The anti-science stance of Prometheus

Spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Prometheus, the 2012 Ridley Scott-directed not-a-prequel to Alien, is an interesting failure. The film is gorgeous and the actors generally do a fantastic job. The failure of the movie is the story, the plot. Many reviewers at the time of release went into its problems ¹ . One problem that many have pointed out is that the plot is powered by characters doing stupid things, like (literally) running in the wrong direction. I want to discuss another problem I have with the film, one that’s been bugging me ever since I saw it in the theater.

The movie is willfully, belligerently anti-science.

Characters in the film grapple with questions of human origins, the meaning of life, the cosmic why. Indeed, an important characteristic of the main character is her christian faith ². Many films love to contrast faith and science and this can lead to powerful dramatic tension, although I believe this tension is vastly overblown in movies compared to real working scientists—the debates in Contact, for example, seem quite childish.

This is a noble conversation to have in any film. Yet I conclude the film is anti-science because of the way it treats its characters, most of whom are scientists. I was especially excited to see these characters because I wanted to see what scientists and explorers would do in Scott’s big return to the sci-fi genre. Alien, in contrast, featured a “blue collar” crew—think truckers in space—which was radical in the 1970s. Now we were coming full circle to the origins of sci-fi, with explorers, scientists, and soldiers. What story potential.

Instead, we got a film that features:

1. A geologist getting lost in caves and complaining, ‘All these rock tunnels look the same’.
2. A biologist completely misunderstanding an alien creature’s painfully obvious threat display.
3. An archaeologist, after making the greatest scientific discovery in history, being sad that he can’t learn anything because everyone was dead. An archaeologist!

The scientists are not incompetent, they are anti-competent.

That last one is exceptionally galling:

[Android]: I’m very sorry that your engineers are all gone.
[Archaeologist]: You think we wasted our time coming here, don’t you?
[Android]: Your question depends on me understanding what you hoped to achieve by coming here.
[Archaeologist]: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.

To get answers? By talking to someone? You’re sitting outside a ruin that provides a dozen lifetime’s worth of archaeological exploration. What do think archaeologists do?

Now, I understand the film needs an exciting plot and seeing characters jump for joy after spending hours dusting off a small crevice in a doorway is not much fun to watch. But come on! The scientists could have been genuinely excited by all the scientific possibilities and then a scary, dangerous but exciting situation comes down on them.

Damon Lindelof, Prometheus writer and producer, when asked if the film is anti-science, responded:

It’s definitely not anti-science. In fact, if anything I think it’s pro-science because it advances the idea that part of our own programming as human beings, we’re many ways just as governed by our programming as [the android] David is.

He seems out-of-touch with the actions of these characters.

If any one of these scientists failed I would be OK with it, but all of them together? It’s too much. I am forced to conclude—despite Lindelof’s claims—that the movie intentionally undermines the central expertise of each scientist character.