Prometheus (2012) Part I - "It's What I Choose to Believe"

Spoiler Level – Moderate

The Movie – A team of scientists set out in search of extraterrestrial life that may have visited Earth in the distant past.

This movie...this movie has a lot of problems. Logically. Thematically. But I'm going to try to focus on the scientific errors. Because that alone is going to take a while. It's not actually a terrible movie if you can ignore the bad science. This surprised me, because I heard a lot of bad things before watching it. But it's well-acted with a great cast. And besides the stupid science that sets up the movie, the plot after they arrive is pretty interesting.

There has already been a lot of criticism of Prometheus. Some even from a scientific standpoint, such as this one from my favorite podcast, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Part of the reason I waited so long to get around to this movie (besides not wanting to pay theater prices) is I wanted to distance myself from the earlier things I've heard and hopefully provide some fresh thoughts.

The Scene – So in the first part of this, I want to focus on the portrayal of scientists. There are several of them in Prometheus, each flawed in their own way.

The first scientists we're introduced to are Shaw and Holloway, archaeologists who discover a common pattern of dots in the cave paintings of ancient humans. They conclude that this means humanity was engineered by an alien race who come from a star system represented by the dots. They convince a corporation to spend a trillion dollars investigating this hypothesis while openly admitting that they have no evidence and that this is just what they choose to believe. They go on to make several bad decisions throughout the movie including removing their helmets on the alien planet.

As a biologist myself, I most wanted to like Millburn, the mission's biology expert. He seems like a typical scientist character at first. Though when the crew stumbles upon a dead alien he is freaked out and heads back to the ship. However, he is distracted on the way out, gets stranded, and eventually stumbles upon a live alien. Despite being scared by the dead alien and the live alien looking like a cobra, Millburn approaches the thing as if it were a stray cat and is ultimately killed by it.

This look means, "I dare you to touch me. I dare you." From Prometheus.

Fifield is the ship's geologist with a punk rock aesthetic. His tool for mapping the planet's cavern system is one of the coolest yet potentially plausible future-tech gadgets in the movie. However, he's generally unfriendly and makes a point of only being on the mission to make money. Like Millburn, he is freaked out by dead alien, and the two retreat together for the same eventual demise.

The Science – Shaw and Holloway are two of the worst scientists I've seen in a movie. (Though I'll get around to some even worse scientists when I get to Splice.) To see a motif of six dots in a few ancient paintings and conclude anything at all is difficult. To say it represents a specific star system strains logic. To further conclude that it's a map to the home world of an alien species that engineered humanity is just ridiculous. I'll spend another post on the problems with that idea as well.

But what really bothered me was telling a group of scientists that they had no evidence for their conclusion and just wanted to believe it. Scientists are people like anyone else. We all have hypotheses that we want to be true. However, we do not insist that other scientists accept our ideas out of belief. That is faith, and it's contrary to the very purpose of science. Imagine asking your doctor, "Do you have any evidence that this medicine will cure my disease?" and the doctor responding, "I don't, but it's what I choose to believe." Scientists present the ideas that they think best fits the available data. It's common and reasonable for scientists to disagree about what conclusion is most consistent with the data. When that happens, we collect additional data until evidence clearly favors one idea over the other. We do not insist that anyone should just trust our beliefs.

"Do I have any evidence that Swedish Fish cure cancer? I don't, but it's what I choose to believe. What do you mean my NIH grant is denied?" From Wikimedia Commons.

Millburn is just a poorly written character. A biologist willing to travel several trillion miles in the search of extraterrestrial life is not going to be freaked out when he finds extraterrestrial life! And that was pretty much the ideal situation: a dead but well-preserved specimen. He should have been overjoyed. Sort of like he is 20 minutes later when he finds a live alien. And this alien specifically looks like cobra poised to attack. That should create a mixture of fear and excitement in any scientist. It's perfectly reasonable to make a mistake in handling such a creature given those emotions, but no one in their right mind would see an alien like that and treat it like a pet.

I'm a little torn about Fifield's portayal. On the one hand, I like that he doesn't have the traditional scientist look to him. A lot of scientists fit the nerdy stereotype, but we represent the same range of styles present in the rest of humanity. Here's a tumblr I like that's meant to illustrate this point. So it was nice of the movie to show a scientist rocking the punk look. Fifield's greed is the less realistic part. While science is not a great field to enter if you just care about money, it is possible to get rich with the right discovery, and some scientists can become quite greedy. However, those are not the scientists who sign up for high risk work. Imagine the first mission to Mars. Even if it's funded by a corporation and the astronauts are paid very well, those who volunteer will not do so out of greed. People willing to risk their lives in such a premeditated way do it for the thrill, the fame, to be remembered by history, not money.

In the future, the punk rock look is co-opted by greedy scientists. From Prometheus.

Finally, I'm not sure I have to say this, but it is not a good idea to remove your helmet on an alien planet without extensive testing. I don't care if scanners say that the the gas composition is similar to Earth's atmosphere. There could be trace amounts of poisonous gases that we wouldn't even think to scan for because they don't exist on earth. There could be pathogens that can infect people. I would only trust that the air is safe after test animals have been brought onto the planet and thoroughly shown to suffer no ill effects for several weeks. Even then I wouldn't want to be the first guy to remove his helmet. Now scientists will do stupid and risky things for the sake of their science. For instance, I found it perfectly believable when Shaw nearly got herself killed trying to save her alien specimen in the face of an oncoming storm. But there was just no benefit to removing their helmets.

Fixing the Scene – Making these characters better scientists can fix some of the general character problems that the movie has taken flack for.

Let's start with Millburn and Fifield. Fifield's generally unfriendly personality could be maintained while saying he's only there to make history, rather than money. (Though really I don't understand why they needed to make him unlikable in the first place.) Instead of getting scared when he sees the dead alien, Millburn should be excited. Rather than leaving out of fear, he should take some samples and rush back toward the ship immediately out of eagerness to analyze what he's found. It's fine for Fifield to want to come with him out of fear. A geologist that wasn't really expecting to find life and just wanted to study the geology of another world would reasonably be scared by a dead alien. They could still get lost and distracted and come across the live alien. And instead of stupidly approaching it, Millburn could try and capture it cautiously, but still get attacked. In that way, all the same plot points are hit, but the characters are consistent and believable.

To fix Shaw and Holloway, it's going to take some more work. But first I need to address what's wrong with their hypothesis, so I'll get around to them in a later post. Their characters are largely based on their beliefs. They think aliens engineered us, and they have an existential desire to meet their creators. It's an interesting crossing of science and religion, and I think it's an idea that science fiction is right to explore. Once I re-imagine their ideas, I can design better scientist characters around that concept, and they can still explore such important existential themes.

Finally, astronauts should never remove their helmets. I imagine this is commonly done because the audience would feel more comfortable seeing the actors' faces clearly. So I'd recommend just using future-tech to achieve the same purpose. Say that the astronauts have helmets but the material is so perfectly transparent as to be invisible. This would also allow the astronauts to have a better field of vision, so there would be a reason for it in the movie world as well as being for the audience's benefit.

Next Week – I think a week talking about carbon dating will be fun next time, followed by a week about the likelihood of aliens engineering humanity. So I guess it's another three-parter.