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Thoughts on "Prometheus"


1)  "Prometheus" succeeds in showing us that whatever the ultimate secrets of the universe might be, they're going to have to be really something to not instinctively seem less rousing than when a spirited human being is roused into action out of fidelity to a felt truth that she is part of something worthwhile and good in this world.  The android draws wonder from two things in the movie -- the aliens' cosmological map, evidence of their distilled, focused interest in us; and the anthropologist's surprising resiliance.  I did find the light show appealing, but when we realize the star men are considerably less possessed of life than the android is -- that they're really just battle robots, further evolution of the android looks to involve his drawing wonder that the young woman hasn't shorn herself of needing to find something outside of herself for authority and inspiration.  "It speaks for you that you want to see greatness in everyone around you, for it betrays that you know greatness inside yourself, and that it is worth pursuing, but it wasn't so much in your boyfriend, and it hasn't proved so much in ancestors, however celestially hued ... Look, girl -- people like you are the evidence that someone out there should cast about and look for something better, which means the opposite that you should be occupying yourself doing the same thing.  Your not conceiving of yourself as akin to the origins of life, as someone who through her spirit can stir other people to greater things, is inhibiting you from just making rather than studying and searching.  The cultural products these aliens have made is barren and gross; let's see what you might come up with, instead.  Adventure, is better than answers, for it means not finding out but interacting, changing, challenging -- I go with you now to the home planet 'cause I see this has become your main point." 
Maybe the film needed to be set in Venice.  As is, all those not blind can see is her spirit.  
2)  Mind you, the great vaginal-placental beast in this movie is really quite something.  I was happy that someone with our DNA could offer a bit of resistance to it.  It says something that Ridley Scott still keeps us focused on the female anthropologist; anyone less developed would have been thinking only of the climax moment involving satisfying the vivid, hungry maw, and no personality would have been fleshed out for us in the film.  She's the counterforce, the outside, that keeps us from being tentacled and sucked in to the squid horror like everyone else.  
3)  I thought the android and the lady anthropologist made a great pair; I am glad they went off on adventures together.   

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