It is the work of a master film stylist in collaboration with a popular
science-fiction author. It is visually
stunning, employing groundbreaking special effects, and taking full
advantage of the new theatrical technology of the day. It
creates a real and believable future world in a dynamic and inimitable
style, while generating dreamlike, mythic, psychological, even psychedelic, and
certainly spiritual events and imagery.
It wrestles with weighty questions regarding where we come from and
where we are going, while stubbornly refusing to answer them in anything but an
oblique and ambiguous way.
It opens with a prologue set in the distant past, where an
alien intelligence effects the development of human life on earth. It then thrusts its viewers into the future,
where inexplicable archeological discoveries instigate a space mission to find
the secret of alien intervention in human existence. Along for the ride is an anthropomorphized
artificial intelligence that may be working from a hidden agenda, or may simply
have gone mad.
The movie is “Prometheus.”
“Prometheus” is the work of producer/director Ridley Scott
(“Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Gladiator”) and two sci-fi writers. The first is Jon Spaihts, known in Hollywood
as the author of a well respected but unproduced science fiction romance,
“Passengers,” and hired by Scott’s production company to write two prequel
films to the original “Alien.” The
second and perhaps most important is Damon Lindeloff, popular and controversial
co-creator of the TV series “Lost,” who steered the project toward more
independence from the “Alien” franchise.
Both authors credit Scott with having conceived the overall themes and
basic plot of the film.
Like “Lost,” “Prometheus” has been criticized for raising
too many questions and answering too few.
Stylish but enigmatic, it fails to provide a clear-cut and
straightforward explanation of its proceedings.
It refuses to answer either the larger issues it ponders, or even more
direct questions regarding the aliens’ backstory and motivations.
This ambiguity is the attraction of the film for some; it
provides the stimulation of open-ended and personalized interpretation and
speculation. The seemingly unending
series of unanswered questions, oblique events, and dangling plot strands are a
detraction for others.
Speculation and interpretation followed its release, with
numerous critics and bloggers offering elaborate scenarios and back stories to
connect and explain the film various mysteries, or plot-holes, depending on
your perspective. Blogger Johnathan
McCalmont argues that:
To my mind, these attempts
to wring meaning from the text of the film are hopelessly deluded as Prometheus
is quite explicitly a film about the absolute futility of seeking Big Answers
to Big Questions.
In an interview with Movies.com,
the director himself threw a sort of bone those needing more a concrete
interpretation of the film’s events, admitting that the filmmakers had
considered a controversial motivation for the apparently murderous aliens:
Scott: We
thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an “our
children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks
like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of
course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand
years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say,
“Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it. Guess
what? They crucified him.
Beginning
with blogger Adrian Bott, the Internet
lit up with speculation on how this revelation effects an interpretation of the
movie.
And there is a book to offer guidance. It gives us lingering views of images only
fleetingly glimpsed in the film, and even labels the various elements for an
easier discussion. It’s “Prometheus:
The Art of the Film” and it tells us what the
pyramid, the engineers, the ampule chamber, the babyhead, the hammerpede, the
juggernaut, the orrery, the trilobite, and the deacon are.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” is the work
of producer/director Stanley Kubrick (“Dr. Strangelove,” “A Clockwork Orange,”
“The Shining.”) and science-fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke
(“Childhood’s End,” “Rendezvous with Rama,” and “The Sentinel,” the short story
on which “2001” was loosely based).
Visually, “2001” was and is a revelation. Narratively, it was a radical and groundbreaking
departure from the norm, a major release from a major studio that dared
confuse, bewilder, frustrate and delight viewers with inexplicable (but still
interpretable) images and events. “2001”
offered no easy answers, no really relatable characters, very little dialogue. It was slow, certainly painterly, perhaps
meandering. It sent its characters and
viewers together on a journey of discovery where the revelations were too vast
and complex to understand, and Kubrick was unwilling to lend a helping hand.
Critics were split; many hated
it. Audiences were at first
unenthusiastic; it wasn’t until the film’s psychedelic imagery and spiritual
resonance clicked with the counter culture that the film’s box office took off. Soon, the marketing
of the film changed. Gone was its
description as "an epic drama of adventure and exploration." A year later, it would be described in its
advertising as “The Ultimate Trip,” directly linking the experience of viewing
the film with drug induced euphoria.
So much has been written about
“2001;” it would be pointless to recycle it all here. What I’d like to relate is how and why my
Dad, a 40-year-old middle class father and businessman from a small southern
town, would be so taken and stimulated by such a difficult, challenging,
non-conformist film.
I would have been 12 years old when
“2001” was released, so my memory may be somewhat faulty. I clearly remember sitting near or in the
front row. The movie was so big and so
wide that it exceeded my peripheral vision. I remember the overwhelming sound
and music, coming from every side. The movie engulfed me.
I am sure I saw it in Super
Panavision 70mm Cinerama, the IMAX of its day.
I thought I saw it at the Terrace Theater in Greensboro, NC, but
research reveals that the roadshow release did not come to Greensboro. We may have made a special trip to Raleigh to
see it; we had done so for “The Sound of Music.” Either way, the unprecedented experience
lingers.
So what did Dad relate to?
Well, Dad loved originality. Nothing has ever looked, or sounded, or felt
like “2001.”
Then there was the meticulous
believability of the film, the astonishing make-up and performance of the ape
people, the detail of the future world with its clear links to and evolution
from the present, the majesty and size of the space vehicles, floating silently
in the black sea of space, the uncompromised and unprecedented special
effects. Dad had been impressed with the
attempts to insert believable science into the original “Star Trek” series;
imagine his response to the painstaking accuracy of this future world.
And there was the sound. Magnetic stereo. The absolute cutting edge of film audio technology. Heightening every breath, every hush. In the absence of much dialogue, the sound
effects, and the silences, burst to the forefront. And the music. There had never been such a score. A soaring rendition of the Blue Danube Waltz,
the moody intonations of György Ligeti, and the majestic “Also
Sprach Zarathustra.”
I’m going to
speculate that there was also something in the day-to-day mundane details of Haywood
Floyd and his “business trip” to the moon.
Dad ran a business, begrudgingly wore a tie everyday, and his job often involved travel. This futuristic business trip, with its Pan-AM
stewardess, its anti-gravity toilet, it’s Hilton Hotel, its airplane food, its
phone call home, its casual but uncomfortable encounters, must have seemed both
familiar and foreign at the same time.
But the novel
did.
Arthur C. Clarke was writing the
novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” even as he was collaborating with Kubrick on the
screenplay and the movie. And Clarke did
not have the same interest in ambiguity and obfuscation that Kubrick did. Clarke had a definitive interpretation of the
events of the film. You could argue THE
definitive interpretation; you could argue just another possible
interpretation. But the novel deciphered the
movie, and in the days before the Internet, it was the only game in town.
We bought the paperback. And Dad devoured it.
OMG.
The monolith is an alien device that awakens intelligence and helps
mankind evolve.
The main ape character has a name –
Moon-Watcher. We hear his internal thoughts. After using the first weapon, he thinks to
himself that he is
now master of the world, he is unsure of what to do next—but he will think of
something.
HAL fails because of an internal
conflict when he is ordered to lie about the mission.
The large floating monolith opens and
pulls Bowman’s pod in. His last words
before entering - "The
thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!" THE MONOLITH IS A STAR-GATE!
All those
colors and lights and shapes, that’s Bowman travelling through an interspatial
wormhole to a galaxy far, far away. He
passes through the 'Grand Central Station' of the universe, where he sees alien
spacecraft in route to other destinations.
He sees what appear to be life-forms.
The aliens
hold Bowman in the familiar construct of a ritzy hotel suite. He ages and evolves in a new entity, the Star
Child. We are also privy to his
thoughts. Like Moon-Watcher, he is now
master of the world and uncertain what to do next—but he will think of
something.
Now, not only
was the movie an amazing and captivating experience, it all made sense.
The explanation gave my Dad
permission to like the movie.
He saw it again. And it became one of his favorites.
Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About
© 2012 Edward Bowen
Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About
© 2012 Edward Bowen