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The 'Promethius' metahphor is what? *Spoilers* *Speculative thread*

killswitch, Xenomorph, 12 years ago

Guy Pearce (Peter Weyland) "We are now three months into the year of our Lord, 2023. At this moment of our civilization, we can create cybernetic individuals, who in just a few short years will be completely indistinguishable from us. Which leads to an obvious conclusion: WE are the gods now."

During the viral campaign it seemed clear cut to me that humanity would face a backlash for venturing into a privileged and sacred act of creating. I was certain this was one of the primary themes of the film given the title.

I searched the context of the film for the 'Prometheus moment', the metaphor for punishment via overstepping the mark so to speak. Unable to find this playing out, I assumed it had to pertain to humanity.

I'm now speculating that the Space Jockeys/Engineers are the Prometheus metaphor, their meddling's with creation self-destructive not once, but twice. Adding weight to Shaws statement after Holloway questions her dedication to God "but who created them". The Engineers are not Gods, they are 'Prometheus'. The act of creation is not special Holloway: "anyone can do it". But not anyone can escape the repercussions of the act.


I've read other forms of speculation on this subject which I believe to be wrong for various reasons.

1. One is the sort of 2001 <(Kubrick masterpiece) monolith moment when Humanity reaches a particular milestone, reaching the moon, reaching a planet in a distant galaxy, (Creation/theft of sacred Fire) a reaction is triggered and in the case of Prometheus, the human race which has become too advanced is destroyed.

2. Others that state that humanities experiments with the creation of life bio and synthetic (David) is an insult to out creators (my original thought).

The trouble with the two examples above is, remember, the derelict warship that was scheduled to destroy earth was scheduled to make that trip thousands of years ago. The ship was enclosed in rock and terrain which had smothered it over a long period of time. None of the above had even occurred when it was decided we would be eradicated.

This leads me on the question 1 and 2

1: What are your additional thoughts on the 'Prometheus' metaphor in the film? Did I miss its existence? What is the relevance of the title?

and

2: What possible reason could the engineers have for wanting to wipe us out?

I loved the conversation between David and Holloway touching on the relationships of a being towards its creator and a being towards its creation. "We made you because We could". Maybe the hard, cold irony of the situation is that they may have uncovered the truth there and then. As David would be scrapped in favor of the newer Hyperdyne systems like Ash, and then Ash would be mocked by Bishop as "a bit twitchy", Humanity simply scraps creations in favor of newer models. A few thousand years ago, when humanity was progressing too slowly, we were scheduled to be wiped out in favor of something else. Humanity the science experiment that got to live on because the engineers who were set to wipe them out had a harsh run in with the repercussions of creating life. We know Jockeys like to refine. (Squid to Face-huger)

jaguargod, Xenomorph, 12 years ago

Interesting theory. I agree that they couldn't have planned to destroy humans because they were making their own creations, since that plan was conceived 2.000 years ago.

Perhaps humans were originally supposed to be the engineered bioweapons, but we turned out too independent and uncontrollable. When they realized that, they began experimenting to develop the next weapon to destroy us, and found something even more uncontrollable than us. Perhaps they saw our potential to rival them as creators.

daveberg, Xenomorph, 12 years ago

Time is an issue for me at the moment so i'll have to be brief - I agree, the Prometheus myth ties into the acts of the engineers. Not the humans themselves. I believe at some point or another the Engineers relaised they'd made a mistake in our creation and sought to rectify this via mass extermination.

Deathdrop, Xenomorph, 12 years ago

So, what do we think about the idea that Jesus was a Space Jockey, as suggested in that one interview?

-Bloo-, Xenomorph, 12 years ago

Maybe we didn't do anything at all. Like you said, we like to replace old models with better ones. David didn't try waging war on everyone, did he? Or, more specifically, his model of robot in general, they didn't pull an I, Robot... his model just got replaced over time because the next one was better and eventually we got to Bishop.

Likewise, we didn't move onto DVDs from VHS tapes because the tapes somehow gave us HIV, right? They didn't do anything wrong, they just weren't advanced enough. Think of us as VHS tapes. In that case, I'd love to see what Blu-rays are. Maybe greys? Time travelers? It's a very interesting thought.

However, I agree with mostly everything you said - nice theory.

Also, Jesus being a Jockey would be magnificent. That would mean we had contact with them after our creation. And that they somehow figured out how to grow facial hair.

Edit: If we go by the "usefulness" theory, that also raises another question: What exactly were we used for?