I'm not sure what's significant about the fact that the History Channel features a show called Ancient Aliens, but it can't mean much good. These ancient aliens are in vogue now. They've purportedly built the Pyramids and Stonehenge, revealed themselves to the Hebrews and the Mayans, and, for all I know, may be responsible for crop circles and cow mutilations.
According to Prometheus, ancient aliens created life on Earth. Yes, this is a movie about intelligent design. It's not the kind of intelligent design anybody's looking for, though. These aliens, directly linked genetically to humans, aren't all that kind. Perhaps that explains the source of all of humanity's woes, since our creators are just as flawed as we are. Next time you experience feelings of guilt or depression, tell your therapist that the ancient aliens are to blame.
The story gets too complicated by the third act, but the movie can be explained by a simple plot equation. Prometheus = Alien + Aliens + Ancient Aliens. Essentially two scientists find evidence on Earth of ancient aliens, so a giant corporation headed by a dying mogul funds an outer-space expedition to find the aliens on a distant moon far beyond the solar system. The scientists quickly find something on the moon, evidence of advanced civilization, though -- and if you watch enough sci-fi you know this before it's already happened -- what they find can't be beneficial or healthy. Meanwhile, just like in Alien, they explore a mysterious vessel with a bad android tagging along.
This movie is the kitchen sink of sci-fi. It begins with the origins of human life, then throws in galatic journeys, holograms, first contact sequences, androids, genetic engineering, bio weapons, zombies, and a self-automated pod that will perform any surgery you like, provided that you are male. At one point, a giant alien squid attacks one member of the cast while somewhere else a zombie attacks all the rest. By the end, I was disappointed that we didn't see time travel or vampires, whose trade union is sure to strike in protest.
Because of the inclusion of all this material, Prometheus preys on just about every modern fear imaginable. Here is another list. It worries us with problems of bioterror, evil corporations preying on the weak, evil computer systems gone haywire, deformed fetuses, deadly infectious diseases, and the threat of alien invasion. Perhaps the most squeamish sequence unfortunately will remind many of us of a C-section. At least it reminded my wife of hers, which I witnessed, and in some ways this was not the most pleasant experience for either of us. Anyway, in the movie a crew member is impregnated with an alien, and she must use the auto-surgery pod to abort this alien, a pod, as I said, designed for a man.
(After the machine cuts her open and then staples her back together, she's off and running to the next task, with a bit of a stomach cramp. Of all things, in a movie with ancient aliens and androids, this really shook our suspension of disbelief.)
As is usual in a movie like this, the best sequences are those when the crew lands on the planet and begins to explore the ancient aliens' lost outpost. And the best character is an android named David. You don't see androids in movies much anymore, so he's welcome here as a walking HAL-9000 with unknown sinister motives.
It's David that stimulates one of the movie's major themes, that of the relationship between creator and creature (or creation). The humans think of David as a robot, a mere machine easily deactivated, and yet they can't figure out why the ancient aliens won't answer their questions about the meaning of life. These aliens, as the movie points out, are the creators of human beings, just as the humans are creators of the android. Yet the aliens want to destroy human beings -- the moon's outpost being a military installation where the aliens bio-engineer organic WMD, which is meant to destroy all of life on Earth. So why would a creator create something only to destroy it later? In other words, the humans wonder, why are the ancient aliens so mean to us? Prometheus depicts humanity as cosmic loners, unable to fully understand and care for the natural environment, unable to respect and control its own creations, unable to have relationship with a higher power (here the aliens).
The main character, Dr. Shaw, presents the only hopeful alternative -- pursuit of the creators. By the end of the movie, after the other humans have died, she's flying in an alien spacecraft ostensibly to the alien homeworld. Once there, she will demand to know the answers about why the aliens created us. Of course she begins this journey just after one of the aliens has savagely attacked her, a couple of hours after her C-section gone wild, and with the android who killed her husband and impregnated her with a deadly alien squid. Sounds like the sequel will be a rollicking road trip/buddy pic.
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