Prometheus by Lord Byron
First Published: 1816

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

One of the Titans. Name means "fore thought"

Son of Iapetus and known for his wisdom. He and his brother Epimetheus were asked by Zeus to create the animals and mankind. After his brother had given all the gifts away and left none for man, Prometheus decided to trick Zeus into taking the lesser animals as sacrifices and leaving the best to men.

To punish man, Zeus took away fire. So Prometheus stole fire from Hephaestus' forge in Olympus to return to man. As punishment, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and left an eagle to torment him forever.

To punish man for stealing fire, Zeus created Pandora, the first woman and root of all evil to be released on Earth.

Prometheus was freed by Hercules and became immortal with the help of the Centaur Chiron.

One of six mecha in metal warriors, a snes game by konami and lucasarts.
It is also the most appropriately named suit in the game, as although powerful, it is incredibly slow, and can't jump, or climb slippery slopes. It tends to get stuck down holes, and have to wait for lifts. With sufficient forethought, however it is unbeatable.

Essentially a walking artillary piece, it is the largest of the pilotable suits, resembling the Stone Rhino from Battletech, but with larger, higher mounted cannons. In addition to the Big Guns, it carries an aerial mine launcher, a flame thrower and a bridge building device. Unlike the Ballistic, the Prometheus is able to use its weapons while moving, and features an omnidirectional forcefield, making it less likely to be picked off by faster suits.

The cannon has a well thought out control method that allows for a lot of flexability; A shell is fired when the button is pushed down, and explodes when it his something, or when the button is released. The cannon shell blows up scenery the same way as the missile powerup, destroying 4x4 squares of gantry at once, and destroying things like fuel tanks and torpedos. Exploding cannon shells spit projectiles in eight directions, allowing for a lot of trick-shot opertunities. The cannon projectiles are affected by weapon upgrades in the same way as other suits' main gun, but the Prometheus's ability to detonate the shell at a chosen point makes bounce and seeker particularly nasty.

The mine launcher spits out small glowing spheres that slowly drift upwards and explode on contact. Good for limiting the mobility of a flight-capable suit, and annoying opponents in liftshafts.

The flamethrower, for all its manly appearance, is not much use against other suits. While much faster to use than other close-combat weapons, and slightly longer-ranged, it does minimal damage. Best used as a parting shot before dropping off a ledge, or at the same time as the cannon at point-blank range. Flamed suits continue to burn for a few seconds after escaping, making it a useful weapon against hit and run attacks.

The bridge-builder drops a single square of gantry at ground-level infront of the Prometheus, as long as it is standing on something, and it won't obstruct a lift shaft or otherwise break the game. It can even be used offensively... by pushing an opponent into some lava, and then covering it over.

Prometheus was the oldest living tree on earth. This tree, a Bristlecone Pine, reached the ripe old age of 4950 years growing on the slopes of the harsh Wheeler Peak of Nevada. In 1964, Donnald Currey was taking core samples of these trees when his core driller broke. Desperate to finish his doctorate, he obtained permission from the Forest Service to cut down one tree to continue his study. He ended up cutting down and killing Prometheus, then the oldest living tree in the world.

The tree now is gone, although a forlorn stump still stares at the desert sky. The oldest surving tree, Methuseleah, is now a youthful 4767 years old. Promethius is now dead, a monument to the fact that even biologists, people who pledge to study the world with a sense of wonder and respect for all life, sometimes do horrifying things

{ Moons of Saturn }
Discovered by            S. A. Collins, D. Carlson
Date of Discovery        1980
Distance from Saturn     139,353 km
Radius                   74.0 × 50.0 × 34.0 km
Mass                     ???
Orbital Eccentricity     0.003
Orbital Inclination      0.0°
Orbital Period           0.6130 day
Rotational Period        ???
Density (gm/cm3)         ???

This strange moon is shaped like an American football. Performing the shepherding function on the inner side of Saturn's F ring, along with Pandora on the outer side, Prometheus has a low density, which probably means it is composed largely of ice and may be quite porous.

Like Pandora, not much else is known about Prometheus. It was discovered through imagery from Voyager 1.

Sources:
NASA.gov
space.com

"If you can't be with the one you love - love the one you're with..."

-Capt. Janek

"We were wrong...we were so wrong..."

-Dr. Elizabeth Shaw

ATTENTION: Prometheus is and is not an Alien movie.

Ridley Scott produced and directed two of the finest science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s before leaving the genre to work in others (fantasy, modern crime thriller, war) over the next few decades. Ever since it was announced that the second Alien film would be directed by James Cameron, fans have wondered when Scott would return to sci-fi.

It was with Great Internet Joy, then, that news came out a year or so ago that Scott had taken up a new project in the Alien universe. After a time, word found its way into the world that the project was a prequel - this was received well, since the series had steadily declined in quality from sublime sci-fi horror to sheer silliness complete with bad jokes.

A few months ago, Scott made it clear that while the new film Prometheus was based on the Alien universe, it was not of that universe. His reasons for doing this were not explicitly given, but it was generally thought that there were probably two major drivers - one, issues over the rights to Alien and two, his desire not to bind himself in terms of story continuity.

Prometheus was promoted by a series of clever, high-priced trailer and teaser releases. Besides the traditional teasers and full trailers depicting carefully-selected scenes from the movie, there was a teaser which consisted of characters from the movie giving what was described as a 'TED Talk from the future' on the subject of the origins of human life, and another extended teaser which turned out to be an advertisement for Artificial Persons. APs are a fixture of the Alien universe, and Prometheus is no exception. Unlike in the original film, here the identity of the AP is clear from the outset - and in that teaser 'David' (Michael Fassbender) - the AP from the movie - stars as the example AP, produced by the Weyland Corporation. Weyland-Yutani Corporation was known as 'The Company' in the Alien movies, and Weyland Corp. appeared in the last installment Alien Vs. Predator which also predated Alien in the continuity timeline. Peter Weyland, the company founder, makes a (virtual) appearance early in the film.

Prometheus is, above all else, incredibly pretty. It's meticulously built, rigged and shot, as we have come to expect from Mr. Scott. I didn't see the 3D version, so can't comment on how well that was done - but the 2D one was good looking enough that I felt satisfied with my ticket price.

The special effects are very, very, very well done. They blend into the background when necessary, and they shine out when required. Unlike the brightly-lit, too-sharp and too-complex crap that seems to show up in big-CGI productions like Transformers and GI Joe and Battleship, the effects here just look like...they belong. This is of course easier to pull off for the Prometheus team because their setting isn't familiar modern cityscapes and Terrestrial scenery. Some early scenes are set on Earth, and the eventual destination of the Prometheus - the titular starship - looks uncannily like those first shots of our home.

The holographic interfaces that are common are so well done that you almost immediately forget about them and focus on their content - a neat trick, I must say - but the physical effects are of very high quality as well. Sets, props, costumes - all very evocative of the original movie while still being distinctive and extremely believable. Vehicles, suits, tools - even the more incidental things like random gear aboard is consistent and well done.

The acting is a bit uneven but competent - there are a relatively large number of characters in the movie for the amount of screen time we actually spend with them, and the difference between leads and also-starrings is pretty blurry. Charlize Theron is fun to watch as the icy Company representative Miss Vickers; Idris Elba handily fills the molded role of 'crusty ship captain' although he may be overdoing the accent a bit, in my humble opinion. Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green's characters seem to be central ones - Marshall-Green ended up being, for me, just competent enough to be forgettable. Rapace doesn't really get much to do until the latter portion of the movie, and then her part really opens up - she's fun to watch, and comparisons to Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley are inevitable, although they're not very similar. Michael Fassbender's David is probably the most 'central' character of the film.

The movie falls down, more than a little, when it comes to story. There are two areas which I found problematic. The first big problem is that of believability. Not the Big Picture - the points the plot is framed on, those which are exposed in the trailers, are just fine and serve well to provide an explanation for why this spaceship is headed out there in the first place. The real problem, though, is behavioral. In the original Alien, the movie works so well partially because the crew of the CTV Nostromo behaves completely consistently with what we know of their characters. We are privy to all the information they have (with one obvious, plot-driven exception) and everyone's actions make perfect sense for their characters. Some of them are more cowboy, some are more cautious; some are analytical and some are impulsive, but all through the horror story the fear and tension works because they are visibly doing pretty much what we would be doing at all times, and the fact that that's not enough to save them is what makes it so scary.

Not so much here.

This crew is incredibly inconsistent in their behavior. Sometimes they're cautious; sometimes they're impulsive or reckless or just plain careless to the point of sheer stupidity - and those might both describe the same character at different times. The viewer will have to stifle cries of "Oh for pity's sake, what the hell are you doing?" or similar sentiments more than once. More than five times. Pretty much continuously, in fact. You end up with (in many cases) a general feeling of "Where the hell did they find these idiots?" What makes it really inexcusable is that these lapses of common sense and even believability are transparently necessary to move the story (not plot) along.

The second big problem is the plot. The setup is fine - it makes perfect sense and ties into Alien really well. About two thirds of the way through the movie, however, it starts to become worryingly clear that the plot is tertiary to the story and the spectacle. Entire scenes and even characters end up, in the end, appearing to be completely unresolved and, worse, completely unnecessary to the plot. Like, completely. Sometimes they're unnecessary to the plot or story!

The film wraps itself up fairly conclusively - there are sequel hints you could park a truck on, sure, but there is indeed a deal of closure to the immediate story. But the closure doesn't really relate to the initial setup plot. It's so dissonant that I had to spend ten minutes walking home from the movie with the friends I saw it with ranting about the plot holes before I could settle back into appreciatively discussing the movie as a whole. I did, because the production is technically so very well done that it almost makes up for the plot and associated story problems.

In sum - this is a movie I'm glad I paid to see in the theater. I recommend you don't think too hard about it, and especially don't think too hard about its relation to the Alien movies - just tell yourself it is a prequel that was disowned, continuity wise, and you'll be fine.

Prometheus (2012)

Directed and Produced by Ridley Scott

My pain’s become an impure joy;
I wait for you on this windswept rock,
the granite and iron hard against my flesh.
My blood quickens when I hear your call.

Tear into me, my love.
Draw a talon across my shivering skin,
lick the blood from my spreading wounds,
let me feel the sweet agony of your bite.

Let me be your Adam.
Pull a rib from my trembling flank
and pleasure yourself upon it
until my ears ring with your ecstasy.

Rip apart my sweating flesh,
devour me in greedy beakfuls.
Flay me, crush me, love me
’til the stones hide their faces.

Pro*me"the*us (?), n. [L., fr. Gr. , from to have forethought for.] Class. Myth.

The son of Iapetus (one of the Titans) and Clymene, fabled by the poets to have surpassed all mankind in knowledge, and to have formed men of clay to whom he gave life by means of fire stolen from heaven. Jupiter, being angry at this, sent Mercury to bind Prometheus to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed upon his liver.

 

© Webster 1913.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.