Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And in this episode, we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: little movie that came out this year called Prometheus. Of
Speaker 1: this tiny, tiny, little indie flick. You probably have not
Speaker 1: heard about it, tiny little viral marketing campaign on the web.
Speaker 1: Maybe a TV added too. You know. Um names in it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: up and coming guy by the name of Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: and directed it. Yeah. So why are we talking about it? Well,
Speaker 1: everybody is talking about it in one way or another.
Speaker 1: And there there's a lot of talk about the science
Speaker 1: in this film because we've discussed the importance of fiction,
Speaker 1: the importance of science fiction before um, where we're creating these, uh,
Speaker 1: these fictional versions of what the future will be, that
Speaker 1: be like based on present technology, emerging technology, modern concerns,
Speaker 1: modern fears, modern hopes, and then you wrap that all
Speaker 1: up into a nice package and consume it. And uh,
Speaker 1: Prometheus is one of, if not the biggest science fiction
Speaker 1: films to come out in um really, for my money,
Speaker 1: the biggest science fiction film to come out in a
Speaker 1: while I can't remember the last one that I really
Speaker 1: kind of got excited about and and and ultimately really
Speaker 1: got my my mind moving in a scientific way, saying,
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, can you think of anything
Speaker 1: and that's been quite on this scale? Yeah? Not not
Speaker 1: not quiet No. Um. So we are going to jump in, uh,
Speaker 1: and we are going to discuss this film, but we
Speaker 1: want to let you know that we are going to
Speaker 1: have a clean divider between spoiler free and spoiler talk.
Speaker 1: So from now until the commercial break that we take,
Speaker 1: we promise to steer clear of any major spoilers anything
Speaker 1: that happens in the you know, the later portions of
Speaker 1: the film when once the plot gets moving and all that,
Speaker 1: and we're and we're can also save our opinions for
Speaker 1: the most part for that section as well. After the
Speaker 1: commercial break, anything's game. So fair warning if you if
Speaker 1: you have seen it, you can listen to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: no worries. If you have not seen it and would
Speaker 1: like to watch it spoiler free, then when you come
Speaker 1: to the commercial break, pose it and come back after
Speaker 1: you've been to the theater. So before we jump completely
Speaker 1: into it, let's uh, let's actually requain ourselves or if
Speaker 1: you have somehow missed that massive ad campaign um that
Speaker 1: they launched online and on TV and probably in the
Speaker 1: sky and in our skin for yeah and our dreams,
Speaker 1: then here's the taste of what the movie is is about,
Speaker 1: as much as we can convey in a purely audio environment.
Speaker 1: So so here you go. Here's a little clip from Prometheus.
Speaker 1: Please tell me you can read that. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm attempting to open the door. Wait, we don't know
Speaker 1: what's on the other side. Sorry, remarkably humor beautiful painting.
Speaker 1: It's a mural. Stop. Don't don't touch sorry, please, don't
Speaker 1: touch anything. Kay. Oh no, the mules are changing. I
Speaker 1: think we lived back to the others during the room
Speaker 1: Charley David. What must they know? So that clip kind
Speaker 1: of introduces the mystery and intrigue that unfolds as we
Speaker 1: follow a crew of scientists and soldiers and explorers and
Speaker 1: mysterious corporate people as they travel to a just an
Speaker 1: exo planet in attempt to discover possibly the origins of life.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's a trillion dollar trip. Yes, right, this
Speaker 1: is uh not you know, some sort of weekend jaunt.
Speaker 1: It's taken them two years and I don't believe that's
Speaker 1: a plot spoiler at all. There two years to too,
Speaker 1: it will take two years to arrive on this planet.
Speaker 1: And uh, they are aboard the U. S. S c
Speaker 1: SS Prometheus, which is a nuclear ion plasma engine fueled craft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is. It is really pimped out because this
Speaker 1: whole venture in this film is is the product of
Speaker 1: of this Peter Whalen character, this Whaland Industries, and and
Speaker 1: this is a fictional congaboration of various, um, you know,
Speaker 1: major tech company. So so think a little a little
Speaker 1: bit of Branson inversion Galactic thrown in here, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Google, a little like any major
Speaker 1: company that's really on the um you know, on the
Speaker 1: cutting edge and the bleeding edge of technology. This is
Speaker 1: an amalgamation of the VAT. And what I like about
Speaker 1: this whaling character, to this Peter Whaland who's the head
Speaker 1: of this corporation, is that he does have this Branson
Speaker 1: like spirit in that he breaks all the rules. Right,
Speaker 1: he's um, he's a pioneer. He is someone who lives
Speaker 1: life to the fullest and he's interested in in exploring
Speaker 1: every corner of the universe. And so I do think
Speaker 1: it's a very engaging character, and I think actually get
Speaker 1: that sense more from the promoes than the actual movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did some virals where he's doing a Ted talk,
Speaker 1: I believe, and he's talking about, uh, you know, really
Speaker 1: just something of his philosophy on on science and human achievement.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking too that for for me, this
Speaker 1: is the first time that something like that, this material,
Speaker 1: this media that is not the movie itself, has really
Speaker 1: enhanced my my enjoyment of the movie itself. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: generally it's just one off stuff that is aimed at
Speaker 1: getting in your theater, and they really were very interested
Speaker 1: in getting you thinking about the film in the world
Speaker 1: of the film prior to to you actually picking up
Speaker 1: a ticket. And I love that they framed it in
Speaker 1: the Ted dot com talk, you know, because and one
Speaker 1: of the things they said actually is that they wanted
Speaker 1: when they were advertising for the film, that they wanted
Speaker 1: people to sort of engage on a different level and
Speaker 1: to perhaps even be introduced to Ted dot com itself
Speaker 1: if they never had listened to Ted dot com, which
Speaker 1: is great because Ted, of course, I feel like most
Speaker 1: of our listeners probably know Ted, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: do check out the Ted Talks because it's it's amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Each one is a is a you know, deals with
Speaker 1: mind blowing topics, generally around stuff that is that that
Speaker 1: will or can change the world for the better. So
Speaker 1: in eighteen minutes or less, Yeah, so Whaland Industries all
Speaker 1: this technology. Um. So, the the ship in the film
Speaker 1: and the characters in the film have a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool gadgets, a lot of really cool science and
Speaker 1: this is about a hundred years in the future. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna spend a lot of time in
Speaker 1: this podcast just talking taking it bit by bit, this
Speaker 1: little technology here, a little technology there, and discussing what
Speaker 1: we thought about it, how it lines up with things
Speaker 1: that we've discussed before on Stuff Toble your Mind. And
Speaker 1: and then we'll also in the later half of this
Speaker 1: podcast we'll also get into some of the cultural aspects
Speaker 1: um and you know, in some of the grosser goofy
Speaker 1: stuff as well. First, I should point out that this
Speaker 1: was a science fiction film, a big blockbuster science fiction film,
Speaker 1: so there are certain problems that are always going to
Speaker 1: be present. For instance, magic gravity, magic artificial gravity of
Speaker 1: borda spaceship, UM, really, the only film I can think
Speaker 1: of that did not engage in magical unexplained gravity has
Speaker 1: been two thousand and one, where were they actually put
Speaker 1: some some forethought into what it would be like in
Speaker 1: a weightless environment. How how you would you would simulate
Speaker 1: gravity artificially through the use of rotation. Uh. You encounter
Speaker 1: some legitimate or at least pseudo scientific excuses for artificial
Speaker 1: gravity in hard science fiction, so specifically hard science fiction novels,
Speaker 1: but you get into the realm of big space movies
Speaker 1: and they tend to either give it, give it sort
Speaker 1: of a half explanation, or just don't explain it at all,
Speaker 1: or it's just assume that the years and somehow they've
Speaker 1: mastered h creating this this atmosphere where they're not floating
Speaker 1: around heship like even Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Did you ever
Speaker 1: see that one? Didn't um Like they had Brian cox
Speaker 1: Um on board to to to give them science advice
Speaker 1: as they were filming it, and they still just went
Speaker 1: ahead and had artificial gravity and didn't explain it. And
Speaker 1: and some people were kind of like British science journalists.
Speaker 1: Uh Ajana Aja was was a bit perturbed by this
Speaker 1: and made kind of a stink about it. But it's
Speaker 1: just it's generally it's what you're gonna get with science
Speaker 1: fiction films. Likewise, sound in space. The first Alien had
Speaker 1: sound in space. You encounter a little sound in space,
Speaker 1: and this one you see a spaceship traveling through the void.
Speaker 1: Somebody's gonna want to throw in the sound of thrusters.
Speaker 1: Someone's gonna want to throw in the sound of an
Speaker 1: explosion if something blows up in space. Uh. The only
Speaker 1: exceptions to this rule really are two thousand and one
Speaker 1: and uh and also the Firefly TV show did a
Speaker 1: good job with this of keeping uh space soundless, but
Speaker 1: then they made the Serenity movie and uh and clearly
Speaker 1: you know, studio heads or whoever came in and said,
Speaker 1: this is nice, but if you're gonna have a battle
Speaker 1: in space, we want explosions. Well, and it is a
Speaker 1: big blockbuster. You can't really, I mean, you can't help
Speaker 1: but expect that the audience. You're watching a blockbuster science
Speaker 1: fiction film, you go into it with those expectations. Anything
Speaker 1: else is just a bit silly. But two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: I will say, um that the absence of sound really
Speaker 1: just makes it that much more alienating and creepy and wonderful,
Speaker 1: and that's it's the granddaddy of all science fiction films
Speaker 1: still still holds up today. A right, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: discuss more of the the actual technology that we've seen
Speaker 1: in the film, but first we need to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about um. Sexuality in Alien specifically, and uh
Speaker 1: in panties actually factors into this as well. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the reason why you want to talk about Aliens and
Speaker 1: panties and space um is because Ridley Scott directed the
Speaker 1: first Aliens Alien. Yes, that's part of the Aliens franchise,
Speaker 1: and although Prometheus is not directly related to Aliens really,
Speaker 1: Scott has said that it's part of the DNA of Alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was at least at some point in its
Speaker 1: development a prequel to Alien, and then to a certain
Speaker 1: extent still is yes, yeah there there there's definitely some
Speaker 1: themes that are explored in Alien, Alien one and some
Speaker 1: of the other ones as well as Prometheus. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the pantalonies. Yes. Well, okay, so if you
Speaker 1: you go all the way back to seventy nine, I
Speaker 1: was like a year old and uh, and Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: makes this film, and he really he in interviews, he's
Speaker 1: been very clear that he set out to make a
Speaker 1: slasher movie in space, a haunted house movie in space.
Speaker 1: You have the alien spaceship, which is and the cramped
Speaker 1: claustrophobic um uh Nostromo's ship in the original film, and
Speaker 1: it's essentially a haunted house with a slasher aboard, only
Speaker 1: it's a spaceship and an alien and and in the
Speaker 1: three decades since that film came out, we've just layered
Speaker 1: multiple layers of criticism and interpretation and UH and fanboy
Speaker 1: fanaticism on top of that film and really built it
Speaker 1: up into this great intellectual thing to cirt extent. I mean,
Speaker 1: we we've on one level. You can't help but create
Speaker 1: a lot of thought provoking content with this, because even
Speaker 1: if you're saying, I'm just going to create a slasher film,
Speaker 1: what is a slasher film? Well, you can get into
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting commentary and discussion on that on
Speaker 1: its own. There are people that argue that a slasher
Speaker 1: film is essentially human sacrifice. That in the old days
Speaker 1: you had you had males that wanted to dominate society
Speaker 1: and to uh to counsel cancel out female power and
Speaker 1: to um combat the female science of birth, you bring
Speaker 1: about the male science of death. We've touched on this,
Speaker 1: I think a little bit in episodes in the past.
Speaker 1: So whereas women create with their bodies, men kill with
Speaker 1: their hands and their weapons. And modern societies, of course,
Speaker 1: we're not really all about human sacrifice anymore, but we
Speaker 1: can still make movie after movie after movie in which females,
Speaker 1: typically females that are engaging in um stereotypically unethical behavior,
Speaker 1: are brutally murdered by a male figure. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: we're seeing as a moral code in a lot of
Speaker 1: these films. Yeah, So just even if you're making you're
Speaker 1: trying to make just a slasher film, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of problematic area already there. On
Speaker 1: top of that, who you get to design your monster
Speaker 1: for this film? But hr Geeger, whose big deal is
Speaker 1: biomechanical designs of a typically sexual nature. Okay, when you
Speaker 1: say sexual nature, I think what you're primarily saying is
Speaker 1: that so many of his creations look like a fallust, yes,
Speaker 1: thallust or yes, everything looks like genitalia to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: stylized um hot leather genitalia is generally you say hot
Speaker 1: leather genitalia. I don't know why hot leather. It's more
Speaker 1: like a cold anyway, cold leather genitalia, let's say. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the look of H. R. Geeker stuff.
Speaker 1: If you've you've seen it everywhere. And this is the
Speaker 1: mood that pervades the Prometheus for sure. Yeah, and um
Speaker 1: bills over into this Alien one and the other aliens. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: but the panties, the panties getting back to panties, what
Speaker 1: the panties have spawned? And when I say the panties,
Speaker 1: that we're talking about Sigourney Weaver's character in the panties
Speaker 1: in Alien one. Yeah, in in the original Alien film,
Speaker 1: she's you have this whole crew, mostly male crew, and
Speaker 1: one by one they're knocked out by this alien. Uh
Speaker 1: it's bursting. It's basically impregnates one man through the face
Speaker 1: and then burst out of his stomach. It and there's
Speaker 1: and you sent me a really interesting article about how
Speaker 1: it's sort of there's themes of rape in there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's they're strong themes of of rape and sexual assault
Speaker 1: because the creature is essentially sexually assaulting each member and
Speaker 1: especially the male members. And uh, in the case of
Speaker 1: the one character impregnating him more or less with this
Speaker 1: violent uh, this violent vision of of pregnancy in which
Speaker 1: the thing then grows in his stomach like a gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal confusion of pregnancy, with this violent birth that kills
Speaker 1: the mother slash father. Um. You know, so strong themes
Speaker 1: of this um. And then it just goes, of course,
Speaker 1: one by one, each character getting knocked off, and Ripley
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weever's character remains really strong. UM. You know, you
Speaker 1: can really get behind her as this strong female character. UM.
Speaker 1: And then you have this scene towards the end of
Speaker 1: the film that of course made a strong impression on
Speaker 1: me when I watched it, UM as a like a
Speaker 1: not a not a one year with that as a
Speaker 1: as a you know, I'm I'm not going through puberty.
Speaker 1: I watched Alien and there's this scene where oh, she's safe,
Speaker 1: she's finally gotten away, she's blown up the ship, and
Speaker 1: she decides, oh, now it's a good time to go
Speaker 1: ahead and strip down to my underwear and then get
Speaker 1: into my escape into my cryogenics pod and uh and
Speaker 1: just sail home a little does she know the alien
Speaker 1: is there watching her um and as she changes, so
Speaker 1: the camera becomes the voyer, right, and the alien is
Speaker 1: kind of the voyer because the alien is not really
Speaker 1: attacking at first. He's just he or she is just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging back and she doesn't know he's there.
Speaker 1: And she's wearing really skimpy, simple underwear, but very skimpy.
Speaker 1: I think you said it like looked like she's wearing
Speaker 1: something a few sizes too small. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: plumbers crack underwear. It's actually an underwear that I've never
Speaker 1: quite seen before. Maybe this exists out there and it's
Speaker 1: in the future right right, where apparently everybody has plumbers crack.
Speaker 1: But it's not ugly, but it is very Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not hyper sexualized, like she's not wearing like a G
Speaker 1: string or anything. But it is a very sexual scene
Speaker 1: because suddenly she's she's unclothed, she's vulnerable. The scenes are
Speaker 1: shot in a way too. It's no accident that it's
Speaker 1: a sexy scene and that and at any moment, this creature,
Speaker 1: this phallic, monstrous, uh sexual monster is going to attack
Speaker 1: her and then you know, and we just hope that
Speaker 1: she has closed on by that point. Well, this has
Speaker 1: spawned the whole cottage industry within academia of trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the panties mean. I mean, even probably
Speaker 1: more so than the Buffy verse, right, um, because it's
Speaker 1: it's problematic for people because they're analyzing it and they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, all the sexual content. Um, a really strong
Speaker 1: female character and like, I'm totally on board, and then
Speaker 1: she strips under the panties and they're like deal breaker. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're we're talking about all of this because after
Speaker 1: the commercial breaking and we get more into um some
Speaker 1: some spoilers there, this is going to be a larger
Speaker 1: part of our conversation then, but we wanted to go
Speaker 1: ahead and seat it now. Alright, so more more on
Speaker 1: the panties la. But but but in uh, in the
Speaker 1: sperit of seating, let's talk about this this other theme
Speaker 1: that runs through Prometheus. Pants for me. Yes, So we've
Speaker 1: discussed pants fermia before, and specifically to the idea of exogenesis,
Speaker 1: which is the notion that life originated elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: universe and somehow found its way to the planet. Um.
Speaker 1: This is this is dealt with right at the beginning
Speaker 1: of Prometheus because you kick off the movie with this
Speaker 1: tall pale um humanoid creature. Yeah, and he's apparently abandoned
Speaker 1: on this desolate world by a spaceship that takes off
Speaker 1: and then he uh, he drinks some sort of goop
Speaker 1: and then he melts in his DNA like just becomes
Speaker 1: this primordial gup that, uh, you get the idea is
Speaker 1: going to spawn life on this planet that the Earth,
Speaker 1: maybe another planet, we don't know. You see his body
Speaker 1: breakdown and like the DNA ulysses just sort of merging
Speaker 1: with the water. Yeah, and uh, and so this is
Speaker 1: a fantastic idea of what exogenesis and to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: pants Fermia might consist of. It's kind of like to
Speaker 1: have a blender. You're throwing a little bit of pants
Speaker 1: Fermian exogenesis and then throwing a little Charito of the
Speaker 1: gods as well, Charito charoits of the gods of course,
Speaker 1: the book by Eric von Denkan. And this is where
Speaker 1: we could the idea that ancient astronauts visited Earth and
Speaker 1: serve as the god figures of our mythologies. So while
Speaker 1: this with their technology and taught us to do things
Speaker 1: like baked bread and build pyramids, that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was interesting to me because I've always thought of
Speaker 1: pantsopermia as being more like this tiny bit of bacteria,
Speaker 1: and it is in the strictly scientific sense, right. So
Speaker 1: to see this this um, this sort of titan like
Speaker 1: human like creature, um like literally dissolve into DNA and
Speaker 1: then spread his his pantsopermia in that manner, was it
Speaker 1: was interesting. I mean, it's it's visually arresting. And I
Speaker 1: should say that if nothing this film is will knock
Speaker 1: your socks off. I mean, it is gorgeous, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: You can't help but inhabit the minds of the characters
Speaker 1: um in this movie. Yes, Scott a always been a
Speaker 1: faculous visual director, even films like Legend, which I don't
Speaker 1: think has I wasn't a huge fan of the plot
Speaker 1: line and legend or I'm not really sure that it's
Speaker 1: important though, because the legend was just such a stunning Yeah. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and that the devil in that it's just incredible. I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about that before, but um, he is,
Speaker 1: but he's anyway, So um, that's a whole other conversation.
Speaker 1: So that is the opening sequence here for Prometheus. We
Speaker 1: see this happening, and it is a really interesting way
Speaker 1: to get into this idea of how did we actually
Speaker 1: come to exist here on Earth in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. Next on the list, suspended animation, crist status.
Speaker 1: This factors into all of the the Alien franchise films.
Speaker 1: It was in the first one. They wake up from
Speaker 1: this quote unquote wake up from from this sleep, and
Speaker 1: the plot begins and uh, and we see some more thing,
Speaker 1: and that's the crew of the Prometheus have been traveling
Speaker 1: for two years and they've been asleep, h quote unquote
Speaker 1: asleep while David, the artificial human, the android of the ship,
Speaker 1: learns languages and plays basketball and comes his hair while
Speaker 1: watching Lawrence of Arabia, which is again another incredible scene
Speaker 1: because you're trying to you know, you're sort of getting
Speaker 1: your bearings in the in the film, and it looks
Speaker 1: like he is the only person on the ship. And
Speaker 1: played by Michael Fassbender, of course. Yeah, and he is
Speaker 1: so good in this role. We'll talk more about the
Speaker 1: significance of David later. So we recently did an episode
Speaker 1: on Hibernation in which we discuss some of the some
Speaker 1: of what we know about suspended animation and and and
Speaker 1: hibernation in ways that we could artificially instill it. And
Speaker 1: this is something that is of interest not only to
Speaker 1: DARPA and NASA, but also just uh actually, like I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, emergency room doctors. Yeah, you know, the
Speaker 1: ideas like, all right, something is wrong. Let us chill
Speaker 1: this out until we can actually treat it, or in
Speaker 1: more extreme cases, chill it out until we can actually
Speaker 1: find a cure for it. Right, Because if you have
Speaker 1: some sort of trauma, you're bleeding to death, you're losing
Speaker 1: oxygen to your brain, can you suspend that? And that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about suspended animation. So in that episode
Speaker 1: of the Hibernation episode, we discussed methods to use both
Speaker 1: chemical and thermal um techniques to put an animal under
Speaker 1: into a hibernative state where their metabolism cranks way down
Speaker 1: and and they're put into this not quite sleep phase,
Speaker 1: but something that that you could call suspended animation UM.
Speaker 1: And then there's a there's actually another interesting guy, this
Speaker 1: guy Mark Roth, researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Speaker 1: in Seattle, Washington, and uh, he's he's looked into a
Speaker 1: short term suspended animation a lot because again, this would
Speaker 1: be a way to stabilize patient center and trauma from injury.
Speaker 1: Uh So, normally hydrogen sulfite is toxic, but Roth has
Speaker 1: working on this technique where you can use it to
Speaker 1: actually alter a million metabolism when it's applied in a
Speaker 1: cold environment, resulting in this suspended animation uh type situation.
Speaker 1: All right, so when you're in this suspended state, the
Speaker 1: body can better cope with deadly oxygen deprivation the results
Speaker 1: from shock, massive blood loss, and heart attacks. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool because if you give someone hydrogen sulfide,
Speaker 1: which is what he did with animals, um, what it
Speaker 1: does is it knocks you out and it might cause
Speaker 1: the oxygen to not bind. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a game of musical chairs there, and that can manipulate
Speaker 1: your metabolism. And he was actually inspired by this because
Speaker 1: there was a skier I want to say she was Swedish,
Speaker 1: but she was caught, um frozen to death for like
Speaker 1: five hours or something, and she came out of this
Speaker 1: kind of suspended animation completely fine. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of what got him to think about this idea of
Speaker 1: hydrogen sulfide, which we produce in tiny amounts in our
Speaker 1: own bodies and what would happen if you expanded that
Speaker 1: amount And it's not hard to sort of see that
Speaker 1: technology now being realized in the year twenty nine d
Speaker 1: three for two years, I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 1: the five hours now that we know has happened at
Speaker 1: least accidentally or as a byproduct of an accident. Could
Speaker 1: that be extrapolated to two years maybe, but we know
Speaker 1: that that the foundation is there. Yeah, So I ultimately,
Speaker 1: I ultimately liked what they did with it, and this
Speaker 1: if for no other reason, they really made a point
Speaker 1: of making waking up from crime status kind of grows.
Speaker 1: People were throwing up all over the place. They're clearly
Speaker 1: they look like they're they're had. They have the worst
Speaker 1: hangover imaginable. And uh, and we were when we were
Speaker 1: discussing hibernation and the artificial hibernation and the potential that
Speaker 1: it could be used for long term space travel. We
Speaker 1: brought that up that in science fiction films that they're
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's it's not this traumatic wake up. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we even put a call out to listeners as said, hey,
Speaker 1: if you've seen something we're waking up from suspended animation
Speaker 1: and science fiction film is actually traumatic, let us know.
Speaker 1: And and in fact, one of our a couple of
Speaker 1: our listeners pointed out the film Pandorum, which which also
Speaker 1: featured people waking up in a very adult, physically disruptive state.
Speaker 1: So I liked what they did in this film with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was very realistic. And again, all of this is
Speaker 1: about building a world that you can really believe in.
Speaker 1: And yes that there are perhaps some holes in different
Speaker 1: places that we'll discuss later on, but really Scott does
Speaker 1: do such an amazing job of making you feel like
Speaker 1: you're inserted into this world that could happen in three possibly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of inserted, the next bit we're going to discuss
Speaker 1: is the Medpods seven twenty I, which is introduced early
Speaker 1: on in the film. You see it on the ship
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll discuss it a little more later, but
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, this thing is gonna be used.
Speaker 1: It's like it's the can. It's like it's gonna go off.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to factor into the plot if
Speaker 1: you introduce it in the way they introduce it, and
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's really snazzy. They introduced this cool um
Speaker 1: outline of the various parts as part of the Vieral marketing,
Speaker 1: and so it has comfortable limb restrates, a liquid spray
Speaker 1: and aesthetic, a laser scalpel, air tight operating shield, computer
Speaker 1: controlled robotic surgical arms, vital sign sensors, and an adjustable
Speaker 1: titanium base. UM. Though we are told from the get
Speaker 1: go that it is UM, that it is a rare
Speaker 1: piece of technology in the future, that they're only like
Speaker 1: twelve of these things. Yeah, it's now today we do
Speaker 1: have we do not have bona fide robotic surgery where
Speaker 1: where a robot is carrying out medical procedures on a
Speaker 1: regular basis on its own. We have the Da Vinci
Speaker 1: system UM that continues to to show a lot of
Speaker 1: promise and UH and generally robot assisted procedures. Where we
Speaker 1: have the bull's eye right now, the idea that let's
Speaker 1: let's work on robotic systems that can aid a surgeon
Speaker 1: in UH daring the surgery or telesurgery systems that can
Speaker 1: allow a surgeon to perform a procedure from the other
Speaker 1: side of the world, from another country, another city, remotely
Speaker 1: through robotic cans. And if we reach the point where
Speaker 1: we have robots working side by side with humans in
Speaker 1: a surgical environment. We can create USI we can we
Speaker 1: can better adapt them to learn from their human surgeons,
Speaker 1: and eventually reach the point where we could have technology
Speaker 1: like we see in the movie where you have like
Speaker 1: an autonomous procedure or UM, something that you can program
Speaker 1: because because the idea when you're introduced to it, it's
Speaker 1: it's like a bead with a shell over it, and
Speaker 1: you climb into the bed, push whatever you need done,
Speaker 1: and it'll do it. It's like, oh, I mean my
Speaker 1: tonsils out, Just punch it in. It's pretty brilliant, Press
Speaker 1: send and then lay back. Yeah, and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about why it's brilliant and uh terrifying and wonderful a
Speaker 1: little bit later. But let's get to something um that
Speaker 1: borders sort of on what we've talked about, is brain
Speaker 1: mapping or even brain memory storage. Yes, because as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: when we're on board the Prometheus at first, everyone is
Speaker 1: in crist status status and David is walking about doing
Speaker 1: this thing, combing his hair but also checking on the
Speaker 1: dreams of the individuals that are that are under in
Speaker 1: their in their crested spots, right, So he just places
Speaker 1: a hand on on their little pods and their information
Speaker 1: comes up. So presumably the reason why he can UH
Speaker 1: check in on their dreams or check out their stats
Speaker 1: in general is just to make sure that they're okay
Speaker 1: when they're in this state. UM. But it is very
Speaker 1: interesting because we've talked about how the National Science Foundation has,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's last year awarded a half
Speaker 1: million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida at
Speaker 1: Orlando and Illinois at Chicago to explore how research researchers
Speaker 1: might use AI archiving and computer imaging to create digital
Speaker 1: lifelike versions of real people. You're talking about here is
Speaker 1: a backup system for your brain. Yeah, which is a
Speaker 1: whole hunting. It's just the technology is just very barely
Speaker 1: touched on in this film. But you people can and
Speaker 1: have created entire science fiction and UH properties just based
Speaker 1: off of this this idea. UM. In the last couple
Speaker 1: of years we saw were signed to the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 1: Um UH toyed around with reconstructing the internal quote unquote
Speaker 1: movie that plays in a person's head by using fm
Speaker 1: R I scans UH and having having patients look at
Speaker 1: or testas look at films and then watching what their
Speaker 1: brain is doing when they look at that, and then
Speaker 1: trying to match it up later and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty interesting. It shows some promise for a
Speaker 1: potential future in which we could use um, really laser
Speaker 1: attentive fm ri I data to tell what's going on
Speaker 1: in a person's head to the point where we can
Speaker 1: actually get an idea of what they're envisioning. And it's
Speaker 1: extream that in Prometheus that they're playing the dreams, because
Speaker 1: that definitely serves the plot, right, so we can get
Speaker 1: some exposition on the characters. But if you want to
Speaker 1: try to fit it into this this um this world
Speaker 1: that real Lea Scott has created, it would make sense
Speaker 1: that David would check can on those dreams and um,
Speaker 1: you know, but there would be something that you could
Speaker 1: administer if someone were saying having nightmares for hours on
Speaker 1: end or um that they just seemed unsettled, like all
Speaker 1: of these would sort of be clues to how the
Speaker 1: person is actually doing in this state. And also a
Speaker 1: mega company like Whaland Industries, there's also the the scary
Speaker 1: idea that this enormous company is actually looking at my dreams,
Speaker 1: so you know, imagine if your employer could see your dreams,
Speaker 1: it would it would be weird, Like that time that
Speaker 1: I dreamt that our boss was getting married, Like who's
Speaker 1: marrying his wife again? Like they're reaffirming their vows and
Speaker 1: they were going to do it in the office. Like
Speaker 1: what if you saw it? What do you think? I
Speaker 1: never knew about that drain? Oh I forget there was
Speaker 1: something else kind of weird about it, but that's the
Speaker 1: only thing I remember, um wiping from brain. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's this idea that that this technology in would
Speaker 1: be in full use, that that you would have a
Speaker 1: backup of your that you would be able to monitor
Speaker 1: someone's streams along with their vital signs. All right, well
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break here and when we
Speaker 1: come back, um, all bets are off and we will
Speaker 1: spoil any and everything in the film. So uh pause,
Speaker 1: pause this podcast. If you have not seen it, go
Speaker 1: out and see it right now whatever you're doing, see
Speaker 1: in the theater or rent it whatever, and then come
Speaker 1: back and we will we will discuss what happened. All right,
Speaker 1: Well we're back and uh so, yeah, the rest of
Speaker 1: that movie happened, didn't it? Oh yeah, and this thing
Speaker 1: happened and then there was a fire and then boom
Speaker 1: and that was the end. Well, and so there you go.
Speaker 1: Plot spoilers. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's so much more
Speaker 1: involved than that. In fact, just this morning, Holly Fry
Speaker 1: of Pop Stuff and another editor, Chris opens Chain opens Chain. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're having a very heated discussion about the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. It was very interesting. Um, I lingered, because
Speaker 1: you know, I have some of that I felt like
Speaker 1: the Devil's Advocate. I had some of the same perspective
Speaker 1: of both of them. The audiences have been a little
Speaker 1: split over it because on one level, you have individuals
Speaker 1: who really came into this with lofty expectations. Uh. Like
Speaker 1: I said, that Original nine film, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: has thirty years worth of of of of fan enthusiasm
Speaker 1: and cultural study and just it's become a part of
Speaker 1: our culture, you know, in those three decades. And so
Speaker 1: you have this film that comes along, and it's a
Speaker 1: very ambitious film and uh and really sets out to
Speaker 1: to equal those thirty thirty years worth of um of
Speaker 1: ideas that have built on top of Alien and U.
Speaker 1: I mean I I really enjoyed it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was great, but that was interesting though. Is like for
Speaker 1: someone like myself who has seen Aliens three, you really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it or may not have seen Alien and Aliens
Speaker 1: the previous one I may or may not happen, but
Speaker 1: it was a lost decade. I'm just kidding. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna get like a whole bunch of emails now
Speaker 1: where people bet Julie you should see Alien. Well no, no,
Speaker 1: this is I mean, I mean obviously like this is
Speaker 1: something that's going to happen because through this whole process anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: it's been very interesting me to now go back and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go and look at all the films it then,
Speaker 1: But you have been steeped in it. You've been steeped
Speaker 1: in the mythology, wouldn't you say? Um, it's been a
Speaker 1: part of my life ever since I was old enough
Speaker 1: to watch the original Alien, probably on like a cable
Speaker 1: or something. And you have that Sigourney Weaver panties poster
Speaker 1: and you're I, I do not have in your office poster,
Speaker 1: but I definitely had it in my mind. Um as
Speaker 1: a young kid. I think that's scene probably influenced a
Speaker 1: lot of of young boys, and she was kind of
Speaker 1: like I was sending the other day, shoot that scene.
Speaker 1: That was she was kind of the Barber Ella for
Speaker 1: for my generation. I see that. I see that, and
Speaker 1: I think it's probably a positive thing because even though
Speaker 1: she was in her in her underwear and how and
Speaker 1: even though that kind of erupts some feminist arguments for
Speaker 1: the film and in some cases, weirdly enough, is embraced
Speaker 1: by think some people say no, let's let's take the panties,
Speaker 1: and still she's ultimately power are less sexualized character than
Speaker 1: Barbara Ella. Yeah, yeah, Well, Richard Adam, the director of
Speaker 1: Um of Barbara far different director than really Scott. But
Speaker 1: my point is that that we both have different experiences
Speaker 1: with with the franchise, and we both, I think, for
Speaker 1: the most part, really embraced this film, uh, and that
Speaker 1: it is visually spectacular and it does have so many
Speaker 1: different intriguing elements that will linger far after you've seen
Speaker 1: the movie. Yeah. I love the cosmology of it and
Speaker 1: the design of it. And and I should also point
Speaker 1: out that I am a total fan of sci fi horror,
Speaker 1: like any horror that takes place in space. UM, I'm
Speaker 1: generally on board for it. Be it a be an alien,
Speaker 1: be a pandorum, be it be even even some thing
Speaker 1: like the Nightmare on the Nightmare Name Street. He hasn't
Speaker 1: gone into space yet, but the Friday where Jason is
Speaker 1: in space, Jason X right an awful but self aware
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. I even I even enjoyed that film,
Speaker 1: So you know, um, so again, I really had a
Speaker 1: great time. And uh and and I felt like it
Speaker 1: it matched my expectations rather well. Yeah. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say again that it's not a flawed movie, because
Speaker 1: it is in some ways. I mean some well for me,
Speaker 1: I should say, like, you know, some of them. I've
Speaker 1: talked about some of the dialogue. Yeah, it's when the
Speaker 1: when the most relatable character in the film is an
Speaker 1: android or a squid monster, then then you know that
Speaker 1: maybe that's saying this is not the most character driven
Speaker 1: motion picture out there. Um okay, but I think there's
Speaker 1: a reason for that, because I think that David is
Speaker 1: someone that you can project everything onto David being the android. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, how could you not. I mean, I've I
Speaker 1: fell in love with David. I thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: he's such an interesting character, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: has to do with Michael Fastbender in the way that
Speaker 1: he was so nuanced in his betrayal. Well, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's discuss him a little more. But first let's listen
Speaker 1: to a little clip of David interacting with one of
Speaker 1: his human crew members. Am I interrupting? I thought you
Speaker 1: might be running low? Put yourself a glass? Thank you?
Speaker 1: But I'm afraid it would be wasted on me. You
Speaker 1: think we wasted our time coming in, don't you? Your
Speaker 1: question depends on me understanding what do you hope to
Speaker 1: achieve by kind of have What we hope to achieve
Speaker 1: was to meet our makers, to get answers where they
Speaker 1: even made us in the first place. Why do you
Speaker 1: think your people made me? We made you? Guess we could.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine how disappointing would be for you to
Speaker 1: hear the same thing from your creator? Huh? May I
Speaker 1: ask you something? Please do? How far would you go
Speaker 1: to get what you came all this way for your answers?
Speaker 1: What would you be willing to do? Anything? And everything?
Speaker 1: So that was a wonderful little scene. As if everyone
Speaker 1: listening to this part has has either seen the film
Speaker 1: or doesn't care about spoilers, It's the scene where he
Speaker 1: is he's handing off an infected glass of champagne that's
Speaker 1: infected with the the goo to one of the jerky
Speaker 1: or members of the crew there. That's right to Halloway,
Speaker 1: right and the beloved though of the film's heroin. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of problematic for the viewer there because on
Speaker 1: one level you don't really like the dude, but he's
Speaker 1: not evil. He's not like Paul Riser and Aliens, where
Speaker 1: you're like, God, this guy can't get an alien. It's
Speaker 1: bally fast enough. No, he's just not that self actualized.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, as a character, he's not that well drawn.
Speaker 1: And but he serves a purpose, right, He's very passionate
Speaker 1: about trying to find his make really um you know,
Speaker 1: human species maker. And he's terribly disappointed because at this
Speaker 1: point in the film he has not met his maker,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And David's basically saying, oh, you're disappointed
Speaker 1: in not meeting your maker, while I met my maker
Speaker 1: every day of my life and is really no big deal, buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy is a bummer. So and that's what I
Speaker 1: love about that um about that scene, and that's a
Speaker 1: really well written scene. I think because it does show
Speaker 1: this UM, this sort of complicated future where you have
Speaker 1: an android who has learned to sympathize, understands empathy, understands
Speaker 1: these human emotions. And that's an interesting thing to think
Speaker 1: about with him, because he knows what empathy is, he
Speaker 1: understands empathy. He is maybe is he capable of actually
Speaker 1: he's capable of faking empathy for sure, but is he
Speaker 1: really empathetic? Well? And what makes him what's the difference
Speaker 1: between him an associopath? Right, and that he's programmed to do?
Speaker 1: Specifically discussed in the past, how in treating psychopaths you
Speaker 1: you teach them to pretend to be empathetic and UH
Speaker 1: and to what extent is that solve problems? To which
Speaker 1: what extent does it create a new problems? And if
Speaker 1: your programmed to understand empathy and to exercise it to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, there's the whole school of thought you
Speaker 1: fake it until you make it, and through the process
Speaker 1: you make it. So on one level, and again this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is projection. You can't help but
Speaker 1: think that David does have some sort of part of
Speaker 1: his UH schematics UM in his programming that does feel
Speaker 1: and that he does feel the slight that you hear
Speaker 1: in that scene where Holloway is being kind of a
Speaker 1: jerk to him and he's responding to it accordingly. M
Speaker 1: It's just a really nice, nicely um handled scene, I think.
Speaker 1: And speaking of encounters with creators, of course, one of
Speaker 1: the ultimate scenes in the film is of course when
Speaker 1: you have the old Peter Whyland uh um, and he
Speaker 1: has he's he's strapped on his exoskeleton and he's walked
Speaker 1: in and David, his creation, is there beside him as
Speaker 1: they wake up. One of these engineers, one of these
Speaker 1: mysterious space jockeys uh that of course originally are are
Speaker 1: seen in passing as part of the set piece an
Speaker 1: alien back in seventy nine. And now here's one alive
Speaker 1: and awake, standing in front of his creation and his
Speaker 1: creation's creation. Okay, so just to recap, Yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: Peter Whalen, right, who has funded the trillion dollar trip
Speaker 1: his creation and he's basically going, yes, he has been
Speaker 1: from Spurns, which as you said, makes um, David fetch
Speaker 1: my robotic pants and was like and you can tell
Speaker 1: he's like kind of annoyed by he's doing because he's
Speaker 1: programmed to UM. But as you pointed out that where
Speaker 1: you're talking about our three generations of something, right, you've
Speaker 1: got the engineer, which is what they've been searching for,
Speaker 1: the the maker, right, this god like the god which yeah,
Speaker 1: which we find out we share a dent of our
Speaker 1: dna um through all sorts of different proceeds on the
Speaker 1: processes on the ship. Uh. And it is a it
Speaker 1: is a very interesting scene because the engineer is not
Speaker 1: so happy to see what man has made or that's
Speaker 1: what it's inferred, and man has made David right, this
Speaker 1: eighth generation robot. Yeah, it's it comes out in the
Speaker 1: film that the the goop that they encounter that gives
Speaker 1: birth all these monsters, the that sexually destroy everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: that it is a like a form of weaponized evolution,
Speaker 1: weaponized organism UM, bio warfare life. You have bio warfare
Speaker 1: intended to wipe out planet Earth, the idea of being Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you get the idea that there's something about humans
Speaker 1: that isn't they realized early on isn't gonna work. Um.
Speaker 1: And if it was two thousand years ago, then you
Speaker 1: know you can sort of maybe they're looking around, they're
Speaker 1: looking at ancient Rome, and they're like, you know, we
Speaker 1: checked in on them. They're not doing so hot. Let's
Speaker 1: go and clean that slate and do something new. But
Speaker 1: that plan falls through. So that plan falls through. Two
Speaker 1: thousand years later, this guy wakes up. Not only was
Speaker 1: the job not done, not only are these humans still alive,
Speaker 1: but they have grown up, expanded out into the into
Speaker 1: the surrounding universe, and have created their own blasphemous little creatures, uh,
Speaker 1: created in their likeness beside them. So yeah, he's mad.
Speaker 1: That combined with two thousand years worth of of of
Speaker 1: of wake up grumpiness, results in a homicidal rampage. So
Speaker 1: I read that Ridley Scott had intended these two thousand
Speaker 1: years ago thing, this thing, this point where the engineers
Speaker 1: had created this goo, to wipe out the earth because
Speaker 1: they were now mad with their creation, uh, to correspond
Speaker 1: with um Christ, and that the Christ figure might have
Speaker 1: even been an engineer himself. So that I want to
Speaker 1: see that that's sequel. We'll see. And now some people
Speaker 1: will say, why wasn't that written in? And probably because
Speaker 1: not everything needs to be written into the well that
Speaker 1: was well, And then you start to look at some
Speaker 1: of the other themes going on, um, certainly birth and
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a moment um. And the
Speaker 1: fact that this is all taking place on Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: so that kind of that certainly does yeah, because I
Speaker 1: can't think, why is this on Christmas Day? Who cares?
Speaker 1: You know? Because they've got the Christmas tree out there. Um,
Speaker 1: And it does make the reading a little bit more
Speaker 1: interesting of what's going on. But again, you can throw
Speaker 1: a whole Jesus plot line into it. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty thick. Yeah, yeah, it gets really interesting. Uh and
Speaker 1: problematic too. And I think this is what is driving
Speaker 1: people a little bit crazy is that there are is
Speaker 1: so cramp packed with with all these ideas, some of
Speaker 1: the wonderful, if not overly ambitious film. Yeah and uh
Speaker 1: and so some of it and there's things like I
Speaker 1: have no idea why that head blew up. It was
Speaker 1: a great from a horror movie perspective. It was great
Speaker 1: when they bring the helmeted head and then they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, reactivate the cellular tissue and they're like, let's
Speaker 1: do it, and then it blows up. I don't Maybe
Speaker 1: a listener can explain that scene to me. To me,
Speaker 1: that was just the horror element of it, the element
Speaker 1: of surprise because here they've got you know, they've got
Speaker 1: an engineer's head that they found um in the pyramid
Speaker 1: on the extra planet and they're they're doing some studies
Speaker 1: on it. And so it was a little bit like,
Speaker 1: here's this giant man head, um, let's reanimate it and
Speaker 1: see what happens. Let's talk a little bit about well,
Speaker 1: we should mention terraforming because in the in the film, uh,
Speaker 1: Whaland Industries, well not so much in the film, but
Speaker 1: in the viral material, there's a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: how Whaland Industries is really into terraforming of the world
Speaker 1: and setting up these colonial environments. Uh. And then we
Speaker 1: encountered the technology of the engineers there. Everyone's able to
Speaker 1: take their helmets off once they're on board the inside
Speaker 1: the pyramid, and because there's some sort of terraforming taking
Speaker 1: place there as well. And we've discussed terraforming before, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly something that is on on the minds of
Speaker 1: of the the loftier visions of human humanities future, the
Speaker 1: idea that we could change Mars into a sustainable environment,
Speaker 1: that we could colonize it for ourselves, and if we
Speaker 1: find an exoplanet that's either a little too hot or
Speaker 1: a little too cold, that we could even things out
Speaker 1: with this the wee bit of terraforming and maybe not
Speaker 1: destroy everything, because a lot of times the terraforming terraforming
Speaker 1: technology is very similar to some of the more disastrous
Speaker 1: things that we could do to our own atmosphere, such
Speaker 1: as creating nuclear winter or or just drastic climate change.
Speaker 1: But so basically, you could choose an exoplanet, get there
Speaker 1: and do some experimentations either on the atmosphere there, or
Speaker 1: you could be creating some sort of uh BioWare warfare
Speaker 1: agent in the form of coup. Yes, and yeah, because
Speaker 1: the coop is What's what I've found awesome about that
Speaker 1: is that it's it's more than just a bioweapon. Like
Speaker 1: it's more than just we've taken one organism and weaponized it,
Speaker 1: or taken a couple of organisms and weaponized it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of life itself weaponized, um, which is just a
Speaker 1: great sci fi idea, and it's but it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing on a far lesser level that we humans
Speaker 1: are already doing. Um. Some bioterrorism is essentially let's take
Speaker 1: some anthrax. Let's take something that that is dangerous in
Speaker 1: our environment and throw it at our enemy and maybe
Speaker 1: they'll catch it. And that's as ancient as you know
Speaker 1: siege environments in the Middle Ages, where somebody would take
Speaker 1: a bunch of dead bodies or a dead cow and
Speaker 1: catapulted into a besiege city to spread disease. But science
Speaker 1: makes things, uh ever more problematic. So we have chimeric
Speaker 1: organisms life forms to contain the genes genes from a
Speaker 1: foreign species, uh, and we've we've actually toyed around with
Speaker 1: using this technology to uh do not only do some
Speaker 1: good stuff. For instance, we've been able to combine the
Speaker 1: common cold with polio in a way that sounds horrifying,
Speaker 1: but it actually may help us cure brain cancer. But
Speaker 1: we've also toyed around with ways to combine smallpox and
Speaker 1: an threax into a single bioweapon. Or also, during nineties,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union's Camera Project study the feasibility of combining
Speaker 1: small box and ebola into one supervirus. So it's an
Speaker 1: area that we've been looking into and it can potentially
Speaker 1: lead to very chilling um ramifications that could backfire on us,
Speaker 1: as it apparently backfired on the engineers in this film. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the idea, is that the engineers on this exo
Speaker 1: planet were perhaps wiped out by their own creation, right,
Speaker 1: that this this creature that has spawned from the goo.
Speaker 1: And when I think it's really interesting about this, it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's not only just torch Earth, right, let's just
Speaker 1: take out our creation altogether. But just in case anybody survives,
Speaker 1: let's throw some goop at them that, you know, if
Speaker 1: they interact with that, they're going to just date this
Speaker 1: horrible creature which will then uh kill them. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just's sort of like a you know, it's a
Speaker 1: very buttoned up program of annihilation. And then we end
Speaker 1: up with that scene in the in the in the
Speaker 1: robotic surgery pot the med pod, where the character of
Speaker 1: Shaw right, yeah, yeah, she is. She ends up with
Speaker 1: the thing growing inside her is eventually like a squid
Speaker 1: monster of some kind and uh and she goes to
Speaker 1: use it and she's like, all right, I need to
Speaker 1: put in this procedure to remove this thing growing in me.
Speaker 1: And then she realizes that it's calibrated only for men
Speaker 1: um which which leads one of the more horror because
Speaker 1: the The idea of I need to go into this
Speaker 1: medical chamber and have this thing removed for me from
Speaker 1: me is pretty terrifying in and of itself. But then
Speaker 1: to learn that the technology isn't even calibrated for females,
Speaker 1: that's just like an extra level of oh, don't do
Speaker 1: it all right. Then she has to go manual on
Speaker 1: it and program it's okay, fine, abdomba a surgery. There
Speaker 1: is a creature in my stomach, please take it out,
Speaker 1: essentially telling the program that and luckily those yeah yeah, um,
Speaker 1: or I think it's for an object or something like that,
Speaker 1: so it identifies it in that way. But it is
Speaker 1: that whole scene is terrifying and interesting. And she doesn't
Speaker 1: say that she needs an abortion. She says she needs acessarian.
Speaker 1: That's what what she tells the computer and um And
Speaker 1: of course I'm I'm not going to go into that
Speaker 1: landscape because I really don't think that's what that scene
Speaker 1: was about. It was about, Hey, I'm just dating an
Speaker 1: alien and it's about to kill me and everybody else
Speaker 1: on board. I gotta get it out. But it is
Speaker 1: a terrifying scene because you are you, You feel like
Speaker 1: you really inhabit the mind, or at least I did
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Shaw, where you're trying to get this procedure done.
Speaker 1: You're inside the pod. You see your stomach basically about
Speaker 1: to burst open. And not only you know, are you
Speaker 1: about to undergo the surgery to remove this creature, but
Speaker 1: it's now going to hang over you a little clamp
Speaker 1: as you're trapped into this pot and you now must
Speaker 1: extricate yourself from this situation. Yeah, and it's it's all.
Speaker 1: It's kind of one of it's like the it's like
Speaker 1: a sci fi version of the Cowboy scene where you know,
Speaker 1: the cowboy bites a bullet and uh and um and
Speaker 1: and performs his own surgery there by the campfire kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um and then I also, here's just a
Speaker 1: little food for thought. Uh, to what extent is this
Speaker 1: scene toying around with some commentary on American healthcare. Here's
Speaker 1: a here's a device. It's calibrated mostly for males, uh
Speaker 1: and uh, and a female is forced to navigate this
Speaker 1: slightly foreign system to make it work. I don't know, well,
Speaker 1: while she's having a virgin proof on Christmas Day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which again another whole spin on this. But it is,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's uh. I think it's so nightmarish in
Speaker 1: such a wonderful scene because you really can get behind
Speaker 1: the technology and actually see at least not the alien
Speaker 1: part or the creature part coming out, but see this
Speaker 1: um technology being used. Yeah. I think that's why it's
Speaker 1: so credible to me, like the scenes, I can really
Speaker 1: sort of say, yes that that could exist in another thing,
Speaker 1: another bit of technology that pops up exoskeletons. As we mentioned,
Speaker 1: Peter Whalen shows up super old. I think he's like
Speaker 1: a century old at this point. We're trying to figure
Speaker 1: that out. I mean we were saying like one hundred
Speaker 1: at the youngest today. I was making an argument that
Speaker 1: he might be one forty today. I looked at the
Speaker 1: timeline for Whitland Industries and like they have his birthday
Speaker 1: on there, and he would be ninety nine or a
Speaker 1: hundred alright, So they went a little bit nuts on
Speaker 1: the old people makeup on him. The old people makeup
Speaker 1: is interesting because like Chekhov has had a rule with
Speaker 1: theater that if you have a young man in old
Speaker 1: man makeup, he will be made young again by the
Speaker 1: end of the film. And and from a sensible point
Speaker 1: of view. Why have a young man play an old
Speaker 1: man when you could just get an old man to
Speaker 1: play an old man. Marthon Sido is out. They're old
Speaker 1: as heck and ready to act every day of his life.
Speaker 1: Get him in there, right, he'd be great for me.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it more in the context of
Speaker 1: m Aubrey Gray. We've talked about him before. He is
Speaker 1: the bio gerontologist who says that, um, we can live
Speaker 1: to a thousand years old, and that the um in fact,
Speaker 1: there's we have the first person to live to five
Speaker 1: hundred has already been born. And he does this. Um.
Speaker 1: He's created this theory through something called the longevity escape velocity,
Speaker 1: and this is this idea that you can maintain your body.
Speaker 1: We now have enough technology where we could do this
Speaker 1: like sort of like a classic automobile. So when I
Speaker 1: saw whaland um, you know, with his crazy, uh, squished
Speaker 1: up old skin, I kept thinking, well, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: kind of in line with what might be available in
Speaker 1: because already you see some women and men cruising around
Speaker 1: who are eighty nine years old with you know, baby
Speaker 1: fine skin, and they're hunched over in their old Schnell suits,
Speaker 1: and so I sort of expected to see some of
Speaker 1: more something like a more like the Uncanny Valley effect,
Speaker 1: where you see that someone has been messed with on
Speaker 1: a tissue level and they would just look grotesque in
Speaker 1: some way. Yeah, I guess I tried to sort of
Speaker 1: explain away the weirdness of old man makeup on younger
Speaker 1: man by sort of thinking out it in those terms like, well,
Speaker 1: he's probably had some some weird treatments at this point
Speaker 1: to sustain him to this to this level, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's why he would look kind of weird because maximum
Speaker 1: sido is an old man in a in a in
Speaker 1: our current age, what will old men look like, especially
Speaker 1: severely rich old men look like a century from now.
Speaker 1: But well, maybe one too many chemical peles, that's what
Speaker 1: it looks like, honestly. But exo skeletons, though, he ends
Speaker 1: up betting on the exo skeleton so he can walk,
Speaker 1: And that is a very real technology we've discussed that
Speaker 1: the Japanese are particularly interested in because it's all about
Speaker 1: let's figure out ways to help older individuals continue to
Speaker 1: move about their lives, to give mobility by augmenting them
Speaker 1: with mechanical kind of mechanical braces. Uh. In some cases
Speaker 1: things external robotic um build outs that will enable them
Speaker 1: to walk or get up and down from from in
Speaker 1: the bathroom easier, things of this nature. So we tell
Speaker 1: you to see that in the film. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: because Japanese, the Japanese do have one of the largest
Speaker 1: aging populations, so it does make sense that they would
Speaker 1: be interested in that technology. But yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: was a nice little um point there in the movie.
Speaker 1: Al Right, well, let's let's come back around two Panties
Speaker 1: again to close everything out. We were mentioning how and
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about this whole panties thing,
Speaker 1: check out Woman the Other Alien and Alien, which was
Speaker 1: by an author by the name of Tom shown and
Speaker 1: appeared in Slate and he just really gets into the
Speaker 1: academic discussions of really Scott's Alien film. And this was
Speaker 1: published before Prometheus, so it doesn't get into that at all.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he talks about how, you know, you had
Speaker 1: in with a pro panties camp and an anti panties
Speaker 1: camp when it came to academic discussion of Alien, and
Speaker 1: then then you had some commentary that came along that
Speaker 1: kind of attempted to bridge the two factions. It's true
Speaker 1: there was a professor Creed who actually tried to bridge
Speaker 1: that conversation by saying much has been written about the
Speaker 1: final scene in which Ripley addresses before the camera, on
Speaker 1: the grounds that it's voyeurism undermines her role as a
Speaker 1: successful heroine. She wrote with an air of weary summary, Um,
Speaker 1: but what if Ripley in her panties signifies the acceptable
Speaker 1: form in shape of woman, the display of woman as
Speaker 1: reassuring and pleasurable sign Yeah, yeah, I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but I did think it sort of casted Elizabeth Shawn
Speaker 1: into this question mark of of where she is in
Speaker 1: this moral code of horror films. Yeah, because she she
Speaker 1: has sex in the film, but she has sex with
Speaker 1: her Is there her husband or boyfriend, anna other whatever,
Speaker 1: it's not morally subject the other character Clary's that they're on.
Speaker 1: Surely sure least they're on who has a who has
Speaker 1: a relationship there with or at least a brief relationship
Speaker 1: with ins elbows character the captain. Uh, that just kind
Speaker 1: of comes out of nowhere. But but it's again that
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that is serving the plot,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't always ring true. Yeah, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: she's not. The Shaw's character isn't tremendously sexualized in this film. Either.
Speaker 1: She does run around in or underwear at one point,
Speaker 1: which is just going to happen in an alien mythos film,
Speaker 1: but but it's not. It's not like hyperly sexual. Okay,
Speaker 1: So she is the one who has the faith, and
Speaker 1: so she also is the one who is birthing on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day, the virgin birth. Uh so there is this idea.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about the MacDonald horror complex sometimes
Speaker 1: subscribing women as either you know, um saintly and innocent
Speaker 1: or you know, um more like the Mary Magdalen um.
Speaker 1: And you do you come away from the film, at
Speaker 1: least I do, and feeling like there was she was
Speaker 1: embodying innocence to a certain degree. Yeah, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see that for sure. So it is Yeah, essentially there
Speaker 1: is no sort of voyeuristick take on Elizabeth saw this
Speaker 1: and so is that pro feminist or is that just
Speaker 1: really getting her to you know, again this realm where
Speaker 1: sometimes women just get reduced to this one thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The monsters, for their part, remain hyper sexual U totally
Speaker 1: like hermaphrodites to a certain degree, right, some of them
Speaker 1: that seem phallic will listen become vagina like yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and that gets into the whole area of vagina dan
Speaker 1: tata and in phallic dentata if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about vagina dentata stuff. Mom never told you did
Speaker 1: a whole episode on this. So yeah, it's a reference
Speaker 1: to castration anxiety, which is just sort of perfect for
Speaker 1: a film like this, right, yeah, yeah that that like
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. I think that's one of the for
Speaker 1: with for a film in which so many people die
Speaker 1: so horribly, it's it's amazing they didn't go to that
Speaker 1: that particular. Well, but though at the end there was
Speaker 1: there was some Legona Dantana going on, Oh yes, the
Speaker 1: squid monster that ends up taking out the engineer and
Speaker 1: face sexing and yeah yes, face sexing, yeah, which again
Speaker 1: falls light in line with the with the original ideas
Speaker 1: an alien where it's this weird like like it's it's
Speaker 1: sexual assault, but it's also falling back into what is
Speaker 1: apparently like a um like a childhood misconception about how
Speaker 1: sex may work and how babies work. The idea that
Speaker 1: the baby is put in through the mouth. Um. So
Speaker 1: some of the this is how deep. A lot of
Speaker 1: the commentary for Alien goes where they really gets into
Speaker 1: into the biologic confusion of the piece. You know that
Speaker 1: actually not to relate fist my daughter, but I mean
Speaker 1: she's there, here's old and she didn't ask me the
Speaker 1: other day why I swallowed her. Oh well there you go.
Speaker 1: So and I was amazed. I thought, oh God, she
Speaker 1: thinks I swallowed her because you know, you could say
Speaker 1: I was in your belly or whatever. Um. I did
Speaker 1: want to go quickly back to the creator thing because
Speaker 1: it's a huge theme of this movie is trying to
Speaker 1: find Um. It's not trying to find God per se.
Speaker 1: It's trying to find the answer to the question of
Speaker 1: why we are here? Who put us here? Um? Is
Speaker 1: there a reason for our being? Yeah? And it's um.
Speaker 1: And that's why this is sort of a movie that
Speaker 1: is I think so engaging, is because it is taking
Speaker 1: on this theme um and all that you do have
Speaker 1: this person of faith in Elizabeth Shaw. Uh, you also
Speaker 1: are running against these other moments where there is a void.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I thought was very
Speaker 1: um interesting is when Whyland meets his maker, right, the engineer,
Speaker 1: and um, he's sitting there dying afterward, and David's head
Speaker 1: has been ripped off his robot body and they're having
Speaker 1: a conversation and Whalen says to him, there's nothing, and
Speaker 1: David says, I know, have a good journey, Mr Whalen,
Speaker 1: And so I thought, is this you know? That's that's
Speaker 1: I think part of the what the movie is trying
Speaker 1: to say too, is that there's always going to be
Speaker 1: the mystery. And you know, in the absence of answers
Speaker 1: there there's nothing. Um, and there may also be nothing
Speaker 1: even with the answers, because he did have his answer
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. Uh, so interesting food for thought there,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I would like to invite everyone to
Speaker 1: take that food for thought, allow it to crawl down
Speaker 1: your throat and uh and grow inside you into something
Speaker 1: something more, even more meaningful, to state that. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you have any gestation thoughts, um our thoughts from your gestation, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a share them with us. Yeah, general
Speaker 1: thoughts about the technology in the movie, um, and the
Speaker 1: and the ideas in the movie and things we've discussed here.
Speaker 1: Let us know about those. Just fair warning. UM. If
Speaker 1: it's a spoilery discussion. We're we're not going to read
Speaker 1: any of that on the air. We'd still love to
Speaker 1: hear it, but it'll it'll end up just being for
Speaker 1: for our eyes only. Uh. If you won't want to
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Speaker 1: us a line at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
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