‘What if you could meet God but God turned out to be the Devil?’
Joe Utichi, UK based freelance journalist and BAFTA member, spent several days on set production where he had ongoing access to the cast and crew. His recent article for TheScifiShow reveals many fascinating plot and thematic elements in Prometheus. Here are some amazing quotes collected by Joe Utichi and found in TheScifiShow’s exclusive article:
“What if you could meet God but God turned out to be the Devil?”
Michael Ellenberg, Prometheus executive producer“Ridley was inspired by everything from the Nazca Lines in Peru, which are these vast Earth sculptures can only be seen from the air, to cave paintings in France, to ancient Egypt and ancient Mayan civilisations. We’re pushing beyond what’s been found thus far and speculating about what maybe found in the future.”
Michael Ellenberg, Prometheus executive producer“Very loosely, these creatures are some kind of genetic Engineers on an interplanetary level… They go around creating life. In certain ways, they’re kind of God-like.”
Arthur Max, production designer“a movie based on a philosophy and not an alien. The movie’s intelligence holds you through most its runtime before you get in to all the action. You’re turning the page not just because of what happens but what is said.“
Logan Marshall-Green“Certainly, it makes an argument that will move away Darwinism, let’s just say!”
Logan Marshall-Green“It’s about the beginning of life and the eternal ‘what if’… Has this ball we’ve been sitting on right now been around for three billion years or one billion? And if we haven’t been pre-visited (by alien civilisations), then what was this planet doing for all that time before life came along? It’s only our arrogance that says, ‘No, it’s impossible, we’re the first ones.’ Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. In recent memory or legend we keep talking about wonderful, weird things such as Atlantis – what is that? Where does that come from? Is that real, was it real, is it a memory, did it exist? And if that did exist, did it exist three quarters of a billion years ago? There’d be nothing left now. How was that created and who was it?”
Ridley Scott“Ridley first called me in mid-July of (2010),… I’d never met him before, but obviously I was a massive fan of his work. I was driving in my car when the phone rang and a voice on the other end said, ‘Ridley Scott is going to call you in five minutes, are you available?’ After crashing my car and dealing with the immediate aftermath of that, I started talking to Ridley Scott. I was sort of trembling when he called me on the phone and he said he was going to send me a script.”
Damon Lindelof“He was also driven by these bigger thematic ideas about what this movie could be about… We started having conversations, and as a result of those conversations we worked very closely together for a couple of months, rewriting the script until he was satisfied that it felt like it was its own movie.”
Damon Lindelof“I think that one of the really interesting ideas that the movie is dealing with… s this sense that space exploration, particularly in the future, is going to start to be not just about going out there and finding planets, so that we can build colonies, or anything else, but also this inherent idea that, the further we go out, perhaps the more we learn about ourselves. And, I think the characters in this movie – some of them at least – are very preoccupied with the idea of, ‘Where did we come from? What are our origins? What is our place in the universe? Are we the only sentient beings, or are there others?’”
Damon Lindelof“It’s basically about trying to find out if there was intervention in the birth of civilisation on planet Earth by other beings, which we come to know as Engineers, and whether they had a master plan in mind for us.”
Michael Fassbender“There’s always politics within, and that’s why, I think, this cast got together. The tempo, the pace, the intelligence of the script; each person has got their own agenda on that ship and it’s each a very individual agenda. Some people are there for the pay. Other people are there to get answers. Other people are there to hopefully attain some sort of secret. Others are there in somewhat of a spite journey. You’ve got all these collective relationships, individuals and motivations and that’s what makes quite intriguing even before the shit hits the fan.”
Michael Fassbender
And even more at the source! http://www.thescifishow.com/2012/04/blog/the-themes-of-prometheus
After much lurking, I’m converging on a theory that we were supposed to come find the engineers but it wasn’t a “friendly” invitation. I’ve seen hints of this on the forum but perhaps, Earth was basically a petri dish and the engineers gave genetics a little shove for a future experiment – steering the Homo genus to end in sapien. The amount of time necessary for space travel would be more than enough needed to crown a dominant species (apart from ultra-disasters), of which, could actually be the theorized end-result.
Basically, tl;dr: The engineers do not have the correct species for their pet bioweapon but have the seeds. Drop seeds, throw fertilizer, wait for harvest, squeeze and mix.
I’m guessing the engineers are somewhat timeless beings since Ridley has suggested that they are the pre-visitors of earth, creators of human life and not only that but also beings who have potentially waited millions if not billions of years for life to evolve and finally seek them… Who they stick to the same agenda for millions of years? And why would they not evolve themselves?
would*
It’s not a question of *them* evolve or not…
They design life and instead of messing around in total_artifial life experiments in a lab (which our own experiments in this planet shows that result usually in very unstable results in the long run), they “spread life seeds” around the universe and set a “trap”…if life in some parts of universe evolve to become inteligent (or whatever what really means) enough to reach a stage that can “decode” the “iinvitation (that actually is a “mouse trap”) and are smart enough to travel till the trap….they are “harvested” and their DNA material is used as raw material to the enginners build what they want/need.
cute experiment but takes too long
“takes too long”
Exactly.
Ridley Scott: “Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. In recent memory or legend we keep talking about wonderful, weird things such as Atlantis – what is that?”
This comment is surprising. Scott sounds like another uneducated conspiracy theorist that believes in Atlantis, Big Foot and UFO sightings. What about the mermaids? All around the world throughout ancient history stories of mermaids have been documented. I always thought Scott more grounded in science with his movie Alien but maybe it was his script writer that deserves the credit.
Whether Ridley is a conspiracy theorist or not is certainly not the point. He is 1st and foremost an entertainer of fiction film making not a maker of documentaries . Whatever anyone believes, no one, NOT EVEN SCIENCE has a provable final answer for any of the questions posed in this film or any of the questions about our world and how ” We” and ‘It” came into being. It is all speculative. It certainly does not offend me that people ask questions.If reality in a complete sense is what you are looking for in an entertaining film then maybe Science “Fiction” is not for you.
Atlantis was just a bad example that most people can relate to but I’m sure you understood what he meant.
science is the quest for answers. curiosity is the first step. imagination is the compass
[“Certainly, it makes an argument that will move away Darwinism, let’s just say!”]
This has me more than a little concerned. Why is it that so many people think that evolution is just a controversial educated guess rather than a demonstrable reality like gravity and the laws of motion? If the premise is that these space primates created H. sapiens here on earth, then what produced them? You can’t throw out evolution without replacing it with an infinite regress of creation/created. Scott may be a great filmmaker, but he mutilates scientific facts and accepts the work of a known fraud (Erich von Däniken) over real science, which is depressing.
I think the premise, whether it is philosophically reaching or not, is that the human race itself has come to a crossroads with genetic engineering, able to reproduce living organisms through cloning. Why would it be far fetched for this SCIENCE FICTION film to play on that premise and assume another culture in the far reaches of space passed these same crossroads long ago. In the relative scheme of things, look at all that the human race achieved in a mere 100-200 years, let alone millions, or billions. If another race, in the far reaches of space (which by the way, as the universe expands, would be presumably much older than our own race) advanced to intellectual and philosophical levels far in excess of what we as humans can even imagine, they could easily have chosen to plant seeds on planets that could support life. With an advanced civilization, the questions of gravity, space travel, etc. would have been solved and they could choose to ENGINEER a species and plant it on another planet.
As an example, how is it any different than our own rudimentary play with genetics to recreate a lamb in the laboratory? Take it to another level…an advanced species creates a genetically engineered species and implants it on earth. Maybe the advanced species set up an outpost on earth to facilitate this course of action. Maybe the outpost was called Atlantis. The point is, it is speculation and this is a MOVIE about SCIENCE FICTION. The originators and the viewers are free to believe and think what they want.
I personally think that this question of “Where did we come from?” is an amazing premise for this movie and the fact that Ridley Scott is at the helm makes it even more exciting. It will certainly spark more than its fair share of debate. And that is good. It is good to see this imagination presented on the screen. I believe that this kind of thing is what allows us to reflect on what is possible and what can be achieved. Look at 2001: A Space Odyssey. Does anyone see a resemblance of the Orion to the Space Shuttle? Look at Avatar. The translucent computer screens in the control room. Don’t you think there are companies trying to devise real products that mimic those right now?
With Prometheus, which I have been looking forward to for a very long time, if it sparks conversation and reflection on who we are as a species and why we are here and where we are headed, it is a good thing! It is all progress in one way, shape or form.
I loved this movie and I was so intrigued by the mythology Scott created. It really had me questioning religion and evolution. You never know I guess but there’s always that “what if?” in the back of our minds. Whatever our purpose is/was, I hope it plays out better than Prometheus.