In 1979, after Ridley Scott's "Alien 1" was a huge commercial success, Fox did not choose to let him continue to direct the "Alien 2" series, but aimed at being seen with "Terminator" at that time. James Cameron with huge directing commercial potential. Although James Cameron lived up to expectations, with his control of rhythm and big scenes, "Alien 2" made the audience too much hidden, but this thing has always made Ridley Scott brooding, and another thing Yes, as the second child of the family, Ridley Scott's brother's accidental death one after another stimulated his thinking about death. During this period, he first filmed "Blade Runner" because of his brother. Then his younger brother committed suicide by jumping off the bridge and gave him a huge blow. After that, his Alien series began to try to build a complete world view, which the Alien 1-4 series did not do, even because each series was composed of different Director's guidance, the coherence of the Alien 1-4 series and the rationality of some settings are lacking. Compared with "Alien 1", which focuses on the creation of a terrifying atmosphere to stimulate the viewing experience, "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" have added more narrative content, raised the story level, and built the alien world. Origin of life: Engineers create humans, humans create androids, and in 2017's Alien: Covenant, it was implied that androids became the creators of aliens. There is no doubt that these two alien series incorporate more of what Ridley Scott wants to express and discuss, and he also prefers to use the shell of religion to conceal the entire alien series.
1. Religion and Alien Worldview
Ridley Scott is an atheist, but the shadow of religion can be said to run through the entire Alien series. Especially as the two sequels. Because the style of "Alien 1" and later "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" has changed a lot. The first is a change in image style, Alien 1 represents the early Ridley Scott, the discreet use of music and replaced by electronic sounds, machine sounds. The unnatural use of light to create a gloomy or even dark atmosphere, and the Hitchcock-like suspense in the enclosed space, these techniques are reflected in his early works such as "Black Rain" and "Blade Runner". Later, after "The End of the Road" in 1991, Ridley gradually changed his visual style, the black side gradually decreased, and the early style of mixing natural light and artificial light became a natural light. Mainly, the green tone also began to change [Jiang Xiaoyu, "Audio-Video Entertainment and Human-centered Watch"].
1.1 The theory of alien Jesus and the myth of Cthulhu
"Prometheus" tells that human beings discovered the ruins of their creators and decided to follow the instructions to reach the LV-223 planet to find them, but found that their creators-engineers were all dead, and then Attacked by black water infection and aliens.
Ridley Scott has unabashedly criticized human arrogance throughout the Alien series. In the setting of "Prometheus", humans at this time have overcome all problems except death. On the spaceship, everyone has their own purpose. Wei Lun wants immortality, Vickers wants to be recognized, Harloway is eager to find the answer, the captain represents responsibility, and Van Feld clearly expresses himself. It's all about making money. They have nothing to say about their faith in God, and even Milder and Van Feld show palpable contempt when Sean demonstrates the purpose of their trip.
All human arrogance is punished in Alien. In "Alien 1", Ken was attacked by a face-hugger and suddenly recovered. Everyone forgot to talk and laugh about what happened before, which directly led to the aliens fleeing into the spaceship. The alien's destination is to be thrown out of the capsule instead of being directly destroyed by humans. In "Prometheus", Mildred was attacked for two reasons. One was that he got lost, and the two scientists didn't bring a map, which was unreasonable. But this also indicated that it was these two people who counted on each other's preparation to commit such a low-level practice, and the second was that Mir had directly touched the Iron Head Worm. It is also against common sense for a biologist to reach out and touch an unknown creature without fear when he encounters it. But it was his arrogance, the protection of his space suit and his reliance on each other that made him the first to die. "Alien: Covenant"'s side story "The Last Supper" not only foreshadows the crew's respective personalities, but also arranges the accident that the crew gets stuck with things. In such an accident, all the crew retreated in fear, and finally the android Watts and a helping hand lifted the crisis. This deliberate arrangement also reflects the imperfection of human beings and the superiority of artificial humans, which will be discussed later.
Human imperfection is the first step in the beginning of Ridley Scott's alien world. Aliens are worshipped because they have a more perfect body and purer than other species. In "Prometheus", the engineer built a huge palace to store alien eggs, and there are huge alien images sculpted in it. It can be inferred that the engineer fears and worships aliens just like people in religions for gods. Later, this sentence was said by David, "They will not be entangled by unnecessary moral values of human beings, and everything will act according to instinct."
Then the question is, since humans are not perfect, why did engineers create humans? ? In the key plot of "Prometheus" David and Harloway's discussion can be seen at one end. David asked Harloway, "Why did man create me?" Harloway replied, "Because we can." David said, "Would you be disappointed if you knew that your creator saw you the same way? ?" A hypothesis can be drawn from here, that the engineers created the human beings only by accident, they only created the human beings by learning the method of creation. But this assumption cannot be established from this passage, because this dialogue is more inclined to explain the game between David and Harloway, and then David decides to let Harloway drink the black fluid.
Even more convincing is the fact that at the end it is learned that the purpose of the engineer flying the spaceship with the black fluid is to destroy the human race. This shows that engineers have the ability to destroy human beings, and in the corresponding Cthulhu myth, the Cthulhu myth is based on the novel world of American writer Howard Philip Lovecraft, and all Lovecraft's novels point to A common theme: the value of human beings in the universe is meaningless, and all the search for the mysterious unknown will lead to a disastrous end. Often relies on the power of other powerful beings in the universe, yet these beings have no interest in human beings. Just as Welch Allen longed for an engineer such as Prometheus to bring immortality to mankind but was killed by an engineer, it shows that although the engineer created human beings, he has no interest in human beings and can easily destroy them. Their technological civilization far surpasses that of human beings. Such as the holographic projection on the spaceship, where Ridley Scott arranged for engineers to steer the spaceship with a flute, it may hint at Pythagoras' theory of a "musical universe": a phenomenon that Pythagoras thought of sound The harmony of characteristics and a certain essential order are related to the proportional relationship of numbers, and numbers are the origin of all things. The harmony of music is the harmony of numbers, that is, the harmony of the universe. Jin Honglian, "Harmony" and "Order" in Pythagorean Music Theory, Journal of Nanjing University of the Arts, 2011, No. 1]. From such a setting, it can also be imagined that the technological civilization of engineers is something that human beings can never reach and imagine. But another point worth pondering is that the room where the engineer stored the alien eggs seemed to be a huge palace, with a huge human-like head carved into it. In the whole palace, the murals, carvings, and stone carvings are very similar to the early civilization of mankind. This kind of human-like phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the engineer may also have religious worship. He is just a higher-level existence than humans, and there must be higher-level creatures in the vast universe. This can be explained by the paradox of Almighty God in the Bible. God created human beings and ordered them to only recognize him as the only God. But the existence of God cannot completely eliminate evil, so God is not omnipotent. In the same way, God deliberately placed the fruit of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. After human beings touched it, they finally multiplied and became evil, and God sent a great flood. The paradox is that he clearly knows the consequences of human beings stealing the fruits of good and evil, and he also places him in the garden, so God may not be completely benevolent and righteous. In "Alien", it corresponds to the engineers who created humans. When humans discovered their holographic projections, they found that they were completely destroyed. This also shows that engineers are just higher figures than humans, although their technology trees are beyond the reach and imagination of humans. But there must be more unimaginable higher-order beings in the universe. This is where the idea of an alien Jesus comes into play.
In "Prometheus", an engineer drinks a round bowl of matter that decomposes and falls into a waterfall, and human beings are born. In the uncensored version, a group of engineers appeared. An engineer who looked like an old man handed a round bowl of matter to the decomposition engineer, and then left him alone, while the other engineers boarded the spaceship and left. Although the abridged version omits the existence of other engineers, the spacecraft can still be seen leaving. This shows that only the decomposition engineer was left there. The problem is, Sean and Dr. Harloway have discovered murals where aliens point to their existence to humans. Now that the decomposition engineer is dead, how did the mural remain. The only explanation is that after the birth of human beings, engineers or other higher creatures have come. A bold guess is that an alien with higher technology than human once came to the earth to help human beings, but human beings ended up hurting him. This incident aroused the anger of the aliens and decided to destroy human beings. After all, when Sean arrived on the planet LV-223, the carbon determination engineer died 2,000 years ago, which is a very reasonable time. This corresponds to the illusion that some scholars have put forward for a long time, that is, Jesus is an alien. From today's point of view, many of the good deeds Jesus did in the Bible can be explained by current science.
1.2 The Great Flood and Exodus
Ridley Scott expressed in an interview that he himself believes that there must be higher-order life in the universe, and that human beings are likely to originate from alien planets. This statement is in line with the alien macroscopic world view. And specifically, Ridley Scott's "Alien" series can often correspond to religious symbols. For example, in the extra part of "Prometheus", David (David) drove the engineer's spaceship like LV-426 down into the black water, causing the aliens of LV-426 to become extinct. As for whether LV-426 is the home planet of engineers, it is yet to be agreed, because from the point of view of the film, these people do not look like engineers. And "Alien: Covenant" is a story that takes place ten years after "Prometheus" in time. There must be some key explanation missing. In short, David stood on the spaceship and read: The unparalleled merits of the world are beyond the reach of the almighty. The black water landed, and the aliens fled in all directions. It was like the ancient city of Pompeii was submerged, and the tragic state of death was preserved. In terms of camera language, David, who is shot upwards, is like an almighty God. And the black water disaster is like the great flood that God cleansed mankind. This also corresponds to the engineer who created human beings, the heavenly father of human beings, originally intended to use black water to destroy human beings. There are many versions of the legend about the Great Flood. In the Bible, God sent a flood because Cain, the son of Ada and Eve, killed his own younger brother, which opened up the evils of human cannibalism, hatred, anger, and anger. God was so angry that he sent a flood to punish mankind. In Sumerian mythology, God often ordered the inferior gods to do things, and the gods created human beings in order to be lazy. However, the speed of human reproduction was so fast that the gods couldn't sleep because of the noise. The gods might get up because they couldn't sleep, so they sent down a great flood to wipe out human beings. In a word, in the myths of various systems, the events of the Great Flood have all happened, and the purpose is to destroy human beings, but the reasons are different.
From this point of view, we can boldly speculate on why the living engineer in "Prometheus" kills everyone after listening to what David said. In the official interpretation version, what David said was "This man came here according to your instructions, and he wants you to give him more life." In the deleted clip, their dialogue is more, and David further Telling the engineer who he is and how Welch thinks he is a god. But both the abridged version and the uncensored version are actually enough for the audience to guess why the engineer started killing after listening to it. Just like the Sumerian mythology, human beings were created by gods, and human beings reproduced madly and developed rapidly in "Alien", and finally mastered the creator's language and came to their planet. Just as humans one day discovered that ants can speak human language and can build spaceships. The first reaction of human beings will be to kill the ants, or leave a few for biological experiments. This is the same as the meaning of black water to engineers, which can not only destroy human beings but also make the earth their experimental base.
"Alien: Covenant" describes that the LV-426 after the arrival of black water is covered with a kind of eggshell-like thing. Once a human is trampled, it can parasitize on the human body and give birth to a new alien. In "Exodus", in order to lead the Jews to leave Egypt and escape from Pharaoh's rule, God sent ten plagues to deter Pharaoh, including: snake rod, water to blood, frog plague, lice plague, fly plague, plague, boils, The plague of darkness, the plague of hail, the death of the firstborn. In addition to the snake rod, other disasters have threatened the pharaoh, and in "Alien: Covenant", there are eggshell substances on the ground. After stepping on it, the black powdery substances are released and enter people's bodies. This method is very similar to the scene of the plague of lice in the ten plagues. And back to "Exodus", the ten plagues emphasize "God's power" and "violent confirmation of God's authority" [Li Yiyang, "The Violent Narrative of the Epic (In Exodus)", "Researcher" 2013 Year 7]. As in the book of Exodus, God said: For this time I will let all disasters come upon you, your servants, and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in the whole world. If I stretched out my hand against you and your people with a plague, you would have been wiped from the earth long ago. So God personally brought down the ten plagues, not only in words, but also a violent God in action. This sentence contrasts the behavior of David in "Alien: Covenant" when he dropped black water to destroy the aliens and cultivate the aliens. Just as in "Prometheus", when David took out the black water, he said, "All greatness begins with a small beginning." He has divine compassion for small sacrifices, and he uses violence to create a people who believe in himself, that is, aliens . In "Alien: Covenant", it can be seen that David is trying to communicate with the alien, and finally let the alien submit to him. There are many places of conciliation with "Exodus".
Ridley Scott does understand and loves the use of religious elements, but religious elements tend to suggest the direction of the plot or the motivation of the characters. Sometimes it is not completely certain whether it is deliberately arranged according to some elements of religion, and only bold conjectures can be made on this basis. For example, in "The Last Supper", after removing the captain who died at the beginning and the non-human existence of Watt, there are a total of thirteen people in the panorama, which corresponds to the number of "The Last Supper", Dennis (Dennis) Apparently sits in the most central Jesus position. The blanket that the captain wears at the beginning is also similar to the clothes wrapped in the crucifixion in the oil painting. The first sentence in this short film is that Watt said to Dennis, "follow the light." This is a very obvious religious intention, just as God said in the Bible that there is light, and there is light. This can be interpreted as following God's guidance, and Watt's body was finally replaced by David in "Alien: Covenant" to become David, which gives this sentence another meaning. i.e. David alludes to the role of God or Satan, and it is very likely that after Alien: Covenant, David will do something similar to what he did to Dr. Shaw. Therefore, many of Ridley Scott's religious elements are also ambiguous. Although it is indeed a good direction to interpret the film, many forms outweigh the content, which is confusing. And more can only be used as a basis for all kinds of speculation.
2 Artificial Humans: Anti-anthropocentrism
Ridley Scott has created many artificial humans, and there is no doubt that there are many directors thinking about artificial intelligence. In this chapter, the author will analyze the artificial humans created by Ridley Scott, trying to reflect the transformation of Ridley Scott's thinking about artificial intelligence. Characters analyzed include: Ash from Alien 1, Roy from Blade Runner, David and Vickers from Prometheus, Vic S is controversial here, because she is not explained in the film as an android, which will be explained later, as well as Watt in "Alien: Covenant"
The first is Ashe, Ashe is the first generation of androids, because in the "Alien" series, the androids are sorted according to the initials ABCD of their names. Here Ashe is a highly bionic robot that can behave so completely like a human that at the end Ripley successfully spooks the audience when he finds out that Ashe is a robot. But Ashe is more emotionally ruthless in it. When you think about it, Ashe actually acts as an interpreter in the whole film, which is in line with his setting, that is, obeying the company. Complete the tasks assigned by the computer host, and are relatively weak in emotional interaction with the crew. Therefore, Ashe only has the bionic nature of an artificial human, and in terms of emotional simulation, it is better to say that it is a robot that completes tasks on behalf of the company.
And when it comes to Watt, AI presents a kind of assembly-line production. An extra short film officially released gives a glimpse into the entire production process of Watt, which is different from the one created by David in Welch Allen's office. Watt was born from the beginning to have no personal will and was presupposed to be obedient to humans. So Watt's setting is more like an upgraded version of Ashe. He has no self-independent thinking, and he can't ask, like David, you created me, then who created you. Such words with cognitive hunger and a sense of rebellion. David attempts to awaken Watt, but fails. Just as David deliberately referred to Shelley as Byron and was corrected by Watt, although Byron and Shelley admired each other, Shelley was relatively conservative, unlike Byron who had a radical and high-spirited sense of change for the era in which he lived. This is also the different state of David and Watt under artificial settings. However, an interesting proposition is that in the "Alien" series, each spacecraft only arranges one android. We must know that humans are placed in the dormant cabin to sleep during the flight, so why can't they rigorously consider arranging multiple androids? In case one of the androids has an accident, can they continue to sail? This is very likely that human beings have long considered the self-awakening of artificial humans. David’s failure to awaken Watt is likely to be due to insufficient time. If artificial humans interact with each other during the long years of voyage, the consciousness of artificial humans will be awakened. The problem is not impossible.
Going back to the concept of replicants in "Blade Runner", whether or not the director has absorbed part of the concept of replicants from "Alien". But it is true that the characteristics of the replicants in the film have certain projections for David and Vickers in "Alien". As far as Roy is concerned, he is graceful in manner, delicate in emotion, and, as his creator said, he is the highest concept of the son of technology. This is very similar to the characteristics of David in "Alien". The setting of Vickers in "Prometheus" is likely to be an artificial human who thinks he is human, and if so, it also fits the role of Deckard in "Blade Runner". The difference is that in "Blade Runner", the director focuses on the relationship between human beings and human nature. The short lifespan of replicants prevents their lives from blooming, and no one respects their feelings as human beings. In "Alien", David eventually became a new creator in a universe through a series of awakenings. It can be said that the fundamental difference between Roy in "Blade Runner" and David in "Alien" is that the director's discussion of artificial intelligence has risen from the relationship between replicators and human nature to re-listing artificial humans as a new kind of artificial intelligence. species, just as humans are as distinct from their creators.
Vickers is more special. In "Prometheus", she is set as Weilun's daughter. She has always been dissatisfied with Weilun's disdain for him, and regards the android David as his son. She is strong, and she is more like a robot than the emotional and delicate David. The presumption of whether Vickers is an artificial human can only be speculated from some details in the film, such as when the human being woke up from the dormant capsule, Vickers showed the superiority of physical fitness and started to do plank support when he got up. But it is indeed possible that Vickers is only in good health, but another major doubt is that the medical equipment in Vickers' room was finally found by Sean only for men. As Wei Lun's only child, even if he is no longer favored by his father, Welch Allyn is also not without medical facilities for Vickers. Therefore, it can be guessed that Vickers is not human, and human medical equipment is useless to her. Another key point is that the androids are sorted by the initials of their names in the Alien setting. From Ashe to David, they are the replacements of androids, but when Watt suddenly became a W, so the It's very likely that X is a cyborg that starts with a V, with Watt coming in after him.
Speaking of David, at the beginning of "Alien: Covenant", you can see that David is excellent, and he has the ability to constantly learn to question and think. In answer to Welch Allen's difference between himself and humans, he said "You are mortal, and I am immortal." This sentence challenges the authority of human beings, but guesses that David is in the initial stage of growth, he is saying This sentence is not to laugh at Wei Lun. But it does imply that David's ability to think will eventually lead him to betray humanity. This kind of immortality thinking also has an important position in "Blade Runner". Roy is excellent but only has a life span of four years. In order to prolong his life, he escaped back to earth but found that there was no way to kill his own. Creator. Therefore, it can be deduced that whether the androids have the ability to recognize themselves as a new species lies in whether they can live forever.
Mention of David's betrayal can be linked to the story of Lucifer, an angel in the Bible, who refused to kneel to the human beings, the son of God, and finally fell into the devil. Angels themselves are gods higher than human beings, but they are required to serve human beings, which results in the rebellion of angels. This is how David is set, perfect wisdom and immortality. On the other hand, the cave-like building in which David lives in Alien: Covenant simulates the work of the nineteenth century oil painter Arnold Bocklin. Island", in "Island of the Dead", a ferryman takes a ghost to the island. This ferryman is the ferry god Xia Long, who ferrys the undead into the underworld, and the white undead is very similar to the new white opposite sex in "Alien: Covenant". In addition, "Island of Death" was later interpreted to contain the implication that death is also the beginning of life. Comparing the characteristics of alien parasites on creatures, it is very compatible with the painting. So Ridley Scott probably did consider the Lucifer story on David's Mutiny.
The process of David's awakening is actually gradually finding his own position in the relationship with human beings. There are two hints in the movie. One is that David's favorite movie may be "Lawrence of Arabia", which is also the movie David is watching in "Prometheus". And many of David's lines in it also come from "Lawrence of Arabia", which will be mentioned later. It is worth mentioning that the story of "Lawrence of Arabia" tells the story of Lawrence, a British officer sent to Arabia to help the Arabs unite. In this process, Lawrence changed into Arab costumes in order to pay attention to the strategy and integrated into Arab customs, and the whole story actually discussed that Lawrence was constantly searching for and completing himself in this process. In contrast to "Prometheus", Dr. Harloway mocked why David, as an artificial human, had to wear a space suit. David replied that in his own settings, in order to get along better with people, he had to simulate the appearance of a human being. . It can be said that "Lawrence of Arabia" actually hints at the path of David's awakening. The second is that David constantly thinks and realizes the many limitations of human beings, which is actually equivalent to the process of doubting his own creator and ultimately killing his father. When arriving at LV-223 in the film, David looked at the planet and said a sentence: There is nothing in the desert, there is no one, there is nothing. (There is nothing in the desert, no man, it's nothing) This sentence also comes from "Lawrence of Arabia". It is a very idealistic sentence. It can be seen that David is still in a stage of cognitive recovery, and at the back, When Sean discovered that the engineer and black water matter, David stole the black water matter and said: All great things have small beginnings (big things have small beginnings). Here, David begins to gradually realize the origin of life in the universe, which indicates that the creation will finally be incorporated into belief.
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