There is only death here now...
Over the past few days I've been
catching up on a bunch of movies I've wanted to see for a while.
Theses days I'm not much for one going out to the theatre and since I
got Netflix I don’t really rent DVD's all that often either. All
this is a round about way of saying I finally watched Prometheus.
I'm not sure how I feel about this
movie. On the one had the visuals were pretty amazing. It also hit a
lot of the same notes as in previous instalments in the
Alien/Predator franchise. But I don't know, some how it just fell
flat.
Warning if you haven’t seen this film
then what I'm going to talk about next will probably spoil things for
you. You've been warned.
What I did find interesting was the
concept of God and the creation of life. So the basic idea here is
that the Engineer alien race created humans. Then for some reason
they decided that us humans needed to be terminated by some kind of
bio-engineered virus. Or maybe the idea was that humans were just
stage one of the Engineers plan. Phase two was the introduction of
the mutating alien virus. Which begs the question of why they would
want to either kill us all or turn us into some kind of new mutant
species.
Now were talking about something
interesting. Maybe were dealing with a sort of reverse terminator
scenario. Maybe the Engineer's were afraid of what humanity might one
day do to them. That we had become to violent to control. Maybe Earth
was the failure. Like lab rats that served their purpose it was time
to put them out of their misery. Maybe there were other Earth like
planets that served their purpose better than we could. Maybe we were
the cain to this alternate Earths Able.
Or was it that the Engineer race was
divided on what to do with us. Maybe this was a rogue group who was
out to do some kind of terrorist act versus it's own species. Turn us
humans into a bio-weapon to be used against a more powerful political
entity in the Engineer's home world.
Or were humans being used as
bio-weapons against some far greater enemy. Another alien species
even more hell bent on destruction than we humans ever imagined
possible.
I guess it also changed my view on what
a Creator-God might really mean. Someone who creates just because
they can. Some kind of artistic drive for no other purpose then it
seemed like a good idea at the time. That maybe, like an abusive
parent this God might not be so nurturing and benign to it's
creation. If anything it makes me less inclined to believe or have
any sort of loyalty to any God/Creator if one did exist.
Ultimately from a gaming perspective it
really breaths new life into aliens for me. I've had this idea for
some time about having a intergalactic war between a species of
aliens and humanity in my Digital Dark Age campaign. The idea of an
alien race who has left archaeological traces of existence for
mankind to uncover, and whom mankind believes to be extinct, only to
return with a vengeance is one that really appeals to me. Prometheus
has if anything really sparked my imagination in terms of why and
what this war with this returned alien race might mean and be about.
So in the end I guess in some way
Prometheus was a success. At least from the point of view that it
entertained me, and then let my my reflect on hidden deeper meanings
within the film. It sparked my imagination in a way that I had never
anticipated. New interesting possibilities lie ahead...
Ever play Mass Effect? You should look up the Protheans and Reapers. Alot of similar themes there.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of it. I know a little about it, but not much. My unwillingness to invest my time in computer games holds me back from finding out more. That and the fact that my friends are pretty well versed in the setting makes me hesitant to use it in any future gaming endeavour. But thanks for the heads up, maybe I should look it to it a bit more.
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