The Science of 'Prometheus'

In this episode, Robert and Julie suit up and venture into the dark and Gigery heart of 'Prometheus.' They’ll examine the film’s futuristic science as well as some of its themes. And fear not! You’ll only encounter spoilers after the commercial break.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas.
And in this episode, we're going to talk about a
little movie that came out this year called Prometheus. Of
this tiny, tiny, little indie flick. You probably have not
heard about it, tiny little viral marketing campaign on the web.

(00:27):
Maybe a TV added too. You know. Um names in it, Yeah,
up and coming guy by the name of Ridley Scott
and directed it. Yeah. So why are we talking about it? Well,
everybody is talking about it in one way or another.
And there there's a lot of talk about the science
in this film because we've discussed the importance of fiction,
the importance of science fiction before um, where we're creating these, uh,

(00:51):
these fictional versions of what the future will be, that
be like based on present technology, emerging technology, modern concerns,
modern fears, modern hopes, and then you wrap that all
up into a nice package and consume it. And uh,
Prometheus is one of, if not the biggest science fiction
films to come out in um really, for my money,

(01:13):
the biggest science fiction film to come out in a
while I can't remember the last one that I really
kind of got excited about and and and ultimately really
got my my mind moving in a scientific way, saying,
in the last ten years, can you think of anything
and that's been quite on this scale? Yeah? Not not
not quiet No. Um. So we are going to jump in, uh,

(01:36):
and we are going to discuss this film, but we
want to let you know that we are going to
have a clean divider between spoiler free and spoiler talk.
So from now until the commercial break that we take,
we promise to steer clear of any major spoilers anything
that happens in the you know, the later portions of
the film when once the plot gets moving and all that,

(01:58):
and we're and we're can also save our opinions for
the most part for that section as well. After the
commercial break, anything's game. So fair warning if you if
you have seen it, you can listen to the whole thing,
no worries. If you have not seen it and would
like to watch it spoiler free, then when you come
to the commercial break, pose it and come back after

(02:20):
you've been to the theater. So before we jump completely
into it, let's uh, let's actually requain ourselves or if
you have somehow missed that massive ad campaign um that
they launched online and on TV and probably in the
sky and in our skin for yeah and our dreams,

(02:40):
then here's the taste of what the movie is is about,
as much as we can convey in a purely audio environment.
So so here you go. Here's a little clip from Prometheus.
Please tell me you can read that. What are you doing?
I'm attempting to open the door. Wait, we don't know
what's on the other side. Sorry, remarkably humor beautiful painting.

(03:26):
It's a mural. Stop. Don't don't touch sorry, please, don't
touch anything. Kay. Oh no, the mules are changing. I

(03:55):
think we lived back to the others during the room
Charley David. What must they know? So that clip kind
of introduces the mystery and intrigue that unfolds as we
follow a crew of scientists and soldiers and explorers and
mysterious corporate people as they travel to a just an

(04:17):
exo planet in attempt to discover possibly the origins of life.
That's right, it's a trillion dollar trip. Yes, right, this
is uh not you know, some sort of weekend jaunt.
It's taken them two years and I don't believe that's
a plot spoiler at all. There two years to too,
it will take two years to arrive on this planet.

(04:38):
And uh, they are aboard the U. S. S c
SS Prometheus, which is a nuclear ion plasma engine fueled craft. Yeah,
and it is. It is really pimped out because this
whole venture in this film is is the product of
of this Peter Whalen character, this Whaland Industries, and and

(04:59):
this is a fictional congaboration of various, um, you know,
major tech company. So so think a little a little
bit of Branson inversion Galactic thrown in here, you know,
a little bit of Google, a little like any major
company that's really on the um you know, on the
cutting edge and the bleeding edge of technology. This is
an amalgamation of the VAT. And what I like about

(05:21):
this whaling character, to this Peter Whaland who's the head
of this corporation, is that he does have this Branson
like spirit in that he breaks all the rules. Right,
he's um, he's a pioneer. He is someone who lives
life to the fullest and he's interested in in exploring
every corner of the universe. And so I do think

(05:42):
it's a very engaging character, and I think actually get
that sense more from the promoes than the actual movie. Yeah,
they did some virals where he's doing a Ted talk,
I believe, and he's talking about, uh, you know, really
just something of his philosophy on on science and human achievement.
And I was thinking too that for for me, this

(06:04):
is the first time that something like that, this material,
this media that is not the movie itself, has really
enhanced my my enjoyment of the movie itself. Yeah, because
generally it's just one off stuff that is aimed at
getting in your theater, and they really were very interested
in getting you thinking about the film in the world
of the film prior to to you actually picking up

(06:25):
a ticket. And I love that they framed it in
the Ted dot com talk, you know, because and one
of the things they said actually is that they wanted
when they were advertising for the film, that they wanted
people to sort of engage on a different level and
to perhaps even be introduced to Ted dot com itself
if they never had listened to Ted dot com, which
is great because Ted, of course, I feel like most
of our listeners probably know Ted, and if you haven't

(06:47):
do check out the Ted Talks because it's it's amazing stuff.
Each one is a is a you know, deals with
mind blowing topics, generally around stuff that is that that
will or can change the world for the better. So
in eighteen minutes or less, Yeah, so Whaland Industries all
this technology. Um. So, the the ship in the film

(07:07):
and the characters in the film have a lot of
really cool gadgets, a lot of really cool science and
this is about a hundred years in the future. And uh,
and so we're gonna spend a lot of time in
this podcast just talking taking it bit by bit, this
little technology here, a little technology there, and discussing what
we thought about it, how it lines up with things
that we've discussed before on Stuff Toble your Mind. And

(07:28):
and then we'll also in the later half of this
podcast we'll also get into some of the cultural aspects
um and you know, in some of the grosser goofy
stuff as well. First, I should point out that this
was a science fiction film, a big blockbuster science fiction film,
so there are certain problems that are always going to
be present. For instance, magic gravity, magic artificial gravity of

(07:52):
borda spaceship, UM, really, the only film I can think
of that did not engage in magical unexplained gravity has
been two thousand and one, where were they actually put
some some forethought into what it would be like in
a weightless environment. How how you would you would simulate

(08:12):
gravity artificially through the use of rotation. Uh. You encounter
some legitimate or at least pseudo scientific excuses for artificial
gravity in hard science fiction, so specifically hard science fiction novels,
but you get into the realm of big space movies
and they tend to either give it, give it sort

(08:33):
of a half explanation, or just don't explain it at all,
or it's just assume that the years and somehow they've
mastered h creating this this atmosphere where they're not floating
around heship like even Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Did you ever
see that one? Didn't um Like they had Brian cox
Um on board to to to give them science advice

(08:54):
as they were filming it, and they still just went
ahead and had artificial gravity and didn't explain it. And
and some people were kind of like British science journalists.
Uh Ajana Aja was was a bit perturbed by this
and made kind of a stink about it. But it's
just it's generally it's what you're gonna get with science
fiction films. Likewise, sound in space. The first Alien had

(09:15):
sound in space. You encounter a little sound in space,
and this one you see a spaceship traveling through the void.
Somebody's gonna want to throw in the sound of thrusters.
Someone's gonna want to throw in the sound of an
explosion if something blows up in space. Uh. The only
exceptions to this rule really are two thousand and one
and uh and also the Firefly TV show did a

(09:36):
good job with this of keeping uh space soundless, but
then they made the Serenity movie and uh and clearly
you know, studio heads or whoever came in and said,
this is nice, but if you're gonna have a battle
in space, we want explosions. Well, and it is a
big blockbuster. You can't really, I mean, you can't help
but expect that the audience. You're watching a blockbuster science

(09:59):
fiction film, you go into it with those expectations. Anything
else is just a bit silly. But two thousand and one,
I will say, um that the absence of sound really
just makes it that much more alienating and creepy and wonderful,
and that's it's the granddaddy of all science fiction films
still still holds up today. A right, So we're gonna
discuss more of the the actual technology that we've seen

(10:19):
in the film, but first we need to talk a
little bit about um. Sexuality in Alien specifically, and uh
in panties actually factors into this as well. Okay, So
the reason why you want to talk about Aliens and
panties and space um is because Ridley Scott directed the
first Aliens Alien. Yes, that's part of the Aliens franchise,

(10:44):
and although Prometheus is not directly related to Aliens really,
Scott has said that it's part of the DNA of Alien. Yeah,
and it was at least at some point in its
development a prequel to Alien, and then to a certain
extent still is yes, yeah there there there's definitely some
themes that are explored in Alien, Alien one and some

(11:06):
of the other ones as well as Prometheus. So let's
talk about the pantalonies. Yes. Well, okay, so if you
you go all the way back to seventy nine, I
was like a year old and uh, and Ridley Scott
makes this film, and he really he in interviews, he's
been very clear that he set out to make a
slasher movie in space, a haunted house movie in space.

(11:30):
You have the alien spaceship, which is and the cramped
claustrophobic um uh Nostromo's ship in the original film, and
it's essentially a haunted house with a slasher aboard, only
it's a spaceship and an alien and and in the
three decades since that film came out, we've just layered
multiple layers of criticism and interpretation and UH and fanboy

(11:56):
fanaticism on top of that film and really built it
up into this great intellectual thing to cirt extent. I mean,
we we've on one level. You can't help but create
a lot of thought provoking content with this, because even
if you're saying, I'm just going to create a slasher film,
what is a slasher film? Well, you can get into

(12:17):
a lot of interesting commentary and discussion on that on
its own. There are people that argue that a slasher
film is essentially human sacrifice. That in the old days
you had you had males that wanted to dominate society
and to uh to counsel cancel out female power and

(12:38):
to um combat the female science of birth, you bring
about the male science of death. We've touched on this,
I think a little bit in episodes in the past.
So whereas women create with their bodies, men kill with
their hands and their weapons. And modern societies, of course,
we're not really all about human sacrifice anymore, but we

(12:59):
can still make movie after movie after movie in which females,
typically females that are engaging in um stereotypically unethical behavior,
are brutally murdered by a male figure. Okay, so what
we're seeing as a moral code in a lot of
these films. Yeah, So just even if you're making you're
trying to make just a slasher film, there's a lot
of there's a lot of problematic area already there. On

(13:23):
top of that, who you get to design your monster
for this film? But hr Geeger, whose big deal is
biomechanical designs of a typically sexual nature. Okay, when you
say sexual nature, I think what you're primarily saying is
that so many of his creations look like a fallust, yes,

(13:43):
thallust or yes, everything looks like genitalia to a certain extent,
stylized um hot leather genitalia is generally you say hot
leather genitalia. I don't know why hot leather. It's more
like a cold anyway, cold leather genitalia, let's say. And uh,

(14:03):
I mean that's the look of H. R. Geeker stuff.
If you've you've seen it everywhere. And this is the
mood that pervades the Prometheus for sure. Yeah, and um
bills over into this Alien one and the other aliens. Yeah. So, um,
but the panties, the panties getting back to panties, what
the panties have spawned? And when I say the panties,

(14:24):
that we're talking about Sigourney Weaver's character in the panties
in Alien one. Yeah, in in the original Alien film,
she's you have this whole crew, mostly male crew, and
one by one they're knocked out by this alien. Uh
it's bursting. It's basically impregnates one man through the face
and then burst out of his stomach. It and there's

(14:46):
and you sent me a really interesting article about how
it's sort of there's themes of rape in there as well. Yeah,
it's they're strong themes of of rape and sexual assault
because the creature is essentially sexually assaulting each member and
especially the male members. And uh, in the case of
the one character impregnating him more or less with this

(15:07):
violent uh, this violent vision of of pregnancy in which
the thing then grows in his stomach like a gastro
intestinal confusion of pregnancy, with this violent birth that kills
the mother slash father. Um. You know, so strong themes
of this um. And then it just goes, of course,
one by one, each character getting knocked off, and Ripley

(15:28):
Sigourney Weever's character remains really strong. UM. You know, you
can really get behind her as this strong female character. UM.
And then you have this scene towards the end of
the film that of course made a strong impression on
me when I watched it, UM as a like a
not a not a one year with that as a
as a you know, I'm I'm not going through puberty.
I watched Alien and there's this scene where oh, she's safe,

(15:50):
she's finally gotten away, she's blown up the ship, and
she decides, oh, now it's a good time to go
ahead and strip down to my underwear and then get
into my escape into my cryogenics pod and uh and
just sail home a little does she know the alien
is there watching her um and as she changes, so
the camera becomes the voyer, right, and the alien is

(16:13):
kind of the voyer because the alien is not really
attacking at first. He's just he or she is just
kind of hanging back and she doesn't know he's there.
And she's wearing really skimpy, simple underwear, but very skimpy.
I think you said it like looked like she's wearing
something a few sizes too small. Yeah, it looks like
plumbers crack underwear. It's actually an underwear that I've never
quite seen before. Maybe this exists out there and it's

(16:35):
in the future right right, where apparently everybody has plumbers crack.
But it's not ugly, but it is very Yeah, it's
not hyper sexualized, like she's not wearing like a G
string or anything. But it is a very sexual scene
because suddenly she's she's unclothed, she's vulnerable. The scenes are
shot in a way too. It's no accident that it's

(16:58):
a sexy scene and that and at any moment, this creature,
this phallic, monstrous, uh sexual monster is going to attack
her and then you know, and we just hope that
she has closed on by that point. Well, this has
spawned the whole cottage industry within academia of trying to
figure out what the panties mean. I mean, even probably

(17:20):
more so than the Buffy verse, right, um, because it's
it's problematic for people because they're analyzing it and they're like,
all right, all the sexual content. Um, a really strong
female character and like, I'm totally on board, and then
she strips under the panties and they're like deal breaker. Okay,
So we're we're talking about all of this because after
the commercial breaking and we get more into um some

(17:43):
some spoilers there, this is going to be a larger
part of our conversation then, but we wanted to go
ahead and seat it now. Alright, so more more on
the panties la. But but but in uh, in the
sperit of seating, let's talk about this this other theme
that runs through Prometheus. Pants for me. Yes, So we've
discussed pants fermia before, and specifically to the idea of exogenesis,

(18:07):
which is the notion that life originated elsewhere in the
universe and somehow found its way to the planet. Um.
This is this is dealt with right at the beginning
of Prometheus because you kick off the movie with this
tall pale um humanoid creature. Yeah, and he's apparently abandoned
on this desolate world by a spaceship that takes off

(18:30):
and then he uh, he drinks some sort of goop
and then he melts in his DNA like just becomes
this primordial gup that, uh, you get the idea is
going to spawn life on this planet that the Earth,
maybe another planet, we don't know. You see his body
breakdown and like the DNA ulysses just sort of merging
with the water. Yeah, and uh, and so this is
a fantastic idea of what exogenesis and to a certain extent,

(18:54):
pants Fermia might consist of. It's kind of like to
have a blender. You're throwing a little bit of pants
Fermian exogenesis and then throwing a little Charito of the
gods as well, Charito charoits of the gods of course,
the book by Eric von Denkan. And this is where
we could the idea that ancient astronauts visited Earth and
serve as the god figures of our mythologies. So while

(19:14):
this with their technology and taught us to do things
like baked bread and build pyramids, that sort of thing. Yeah,
it was interesting to me because I've always thought of
pantsopermia as being more like this tiny bit of bacteria,
and it is in the strictly scientific sense, right. So
to see this this um, this sort of titan like
human like creature, um like literally dissolve into DNA and

(19:39):
then spread his his pantsopermia in that manner, was it
was interesting. I mean, it's it's visually arresting. And I
should say that if nothing this film is will knock
your socks off. I mean, it is gorgeous, it's beautiful.
You can't help but inhabit the minds of the characters
um in this movie. Yes, Scott a always been a

(20:00):
faculous visual director, even films like Legend, which I don't
think has I wasn't a huge fan of the plot
line and legend or I'm not really sure that it's
important though, because the legend was just such a stunning Yeah. Yeah, um,
and that the devil in that it's just incredible. I
think we've talked about that before, but um, he is,
but he's anyway, So um, that's a whole other conversation.

(20:23):
So that is the opening sequence here for Prometheus. We
see this happening, and it is a really interesting way
to get into this idea of how did we actually
come to exist here on Earth in the first place. Yeah,
all right. Next on the list, suspended animation, crist status.
This factors into all of the the Alien franchise films.
It was in the first one. They wake up from
this quote unquote wake up from from this sleep, and

(20:46):
the plot begins and uh, and we see some more thing,
and that's the crew of the Prometheus have been traveling
for two years and they've been asleep, h quote unquote
asleep while David, the artificial human, the android of the ship,
learns languages and plays basketball and comes his hair while
watching Lawrence of Arabia, which is again another incredible scene

(21:08):
because you're trying to you know, you're sort of getting
your bearings in the in the film, and it looks
like he is the only person on the ship. And
played by Michael Fassbender, of course. Yeah, and he is
so good in this role. We'll talk more about the
significance of David later. So we recently did an episode
on Hibernation in which we discuss some of the some
of what we know about suspended animation and and and

(21:31):
hibernation in ways that we could artificially instill it. And
this is something that is of interest not only to
DARPA and NASA, but also just uh actually, like I
was gonna say, emergency room doctors. Yeah, you know, the
ideas like, all right, something is wrong. Let us chill
this out until we can actually treat it, or in
more extreme cases, chill it out until we can actually

(21:54):
find a cure for it. Right, Because if you have
some sort of trauma, you're bleeding to death, you're losing
oxygen to your brain, can you suspend that? And that's
what we're talking about suspended animation. So in that episode
of the Hibernation episode, we discussed methods to use both
chemical and thermal um techniques to put an animal under

(22:14):
into a hibernative state where their metabolism cranks way down
and and they're put into this not quite sleep phase,
but something that that you could call suspended animation UM.
And then there's a there's actually another interesting guy, this
guy Mark Roth, researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
in Seattle, Washington, and uh, he's he's looked into a

(22:38):
short term suspended animation a lot because again, this would
be a way to stabilize patient center and trauma from injury.
Uh So, normally hydrogen sulfite is toxic, but Roth has
working on this technique where you can use it to
actually alter a million metabolism when it's applied in a
cold environment, resulting in this suspended animation uh type situation.

(23:00):
All right, so when you're in this suspended state, the
body can better cope with deadly oxygen deprivation the results
from shock, massive blood loss, and heart attacks. So yeah,
it's really cool because if you give someone hydrogen sulfide,
which is what he did with animals, um, what it
does is it knocks you out and it might cause
the oxygen to not bind. So it's kind of like

(23:22):
a game of musical chairs there, and that can manipulate
your metabolism. And he was actually inspired by this because
there was a skier I want to say she was Swedish,
but she was caught, um frozen to death for like
five hours or something, and she came out of this
kind of suspended animation completely fine. And so that's kind

(23:44):
of what got him to think about this idea of
hydrogen sulfide, which we produce in tiny amounts in our
own bodies and what would happen if you expanded that
amount And it's not hard to sort of see that
technology now being realized in the year twenty nine d
three for two years, I don't know, but you know,
the five hours now that we know has happened at

(24:07):
least accidentally or as a byproduct of an accident. Could
that be extrapolated to two years maybe, but we know
that that the foundation is there. Yeah, So I ultimately,
I ultimately liked what they did with it, and this
if for no other reason, they really made a point
of making waking up from crime status kind of grows.
People were throwing up all over the place. They're clearly
they look like they're they're had. They have the worst

(24:29):
hangover imaginable. And uh, and we were when we were
discussing hibernation and the artificial hibernation and the potential that
it could be used for long term space travel. We
brought that up that in science fiction films that they're
a lot of times it's it's not this traumatic wake up. Uh.
And we even put a call out to listeners as said, hey,

(24:49):
if you've seen something we're waking up from suspended animation
and science fiction film is actually traumatic, let us know.
And and in fact, one of our a couple of
our listeners pointed out the film Pandorum, which which also
featured people waking up in a very adult, physically disruptive state.
So I liked what they did in this film with that. Yeah,
that was very realistic. And again, all of this is

(25:11):
about building a world that you can really believe in.
And yes that there are perhaps some holes in different
places that we'll discuss later on, but really Scott does
do such an amazing job of making you feel like
you're inserted into this world that could happen in three possibly.
Speaking of inserted, the next bit we're going to discuss

(25:31):
is the Medpods seven twenty I, which is introduced early
on in the film. You see it on the ship
and we'll we'll discuss it a little more later, but
I'm just you know, this thing is gonna be used.
It's like it's the can. It's like it's gonna go off.
You know, it's going to factor into the plot if
you introduce it in the way they introduce it, and

(25:54):
it's uh, it's really snazzy. They introduced this cool um
outline of the various parts as part of the Vieral marketing,
and so it has comfortable limb restrates, a liquid spray
and aesthetic, a laser scalpel, air tight operating shield, computer
controlled robotic surgical arms, vital sign sensors, and an adjustable
titanium base. UM. Though we are told from the get

(26:15):
go that it is UM, that it is a rare
piece of technology in the future, that they're only like
twelve of these things. Yeah, it's now today we do
have we do not have bona fide robotic surgery where
where a robot is carrying out medical procedures on a
regular basis on its own. We have the Da Vinci
system UM that continues to to show a lot of

(26:36):
promise and UH and generally robot assisted procedures. Where we
have the bull's eye right now, the idea that let's
let's work on robotic systems that can aid a surgeon
in UH daring the surgery or telesurgery systems that can
allow a surgeon to perform a procedure from the other
side of the world, from another country, another city, remotely

(27:00):
through robotic cans. And if we reach the point where
we have robots working side by side with humans in
a surgical environment. We can create USI we can we
can better adapt them to learn from their human surgeons,
and eventually reach the point where we could have technology
like we see in the movie where you have like
an autonomous procedure or UM, something that you can program

(27:23):
because because the idea when you're introduced to it, it's
it's like a bead with a shell over it, and
you climb into the bed, push whatever you need done,
and it'll do it. It's like, oh, I mean my
tonsils out, Just punch it in. It's pretty brilliant, Press
send and then lay back. Yeah, and we'll talk more
about why it's brilliant and uh terrifying and wonderful a
little bit later. But let's get to something um that

(27:44):
borders sort of on what we've talked about, is brain
mapping or even brain memory storage. Yes, because as we mentioned,
when we're on board the Prometheus at first, everyone is
in crist status status and David is walking about doing
this thing, combing his hair but also checking on the
dreams of the individuals that are that are under in

(28:06):
their in their crested spots, right, So he just places
a hand on on their little pods and their information
comes up. So presumably the reason why he can UH
check in on their dreams or check out their stats
in general is just to make sure that they're okay
when they're in this state. UM. But it is very

(28:27):
interesting because we've talked about how the National Science Foundation has,
you know, I think there's last year awarded a half
million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida at
Orlando and Illinois at Chicago to explore how research researchers
might use AI archiving and computer imaging to create digital
lifelike versions of real people. You're talking about here is

(28:48):
a backup system for your brain. Yeah, which is a
whole hunting. It's just the technology is just very barely
touched on in this film. But you people can and
have created entire science fiction and UH properties just based
off of this this idea. UM. In the last couple
of years we saw were signed to the University of California, Berkeley.

(29:09):
Um UH toyed around with reconstructing the internal quote unquote
movie that plays in a person's head by using fm
R I scans UH and having having patients look at
or testas look at films and then watching what their
brain is doing when they look at that, and then
trying to match it up later and uh and yeah,

(29:29):
it's it's pretty interesting. It shows some promise for a
potential future in which we could use um, really laser
attentive fm ri I data to tell what's going on
in a person's head to the point where we can
actually get an idea of what they're envisioning. And it's
extream that in Prometheus that they're playing the dreams, because
that definitely serves the plot, right, so we can get

(29:51):
some exposition on the characters. But if you want to
try to fit it into this this um this world
that real Lea Scott has created, it would make sense
that David would check can on those dreams and um,
you know, but there would be something that you could
administer if someone were saying having nightmares for hours on
end or um that they just seemed unsettled, like all
of these would sort of be clues to how the

(30:12):
person is actually doing in this state. And also a
mega company like Whaland Industries, there's also the the scary
idea that this enormous company is actually looking at my dreams,
so you know, imagine if your employer could see your dreams,
it would it would be weird, Like that time that
I dreamt that our boss was getting married, Like who's

(30:32):
marrying his wife again? Like they're reaffirming their vows and
they were going to do it in the office. Like
what if you saw it? What do you think? I
never knew about that drain? Oh I forget there was
something else kind of weird about it, but that's the
only thing I remember, um wiping from brain. So yeah,
there's there's this idea that that this technology in would

(30:56):
be in full use, that that you would have a
backup of your that you would be able to monitor
someone's streams along with their vital signs. All right, well
we're gonna take a quick break here and when we
come back, um, all bets are off and we will
spoil any and everything in the film. So uh pause,
pause this podcast. If you have not seen it, go

(31:18):
out and see it right now whatever you're doing, see
in the theater or rent it whatever, and then come
back and we will we will discuss what happened. All right,
Well we're back and uh so, yeah, the rest of
that movie happened, didn't it? Oh yeah, and this thing
happened and then there was a fire and then boom

(31:40):
and that was the end. Well, and so there you go.
Plot spoilers. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's so much more
involved than that. In fact, just this morning, Holly Fry
of Pop Stuff and another editor, Chris opens Chain opens Chain. Uh,
we're having a very heated discussion about the movie. Yeah,
they were. It was very interesting. Um, I lingered, because

(32:04):
you know, I have some of that I felt like
the Devil's Advocate. I had some of the same perspective
of both of them. The audiences have been a little
split over it because on one level, you have individuals
who really came into this with lofty expectations. Uh. Like
I said, that Original nine film, like we said earlier,
has thirty years worth of of of of fan enthusiasm

(32:27):
and cultural study and just it's become a part of
our culture, you know, in those three decades. And so
you have this film that comes along, and it's a
very ambitious film and uh and really sets out to
to equal those thirty thirty years worth of um of
ideas that have built on top of Alien and U.
I mean I I really enjoyed it. I thought it

(32:48):
was great, but that was interesting though. Is like for
someone like myself who has seen Aliens three, you really
enjoyed it or may not have seen Alien and Aliens
the previous one I may or may not happen, but
it was a lost decade. I'm just kidding. Um, but
we're gonna get like a whole bunch of emails now
where people bet Julie you should see Alien. Well no, no,

(33:09):
this is I mean, I mean obviously like this is
something that's going to happen because through this whole process anyway, Um,
it's been very interesting me to now go back and say, Okay,
let's go and look at all the films it then,
But you have been steeped in it. You've been steeped
in the mythology, wouldn't you say? Um, it's been a
part of my life ever since I was old enough

(33:31):
to watch the original Alien, probably on like a cable
or something. And you have that Sigourney Weaver panties poster
and you're I, I do not have in your office poster,
but I definitely had it in my mind. Um as
a young kid. I think that's scene probably influenced a
lot of of young boys, and she was kind of
like I was sending the other day, shoot that scene.
That was she was kind of the Barber Ella for

(33:52):
for my generation. I see that. I see that, and
I think it's probably a positive thing because even though
she was in her in her underwear and how and
even though that kind of erupts some feminist arguments for
the film and in some cases, weirdly enough, is embraced
by think some people say no, let's let's take the panties,
and still she's ultimately power are less sexualized character than
Barbara Ella. Yeah, yeah, Well, Richard Adam, the director of

(34:16):
Um of Barbara far different director than really Scott. But
my point is that that we both have different experiences
with with the franchise, and we both, I think, for
the most part, really embraced this film, uh, and that
it is visually spectacular and it does have so many

(34:36):
different intriguing elements that will linger far after you've seen
the movie. Yeah. I love the cosmology of it and
the design of it. And and I should also point
out that I am a total fan of sci fi horror,
like any horror that takes place in space. UM, I'm
generally on board for it. Be it a be an alien,
be a pandorum, be it be even even some thing

(35:00):
like the Nightmare on the Nightmare Name Street. He hasn't
gone into space yet, but the Friday where Jason is
in space, Jason X right an awful but self aware
to a certain extent. I even I even enjoyed that film,
So you know, um, so again, I really had a
great time. And uh and and I felt like it

(35:23):
it matched my expectations rather well. Yeah. And that's not
to say again that it's not a flawed movie, because
it is in some ways. I mean some well for me,
I should say, like, you know, some of them. I've
talked about some of the dialogue. Yeah, it's when the
when the most relatable character in the film is an
android or a squid monster, then then you know that

(35:46):
maybe that's saying this is not the most character driven
motion picture out there. Um okay, but I think there's
a reason for that, because I think that David is
someone that you can project everything onto David being the android. Um,
you know, how could you not. I mean, I've I
fell in love with David. I thought that, you know,
he's such an interesting character, and a lot of that
has to do with Michael Fastbender in the way that

(36:08):
he was so nuanced in his betrayal. Well, let's uh,
let's discuss him a little more. But first let's listen
to a little clip of David interacting with one of
his human crew members. Am I interrupting? I thought you
might be running low? Put yourself a glass? Thank you?
But I'm afraid it would be wasted on me. You

(36:29):
think we wasted our time coming in, don't you? Your
question depends on me understanding what do you hope to
achieve by kind of have What we hope to achieve
was to meet our makers, to get answers where they
even made us in the first place. Why do you
think your people made me? We made you? Guess we could.

(36:51):
Can you imagine how disappointing would be for you to
hear the same thing from your creator? Huh? May I
ask you something? Please do? How far would you go
to get what you came all this way for your answers?
What would you be willing to do? Anything? And everything?

(37:14):
So that was a wonderful little scene. As if everyone
listening to this part has has either seen the film
or doesn't care about spoilers, It's the scene where he
is he's handing off an infected glass of champagne that's
infected with the the goo to one of the jerky
or members of the crew there. That's right to Halloway,

(37:34):
right and the beloved though of the film's heroin. So
it's kind of problematic for the viewer there because on
one level you don't really like the dude, but he's
not evil. He's not like Paul Riser and Aliens, where
you're like, God, this guy can't get an alien. It's
bally fast enough. No, he's just not that self actualized.
I mean, honestly, as a character, he's not that well drawn.
And but he serves a purpose, right, He's very passionate

(37:56):
about trying to find his make really um you know,
human species maker. And he's terribly disappointed because at this
point in the film he has not met his maker,
so to speak. And David's basically saying, oh, you're disappointed
in not meeting your maker, while I met my maker
every day of my life and is really no big deal, buddy. Yeah,

(38:17):
that guy is a bummer. So and that's what I
love about that um about that scene, and that's a
really well written scene. I think because it does show
this UM, this sort of complicated future where you have
an android who has learned to sympathize, understands empathy, understands
these human emotions. And that's an interesting thing to think

(38:37):
about with him, because he knows what empathy is, he
understands empathy. He is maybe is he capable of actually
he's capable of faking empathy for sure, but is he
really empathetic? Well? And what makes him what's the difference
between him an associopath? Right, and that he's programmed to do?
Specifically discussed in the past, how in treating psychopaths you

(39:00):
you teach them to pretend to be empathetic and UH
and to what extent is that solve problems? To which
what extent does it create a new problems? And if
your programmed to understand empathy and to exercise it to
a certain degree, there's the whole school of thought you
fake it until you make it, and through the process
you make it. So on one level, and again this

(39:20):
is you know, this is projection. You can't help but
think that David does have some sort of part of
his UH schematics UM in his programming that does feel
and that he does feel the slight that you hear
in that scene where Holloway is being kind of a
jerk to him and he's responding to it accordingly. M

(39:41):
It's just a really nice, nicely um handled scene, I think.
And speaking of encounters with creators, of course, one of
the ultimate scenes in the film is of course when
you have the old Peter Whyland uh um, and he
has he's he's strapped on his exoskeleton and he's walked
in and David, his creation, is there beside him as

(40:02):
they wake up. One of these engineers, one of these
mysterious space jockeys uh that of course originally are are
seen in passing as part of the set piece an
alien back in seventy nine. And now here's one alive
and awake, standing in front of his creation and his
creation's creation. Okay, so just to recap, Yeah, you've got

(40:22):
Peter Whalen, right, who has funded the trillion dollar trip
his creation and he's basically going, yes, he has been
from Spurns, which as you said, makes um, David fetch
my robotic pants and was like and you can tell
he's like kind of annoyed by he's doing because he's
programmed to UM. But as you pointed out that where

(40:45):
you're talking about our three generations of something, right, you've
got the engineer, which is what they've been searching for,
the the maker, right, this god like the god which yeah,
which we find out we share a dent of our
dna um through all sorts of different proceeds on the
processes on the ship. Uh. And it is a it

(41:08):
is a very interesting scene because the engineer is not
so happy to see what man has made or that's
what it's inferred, and man has made David right, this
eighth generation robot. Yeah, it's it comes out in the
film that the the goop that they encounter that gives
birth all these monsters, the that sexually destroy everything. Uh,

(41:31):
that it is a like a form of weaponized evolution,
weaponized organism UM, bio warfare life. You have bio warfare
intended to wipe out planet Earth, the idea of being Yeah,
but you get the idea that there's something about humans
that isn't they realized early on isn't gonna work. Um.

(41:51):
And if it was two thousand years ago, then you
know you can sort of maybe they're looking around, they're
looking at ancient Rome, and they're like, you know, we
checked in on them. They're not doing so hot. Let's
go and clean that slate and do something new. But
that plan falls through. So that plan falls through. Two
thousand years later, this guy wakes up. Not only was
the job not done, not only are these humans still alive,

(42:12):
but they have grown up, expanded out into the into
the surrounding universe, and have created their own blasphemous little creatures, uh,
created in their likeness beside them. So yeah, he's mad.
That combined with two thousand years worth of of of

(42:33):
of wake up grumpiness, results in a homicidal rampage. So
I read that Ridley Scott had intended these two thousand
years ago thing, this thing, this point where the engineers
had created this goo, to wipe out the earth because
they were now mad with their creation, uh, to correspond
with um Christ, and that the Christ figure might have

(42:55):
even been an engineer himself. So that I want to
see that that's sequel. We'll see. And now some people
will say, why wasn't that written in? And probably because
not everything needs to be written into the well that
was well, And then you start to look at some
of the other themes going on, um, certainly birth and
we'll get to that in a moment um. And the

(43:17):
fact that this is all taking place on Christmas Day,
so that kind of that certainly does yeah, because I
can't think, why is this on Christmas Day? Who cares?
You know? Because they've got the Christmas tree out there. Um,
And it does make the reading a little bit more
interesting of what's going on. But again, you can throw

(43:38):
a whole Jesus plot line into it. Yeah, it's it's
pretty thick. Yeah, yeah, it gets really interesting. Uh and
problematic too. And I think this is what is driving
people a little bit crazy is that there are is
so cramp packed with with all these ideas, some of
the wonderful, if not overly ambitious film. Yeah and uh
and so some of it and there's things like I

(44:00):
have no idea why that head blew up. It was
a great from a horror movie perspective. It was great
when they bring the helmeted head and then they were like,
all right, reactivate the cellular tissue and they're like, let's
do it, and then it blows up. I don't Maybe
a listener can explain that scene to me. To me,
that was just the horror element of it, the element
of surprise because here they've got you know, they've got

(44:22):
an engineer's head that they found um in the pyramid
on the extra planet and they're they're doing some studies
on it. And so it was a little bit like,
here's this giant man head, um, let's reanimate it and
see what happens. Let's talk a little bit about well,
we should mention terraforming because in the in the film, uh,

(44:42):
Whaland Industries, well not so much in the film, but
in the viral material, there's a lot of talk about
how Whaland Industries is really into terraforming of the world
and setting up these colonial environments. Uh. And then we
encountered the technology of the engineers there. Everyone's able to
take their helmets off once they're on board the inside
the pyramid, and because there's some sort of terraforming taking

(45:03):
place there as well. And we've discussed terraforming before, and
it's certainly something that is on on the minds of
of the the loftier visions of human humanities future, the
idea that we could change Mars into a sustainable environment,
that we could colonize it for ourselves, and if we
find an exoplanet that's either a little too hot or

(45:24):
a little too cold, that we could even things out
with this the wee bit of terraforming and maybe not
destroy everything, because a lot of times the terraforming terraforming
technology is very similar to some of the more disastrous
things that we could do to our own atmosphere, such
as creating nuclear winter or or just drastic climate change.

(45:46):
But so basically, you could choose an exoplanet, get there
and do some experimentations either on the atmosphere there, or
you could be creating some sort of uh BioWare warfare
agent in the form of coup. Yes, and yeah, because
the coop is What's what I've found awesome about that
is that it's it's more than just a bioweapon. Like

(46:08):
it's more than just we've taken one organism and weaponized it,
or taken a couple of organisms and weaponized it. It's
kind of life itself weaponized, um, which is just a
great sci fi idea, and it's but it's the kind
of thing on a far lesser level that we humans
are already doing. Um. Some bioterrorism is essentially let's take
some anthrax. Let's take something that that is dangerous in

(46:30):
our environment and throw it at our enemy and maybe
they'll catch it. And that's as ancient as you know
siege environments in the Middle Ages, where somebody would take
a bunch of dead bodies or a dead cow and
catapulted into a besiege city to spread disease. But science
makes things, uh ever more problematic. So we have chimeric

(46:50):
organisms life forms to contain the genes genes from a
foreign species, uh, and we've we've actually toyed around with
using this technology to uh do not only do some
good stuff. For instance, we've been able to combine the
common cold with polio in a way that sounds horrifying,
but it actually may help us cure brain cancer. But

(47:12):
we've also toyed around with ways to combine smallpox and
an threax into a single bioweapon. Or also, during nineties,
the Soviet Union's Camera Project study the feasibility of combining
small box and ebola into one supervirus. So it's an
area that we've been looking into and it can potentially
lead to very chilling um ramifications that could backfire on us,

(47:36):
as it apparently backfired on the engineers in this film. Well, yeah,
that's the idea, is that the engineers on this exo
planet were perhaps wiped out by their own creation, right,
that this this creature that has spawned from the goo.
And when I think it's really interesting about this, it's like, hey,
let's let's not only just torch Earth, right, let's just
take out our creation altogether. But just in case anybody survives,
let's throw some goop at them that, you know, if

(47:59):
they interact with that, they're going to just date this
horrible creature which will then uh kill them. Yeah. I mean,
it's just's sort of like a you know, it's a
very buttoned up program of annihilation. And then we end
up with that scene in the in the in the
robotic surgery pot the med pod, where the character of

(48:21):
Shaw right, yeah, yeah, she is. She ends up with
the thing growing inside her is eventually like a squid
monster of some kind and uh and she goes to
use it and she's like, all right, I need to
put in this procedure to remove this thing growing in me.
And then she realizes that it's calibrated only for men
um which which leads one of the more horror because

(48:43):
the The idea of I need to go into this
medical chamber and have this thing removed for me from
me is pretty terrifying in and of itself. But then
to learn that the technology isn't even calibrated for females,
that's just like an extra level of oh, don't do
it all right. Then she has to go manual on
it and program it's okay, fine, abdomba a surgery. There
is a creature in my stomach, please take it out,

(49:04):
essentially telling the program that and luckily those yeah yeah, um,
or I think it's for an object or something like that,
so it identifies it in that way. But it is
that whole scene is terrifying and interesting. And she doesn't
say that she needs an abortion. She says she needs acessarian.
That's what what she tells the computer and um And

(49:27):
of course I'm I'm not going to go into that
landscape because I really don't think that's what that scene
was about. It was about, Hey, I'm just dating an
alien and it's about to kill me and everybody else
on board. I gotta get it out. But it is
a terrifying scene because you are you, You feel like
you really inhabit the mind, or at least I did
of Elizabeth Shaw, where you're trying to get this procedure done.

(49:48):
You're inside the pod. You see your stomach basically about
to burst open. And not only you know, are you
about to undergo the surgery to remove this creature, but
it's now going to hang over you a little clamp
as you're trapped into this pot and you now must
extricate yourself from this situation. Yeah, and it's it's all.
It's kind of one of it's like the it's like

(50:09):
a sci fi version of the Cowboy scene where you know,
the cowboy bites a bullet and uh and um and
and performs his own surgery there by the campfire kind
of thing. Um and then I also, here's just a
little food for thought. Uh, to what extent is this
scene toying around with some commentary on American healthcare. Here's

(50:29):
a here's a device. It's calibrated mostly for males, uh
and uh, and a female is forced to navigate this
slightly foreign system to make it work. I don't know, well,
while she's having a virgin proof on Christmas Day. Yeah, yeah,
which again another whole spin on this. But it is,

(50:51):
it's it's it's uh. I think it's so nightmarish in
such a wonderful scene because you really can get behind
the technology and actually see at least not the alien
part or the creature part coming out, but see this
um technology being used. Yeah. I think that's why it's
so credible to me, like the scenes, I can really
sort of say, yes that that could exist in another thing,

(51:16):
another bit of technology that pops up exoskeletons. As we mentioned,
Peter Whalen shows up super old. I think he's like
a century old at this point. We're trying to figure
that out. I mean we were saying like one hundred
at the youngest today. I was making an argument that
he might be one forty today. I looked at the
timeline for Whitland Industries and like they have his birthday

(51:36):
on there, and he would be ninety nine or a
hundred alright, So they went a little bit nuts on
the old people makeup on him. The old people makeup
is interesting because like Chekhov has had a rule with
theater that if you have a young man in old
man makeup, he will be made young again by the
end of the film. And and from a sensible point
of view. Why have a young man play an old
man when you could just get an old man to

(51:58):
play an old man. Marthon Sido is out. They're old
as heck and ready to act every day of his life.
Get him in there, right, he'd be great for me.
I was thinking about it more in the context of
m Aubrey Gray. We've talked about him before. He is
the bio gerontologist who says that, um, we can live
to a thousand years old, and that the um in fact,
there's we have the first person to live to five

(52:20):
hundred has already been born. And he does this. Um.
He's created this theory through something called the longevity escape velocity,
and this is this idea that you can maintain your body.
We now have enough technology where we could do this
like sort of like a classic automobile. So when I
saw whaland um, you know, with his crazy, uh, squished

(52:41):
up old skin, I kept thinking, well, that doesn't seem
kind of in line with what might be available in
because already you see some women and men cruising around
who are eighty nine years old with you know, baby
fine skin, and they're hunched over in their old Schnell suits,
and so I sort of expected to see some of

(53:02):
more something like a more like the Uncanny Valley effect,
where you see that someone has been messed with on
a tissue level and they would just look grotesque in
some way. Yeah, I guess I tried to sort of
explain away the weirdness of old man makeup on younger
man by sort of thinking out it in those terms like, well,
he's probably had some some weird treatments at this point

(53:22):
to sustain him to this to this level, and maybe
that's why he would look kind of weird because maximum
sido is an old man in a in a in
our current age, what will old men look like, especially
severely rich old men look like a century from now.
But well, maybe one too many chemical peles, that's what
it looks like, honestly. But exo skeletons, though, he ends

(53:46):
up betting on the exo skeleton so he can walk,
And that is a very real technology we've discussed that
the Japanese are particularly interested in because it's all about
let's figure out ways to help older individuals continue to
move about their lives, to give mobility by augmenting them
with mechanical kind of mechanical braces. Uh. In some cases

(54:09):
things external robotic um build outs that will enable them
to walk or get up and down from from in
the bathroom easier, things of this nature. So we tell
you to see that in the film. And um, yeah,
because Japanese, the Japanese do have one of the largest
aging populations, so it does make sense that they would
be interested in that technology. But yeah, that was that

(54:29):
was a nice little um point there in the movie.
Al Right, well, let's let's come back around two Panties
again to close everything out. We were mentioning how and
if you want to learn more about this whole panties thing,
check out Woman the Other Alien and Alien, which was
by an author by the name of Tom shown and
appeared in Slate and he just really gets into the

(54:51):
academic discussions of really Scott's Alien film. And this was
published before Prometheus, so it doesn't get into that at all.
But yeah, he talks about how, you know, you had
in with a pro panties camp and an anti panties
camp when it came to academic discussion of Alien, and
then then you had some commentary that came along that
kind of attempted to bridge the two factions. It's true

(55:13):
there was a professor Creed who actually tried to bridge
that conversation by saying much has been written about the
final scene in which Ripley addresses before the camera, on
the grounds that it's voyeurism undermines her role as a
successful heroine. She wrote with an air of weary summary, Um,
but what if Ripley in her panties signifies the acceptable

(55:34):
form in shape of woman, the display of woman as
reassuring and pleasurable sign Yeah, yeah, I don't know, um,
but I did think it sort of casted Elizabeth Shawn
into this question mark of of where she is in
this moral code of horror films. Yeah, because she she

(55:55):
has sex in the film, but she has sex with
her Is there her husband or boyfriend, anna other whatever,
it's not morally subject the other character Clary's that they're on.
Surely sure least they're on who has a who has
a relationship there with or at least a brief relationship
with ins elbows character the captain. Uh, that just kind

(56:16):
of comes out of nowhere. But but it's again that
that's one of those things that is serving the plot,
and so it doesn't always ring true. Yeah, but but yeah,
she's not. The Shaw's character isn't tremendously sexualized in this film. Either.
She does run around in or underwear at one point,
which is just going to happen in an alien mythos film,

(56:36):
but but it's not. It's not like hyperly sexual. Okay,
So she is the one who has the faith, and
so she also is the one who is birthing on
Christmas Day, the virgin birth. Uh so there is this idea.
You know, we talked about the MacDonald horror complex sometimes

(56:57):
subscribing women as either you know, um saintly and innocent
or you know, um more like the Mary Magdalen um.
And you do you come away from the film, at
least I do, and feeling like there was she was
embodying innocence to a certain degree. Yeah, yeah, I can
see that for sure. So it is Yeah, essentially there

(57:20):
is no sort of voyeuristick take on Elizabeth saw this
and so is that pro feminist or is that just
really getting her to you know, again this realm where
sometimes women just get reduced to this one thing. Yeah.
The monsters, for their part, remain hyper sexual U totally
like hermaphrodites to a certain degree, right, some of them

(57:42):
that seem phallic will listen become vagina like yeah, and uh,
and that gets into the whole area of vagina dan
tata and in phallic dentata if you want to know
more about vagina dentata stuff. Mom never told you did
a whole episode on this. So yeah, it's a reference
to castration anxiety, which is just sort of perfect for

(58:03):
a film like this, right, yeah, yeah that that like
that doesn't happen. I think that's one of the for
with for a film in which so many people die
so horribly, it's it's amazing they didn't go to that
that particular. Well, but though at the end there was
there was some Legona Dantana going on, Oh yes, the
squid monster that ends up taking out the engineer and

(58:27):
face sexing and yeah yes, face sexing, yeah, which again
falls light in line with the with the original ideas
an alien where it's this weird like like it's it's
sexual assault, but it's also falling back into what is
apparently like a um like a childhood misconception about how
sex may work and how babies work. The idea that
the baby is put in through the mouth. Um. So

(58:49):
some of the this is how deep. A lot of
the commentary for Alien goes where they really gets into
into the biologic confusion of the piece. You know that
actually not to relate fist my daughter, but I mean
she's there, here's old and she didn't ask me the
other day why I swallowed her. Oh well there you go.
So and I was amazed. I thought, oh God, she
thinks I swallowed her because you know, you could say

(59:10):
I was in your belly or whatever. Um. I did
want to go quickly back to the creator thing because
it's a huge theme of this movie is trying to
find Um. It's not trying to find God per se.
It's trying to find the answer to the question of
why we are here? Who put us here? Um? Is
there a reason for our being? Yeah? And it's um.

(59:32):
And that's why this is sort of a movie that
is I think so engaging, is because it is taking
on this theme um and all that you do have
this person of faith in Elizabeth Shaw. Uh, you also
are running against these other moments where there is a void.
And one of the things that I thought was very

(59:54):
um interesting is when Whyland meets his maker, right, the engineer,
and um, he's sitting there dying afterward, and David's head
has been ripped off his robot body and they're having
a conversation and Whalen says to him, there's nothing, and
David says, I know, have a good journey, Mr Whalen,

(01:00:17):
And so I thought, is this you know? That's that's
I think part of the what the movie is trying
to say too, is that there's always going to be
the mystery. And you know, in the absence of answers
there there's nothing. Um, and there may also be nothing
even with the answers, because he did have his answer
to a certain degree. Uh, so interesting food for thought there,

(01:00:40):
all right, Well, I would like to invite everyone to
take that food for thought, allow it to crawl down
your throat and uh and grow inside you into something
something more, even more meaningful, to state that. Uh. If
you have any gestation thoughts, um our thoughts from your gestation, yeah,
if you have a share them with us. Yeah, general

(01:01:01):
thoughts about the technology in the movie, um, and the
and the ideas in the movie and things we've discussed here.
Let us know about those. Just fair warning. UM. If
it's a spoilery discussion. We're we're not going to read
any of that on the air. We'd still love to
hear it, but it'll it'll end up just being for
for our eyes only. Uh. If you won't want to
interact with us and share stuff, you can find us

(01:01:21):
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(01:01:42):
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.