Prometheus 2: This Time It Makes Sense

[thejeff]

Lord Snow wrote:

Hama wrote:

I've yet to find a reliable historical document that mentions Jesus in any big way.

In antiquities of the Jews, a work by a Jewish historian who has proven himself reliable on many other subject matters, mentions Jesus as a wise teacher. Remember that Jesus was not a "christian", he was a Jew who had a host of new teachings. According to Jospehus Flavius, there indeed was a prominent figure with a name somewhat like Jesus (a Hebrew name, so translations get fuzzy).

This is not nearly enough to determine that Jesus was anything like he was portrayed in Christianity, but it's a good indication that there was someone with a similar name who was a spiritualist.

That's as close as we'll get to have historic evidence on the subject, but scholars who devote their life to researching this have broadly agreed that it seems genuine so I'm inclined to believe them there's a good chance it's true.

Which doesn't go at all beyond

Quote:

I'm more along the lines that he walked around telling people to be good to each other and "performed miracles" by feeding people. And as usual, someone turned it into a religion over time.

But we really shouldn't dig too much deeper into this, as it's likely to spill into religious flame war territory and is already pretty removed from Prometheus.

[GreyWolfLord]

Hama wrote:

I've yet to find a reliable historical document that mentions Jesus in any big way.

If you know any, link me please, I'd love to read it.

What is my observation is that there were several dudes in the middle east, all around the same time, going about, talking about god.

As far as I know, there are no reliable documents that mention him. The closest is Josephus, and it's actually a leap of faith/logic that it's actually talking about him.

Otherwise, there's no actual evidence that I know of from that period or close to it (well, after 300 years there starts to be...but that enters the arena of myth as no one in that time existed in 0-33 AD, even stuff from Josephus at times to those in that period is somewhat shrouded in rumor and hearsay).

It basically comes down to faith because there is really no hard evidence at all.

At least from a scientific view. Some believers can be funny however, and ascribe facts where there are none. Even more ironic...while they do that in their beliefs, they will discount others doing the same thing (for example Mormons ascribing Mormonism in Native Americans from ancient history will be derided by the same Christians that see a tablet talking about Jupiter as a symbology for their own religious facts).

What it boils down to, is Faith. To tell the truth, considering the religion, that's what it's supposed to be. If there was solid proof, then the entire chapters devoted to faith and why it's important wouldn't be necessary. However, that still doesn't stop people from trying to find hard evidence so they don't need quite as much faith.

[Lord Snow]

@TheJeff, Hama specifically said "several dudes", meaning he didn't think there was actually a dude named Jesus who was a religious leader. According to Josephus, there was, or so at least most researchers in the field agree. That's as close to the truth as we know. My point is, there likely was a "Jesus", even if he was not much like the one described in the Christian text books. And no plausible iteration of a true historic Jesus fits something that makes sense for an Engineer to do. Even if Jesus was not attempting to start a new religion, he was considered a wise teacher by the Jews - which, in that time and place in history, was synonymous with being a learned religious Jew. Why would an Engineer spout nonsense like that, when it *knows* how humans were created? It's not that it's impossible, it's just improbable to the point of being a laughable idea.

[havoc xiii]

I always took that scene as a turning point. The engineers watchin their "experiment" noticed we killed someone doing great things and decided to reboot the system so to speak.

[thejeff]

Lord Snow wrote:

@TheJeff, Hama specifically said "several dudes", meaning he didn't think there was actually a dude named Jesus who was a religious leader. According to Josephus, there was, or so at least most researchers in the field agree. That's as close to the truth as we know. My point is, there likely was a "Jesus", even if he was not much like the one described in the Christian text books. And no plausible iteration of a true historic Jesus fits something that makes sense for an Engineer to do. Even if Jesus was not attempting to start a new religion, he was considered a wise teacher by the Jews - which, in that time and place in history, was synonymous with being a learned religious Jew. Why would an Engineer spout nonsense like that, when it *knows* how humans were created? It's not that it's impossible, it's just improbable to the point of being a laughable idea.

I didn't read Hama that way. There were in fact several dudes going around the Middle East talking about God at the time. Jesus was one. John the Baptist would be another. There were more.

Having little to no idea about the motivations or plans of the Engineers with regards to humanity, it's hard decide what might make sense. Jesus as one of many teachers sent to guide humans onto different path? He's just the one that got killed.

I don't know. I kind of like it being slightly hinted at, but not confirmed or explained.

[Hama]

Well, if this engineer went around saying good stuff, telling people to be good to one another, turn the other cheek, you know...

And then some Romans decided to strap him to a cross, because, well, people are bastards.

And that pissed off the other engineers, so they decided to wipe out humanity.

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Although that doesn't seem too plausible. After all, you cannot blame the entire population of a planet for the actions of several dozen bastards.

More probably, Engineers wanted a fighting race of people, and humans weren't up to par. So they decided to wipe the slate clean.

[Lord Snow]

Hama wrote:

Well, if this engineer went around saying good stuff, telling people to be good to one another, turn the other cheek, you know...

And then some Romans decided to strap him to a cross, because, well, people are bastards.

And that pissed off the other engineers, so they decided to wipe out humanity.

.
.
.

Although that doesn't seem too plausible. After all, you cannot blame the entire population of a planet for the actions of several dozen bastards.

More probably, Engineers wanted a fighting race of people, and humans weren't up to par. So they decided to wipe the slate clean.

I agree that the Jesus-killing making the aliens mad theory isn't plausible at all, and that your idea is more plausible, but I still fail to see the logic of it. If you want to breed fighters and you have an advanced enough science to create life, I don't see how the results will ever be humans and not something more similar to the Krogan of the Mass Effect universe.

Also, if the humans aren't as capable as you hoped they would be... why wipe them out? why expend the resources to do so? just leave them where they are and start from scratch somewhere else.

[thejeff]

The other thing to remember is that it's a Horror film, not science fiction. It's setting up monsters, not building a coherent universe to explore.

[Lord Snow]

thejeff wrote:

The other thing to remember is that it's a Horror film, not science fiction. It's setting up monsters, not building a coherent universe to explore.

I think that the movie does attempt to be a science fiction film as well as a horror flick. A lot of the criticism about it (especially at boards like this one, with large numbers of actual science fiction fans) is probably because of it's science fiction aspirations. If it was nothing but a dumb horror movie, it might never have got the attention.

It's much more of a science fiction movie than Alien ever was, for example, what with it's more detailed world building and wider scope.

[Hama]

Lord Snow wrote:

Also, if the humans aren't as capable as you hoped they would be... why wipe them out? why expend the resources to do so? just leave them where they are and start from scratch somewhere else.

Life supporting planets are few and far in between. Much cheaper to wipe out an entire race of people and start anew. You plow the field again after a harvest. You don't get another field.

[Lord Snow]

Hama wrote:

Lord Snow wrote:

Also, if the humans aren't as capable as you hoped they would be... why wipe them out? why expend the resources to do so? just leave them where they are and start from scratch somewhere else.

Life supporting planets are few and far in between. Much cheaper to wipe out an entire race of people and start anew. You plow the field again after a harvest. You don't get another field.

Actually, they are really not. To the best current human knowledge there are probably billions of potentially habitable planets in the milky way. Even withing the extremely limited range where our telescopes can pick up such things up, we found many hundreds.

I can't imagine that just choosing any such planet in the vicinity and starting from scratch there is much more difficult than wiping out all life forms on a planet (while somehow trying to avoid causing irreversible damage to the environment in the process).

Your analogy of plowing the field again after harvest is inaccurate. Rather, imagine you found the plants in the field are all bad, and you have infinite land to choose from. You can either just start a new field on a new spot of land, or you have to go through the process of harvesting an entire useless field, and then plowing under the remains. I know which of the two I will do.

[Hama]

Then maybe they made us to test their WMDs? :D

[Kthulhu]

Lord Snow wrote:

Hama wrote:

Life supporting planets are few and far in between. Much cheaper to wipe out an entire race of people and start anew. You plow the field again after a harvest. You don't get another field.

Actually, they are really not. To the best current human knowledge there are probably billions of potentially habitable planets in the milky way. Even withing the extremely limited range where our telescopes can pick up such things up, we found many hundreds.

In addition, who is to say that alien life necessarily adheres to what we humans consider "potentially habitable"? Hell, even here on Earth we have extremophiles....(mostly) microscopic organisms that are able to survive and thrive in environments that most life on Earth simple wouldn't be able to deal with. Ramp that up by a few orders of magnitude considering that alien life is...ALIEN.

[Lord Snow]

AND... why do you need an ENTIRE PLANET for one experiment? just create life and contain them in one closed area. That way you could easily run multiple experiments in the same time and at the same planet.

[Kryzbyn]

So he decided to use the Guyver back story? Interesting...

[Grand Magus]

2016 ???

[Werthead]

Fairly random threadbump, but okay.

PROMETHEUS 2 is actually no more. It's now ALIEN: COVENANT, is going to be start of a new ALIEN prequel trilogy and Noomi Rapace has been dropped (apparently not her choice). The new film will apparently focus on a team of explorers encountering the android David on some random planet some years after the events of PROMETHEUS. Eventually xenomorphs and/or Engineers show up.

I'm not sure how I like this development. It feels very cynical and market-led, almost like Ridley Scott decided to gazump Neil Blomkamp's ALIEN 5 project with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn (which is now on hold until COVENANT, at least, is in the can) by making a proper ALIENS film and dumping most of the PROMETHEUS-specific casting and plot points. It's all a bit baffling.