Prometheus (2012) redux

When I first reviewed Prometheus, it struck me that the film wasn’t saying anything. The film made a big deal of religion versus atheism, but it never went beyond some ham-fisted “is true” “is not” dialog that didn’t seem to add up to much. Recently, I’ve given this film a lot of thought however, and I’ve concluded that Prometheus is actually an attack on militant atheism.

Interpreting a film is always difficult because you end up reading a lot of tea leaves the writer may not have intended. In fact, the writer here may have intended nothing more than to throw in some pro/con-religion dialog just to make you think the film is deep. But I have noticed several things that create a consistent pattern, and patterns usually mean intent. What I found is the consistent message that militant atheism is rotten. Observe:

● Who Survives: Sometimes the most obvious example of what the writer favors comes from which characters survive the movie. In fact, this touches on a well-known theory that characters who behave morally survive slasher flicks and those who don’t die. Here, two characters ultimately survive. One is Shaw, the only openly religious character. The other is David, the android, who is religious as well (discussed below).

Further, the first to die, and die most horribly, are the two scientists (Millburn and Fifield) who openly mock Shaw for going against Darwinism. The next to die horribly is Shaw’s boyfriend Holloway, who also mocks Shaw’s faith and tries repeatedly to get her to abandon it. The last two to die in highly visible and ignoble ways are Vickers, who shows utter disdain for “true believers” and can’t even tolerate the Captain putting up a Christmas tree, and the Engineer, who is the most militant of the atheists (discussed below). The Captain, who honors the symbols of Christianity (like putting up a Christmas tree) but only expresses limited faith, dies nobly to save humanity. The rest die off screen.

That means all the aggressive atheists die horribly, whereas those who express some faith die nobly or survive. That suggest meaning. Specifically, in film speak, it suggests that the aggressive atheists are bad and the believers are good.

● Who is right?: Another way to tell what a film is pushing is asking which characters are right. Shaw represents religion and the other scientists represent militant (mocking) atheism. They claim that she’s a fool to believe that humans were “created.” She’s proven right, however.

● What does the neutral observer say?: When a film involves competing sides, there is often an unaligned observer who suggests which side is supposed to be right. In this case, we have David the android. We are told that David cannot appreciate the concept of God because he’s not human and cannot take things on faith. Yet, we get two interesting moments on this issue from David.

First, before David poisons Holloway, he and Holloway have a quick discussion about what Holloway hopes to discover from meeting his creator. Holloway says he wants to know why they made us. David then asks Holloway why humans made David and Holloway says, “Because we could.” Interestingly, David, who is supposed to have no ability to appreciate the idea of God, notes that this answer would be really disappointing to hear. Translation: David is disappointed because he sees something sacred about life, even his own.

Secondly, when the Engineer kills Weyland, his dying words are, “There is nothing,” meaning there is no God. David responds with “I know. . . have a pleasant journey, sir.” This is fascinatingly contradictory. On the one hand, David is agreeing that Weyland is right that there is no God. But then he wishes him a pleasant journey in the afterlife, which wouldn’t exist without a God. To understand what this means, you need to realize that David humors the humans throughout. Whenever they give him an order he doesn’t agree with, he says “yes” and then does his own thing no matter what they told him to do. I think this is the same here. Weyland is telling David, “There is no God,” so David responds like a good android and confirms what he has been told to believe. But once David has humored him, he acts according to his own belief and he wishes Weyland a pleasant journey on his way to meet his maker in the afterlife. That makes David religious, and that means the neutral observer says the religious side is right. It also means David is treating Weyland, who is now an atheist, like a fool.

● Hypocrisy: Beyond how they die, Prometheus also shows the atheists as hypocrites. Take the case of Holloway. He keeps telling Shaw that she needs to abandon her faith because there is no God. Yet, Holloway also argues, “God does not build in straight lines.” So he’s a hypocrite because while he wants everyone to be an atheist, he still accepts the idea of God.

Millburn and Fifield are another example of hypocrisy. They claim to be rational thinkers who accept Darwinism because of the evidence. Yet, when they are proven wrong about Darwinism when they find the body of the Engineer, they don’t act like rational thinkers. To the contrary, despite being confronted with clear evidence that would wipe out Darwinism and necessarily lead to a re-alignment of science, these two scientists refuse to examine the evidence and don’t even talk about its implications. . . instead, they talk about tobacco. They are hypocrites in their claim to be rational thinkers.

There’s another aspect to Holloway as well. At one point, Holloway tells Shaw that the fact that the Engineers made humans means there is no God. This is logically false and Shaw calls him on this by saying God made the Engineers. Holloway doesn’t respond by telling her there no God, which would be the true atheist position. Instead, he agrees with her (“Exactly”), but then wrongly says that because of this, we can never know anything about the nature of God. He then uses that assertion to tell her that she should stop worshiping God because we can’t know anything about God. His position is logically wrong, but more interestingly, think about what his position says logically: there is a God, but let’s ignore him. This fits Holloway’s attitude throughout the film. What bothers him isn’t that others believe in God, it’s that they worship God. In effect, he’s not anti-God, he’s anti-worship. . . the same characteristic of militant atheists who’s real beef isn’t that people believe in God, but that they act on that belief.

● Who is the bad guy?: Finally, we need to ask who is the bad guy. In this case, the bad guy is the Engineer. . . and he is the most militant atheist. It’s true.

When the film begins and the Engineers create humans, the whole thing appears religious in nature. They are wearing robes and the whole event has a ceremonial feel to it. This is how movies convey religion. So the Engineers, when they are good guys, were religious.

By the time we find the dead Engineer, things have changed. At first, I was confused by the giant statue of a head they seem to be worshiping in the pyramid. This struck me as evidence they were still religious. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that worshiping a statue of your own head is not a symbol of religion, but is a symbol of atheism. It is basically a declaration that man has thrown away God and now worships himself. And now that they are atheists they have decided to kill off the human race. That makes them bad guys. Translation: atheists are bad, genocidal people.

But there’s more.

For one thing, we need to ask why they wanted to kill off the humans. The film doesn’t seem to answer this, but there is a huge clue I missed the first couple times. When they carbon date the dead Engineer, they place it “around 2,000 years ago.” Think about what 2,000 years ago means in popular culture... Christianity. And don’t forget, they find the Engineer on Christmas Day, according to the Captain. In movie-speak where everything in a film is relevant, this tells us the Engineers were happy with us for tens of thousands of years when we worshiped them until Christianity came along. Once we found God, the Engineers because so angry with us they decided to kill us all. Basically, they are so militantly atheistic that they decided to wipe out humanity just because they didn’t want us believing in God.

Even the scene with the living Engineer suggests this. He doesn’t freak out and attack the humans when he first sees them or even when Weyland’s guard roughs up Shaw (the religious believer). He’s fine with those things. He only freaks out after David tells him that they have come looking for their creator. Now, we don’t know what David told him exactly, but he does use the word “Creator.” Translation: once David tells him they have come seeking God, the Engineer attacks them and decides to carry out his mission to wipe out humanity. I think it’s very reasonable to believe from this that the Engineer wants to eradicate the humans because they are religious, i.e. he’s a highly militant atheist. What’s more, in the final scene of the movie, the now-dead Engineer spawns the evil alien creature, which looks suspiciously like Satan.

All in all, I think this adds up to the film’s message being an attack on militant atheism. I don’t see an attack on atheism per se, but definitely the militant variety.

Thoughts?