Sci-fi Film Explores Idea That Earth’s Life Was Seeded From Space

Prometheus 2012 offers an intriguing premise: ancient civilizations were told in mysterious ways of a habitable moon in a distant galaxy (Part 1 of 4)

Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash

I recently did a review series on the Alien franchise. It is not one of my favorites.

The second film is pretty good, but the rest have a variety of issues. The third film pretty well killed the franchise, which is what happens when you murder your protagonist. The writers realized their mistake, but too little, too late. They tried to bring Ripley back the in fourth film, but she was a clone, so no one cared. I don’t know how or why nobody realized the audience wasn’t going to be invested in a clone.

I was a kid when the later films came out, and I could’ve told them that was going to happen. They should’ve called me because, apparently, I’m a cinematic review prodigy. But now for Prometheus (2012):

About fifteen years later, somebody decided it was a good idea to resurrect this corpse. What followed was one of the more incoherent stories in cinema. The Room has a more solid train of thought. It doesn’t dethrone The Last Jedi for Worst Film by any stretch. But Prometheus (2012) does have the single most idiotic scene I have ever laid eyes on:

The movie opens with a giant white humanoid standing over a cliff. He drinks some black goo and disintegrates. His crumbling body falls into the water, and the camera zooms in to show his dead DNA reconfiguring into new DNA for no obvious reason. The idea seems to be that, in order for something to be created, something else has to die.

I’ve already got questions. How can dead matter recreate itself? Is it somehow interacting with the environment? What’s the black goo doing besides killing the white alien? This is like expecting battery acid to create life! We get no answers for anything.

That’s pretty much the approach of the entire movie. “Have questions? Don’t care! Moving on!” Stuff just happens, and nobody has time to question anything because, well, more stuff happens.

If you haven’t guessed already, the writers are attempting to tell a story in which panspermia — the science hypothesis that life was seeded from space — is responsible for the existence of life on Earth, or of humans anyway. But unlike the traditional theory of panspermia, where the basic requirements for organic material are transferred from meteors, a white alien drinking black battery acid is the origin. Darwin, eat your heart out.

Mysterious artwork points to the stars

So, after the white alien dies, we cut to two scientists named Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and Dr. Charlie Holloway. These two have been searching the globe for ancient artwork pointing to a group of stars. A giant is always seen pointing to this grouping. Later in the film, when Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway explain the mission to their crew, they say that these giants are pointing to a group of stars that the ancient peoples couldn’t see. So, these peoples had access to unknowable knowledge, which has led our doctors to conclude that the giants are aliens and that they created us.

Now, this might be picky, but how did ancient man know what stars the giants were pointing at if they couldn’t see them? How did they know to draw those stars in that exact, precise pattern? Did the aliens help them with the paintings? If they did, couldn’t they have helped our ancestors do a little better than drawing stick people on ancient stone tablets and rock walls? Why would anyone bother pointing to something if the people they’re directing can’t see the object in question? And what if one of these cultures was off by an inch? Then, whatever futuristic star chart the scientists were using wouldn’t be able to find the right grouping of stars in a vast universe.

And why would anyone conclude that a giant pointing to a bunch of stars made humanity? It could mean anything. The drawings could just be saying, this is where we came from, or this is where the old gods come from, or even — stay away from those stars when you learn space travel; they’re dangerous!

Enter the bad guys

And this shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody, but the white aliens turn out to be bad guys. So why were they helping ancient man in the first place? These doctors make so many assumptions that it’s mind-numbing! It’s also hilarious because one of the crew members makes a comment about this theory undermining Darwinism. But panspermia has been used to work around the origin of life problem in order to save Darwinism. That is, the sheer complexity of even simple life forms poses a time lapse problem for the origin of life on Earth. Starting it earlier, elsewhere, is thought to help resolve that.

Anyway, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Halloway also explain that the ship is heading toward a single moon, which is the only terrestrial body capable of sustaining life within the group of stars. They’re heading to this moon, hoping to find what Shaw and Halloway call the Engineers.

While they are on on the ship, the cast is introduced individually. One crew member, David, is a robot, and like the other robots in this franchise, he is interested in humanity. But, unlike the others, he is also a little jealous of mankind. That is, of course, stupid because robots can’t feel interested or jealous. But I’ve beaten that dead horse to a pulp in other reviews. The other thing to know about David is that he is a vindictive and malicious robot as well (which again doesn’t make any sense).

The Girlboss shows her hand

The only other noteworthy event while they’re still aboard ship is that Meredith Vickers, the Weyland Corp representative, offers Shaw and Holloway the cliché “I’m the one in charge around here speech,” because the corporation is funding the mission. She also implies that there is an alternative agenda, but she has no desire to tell Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway what it is.

Also, Shaw comes across what is called a med-pod, which is a robotic bed that can perform surgery. She also says that her room is actually a shuttle connected to the ship, just in case something goes wrong.

Once Meredith feels she’s put Shaw and Holloway in their place, the ship arrives at the target moon, and the crew quickly comes across a road that leads to a hollow stone structure. Shaw and Holloway take some of the members of the crew to investigate this building, and we’ll cover what happens then next time.

Meanwhile…