First, it never should have tried to market itself as a prequel to Alien. Alien was never Ridley Scott’s creation, but Dan O’Bannon. Ridley Scott only directed Alien. Dan O’Bannon was the writer of Alien and even helped herald the Alien/Prometheus crossovers. He was consulted heavily during Aliens & Alien 3. He was an old school Hollywood guy who was not ashamed of making a monster movie and making it scary. He also had the brilliant idea of making characters that worked for either men or women. It is true that as the story developed, because the audience already knew Sigourney Weaver was the star, the movie franchise continued, gendered storylines bloomed, but initially, gender *gasp* didn’t matter.
O’Bannon also had socioeconomic significance in his story–a concept sadly missing in Prometheus. O’Bannon was tired of space movies that were clean, advanced & full of brilliant specialists & scientists. He wanted space populated by expendable, blue collar workers, an evil corporation and for it to just be another day of drudgery. Even though he didn’t write Aliens and Alien 3, the two movies remained faithful by following the grunts of society: the military and prisoners. Scott has always been more concerned with lofty concepts, but O’Bannon was practical, brought him back to earth & really had the heart of the movie. Scott and O’Bannon balanced each other, but Scott & Lindehof are so lofty and removed from basic reality of daily life for most people, Prometheus ends up floating away entirely.
Second, I was surprised that reviews thought that Elizabeth Shaw was a devout Christian because she wears a cross, and her dad talked about his faith once in a memory. She is definitely spirtual and keeps talking about God, but if they were going for a specific religion other than space Jesus, they got it wrong. (Disclaimer: for me, Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, but for purposes of this topic, lets say religion.) Have Scott or Lindehof met devout Christians? Good, bad, progressive, conservative, we tend to be obsessed with spouting Biblical verses, praying, asking what God wants us to do & generally expressive in our faith in daily conversation. We can’t help it.
I just finished watching Wim Wenders’ Land of Plenty. As far as I know, Wim Wenders isn’t Christian or American, but for me, he got the Christian female as played by Michelle Williams. She prays to God, especially in her moments of weakness. She may be a bit goofy and not as cautious as she should be, but it is because she is concerned about people in her daily life. Perhaps she isn’t so good at effectively conveying it, but she tries. At the end of the day, when weird stuff starts happening, she curses AND she prays. She is practical and spiritual. Basically, she is just a human being who talks to God a lot. Shaw just wants to talk to the Space Jockey, which doesn’t make her NOT Christian, but it also doesn’t make her Christian.
