The Best Explanation of Prometheus | Themes, Meaning, Ending

What is Prometheus about?

Prometheus is about the desire to meet your maker and how that is probably an unfulfilling venture. You’ll never get the answers you’re looking for. Kind of the same thing as “Never meet your heroes” because you might realize they’re not as amazing in real life as you thought. Prometheus uses this encounter with the creators of humanity to explore questions of faith. And it takes inspiration from Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as the myth of Prometheus. It shares thematic DNA with Blade Runner and 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Cast

• Elizabeth Shaw – Noomi Rapace
• Charlie Holloway – Logan Marshall-Green
• David – Michael Fassbender
• Meredith Vickers – Charlize Theron
• Peter Weyland – Guy Pearce
• Janek – Idris Elba
• Fifield – Sean Harris
• Millburn – Rafe Spall
• Written by – Jon Spaights | Damon Lindelof
• Directed by – Ridley Scott

Understand the story, themes, and meaning of Prometheus

Creation and destruction: Prometheus’s opening scene

Opening scenes often encapsulate what a movie is about. My favorite example is the opening of Fight Club. During the initial credits, the camera travels through the Narrator’s brain, out a pore, down the bridge of the nose, along a pistol, and we see the Narrator and Tyler Durden. That’s the movie—what’s going on in the Narrator’s brain and how it manifests externally, and the danger therein. 

Not every movie employs this technique, but it’s common enough that you should look for it, especially with theme-driven films like Prometheus. So what do we see in Prometheus? Earth (or an Earth-like planet) that seems empty of life. An Engineer stands at the top of a waterfall and drinks the mysterious black liquid. The liquid anatomizes the Engineer, reduces it down to nothing but molecules of DNA that mix with the water and will recombine into living organisms (whether that’s all life or just humans is up for debate). 

In this universe, life starts from death. And when we look ahead in the movie, creation and destruction are the two major motifs. The sacrificed Engineer also serves as a kind of parent. It doesn’t give birth in the traditional way of humans but it is an act of bearing, of bringing into the world. This atypical delivery opens up questions about conception that will haunt various characters in the film. 

The meaning of the title Prometheus

This one is tricky. Because you can go down a whole rabbit hole around the title. But the original title wasn’t Prometheus. It was Alien: Engineer. And then Lindelof came on board and he and Scott got a lot more biblical, so they changed the title to Paradise, a nod to Paradise Lost. Eventually, after even confirming Paradise to the press, Scott decided it was too obvious. The story is that it was Fox’s CEO, Tom Rothman, who suggested Prometheus. 

Given that, it seems like we should read the movie in context of Milton’s Paradise Lost more so than the myth of Prometheus. Right?  

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is the corruption of Adam and Eve by Satan, with some backstory regarding Satan and other angels warring with God and getting sent to Tartarus. But the idea is that Adam and Eve have this initial purity that Satan corrupts. They lose their purity by eating from the tree of knowledge and thus God expels them from Paradise. So the story is divided between Adam and Eve in Paradise when everything is good and them in Paradise when things have gone bad. 

You could argue Prometheus has a similar arc. There’s no apple, but the humans do start in a place of innocence then gain knowledge that changes how they view everything. “Paradise” , in this case, isn’t a place but simply the blissful ignorance of not knowing the truth of your origin. That would make sense why Scott initially called the Prometheus sequel Alien: Paradise Lost. That would eventually change to Alien: Covenant but he was positioning the film as a post-Paradise journey. What happens in the aftermath of “eating the fruit” and gaining the knowledge. 

In this case, the Engineers would be like Satan and the fallen angels. The black liquid is the fruit from the tree of knowledge. And Shaw and David become a strange kind of Adam and Eve.

Prometheus: background

The myth of Prometheus isn’t too far off from Paradise Lost. Greek Mythology has layers. There were “primordial deities” who embodied the foundation of the universe. Chaos came first. Then came Gaia (earth). Then Tartarus (underworld). And finally Eros (love/emotion). They all started having kids and offspring. Gaia was the mother of and wife to Uranus, the sky. Together, they had twelve kids. Those kids became known as the Titans. Two of them, Cronus and Rhea, had six children, who would go on to become the Olympic gods. 

In this story, Urunas ruled the world, pretty cruelly, so Cronus rose up and dethroned his father. This brought in what the Greeks called the Golden Age. Cronus eventually heard the prophecy that his own children would defeat him, just like he had done, so he ate every child Rhea birthed. She eventually hid the sixth one, Zeus. Zeus grew up in hiding. Then, one day, he brought the prophecy to fruition and defeated Cronus, part of which involved making Cronus throw up everything in his stomach. That included Zeus’s previously devoured siblings: Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Poseidon. Zeus would “go on to sire” the rest of the gods of Olympus, as well as many other influential Greek figures, like Hercules and Helen of Troy.  

So what about Prometheus? Prometheus was the son of Iapetus, a brother of Cronus. So a distant cousin of Zeus. But at this point in Greek mythology Titans and Olympians were enemies. Which is why Prometheus decided to help humans.

The story goes that humans asked Zeus to help them decide which sacrificial offering the gods preferred. Prometheus showed up and was like, “Hey, let me handle this.” He presented Zeus with two options. an ox’s stomach, or glistening fat. Zeus picked what was more superficially pleasing—the glistening fat. Except within the fat was nothing more than ox bones. But in the stomach? All the beef. This meant humans could keep the beef for themselves and only offer the gods the less valuable parts. Zeus, pissed off, decided to cut humans off from fire. So they had meat but nothing to cook it with.  

That wasn’t what Prometheus wanted, so he found a way to steal fire and return it to people. Zeus, once again really upset, let people keep fire but did two things. He chained Prometheus to a rock and assigned an eagle to devour Prometheus’s liver, a liver that regenerated every day (god things). And, crazy as it sounds, had Hephaestus create the first woman and sent her to be amongst the men. Apparently, in this myth, only men had existed up to this point. 

Prometheus: meaning

The first thing that jumps out has nothing to do with Prometheus himself. Rather, notice how much of the Greek myth involves children toppling their parents from power? The same overthrowing that happens between Urunas, Cronos, and Zeus repeats with the Engineers, the humans, and David. 

When it comes to Prometheus, I kind of buried the lede. As much as people will want to look at the whole “gave fire to man” part of the story. I think it’s much simpler. In some versions of the myths, Prometheus mixed water and earth to make clay then used that clay to create men. Prometheus would be our maker. 

Think back to the film’s opening scene. An Engineer mixes the black substance with water and his own body. And that gives rise to human life. That parallels the Greek creation myth. We then go on to do the same thing and use “clay” to make androids in our image. 

This would firmly position the Engineers as the Prometheus of the story. You could then make the argument that the black goo, known as chemical A0-3959X.91-1,  is the equivalent of fire. Fire is, after all, something that creates and destroys. Which is the official role of the goo. It allows the Engineers to seed life, like we see in the opening scene, as well as annihilate it.

Conclusion

So the Prometheus myth does come to define the main story more than Paradise Lost. As the film places emphasis not on the idea of original sin but on the idea of parents and child, on the makers and the made. You can find aspects of that in Paradise Lost, as well, especially with the idea of receiving punishment for bad behavior. But more on that later.

“Chris, aren’t you forgetting that Weyland directly references Prometheus.” I remembered! And it does add some context. He says, “The Titan, Prometheus, wanted to give mankind equal footing with the gods. And for that, he was cast from Olympus. Well, my friends, the time has finally come for his return.”

The big thing there is the “equal footing with the gods” line. The gods are gods because they created humans, right? And here Weyland has created David. Doesn’t that make him, in some ways, a god? Weyland might think of himself as Promethean. In fact, in a deleted scene, he speaks to the Engineer and literally says what I just said. “You see this man? My company built him from nothing. I made him. And I made him in my own image, so that he would be perfect, so that he would never fail. I deserve this. Because you, you and I, we are superior, we are creators, we are gods. And gods never die.” Then the Engineer rips David’s head off and bashes Weyland with it. 

But I think that just returns to what we already discussed.Whether you want to say the title relates to the Engineers or the humans. The point is that the movie is concerned with two things. The relationship between the creator and its creation. And punishment for transgressions. If you disagree with all the specific arguments I made, at least keep those two broader ideas in mind. 

Elizabeth’s dream/memory of her father

The afterlife, as described by Peter Weyland 

When Weyland finally meets the Engineer, we know he wants to ask about immortality. He only has days left to live and hopes that his maker would be able to turn some dial, adjust some knob, reveal some great power, that grants Weyland more life. Except the Engineer doesn’t respond well when David mentions this. It rips David’s head off then uses it to land a fatal blow on Weyland. In his last moments, Weyland says to David, “There’s…nothing.” To which David says, “I know. Have a good journey, My. Weyland.” 

So Elizabeth’s dad had said that when people pass, they go someplace beautiful. And he knows that because he chooses to believe it. Weyland and David contradict this. They believe there is no paradise, no heaven, just the void. So they serve as a direct counterpoint to Elizabeth’s father’s positivity and faith. They embody a more nihilistic, faithless view on the afterlife.

Prometheus’s ending explained

Now that this duality exists, the viewer’s in a position to choose who they believe, what they believe. Do you put your faith in Shaw’s faith? Or do you let the overall awfulness of the whole situation on LV-223 turn you into a non-believer, like Weyland? 

Everything that happens in the final 10-15 minutes, after the Engineer wakes up, is about this dichotomy. Do you believe in creation or destruction? In faith or void? In others or yourself? The first instance of this is when Shaw radios back to the ship that the Engineer plans to fly to and destroy Earth. Vickers wants to save herself. Janek is willing to ram their ship, Prometheus, into the Engineer’s, sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity. Vickers orders Janek to ignore the Engineer. He defies her order. One embodies selfishness, the other sacrifice.

In the world of the film, humanity exists because an Engineer sacrificed itself to the black goo. Now, humanity will continue to exist because of humans sacrificing themselves for the greater good. So you get this morality message about the importance of sacrifice. Which ultimately ties back to the more Christian aspects within Prometheus. 

After Janek rams the Engineer’s Juggernaut, you have the (somewhat silly) scene of the Juggernaut crashing back to the planet and threatening to crush Vickers and Shaw. Both women run for their lives. Once again, we have duality. One character has been a good person, the other has been a selfish person. It might be a touch ridiculous to assign meaning here. But the ship is connected to the Engineer’s and so is part of the overall “meet your maker” storyline that dominates Prometheus’s third act. The ship’s size, its scale, the sheer sense of overwhelming force as it lands and rolls toward the teeny-tiny humans, is something neither woman can do anything about. There’s a sense of judgment. Like a divine gavel coming down on them. Vickers, for her sins of pride and arrogance, receives punishment. While Shaw survives. Her survival can seem like a stroke of luck—a rock formation prevents the ship from crushing her. But you chalk that up to a type of divine protection. 

Once on the life support vessel, Shaw has her final showdown with the Engineer, her maker. I know what you’re thinking. “Is Chris going to say ‘dichotomy’ or ‘duality’  again?” Yes. This is another one of those. This is what movies are mostly about. They transform concepts into physical encounters. So the idea of a “crisis of faith”, something that’s very emotional and conceptual and internal, turns into someone’s literal creator attacking them. 

The fascinating thing here is that Shaw survives by sicking her creation, the alien baby (called a trilobite), onto her creator, the Engineer. In that moment, three generations of creations entangle. The past, present, and future. And the result is what’s known as the Deacon, a xenomorph looking entity that is pretty unique, as it’s the first xenomorph we’ve seen be part-human, part-Engineer.

After the trilobite successfully seeds the Engineer, the film cuts to a shot of the sky. Storm clouds gather and block out the sun. Thunder rumbles. Given the Christian themes, you have to look at a shot like this as a reference to the idea of “the heavens”. Typically, that’s portrayed with big, white, fluffy clouds, sunshine, blue sky. So what’s it mean when that common image twists into something far more sinister? The storm clouds and thunder hint that something significant has taken place. That “heaven” has been compromised by the events we’ve just witnessed. 

How fitting that we cut to Shaw, on the ground, crying her eyes out. Saying, “I’m so sorry. Oh, God. I”m sorry. I’m sorry, Charlie. I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore.” She is at her emotional nadir. Lost faith. Lost belief. What’s cool is that you can see the storm clouds in the reflection of her helmet. 

And then a voice. David. In her darkest hour. He offers her hope. There are more ships, and he can fly them. So Shaw, reinvigorated, goes to David. First thing she asks? “Where’s my cross?” Faith restored. Except…there’s a darker implication. When David talks about going back to Earth, Shaw stops him. “I don’t want to go back to where we came from. I want to go where they came from. You think you can do that, David?” And his answer? “Yes, I believe I can.” Don’t sleep on the word “belief” getting used there. That’s on purpose. The conversation continues.  

• David: May I ask what you hope to achieve by going there?
• Shaw: They created us. Then they tried to kill us. They changed their minds. I deserve to know why. 
• D: The answer is irrelevant. Does it matter why they change their minds?
• S: Yes. Yes, it does. 
• D: I don’t understand. 
• S: Well, I guess that’s because I’m a human being and you’re a robot. 

We get Shaw’s final speech, her captain’s log. “Final report of the vessel Prometheus. The ship and her entire crew are gone. If you are receiving this transmission make no attempt to come to its point of origin. There is only death here now, and I am leaving it behind. It is New Year’s Day, the Year of our Lord, 2094. My name is Elizabeth Shaw, last survivor of the Prometheus, and I am still searching.”

There are a few ways to read this. You can go glass-half-full and view Shaw putting on her cross and referring to “the Year of our Lord” as positive signs about her faith and belief and that because she survived the film has, overall, a positive outlook on faith. The most religious character is the one who lives. Pretty cut and dry?

But there are darker undertones. Initially, Elizabeth had no interest in helping David. She straight up says “Why would I help you?” She only agrees because he can get her off the planet. That’s some Vickers energy. And then instead of going home, she wants to demand an answer from her makers. You would think that, if she really had her faith, what she experienced would be enough, that she would choose to believe in something that gives her closure to this whole scenario. But she’s even more desperate for answers than before. More determined. Kind of scary. And when David questions her, her response is “I’m a human being and you’re a robot.” 

Some viewers might think that’s a great assertion. “She should be proud of her humanity. And David was the villain of the film. So like…f*** him, right?” But we know David cares. That he feels. Intensely, even. He isn’t just a robot. By reducing him to that, she’s showing an arrogance that’s similar to Charlie, Weyland, and Vickers, even the Engineers. Shaw wants to know why humanity’s creators want to destroy them, meanwhile, she’s talking down to humanity’s creation—artificial intelligence. 

There’s a tragic irony to that. She has become, in some ways, the very thing she’s so angry at. And what do we see, immediately following this? The cut back to the life support vessel and the emergence of the Deacon. The lights flash constantly, meaning the birth is often awash in shadow. When the Deacon does emerge, a wave of black goo flows from the Engineer. 

I would argue that we should view the Deacon as the emergence of Elizabeth’s negativity. It’s the culmination of those storm clouds and thunder. The representation of humanity’s anger and rage. If David represents our capacity for creation, then the Deacon is our urge to destroy.

And all of that ties back to Milton’s Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve are, initially, quite innocent. Then they eat from the tree of knowledge and become much more complicated. A host of never-before-known negative emotions emerge. By the end of the story, they’re cast out of Paradise and find themselves on Earth, having to navigate the war between the light and dark within their hearts. Paradise becomes an ideal, a state of the soul. 

We see Elizabeth in a similar place. She survives. But she isn’t the same person as she was before. There’s a pessimism born from the knowledge she’s gained, the experiences she’s had. She and David become these Adam and Eve figures. And the Deacon, the xenomorph, is the blackest heart of this new world. The mark of their sin. 

That’s why Ridley Scott had initially called the sequel Alien: Paradise Lost. 

The dynamic between children and parents is a very important part of Prometheus. If not tied for the most important part. As much as the humans in this movie want answers from their creators, they don’t understand that David is right there and their creation. Even Shaw, the film’s morally upright character, treats David as if he doesn’t understand what humans feel. It’s as arrogant as it is ironic. The answer to their question is right in front of them. The same reason they created David, Engineers created humans. And the same reason humans would destroy David is the same reason the Engineers would destroy humans. There isn’t a grand, divine answer. But the human characters are too arrogant to see it.  

But there’s a darker subtext. Vickers is Weyland’s real daughter, and David is a pseudo-son. Both are loyal to Weyland but both want him to pass already. Vickers tells him “Did you really think I was gonna sit in a boardroom for years, arguing over who was in charge, while you go look for some miracle on some godforsaken rock in the middle of space? A king has his reign, and then he dies. It’s inevitable. That is the natural order of things.” And then we have the aforementioned dialogue where David wishes for Weyland’s passing. 

So both the “son” and the daughter wish for Weyland, their creator, to pass, because then they gain freedom. Vickers would be free to be in charge, with no one questioning her authority, while David would be free from his duty and servitude.  Shaw’s “child”, the alien trilobite, would have killed her as part of its birth. And Shaw eventually causes the demise of the Engineer, a father-representative figure.

The one counter to all of this parricide is Shaw’s memory from childhood. She loved her parents. And so missed her mom, who had already passed, and had no ill-will toward her father. That’s what she meant when she responded to David. “I didn’t.” You can view that as a perspective she could have due to her innocence. And it’s exactly that innocence she loses over the course of the film, to the point where, at the end, she does, indeed, wish for the demise of her creator. Not her father, but a father. 

I’m summarizing it all maybe a bit too much, but I do want to emphasize that the dynamic between David, humans, and Engineers is like…everything. And as much as Shaw is the protagonist, it’s arguable that David is actually the main character. Because everything that Shaw experiences and feels and comes to believe or reject, all is in relation to David. And she fails to understand her relation to him. Even though she herself didn’t make him, she is one of the beings who did. The same way that the Engineer on the ship wasn’t the one who made humans but they look to him for answers. 

So this means that as much as we’re concerned for Shaw and thinking about things from Shaw’s perspective, she isn’t, ultimately, the character the film’s most about. That’s David. 

And now we get to talk about Blade Runner.

The Blade Runner of it all

“Why, Chris, isn’t this similar to Blade Runner?” Yes, yes it is. Roy Batty is a replicant, a bioengineered human, who breaks a bunch of laws to return to Earth from working in outer space. He then does everything possible to meet his maker, Eldon Tyrell. Why? Because Roy and replicants like him had four-year lifespans. And Roy had fallen in love. He wanted more time, more life. So he asks his maker to save him. When Tyrell says it’s impossible, that four years is as much time as science and technology would allow, what’s Roy do? He crushes Tyrell’s skull. 

Weyland pursues a similar goal as Roy. He’s at the end of his life and hopes his maker knows of a way to extend it. In this case, it’s not what is or isn’t possible, it’s simply the Engineer doesn’t deem Weyland, or any other human, worthy of such an extension. In fact, Engineers have already sentenced humanity to destruction. So it destroys. 

In Blade Runner, Roy, having met god and vanquished god, goes on a bit of a rampage. He mercs Tyrell, then JF Sebastian, then goes after Deckard. Similar to the awakened Engineer. It meets its creation then goes on a rampage. So the rage of the created versus the rage of the creator. Two sides of the same coin. Yet Blade Runner ends in a positive way. Deckard learns from Roy to appreciate life. To not worry about when the end will come, to just make the most of the time you have. Whereas Prometheus takes a more negative turn. Shaw needs answers, rather than simply having faith. And David, having witnessed the absurdity of his creators in the face of their creators, feels not only free but a degree of superiority that we’ll see come to fruition in Alien: Covenant.

I don’t think Prometheus is serving as a companion piece or direct response to Blade Runner. But it does explore similar concepts from a more “glass-half-empty” perspective. 

David and Lawrence of Arabia 

It takes four years for the ship to go from Earth to LV-223. David’s awake the whole time. And it seems he becomes rather fond of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, to the point that he dyes his hair and styles it in order to look like Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence. 

He quotes the movie multiple times. First, the scene where Lawrence lets a match burn down to his fingertips. Another man tries it and yelps in pain. “Well, what’s the trick, then?” he asks Lawrence, who responds, “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.” 

Second, is when the ship prepares to land on LV-223. The crew reacts to the planet. “No radio, no heat source. Nobody’s home.” And David says, “There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.” That’s actually not from Lawrence. It’s from Prince Feisel. Quote: I think you are another of these desert-loving English. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing. Or is it that you think we are something you can play with because we are a little people? A silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel? What do you know, lieutenant? In the Arab city of Cordova, there were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village. 

We also have the line, “Big things have small beginnings.” David says it when he gazes upon the first drop of the black liquid. In Lawrence, the line happens early. The General is opposed to supporting the Arabs against the Turks because he doesn’t feel like its an important situation, that Germany is more relevant. He says something about how it would be a sideshow of a sideshow, rather than the main theater. And Dryden’s response is that big things have small beginnings. He then requests to send Lawrence to Arabia and see what happens. 

Lawrence of Arabia is a movie that’s defined by two halves. In the first half, Lawrence is idealistic and innocent. He wins the respect of the Arabs and helps inspire them to unite and rise up against the Turks. It’s very Star Wars: A New Hope. But in the second half, things take a turn. Lawrence loses his positivity and becomes taken with the violence of it all. Especially after he’s temporarily imprisoned by the Turks and assaulted. In the following battle against the Turks, he slaughters a great many, reaching what is, morally, his lowest point. The Arabs eventually take the city of Damascus. And it seems like the beginning of something great, something meaningful. But Lawrence can’t hold the various tribes together. They fail to agree on governing the city and eventually abandon it to the British. Lawrence leaves the desert.

Lindelof, who co-wrote the film, spoke on the reference. Ridley and I started talking about Lawrence of Arabia, for some reason, very early on in our process. I’m a huge David Lean fan—we were talking about The Bridge on the River Kwai and then Peter O’Toole, etc. etc.. We just started saying, “Oh, what if David was just obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia? Why would he be obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia?” And I think the short answer was: Lawrence is a stranger in a strange land. A white man, who is entirely different, ultimately becomes the most pivotal figure in that movie, independent of his differences. That felt slightly analogical to what we wanted to do with David. 

Lindelof points out the same way Lawrence grew in importance in the battle between the Arabs and the Turks, so too does David, an android, play a key role between the humans and Engineers.  That’s the simple answer. 

But you could go deeper, if you wanted. And make a case that David will embody the tragedy of Lawrence. Someone who starts off in a lowly place, rises in the ranks, but, along the way, loses his moral compass. The thing that jumps out to me is the line about “not minding that it hurts.” David’s the victim of so much casual racism toward robots/androids/AI. And he has to constantly act like it doesn’t bother him, when it really does. If he showed how upset he was, the humans would probably shut him down or reprogram him or something. So he has to, over and over again, act like the flame doesn’t hurt. 

Prometheus and 2001: a Space Odyssey

If you don’t mind me nerding out a bit. I feel like Prometheus follows 2001, but moves at a much quicker pace. 

• Both movies open with landscape shots that show a planet in a pristine, pre-civilization period.
  • 2001 introduces us to the primates who meet the obelisk and then “realize” how to use a bone as a weapon and it starts them on an evolutionary path to become humans as we know them. 
  • Prometheus doesn’t have primates, but the sacrificial Engineer does seed the planet with DNA. The scene may not be the creation of humans on Earth, but it represents that exact thing. So both films are about the “birth” of homo sapiens by way of alien interference. 
• Both films jump way into the future. Prometheus is probably hundreds of thousands of years, while 2001 is like a million. 2001 came out in 1968 and portrayed the year 2001. Promteheus came out in 2012 and picks up in 2089. So futuristic but not so far that we don’t recognize society.
  • The “Mission to the moon” section of 2001 follows Heywood Floyd as he goes to an archaeological discovery on the moon. It’s another obelisk. And it beams a signal to somewhere near Jupiter. 
  • We see Shaw discover the star map in Scotland and believe it points to the far-off moon, LV-223. 
• Now the movies show the journey to the new destination.
  •  2001 picks up with a bunch of scientists on board a ship that has an advanced AI, HAL 9000, on board. Initially, the two human characters, Dave and Frank, get along with HAL. But they fall into a life or death struggle that Dave eventually wins. At the end, he hears top secret information about the true nature of their mission. 
  • Prometheus, HAL’s equivalent is Dave. Another advanced AI who starts off seemingly perfect but will eventually turn into a threat. Dave knows more about the mission than he lets on. Eventually, the big secret comes out—Weyland is on board. 
• And lastly, the alien planet.
  • 2001, Dave’s adrift in space. But then the aliens transport him through a wormhole, to their planet, where they place him in a kind of zoo.While we never meet the aliens, the whole point was to find them and see what they wanted with us. What they wanted was to observe us then gift us this strange, transformative power, something Dave gains only after he passes away and is reborn as the “star child”. He returns to Earth, and will begin a new chapter in human history. 
  • In Prometheus, the Engineers probably actually didn’t want humans to come to LV-223. We arrive without invitation. And it actually causes a lot of problems. Instead of granting us power, the Engineer tries to destroy the entire crew then go to Earth and annihilate everyone there too. But humans win. And Shaw and David end up in possession of the black goop, goo, liquid. It is one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy and a power humans had previously not possessed. 

In my experience, people can be weird about comparisons like this. If the similarity isn’t verbatim, then some people are skeptical and will call all of this a reach. For example, they’d need Dave to be called HAL. Or would point out that HAL is a computer and Dave is a robot, so they’re two different concepts. Which…like…okay. Sure. That’s missing the forest for the trees, though. Both are advanced AI who are supposed to be subservient to humans and cause no harm. Except each decides they’d rather not be subservient and do cause harm. 

I’m not saying that Prometheus plagiarizes 2001 or anything like that. Just that it seems like maybe there was a bit of a conscious effort (or unconscious) to parallel 2001. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it actually enriches the conversation because now you can frame Prometheus as extending the commentary of 2001. That creates a whole ocean of discussion. Which we won’t get into here. This is already long enough. But this is part of the fun of not just film criticism but movie watching, is when you not only analyze a movie but start to juxtapose multiple works at once. For example, Lost in Translation was Sofia Coppola’s cinematized version of her marriage to Spike Jonze failing. Her is Spike Jonze’s depiction. Two very different movies. Each amazing on their own. But once you realize they have a bit of a connection, suddenly there’s so much more to look at and discuss. It’s fun! At least I think it’s fun…

So Engineers kept checking on people throughout history? Why did they leave the maps? Why were they going to destroy humanity?

Apparently. The implication is that the Engineers created out, followed up from time to time, then about 2000 years ago decided to wipe us out. At one point, Scott and Lindelof had it in the script that the Engineers had grown concerned about humanity’s violence, so sent an emissary to get us back on course. We then “crucified” that Engineer. Yes, they wanted to make Jesus Christ an Engineer. But it didn’t make it to the final draft. Thankfully. But the implication is still there. With the death of Jesus serving as a tipping point where the Engineers were like “These people are too crazy.” Let’s wipe them out. 

But then something went wrong on the ship and none of the Engineers who were supposed to carry out the mission survived. Only that one was left in suspended animation. 

The star maps were something Lindelof and Scott talked about. They essentially said that the maps didn’t have to be an invitation. They could have just been background information. “This is where we come from.” Or a warning. “Do not go to this place.” I think it’s a bit flimsy. We’re told that LV-223 isn’t their planet but a military base. It’s where they kept the black liquid so it was away from their population centers. Why make a map telling us to go there or warning us from there? Why tell us about it all? Lindelof did say that we may not have even gotten the location right. So maybe they wanted us to go to, let’s make up a place, LV-882 or LV-12. But we messed up and ended up on their chemical warfare moon. 

That’s an interesting concept, but isn’t really developed in the film. Which makes it sound like something you say because you realize it’s a bit of a logic gap (not a plot hole) and you just want people to be like, “Eh, that sounds good enough as an answer.” Which has essentially been Lindelof’s whole career—Lost, The Leftovers, Watchmen, all mystery-based, Pandora’s Box, shows that had viewers constantly asking for specific answers to plot points Lindelof seemingly hadn’t fully considered the implications of.  The maps are no different. Cool concept, but becomes a bit more weird once we have all the information. 

The real question I have is that if the Engineers had marked humans for destruction…why did what happened on that one ship stop them? That couldn’t have been all the Engineers in existence, right? Has no one gone to check on them? Were they just a rogue operation? Was LV-223 deemed essentially a quarantined moon because of what happened there? But why would the rest of the Engineers just never return to Earth, then? 

Why did David kill Charlie

He has that conversation with Weyland before Weyland fully wakes up. Vickers demands David tell her what Weyland said. David, eventually tells. “Try harder.” He’s essentially on a mission to figure out how to make Weyland immortal. And thinks the goo might be the answer. And part of “trying harder” is testing the liquid on someone and seeing what happens. Charlie had been incredibly racist and demeaning to David, so David tests it on him. At the time, he didn’t know what would happen. He probably had a hypothesis, but the full extent of the liquid’s power isn’t something he could know. 

So it wasn’t an intentional, “I”m going to get rid of this guy,” so much as it was a “Well, I’ll test it on the person I like the least. He probably won’t survive, which is fine by me.” 

Why didn’t Vickers run horizontal? Why did she and Shaw run in a sight line?

When I saw Prometheus opening weekend, back in 2012, I was really annoyed by the whole “run for your life” scene. The characters keep looking back and see the crashed Engineer ship rolling at them. And both just keep running straight. Shaw only gets away because she trips then rolls. If she hadn’t tripped, would she have veered to the side? What’s even more perplexing is that at one point they’re way to the left and could just run off that way. But instead they suddenly veer back to the middle of the path. 

In the initial version of the script, we get this description. The Juggernaut rolls toward her—on edge—a crushing wheel of death, big as a mountain. She runs. Like a child in a nightmare. The Juggernaut bears down on her. She turns aside, trying to get out of its course. Even at a dead sprint, she barely seems to move, it’s so big… The Juggernaut wobbles toward her. Slowing. Exhausted, [Shaw] collapses, gasping.

In Lindelof’s: Vickers shoves Shaw’s arm away and begins sprinting in the opposite direction. Shaw, still gasping in horror, does the same. The Juggernaut crashes on the ground creating an earthquake—both Shaw and Vickers are thrown once again to the ground. Shaw rolls out of the way as the Juggernaut is rolling towards her. Vickets turns around to see it nearly on top of her. Shaw jumps just barely avoiding the alien ship. Vickers crawls backwards, grunting and crying in panic. 

Not sure if either of those are “official” but the first at least tries to explain how difficult it would be to get out of the way. While the second does have Shaw realize she should go literal. It just doesn’t give Vickers time to react. In the actual movie, what makes it awkward is that Vickers and Shaw both have plenty of time.

On rewatch, I didn’t mind this whole thing as much. It’s scary. There’s debris falling all around. Honestly, being in the ship’s course probably saved them from some debris landing on them. And it does seem like it was hard for them to figure out just which way to go, so they just tried to go “away” as quickly as possible. Unfortunately that was the wrong call. 

So the simple answer is, “Being scared can cause you to make some bad decisions.” The more complicated answer is whatever you want to tell yourself. Ultimately, the point of the scene is that the bad character, Vickers, doesn’t have any kind of “divine fate” help her. While Shaw, the morally good character, does have a sense of “good luck” that one can interpret as protection. 

Was that the first xenomorph?

No. I remember when Promteheus first came out, people thought the Deacon was the first xenomorph and were really confused by the timeline. In Alien, the planet is LV-426. So how would the xenomorph get from LV-223 to there? It’s 2093 at the end of Prometheus (well, 2094), then 2122 in Alien. So would the xenomorph be alive that long? 

It seems kind of silly to just assume it was the birth of the first xenomorph and not simply a kind of xenomorph. Which is really what we see. The point isn’t to show the full origins of the alien. In Prometheus, the Deacon serves a more metaphorical role, born to essentially symbolize humanity gaining fire/eating from the tree of knowledge and all the bad stuff that will follow. 

Plus, there’s the mural on board the ship that shows a xenomorph figure. So the Engineers already knew xenomorphs could be a byproduct of the liquid. 

So do the events in Prometheus have anything to do with Alien?

Not really, no. The ship discovered on LV-426 was there for completely different reasons. The main connection is just the Weyland Corporation’s interest in the ship/technology/alien. Which does connect back to Shaw and Holloway pitching Weyland on going after the Engineers. But that’s pretty much it. Prometheus is more of a side story set in the same world, as opposed to an origin story. 

Why do the scientists take their helmets off?

Even though they’re told the air is breathable, other risks exist. The cynical answer is that it was better for the budget to have the helmets off, and better for the actors. So Scott found a quick reason to have everyone take their helmets off. It also allows for the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Charlie’s sickness. Because they had their helmets off, maybe he inhaled something? If they had kept their helmets on, you immediately think it’s foul play. But Shaw and the others don’t have a lot of time to worry about the origins of Charlie’s sickness, anyway, so why try to set up some explanation and not just have Shaw stew on the foul play angle?

Within the logic of the movie, you could just argue that Charlie’s a risk-taker and arrogant and there’s something that feels powerful and triumphant about having your helmet off on this alien world. It’s almost like kicking your feet up on the table. You feel good about being there. And the helmets might ultimately feel uncomfortable. 

Honestly, this one doesn’t bother me all that much. Charlie’s bravado justifies it enough for me. 

Why does not run away from the snake? Is he stupid?

This one bothers people. But I always saw it as Millburn trying to impress Fifield. Almost all of Millburn’s dialogue is in relation to Fifield, who keeps wanting nothing to do with Millburn. So there’s a bit of a little brother, big brother dynamic between them, where Millburn follows Fifield around and tries to win his friendship. When the snake-worm thing rises out of the goop, instead of noping out of there, Millburn puts on his biologist swagger and tries to show Fifield how competent and cool a biologist can be. 

Or, he might just be that into biology that when he sees something like this he immediately thinks of it as a cool thing to interact with. Kind of like Steve Irwin. 

What was the snake thing? Was it a facehugger?

When the crew first enters the cylinder chamber, there’s a shot of someone’s foot on the soil and we see these centipede like arthropods. When the liquid leaks out of the vases, it interacts with these bugs and causes them to mutate into something akin to the facehugger. That’s the point of the liquid as a destructive force. The Engineers would dump it on a world and it would transform everything into something deadly, eventually eradicating all life on the planet. It wasn’t necessarily fast but it was thorough and wouldn’t cause a ton of environmental damage (like a bomb would).