by Earth and started studying our animal life, it’s entirely possible they may also have done a bit of simple genetic engineering in the process.
Hi Russ, Ave, Alex Buchet here.
Russ: perhaps I’ve expressed myself in a clumsey fashion.
I think, along with Geoffey Hoyle and other respected scientists, that the ‘seeding’ hypothesis of the appearance of life on Earth is plausible.
However, ‘Prometheus’ goes beyond that and postulates the idea that humanity –Homo Sapiens — was directly seeded onto the planet. This hypothesis is absolutely untenable in light of modern genetics (though, as I said, the brilliant Larry Niven found a way around the problem.)
Ave: thanks for your enlightening comments. Dan O’Bannon also likely brought Moebius into the mix, as the two had collaborated in the Métal Hurlant comic ‘The Long Tomorrow’.
From everything I’ve read,the late O’Bannon was really screwed over re: Alien. Hope he did better with ‘Total Recall’.
O’Bannon once gave a succinct definition of a good story I rather like:
“Three acts and a climax.”
Whoops, that should’ve read:
“Three Acts and a Conflict”…sorry, I’m getting senile.
BTW, ‘Prometheus’ could be construed as an extreme remake of the wonderful ’50s SF classic film, ‘Forbidden Planet’.
Aw Noah, let me write about THAT celluloid wonder one day!
AB — Sounds like they did a weak bit of research on the whole seeding angle. After I see the film I’ll be better equipped to critique it. Since our DNA is very similar to that of primates, and primates have been on Earth about 50 million years (modernish monkeys about 30 million years), that ought to be the film’s timeline if “humans” were supposedly seeded whole cloth from elsewhere.
But Russ, that’s just the point. IT IS’NT.
I don’t want to spoil, but this flick makes no sense whatsoever in terms of current genetic/life sciences knowledge. that’s not usually an issue for me, except when a flick like ‘Prometheus’ markets itself as some kind of intellectual breakthroughfor cinema, when in fact its premises are ripped from yesterday’s headlines in the Weekly World News.
At the very influential site ainticoolnews.com, founder Harry Knowles bravely defends Prometheus against a
tidal wave of bad press:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/56178
Warning, here there be spoilers.
AB — Ah, I can wait until after Friday to read all of that stuff.
Having seen Prometheus (thank you, vacation to France!) I think that it’s hard to talk about the considerable weaknesses of the film, as they are all on a screenplay level. I think it’s a dashingly well directed film, filled with visual panache and soaring, awe-inspiring beauty. And the major scares in it are very effective. But on any basic screenplay logic level, the film falls apart with even a glancing amount of scrutiny. It also suffers from having its major third act set piece given away in the US trailer. And this isn’t about surrendering to it or not, this is about things like the premise of the first act of the movie making absolutely no sense in light of the events of third.
The problem is that discussing this involves spoiling the film. There’s just no way around it. So I hope this is a discussion we can have next week after the film opens in the states.
You can spoil it now as far as I’m concerned if you want; I never care about that stuff.
I don’t know; stick a big “SPOILER ALERT” on the front of your post if you want. Or you can wait. I’m just saying, as far as I’m concerned, feel free to spoil away.
Okay. Will do. But probably tomorrow. It’s 2 am here in Europe right now!
Aw screw it, I can’t sleep.
Okay, this is going to be ALL SPOILERS.
Keeping in mind that on a visual and directorial level, I was quite taken with the film, I think that it really doesn’t work on a screenplay level. The screenplay suffers from many problems, but the four biggest are that it’s predictable, that it sinks under the weight of demands outside of telling of a story, that it crams too much content in for its running length and that it ultimately doesn’t makes sense logically.
I don’t care whether Earth being seeded is plausible or not. On almost all things, I’ll grant them their basic premise, and I actually thought that, were the film longer (or a mini-series) this would provoke some interesting religious and philosophical inquiry, the way Battlestar Galactica sometimes was capable of as it pitted genocidal monotheistic robots again polytheistic somewhat more sympathetic humans.
And I know that Alex acknowledges above that there are logical problems etc. with the film, so this is less any kind of counterargument to this post than simply an explanation of why the screenplay-level problems sank the film for this particular viewer. This was one of those instances where I enjoyed the ride but almost immediately afterward, the film fell apart.
Anyway… Let’s start with the logical problems. The biggest one is the film’s premise. The premise of the film is that the aliens who seeded Earth left behind a map to lead us to them. But the twist at the end is that Noomi Rapace et al did not discover their homeworld, but rather discovered essentially a moon-sized Trinity site, a place where they designed and developed extermination weapons that were meant to wipe out all mankind.
So why– back when they liked us– did they leave us a map to their weapons testing facility? I say “back when they liked us” because the film makes it clear the downed alien spacecraft were going to fly to Earth to deliver their payload of spongy penis and vagina monsters. So they didn’t need us to come there to exterminate us. They were going to come to us.
So why does the map go there? The film doesn’t even bother with attempting an answer, it just kind of hopes that you don’t realize that happened. At the end, Noomi and Michael Fassbender’s Head set a course for wherever the aliens came from, so we have it double-confirmed at the end that this planet isn’t their home world. This one particularly rankles me because it’s fixable with like two lines of dialogue “Why did the map lead up to the testing site?” “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
That’s the biggest of the film’s story-level problems, but it’s not the only one. Logan Marshall Green’s character chooses a horrific, painful death via flamethrower when we already know the air on the planet’s surface is toxic due to high carbon dioxide levels and would like deliver a much less painful death in under two minutes. The medi-bay that Noomi Rapace uses to remove the alien from her body is configured for a man even though it’s in a woman’s cabin. (This actually turns out to likely be bungled foreshadowing as to Guy Pearce’s presence on the ship. Bungled because we already know that he’s on the ship as we’ve seen Michael Fassbender communing with a hidden person in cybersleep and Guy Pearce’s Mr. Weyland is the only other character in the entire film and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together. )
Then there’s the characters who don’t behave the way people actually behave. Noomi Rapace’s lack of ever telling anyone “Oh hey, this expedition we’re taking right now is being lead by a robot who is probably not on our side, given that whole trying to force me into hypersleep with an alien fetus monster inside of me.”
Next are the extra-screenplay demands. The film is both a sequel and, clearly, an anchor-film for a new franchise within the Alien Universe. As the third act happens, the film gets taken over by these demands. In particular, there’s a total fan service moment when the chair-gun-thing finally appears and this– rather than anything having to do with character or story– is treated as the emotional climax of the film. The entire staging of the final major action sequence is done so that the ship will be in the right position to be investigated by Sigorney Weaver et al to investigate it in a few years. At the same time, all human and android presence in the ship or on the planet has to be eliminated as well. At the same time, no summer blockbuster can be self-contained unless you’re Christopher Nolan and so it has to have an open ending.
But one of the major problems with the screenplay is simply that it’s got too much content for its running time. I’m all with Alex Buchet on finding the thematic content of the film really interesting. But there just isn’t enough time to explore it, develop character, set up the scares and the action and move the plot along. As a result, everything gets short-changed.
The final problem is the film’s predictability. This is partially not the writers’ fault. After all, the trailer gives away that an enemy spaceship eventually takes off out of the ruin. But there isn’t a single story beat that you can’t figure out from about five minutes into the film. I found myself relieved when Michael Fassbender was going to put Noomi Rapace into cold storage because I thought for a moment they were going to pull a “Psycho” and take out the headlining actor partway through the film. It turned out this wasn’t the case.
I love Ridley Scott, I really do. Alien and Blade Runner are two of my favorite movies and while Gladiator is a totally ridiculous and campy swords and sandals epic… well… so are all the other swords and sandals epics. I’ve enjoyed his minor efforts like Matchstick Men, his competent hackwork like American Gangster and I think The Duelists and even Legend are pretty aces. And the work he does here is admirable. The terrifying segments really are terrifying. There’s some really interesting integration of visual design and theme. Michael Fassbender is wonderful.
But sadly the screenplay just doesn’t work beyond getting you from point A to point B. Compared to Hampton Fancher’s Blade Runner screenplay or Dan O’Bannon’s Alien screenplay it’s just junk. A far better version of this movie was made a few years ago. It was called “Sunshine,” and Danny Boyle directed it and it bombed hard in the States.
Okay, this was a bit rambly but as I said it’s two in the morning over here and I’ve taken some Tylenol PM. Cheers all…
I pretty much endorse everything you say, Isaac, although as my review indicates my takeaway is far more positive.
Are you in Paris now? We could have a drink.
Alex
Thinking about it…I guess I was wrong to dismiss Russ Maheras’ theories of bio-seeding.
But I guess I’ll wait for the general release this weekend in the USA to discuss the point.
(Actually, I’m kind of starved for good SF discussion…)
AB,
Ach! I wish! I just got back from Roland-Garros (Allez Tsonga!) and I’m leaving very very early tomorrow and have to pack and such. BUT my wife and I have really fallen in love with Paris and I’m sure we’ll be back. And next time you’re in NYC, if you ever are, look me up!
Deal!
And while we’re speaking of science fiction…
R.I.P. Ray Bradbury.
Alas, yes.
Finally got to see “Prometheus” today (had been carefully avoiding the two threads about the movie here, wary of spoilers).
And yes, it’s visually pretty extraordinary, has some nicely harrowing moments; but unlike the lean-and-mean “Alien,” the screenplay is meandering, cluttered, muddled. (Will still buy the DVD when it comes out, though…)
Saw it tonight. Pretty letdown by the overly heavy Noomi Rapace and the pretty hamfisted Christianity imagery. I liked the science parts better. I mean Space Jesus. Really now…eesh.
Still, the engineers and the ship were pretty damn cool. I liked how there were different breeds for different roles. Also, the scene where the biologist and geologist get destroyed by the worm was one of the best comedy of errors I’ve seen in a while.
I think part of the problem was getting Damon Lindelof to write the script. It felt just like Lost by trying to be too meaningful without any real insight rather than just going for the punch everyone really wanted.
What annoys me is the universal view — even among severe critics of the film — that Scott is dealing with deep philosophical material here. He isn’t.
So what if humanity was created by the Engineers? No Vatican theologian would waste a second worrying about it.Why should Shaw consider this a challenge to her faith?
Actually, the only interesting philosophical area of speculation here is treated as a minor sideshow: the robot Dave and his claims to personhood.
Yeah… who’s to say aliens wouldn’t have a religious philosophy? Even the pious folks at the Vatican are smart enough to realize these days that even if we do find out intelligent life out there, it won’t necessarily be a game-changer, religious philosoph-wise.
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R. Maheras says:
…Even the pious folks at the Vatican are smart enough to realize these days that even if we do find out intelligent life out there, it won’t necessarily be a game-changer, religious philosophy-wise.
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Like any power structure, they will interpret possible “game-changing” events in whatever way suits them. If the discovery of alien intelligent life threatens their scheme, they’ll say it’s actually not that important.
Or weasel around it, the way those apocalyptic cults do whenever the end of the world fails to show up on schedule. As was the case with Christianity; Jesus Himself predicting the End would come along in the lifetime of some of His contemporaries.
Or, as in the argument that “9/11 changed everything,” these events are used as a handy excuse to sweep away dissent, grab for ever more power…
Caitlín R. Kiernan’s blog ( http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/ ) turned me on to the following:
“Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About”: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
More “Alien”-“Prometheus” related thoughts in the May 31-June 12 entries at at http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/
I don’t think it’s weaseling; there really is no particular reason that alien life should be a problem for christianity. I don’t think alien seeding would be either, especially not in the most likely form (i.e., microbacteria floating in on space rocks.)
Catholicism doesn’t have any problem with evolution; it’s not Biblically literalist. The child-abuse scandal is a way, way bigger challenge to Catholicism as it’s now constructed than is Prometheus.
@Mike Hunter: thanks for the extremely intelligent comments in the ‘cavalorn’ links you’ve made.
And no, the Roman Catholic Church would have no problem with panspermia. The Church has actually a lot of doxa on seemingly crazy sci-fi.
There’s a strong and wonderful tradition of science-fiction that, if not by Christians (R.A.Lafferty, Orson Scott Card) treats of Christian themes and problematics.
May I recommend:
‘A Case of Conscience’, by James Blish.
‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’, by Walter M. Miller
..and the anti-religious shock masterpiece by, of all people, the crowd-pleasing Harry Harrison:
‘The Streets of Ashkelon’.
Lots more, all far more sophisticated than ‘Prometheus’.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I don’t think it’s weaseling; there really is no particular reason that alien life should be a problem for christianity.
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(Wrote the following this morning, but didn’t have the time to post it)
And there really is no particular reason that gay marriage should be a problem for straights, nor the then-new idea that the Earth revolves round the Sun should be a problem for Holy Mother Church.
But alas, reasonableness is hardly a consistent phenomenon…
At least the Catholic Church’s stance is enlightened in this regard:
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Father Gabriel Funes, the chief astronomer of the Vatican, said in an interview to the Vatican paper, Osservatore Romano last year:
“Just like there is an abundance of creatures on earth, there could also be other beings, even intelligent ones, that were created by God. That doesn’t contradict our faith, because we cannot put boundaries to God’s creative freedom. As saint Francis would say, when we consider the earthly creatures to be our “brothers and sisters”, why couldn’t we also talk about a “extraterrestrial brother”? He would still be part of creation.”
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Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/44713/vatican-holds-conference-on-extraterrestrial-life/#ixzz1y8cRz6jA
Now, anyway:
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For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6536400/The-Vatican-joins-the-search-for-alien-life.html
Back to the computer this evening:
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AB says:
…There’s a strong and wonderful tradition of science-fiction that, if not by Christians (R.A.Lafferty, Orson Scott Card) treats of Christian themes and problematics.
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I’ve read tons of SF around 40 years ago, but aide from the inescapable “A Canticle for Leibowitz” (which, if it delved into Christian themes — unless merely having a priest as protagonist qualifies — I’d missed it) pretty much missed science-fictional riffs on Christianity. I’ll keep an eye out for your other recommendations; I’m currently dipping my toe back in the SF sea, with some later Arthur C. Clarke novels.
Though in Marvel’s extremely fine b&w “Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction” magazine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_Worlds_of_Science_Fiction ), I’d read in the 70s a jaw-droppingly blasphemous “take” on The Greatest Story Ever Told, Michael Moorcock’s “Behold the Man,” superlatively adapted by Doug Moench and Alex Nino.
Reading the synopsis of the Moorcock story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man , it’s astonishing that the comics adaptation was utterly, laceratingly faithful. (So to speak…) In a way that would not be remotely possible today, with frothing fundies ever on the ascendant, and corporations quailing in fear of their wrath.
The best Christian science fiction, and maybe just the best science fiction ever, period, is C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy.
James Blish is interesting too.
Must read those C.S. Lewis books again; all I remember is that a character was named “Maskull” (or something like that), which I thought sounded cool…
And I must’ve read some Blish too (wasn’t he the “Cities In Flight” guy?) — worked my way though the SF bookcase of the Coral Gables Public Library — though again, at least 40 years and hundreds of books later, can’t recall at all.
Which on the bright side, when rereading, means that “everything old is new again”!
Hmm, I believe Mike is confusing Lewis’ book with “A Voyage to Arcturus’ — itself a great classic of Gnostic science fiction!
Yes, Blish was definitely the ‘Cities in Flight’ author. He was also one of the first to write serious SF criticism; and, as a horror fan, Mike should recall his masterpiece of demonologic dread, ‘Black Easter’.
Don’t recall (my fuzzy memories are a recurrent theme with these old books), but it sounds worth looking up!
Finally saw this — worth seeing for the medi-pod abortion scene.
SPOILERS (if that’s not redundant by now): Apart from all the other script flaws which others have already pointed out, what really didn’t work for me were the run-for-your-life scenes near the end of the film with Noomi Rapace. She’s decided that everyone should kamikaze so as to stop the Bad Dad from returning to earth; the natural inference from that is that she’s also resigned herself to dying on the planet. (This may not actually be her intention, but we don’t realise that until the very end). And then there’s scenes of her running from destruction, and it’s meant to be thrilling, but: why should I care? She’s engineered events so that she’s going to die, so her flight made neither narrative nor emotional sense to me. It’s as if Last Days (the Kurt Cobain suicide movie) had had a sequence where Cobain gets chased by a serial killer: dude, who cares, he’s going to kill himself anyway.
Speaking of serial killer sequences: I thought Sunshine was a fantastic film for the first two thirds, but that third-act left-turn — ugh.
On Christianity and alien life: my impression was that this had been a problem for at least some theologians, on the grounds that (i) creation was corrupted in the Fall but (ii) partially redeemed by the crucifixion. If you’ve got life on other planets, then the question arises of whether they too were damned by a similar fall and, if so, whether they were also redeemed by Christ. These seem at least like prima facie, if not insurmountable, problems for literal-minded interpretations of scripture (which, yes, Noah, do exist and are important traditions in theology).
Jones, they exist; it’s just not a big problem for the Catholic church right at the moment.
In his Space trilogy C.S. Lewis does some pretty fantastic things with the fall and the crucifixion and what both of those things mean for life on other planets.
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Jones, one of the Jones boys says:
…SPOILERS…Noomi Rapace [has] decided that everyone should kamikaze so as to stop the Bad Dad from returning to earth…
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No; as I recall, she just told the crew in the Nostro… er, big spaceship they had to stop that alien ship. If some other non-suicidal maneuver (say, passing by close and scorching it with your exhaust blast) might have come to mind, they could’ve done it. (Though that would not go with the self-sacrifice theme highlighted in “Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About”: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html .
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…the natural inference from that is that she’s also resigned herself to dying on the planet. (This may not actually be her intention, but we don’t realise that until the very end). And then there’s scenes of her running from destruction, and it’s meant to be thrilling, but: why should I care? She’s engineered events so that she’s going to die, so her flight made neither narrative nor emotional sense to me…
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Fair enough; came across as the filmmakers deciding there had to be some more jolts toward the end, of the “killer menace that we thought was dead coming back for one more attack” variety.
And, sheesh, if that was the Engineer who was in the horseshoe-craft in the elephant-headed outfit, how did he survive and get to Rapace so quickly?
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Speaking of serial killer sequences: I thought Sunshine was a fantastic film for the first two thirds, but that third-act left-turn — ugh.
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Failure Of Imagination…
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On Christianity and alien life: my impression was that this had been a problem for at least some theologians, on the grounds that (i) creation was corrupted in the Fall but (ii) partially redeemed by the crucifixion. If you’ve got life on other planets, then the question arises of whether they too were damned by a similar fall and, if so, whether they were also redeemed by Christ….
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As illustrated by Frazetta: http://www.joevicas.com/frazettaforum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2560 (check out the reworked — and as usual, inferior — version farther down.)
And, Comics Reporter says, “Totally Missed This Faith Erin Hicks Comic On Prometheus”: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2nrdFOijCcU/T9YfenalzxI/AAAAAAAABkI/ZP0vLUeq3ZQ/s1600/prometheus.jpg
I do agree with Jones that even the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have Big Questions to work out if/when we encounter intelligent alien life. As he rightly says, the big problems for the more traditional forms of Christianity are mostly regarding salvation, not creation. I don’t think they’re insuperable by any means, but it’ll be interesting to see how the questions get answered.
As a side-note, Giordano Bruno was very probably not killed because of his belief in other planets:
“The theme of his On the Infinite Universe and Worlds is not Copernicanism but pantheism, a theme also developed in his On Shadows of Ideas. It appears that his personal cosmology informed his espousal of Copernicus, not the other way around. Much of his work was theological in nature, and constituted a passionate frontal assault on the philosophical basis of the Church’s spiritual teachings, especially on the nature of human salvation and on the primacy of the soul (or in modern terms, he opposed the Church’s emphasis on spiritualism with an unapologetic and all-encompassing materialism). Copernicanism, where it entered at all, was supporting material not the central thesis. This suggests that the Church’s complaint with Bruno was theological not astronomical.”
http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm
Now, I recognize that any kind of execution for deviation on matters of faith rightly shocks the modern conscience…but probably people should be accurate in their claims anyway. Pantheism is of course heretical in traditional Christianity, and remains heretical today in those faiths, even if it’s pretty unlikely one could get burned at the stake for it, one could certainly be defrocked or excommunicated.
But I suppose the appeal of Bruno as a martyr to free thought depends somewhat on him being a crusading scientific atheist, not a mouldy old Hermeticist with a star-gazing hobby. I mean, the thought is quite obviously equally free either way, but modern narratives aren’t as closely paralleled.
The church had a similar problem with native peoples in the americas, of course. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a big deal for the Church to encounter alien life…but it’d be a big deal for everyone, surely. The idea that it would somehow automatically logically undermine the faith just isn’t the case, is all I”m saying.
Oh, sure, there’s definitely an analogy with the Native Americans…and, if you’re familiar with this stuff, with the medieval and Renaissance speculations on the inhabitants of the Antipodes.
I think sentient alien life is a wee bit trickier, but of course, as you say, it will be tricky for everyone.
A few Serious Theological Questions I can come up with, off the top of my head…
1) Are the Sentient Alien Life Forms (SALFs) fallen? Lewis pretty neatly avoided most condundrums by answering that question in the negative and making the Fall a (so-far) purely local event.
2) If fallen, was the Crucifixion redemptive for them? This is the question utterly ignored in Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series, which postulates a large, inhabited multiverse in which every species faces its own Garden choice, and virtually every species Falls.
3) If the answer to 2) is no, then we have a problem: are we saying that Christ’s sacrifice was somehow insufficient? Whole host of thorny issues here — multiple Incarnations? Tricky if the SALFs don’t have a Messiah legend of their own. Trickier still, maybe, if they do — the challenges of inter-species syncretism are probably pretty considerable.
4) If the answer to 2) is yes, we have a bit of a theodicy problem…mixed with a pretty big anthropocentrism problem. Why did God make His perfect revelation to Earth? And what about the billions (trillions?) of SALFs who died without a chance to hear of His grace? (I think the Church has pretty good answers to that — far better than certain strains of evangelism, but still tricky.)
Right….Lewis’ answers are:
1. As you say, no…but he does have the possibility for them to fall (and one of the books is devoted to an essentially edenic dilemma on another planet.)
2. Lewis’ answer is “Yes” — the crucifixion affects everyone. Specifically, all post cruciixion creation is humanoid….
3. obviously avoided since the andwer to 2 is yes
4. as you say, as a catholic not a huge problem for Lewis — basically God does lots of things that human beings (or other intelligent life) can’t figure out, and it’s Christian’s job to spread the word about grace are I think his answers to your questions….
The exact nature of the dilemma would sort of depend on the alien life in question…if I remember, James Blish has a novel where the alien race has no concept of God and lives in harmony, creating a problem since the perfect society appears to be godless. Blish solves it by revealing that the whole planet is a demonic projection, and causing it to explode when exorcised. So…basically the challenge to the Church results in a genocidal fantasy, which is not without precedent, but still, fairly depressing.
Well, please note that that’s not Blish’s position; it’s the viewpoint of the main character, a priest.
Not that it matters all that much but Lewis wasn’t a Catholic.
Right you are, Suat. High Anglican.
Alex, it’s a little ambiguous…but I don’t think the priest is that far off from Blish’s view. (Though it’s been a while since I read it.)
The Blish novel is A Case of Conscience. I read it way back, but as I recall (spoilers etc.) the priest decides the morally-perfect-without-God aliens are a spiritual trap, and exorcises the planet… at the same time that a mining company starts drilling for a superabundant but highly explosive material that permeates the planet. The planet blows up; whether it’s because of a mining disaster leading to a chain reaction, or Divine Intervention, is left to the reader.
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