A Sci-Fi Movie For Our Times

Rating: 1/10 (15 February 2013)

Normally I do not comment on the overlap between science and what passes for sci-fi movies these days. But this is Prometheus, a movie that lovers love, haters love to hate and the norms can join in the fun, if they are of a mind.
The broader reflection that draws me is what the board reactions on display informs about the state of science (and math) learning in this country (US). When Alien came out in 1979, it reached the viewers of the original Star Trek TV series of the late 1960s and the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, a time when the younger generation harbored a veneration for science and what it could inspire and accomplish. Star Wars (1977) was more of a fantasy adventure set in the futuristic past, but it was mindless fun, because of the humorous characters portrayed in a film that poked fun at itself. It offered some inspiration, as well as values that a civil society could support.
Fast forward to the present and I see a younger generation not only NOT holding the sciences in esteem but actually mocking the sciences, and this lack of respect is evident in many of our misguided politicians as well (hell, we can't even call it global warming - it has to be climate change).
Prometheus becomes a cultural test in these times, with many younger people seemingly unable to appreciate the real need for science to play a more important role in our lives, our movies and our imaginations, if we are to compete with the rest of the world and play a major part in this world's technological and economic advances.
What separates Prometheus is the cynicism. Peter Weyland to me personifies the greed and vanity permeating our present culture, capable of murdering and destroying at will. Behind the Weyland character are the script-writers Spaihts and Lindelof (Cowboys & Aliens 2011 and Lost series). These writers, and indirectly Ridley Scott as well, apparently care not a whit about the science and, as Bill Harding (played by Bill Paxton) in Twister (1996) said, "He's not in it for the science, he's in it for the money." While you can get away with this brand of cynicism in a TV series like Dynasty (1981–1989) as entertainment, the singularity of sci-fi is the necessary grounding in scientific rules and an outright rejection of cynicism (although cynicism may be used as a critique but not as an end in itself).
The inept script-writers hold forth the incompetent, pseudo-archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw as their main lead, who wields a religious cross, no less, in what is supposed to be a science-based fictional movie. As stated before, the cynicism in this movie is rampant.
I hold Ridley Scott and others like him responsible for taking their parts in perpetuating the current disdain in American culture for science and learning. To the extreme extent, they are greed personified. Like Dr Jonas Miller in Twister, they are in it for the money.