Dear 'Prometheus' Slanters,

Dear 'Prometheus' film nay-sayers,

Firstly, let's get that great, big, face-hugging elephant out of the room. Prometheus is NOT an 'Alien' movie. I can see how you could construe it that way, being a Ridley Scott film and thus taken as a prequel/sequel to the films. Instead, Prometheus is set in the same universe as 'Alien' and shares concepts from it, but the overall plot and objective of the film is far from it's survival horror relatives.

So, let's break down the basics of the film, before going in-depth about the overall message. What's the superficial plot?

Well, basically this:

1. Anthropologists/Scientists discover a connection between ancient civilizations. Each civilization has a different depiction of the same galaxy far, far, away. 
2. Upon closer examination of this early cave-man depiction, they establish that the system referred to has a planet, much like ours, which is capable of sustaining life.
3. They present this theory to a mega-corporation called Weyland Industries, which decides to fund the trillion dollar mission to explore said planet.
4. Upon arrival, they find existing structures, which appeared to be long-abandoned. 
5. When exploring a structure, they find that it's previous inhabitants suffered through something horrible and met their demise.
6. Further investigation within the structure yields vats of a black, unknown substance. 
7. One of the crew becomes infected, does the beast with two backs with his girlfriend and later on gets killed due to the severity of his infection. 
8. He then comes back to life as a superhuman alien-zombie, only to be killed again. 
9. The infected crew-member's girlfriend then has an alien baby, which she had to c-section out of herself in a crude manner.
10. They discover one of the "Engineers", or humanoids who created the structure, still alive and re-awaken him in the hopes of communication.
11. Engineer kills everyone. 
12. From here on it's your standard horror flick, with lots of screaming, running and blood. 

Hmm, reading it now that I've typed it out does seem rather bland. What's there to like about the film? Why do I think it's one of the smartest films I've watched yet? 

Well, for one, there's so much symbolism and suggested themes here that it's very hard to take the movie at face-value. 

What's the overall theme then?

Basically, it's the story of creation. How we came to be and our misconceptions of our creation, being justified by our own man-made religions. 

So, let's take a look at the film, and fuck it, we'll do it from the start. I'm going to break the key scenes down to two sections, being Depicted (what's being shown) and Symbolized (The symbolism of the depicted scene) where applicable:

The death of an Engineer. The Life of a planet.

Depicted: A lone Engineer is by the water's edge of a waterfall on some unknown planet. He looks towards an ascending ship as it takes off before opening a small canister of what is presumed to be "the black substance" (hereforth referred to as "lifegoo") and consumes it. His body is quickly consumed by the lifegoo and he falls into the water, while his cells are broken down into DNA and washed away.

Symbolized: This is the fundamental creation of life. The Engineer, consuming the lifegoo only to be broken down into DNA from which life on the planet will flourish. The ship leaving before he consumes it shows that there was no intention of it happening any other way.

Notes: This is a very important scene in the scope of the movie, as it gives us insight as to the function of the lifegoo and the intention of the Engineer. There is a slight hesitation before he consumes the lifegoo, which is indicative of the Engineers acknowledgement of what the consequences to him would be if he consumed it.

The struggle to hold on to faith.

This is another important point that I need to touch on, as I've been tugging on the importance of it back and forth, but felt it needed to be included, which is the struggle to maintain faith and the symbolism of Elizabeth Shaw's crucifix. 

It is commonly referred to throughout the film and numerously shown in scenes, but what is more important, is the scene where David (the android), removes Shaw's cross and keeps it when he suspects her of being infected. 

It seems a bit fishy, but if you keep in mind that he took the cross from her, prior to meeting the Engineer, it will make a lot more sense later on as I break the film down further. 

Inside the structure.

Depicted: The crew enter the structure and find a closed room with a decapitated Engineer at the doorway. They enter the room and see a great mural with the depiction of a humanoid, with his abdomen bust open. There is another mural of a Xenomorph and vats of the lifegoo littered all over. They spend what must be 10 minutes in there, before Shaw notices there is a change and says "We have affected the atmosphere. The mural...it's changing." and so it seemed to decay by their presence. 

Important things to note in this scene: 

1. The mielworms being stood upon as they entered the room.
2. The vat of lifegoo with the lifegoo leaking from it.
3. The changing of the mural by their presence.

Symbolized: This is our first introduction to the corruption of man. Our presence changing the mural shows us that we are not quite like the Engineers, as we thought we were. The scene of them stepping on the Mielworms is important in the sense that the Mielworms had always been there, so surely they must have come in contact with the Lifegoo at some point during the 2000 years they were left in isolation with them. However, by us coming in contact with them, and them in the contact of the lifegoo, did they turn into an eel-alien creature. 

What happened 2000 years ago? 

Depicted: They do carbon dating on the decapitated Engineer corpse and establish that it died about 2000 years prior. 

Symbolized: It's safe to assume that one of mankind's greatest events happened about 2000 years ago, being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This ties up in the same timeframe as the deaths of the Engineers on LV223.

David at the steering wheel. 

Depicted: David finds the command quarters of the ship and through some investigation, unlocks a recording of the Engineers, prior to the events that led up to their deaths. It's depicted that they had charted a course for earth and placed themselves in hyper-sleep. One of the Engineers remains alive in a hyper-sleep chamber.

This gives us some insight as to the Engineer's intentions. They intended to return to earth, but their purpose is unknown. This scene mostly justifies the finding of a live Engineer and is important for a later breakdown. 

Wayland's agenda and David's objective.

Depicted: Upon returning to Prometheus, David is shown in a scene wearing a head-unit and seemed to be communicating with Weyland and receiving orders. He then takes a drop of the lifegoo, places it on his finger and spikes Holloway's drink with it after having a discussion about existentialism.

What can be drawn from this scene:  Weyland is looking for any form of longevity. He uses David as a tool to drug Holloway with the lifegoo, to see how it would affect him and if he could use it to prolong his own life. There was no malicious intent with the drugging, but a blatant disregard for others by Weyland and it shows just how Weyland would go to achieve his goal. 

The virgin birth and the beast within.

Depicted: Prior to transforming into a monster, Holloway had intercourse with Shaw. It is established before the actual deed that Shaw and Holloway have tried to conceive a child, but Shaw is unable to have children for unknown reasons. After Holloway is killed, Shaw is quarantined by David in fear of infection, but soon realizes that Shaw is pregnant with a monster. Shaw breaks free from isolation, runs to a surgery machine and has a cesarean to have the monster removed. Once removed, we're shown that this monster is a tentacled squid-like creature. 

Symbolized: Again, another image of the host with it's abdomen torn open. The creature that protrudes from her is violent and wants to kill her. Again, through sacrifice comes life symbolism which we are repeatedly shown in the film. 

Weyland's death.  

This is my favorite scene in the movie, as from this point on, the puzzle pieces start falling together. 

Depicted: Weyland, David, Shaw, Ford and some random security guy enter the command room of the ship. They awaken the Engineer and David communicates with him. The Engineer looks at them, astonished for a second, gently strokes the head of David, only to decapitate him and kill Weyland with David's decapitated head. 

"There is nothing" were Weyland's final words and beautifully fitting to the situation. So deliberate, yet subtle.

Symbolized: This is the moment when we meet our maker, but instead of having answers fulfilled, we are destroyed by them as we are not worthy. The scene of Weyland being killed by the Engineer, using David's head is a grand moment in symbolizing our makers, killing us with the "life" we have created. I'll explain everything I derived from this scene in my interpretation summary below:

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The Engineers have a hard-on for creating life. Their belief of "through sacrifice, comes life" is numerously shown throughout the film in:

1. The opening scene.
2. Holloway's death scene (he sacrificed himself to Vickers, so as to let the others on the ships and then comes back to life as a monster)
3. The cesarean scene.
4. The crash of Prometheus into the ship scene. 
5. The giant squid eating the Engineer to become the Xenomorph scene.

There are much more, but these are blatantly apparent and need to be noted. 

The lifegoo is not a weapon. It is a substance with life-creating properties which changes purpose according to the nature of the host. The mielworm transformation is indicative of this, as they only changed to something dreadful once coming into contact with humans (which is why the short scene of us standing on them and the following scene of the worms wriggling in the lifegoo is important). 

The Engineers are not "like us", they are us. They are what we eventually would evolve to - the pinnacle of human evolution. They are bigger, stronger, completely hairless (look at Darwinism and how we have slowly been losing our body hair over human evolution) with magnificent intellect. 

The depictions on earth, through various different ancient cultures all have the same overall message. Beings pointing to the skies, to a cluster which LV223 is on. Basically, an invitation to us saying "When you become like us, you can find us here." 

I used to, but no longer subscribe to the notion that Jesus Christ was an Engineer. Instead, we know that the Engineers have been observing our evolution and my belief is that they observed the horrors of the Crucifixion of Christ (which is why David removed Shaw's crucifix prior to meeting them. It wasn't for "contamination", but rather because David had an idea that their dismay of us derived from Christ's death and didn't want the symbolism of the crucifix to be present when meeting the Engineer.). 

The Engineers themselves, neutral by all standards (much like Christ), witnessed the crucifixion and decided that we were a lost cause. Yes, we did sacrifice Christ (or he himself did), but no life came of it, only more death under the guise of a noble intention (the Crusades, witch-hunts and various atrocities performed by the Catholic church). They wanted to destroy us (basically reformat the planet and try again), but witnessing our history corrupted the Engineers themselves. No longer were they neutral, but rather "corrupted"  by the "sins" which we, their creations performed. They felt ill-emotions towards us, and because of that, were no longer a worthy "neutral" vessel from which the lifegoo could be used on, which is why things went awry for them around the same time Jesus died. 

Now, here's why I like that scene so much. 

In the scene where Weyland is killed, the Engineer does not instantly try to kill the humans. Instead, he stands and watches them, almost amazed at how far we have come. He looks taken back by David and his knowledge of their language and for a brief second, there is some emotion on the Engineer's face as he strokes David's head, as if he is proud that we've managed to overcome our strife (failures as creations) and reach a level of technological prowess to be able to follow their callings and find them. However, his fascination and admiration is short lived, because as he touched David, he realized that he was not human. Instead, a "fake life" which we have created, completely void of the sacrifice required to create life and defeating the Engineer's overall purpose. This, coupled with Weyland's request for an unnatural longer life was all the Engineer needed to realize that as far as we had come, we had not gone anywhere at all as a species. 

"There is nothing" was absolutely fitting as not only did it describe that there is nothing here that he came for, but also touches on our purpose in the universe. 

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Some info regarding symbolism in the film:

• LV-223 = Leviticus 22:3 "Say to them: 'For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the LORD."
• Prometheus the Deity - In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Greek: Προμηθεύς, pronounced [promɛːtʰeús]) is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay, and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity (theft of fire), an act that enabled progress and civilization. He is known for his intelligence and as a champion of mankind.

Regards,

Nahuel Graziani