Mountains of Madness, parallels

[Enoch]

I'd love to ascribe to these thoughts Enoch, but you're probably being more positively creative with your single post than these filmmakers are ever going to be with these new films

Ohh, you are probably right...
They were a lot bolder back then, now every story follow the
same damn patterns and outlines. Recycling of the recycled with the recycled....

[NickisSmart]

so what you have is the complete reversal of the thematic where in deep space you don't find other things but you find your makers/original ancestors or what have you who look exactly like you do. That's Von Daniken. Instead of finding unknowable things in deep space humanity finds itself. Deep as shit all you want (fits with the film's pretentiousness) but Lovecraftian it ain't, and any parallel to At the Mountains of Madness is purely superficial

I don't entirely agree with you, Omegamorph.

For example, Lovecraft himself likens the Old Ones in At the Mountains of Madness to men:

Poor devils! After all, they were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being. Nature had played a hellish jest on them -- as it will on any others that human madness, callousness, or cruelty may hereafter dig up in that hideously dead or sleeping polar waste -- and this was their tragic homecoming. They had not been even savages -- for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch -- perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically breaking quadrupeds, and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia ... poor Lake, poor Gedney ... and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last -- what had they done that would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forebears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn -- whatever they had been, they were men!" (Lovecraft 495).

Lovecraft, H. P.. At the Mountains of Madness. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft. By H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen Jones. Gollancz, 2008. pp. 422-503.

Again, whatever they had been, they had been men, according to Lovecraft. So, I'm sorry, but I don't entirely agree with your argument, as far as Lovecraft's work is concerned, nor how it can be used in juxtaposition with Scott's own Prometheus. There is in the great unknown not always things that are completely unknowable or unlike ourselves.

Does this mean I find Prometheus to be comparable to At the Mountains of Madness? Absolutely not. They are quite a bit different from each other. Prometheus is focused on God, and religion, and our makers. There is no focus whatever on the immense passage of time, and the terrifying inhabitants of the universe that aren't men, but something else. At the Mountains of Madness had this, and unveiled it slowly to the reader in deliberate craft. Prometheus did not, and any ideas it did have, regardless of their form, were barely explored, as it was chock-full of too many and not provided enough time or freedom to explore any of them.

[OmegaZilla]

I'd love to ascribe to these thoughts Enoch, but you're probably being more positively creative with your single post than these filmmakers are ever going to be with these new films

Ohh, you are probably right...
They were a lot bolder back then, now every story follow the
same damn patterns and outlines. Recycling of the recycled with the recycled....

Agreed. When you think about it Alien was a lucky shot -- lightning in a bottle, the very product of a team effort with many minds converging into the final product

in the meantime thanks for the healthy discussion, most of the times people lower their pH fast (myself included) but that wasn't the case here

Lovecraft himself likens the Old Ones in At the Mountains of Madness to men:

if you read the very extract you have just quoted you'll understand that the comparison is being made because the Elder Things, like the expedition crew, were civilized minds of science -- thus invoking a bizarre sense of sympathy from the narrator. That's like me writing something about the survival of an insectoid and making parallel to humans because both have an unquenchable will to live. Both of these examples are very different from what Prometheus does

[Enoch]

Agreed. When you think about it Alien was a lucky shot -- lightning in a bottle, the very product of a team effort with many minds converging into the final product

in the meantime thanks for the healthy discussion, most of the times people lower their pH fast (myself included) but that wasn't the case here

It was a pleasure to exchange thoughts with you.

[NickisSmart]

if you read the very extract you have just quoted you'll understand that the comparison is being made because the Elder Things, like the expedition crew, were civilized minds of science -- thus invoking a bizarre sense of sympathy from the narrator. That's like me writing something about the survival of an insectoid and making parallel to humans because both have an unquenchable will to live. Both of these examples are very different from what Prometheus does

Furthermore, the Old Ones in Lovecraft's novel looked radically different than ourselves, despite being "men" in some shape or form, whereas in Prometheus they resembled us very closely AND made us. The Old Ones were so far-removed from ourselves, from an older period in the Earth's history, that, if I recall correctly, their influence on us, if any, was much less Chariots of the Gods than the Engineers. I think they were literally totally isolated from us. Isolated, alone, faced with the same horrors of the universe with the same messy, sad results. Again, elements that didn't exist in Prometheus at all, really.

[Ingwar]

Magic space flute? Big NO NO unless as a metaphor.



Musical sound can be described mathematically and math is a language of science. Everything can be described by math.

[Enoch]

Magic space flute? Big NO NO unless as a metaphor.

http://www.wisdom-square.com/images/flute01.jpg

Musical sound can be described mathematically and math is a language of science. Everything can be described by math.

Magic is the metaphor for the "real thing"...
Of course, read Pythagoras and his ideas of music of the spheres.
You can say philosophy is not a science but a mere speculations, but at end of the day
everything is speculation... Quantum physic is philosophical speculation.

[NickisSmart]

Not that I think Prometheus and Lovecraft's novel are terribly alike, but Omega, you think that Prometheus shrinks the Alien universe. Well, to its credit, At the Mountains of Madness is a measuring of all of these cosmic things, but everything that they find is dwarfed or overshadowed by something worse. Their attempts to measure are almost rendered pointless because they keep finding worse and worse things, until Danforth's little human brain short-circuits completely.

That theme of fruitless exploration and madness is completely devoid in Prometheus. Not a scrap of it.

[Ingwar]

Magic space flute? Big NO NO unless as a metaphor.

http://www.wisdom-square.com/images/flute01.jpg

Musical sound can be described mathematically and math is a language of science. Everything can be described by math.

Magic is the metaphor for the "real thing"...
Of course, read Pythagoras and his ideas of music of the spheres.
You can say philosophy is not a science but a mere speculations, but at end of the day
everything is speculation... Quantum physic is philosophical speculation.

Melody played by David is not a speculation. It's a method of activation.

Not everything is a speculation.

[NickisSmart]

Why are we talking about flutes, here? I'm confused.

Anyways, Prometheus. Don't much think it has anything to do with the basic point of this thread. Unless you guys think that Covenant will be more like Prometheus, and less like Lovecraft's famous novel. I had huge problems with Prometheus's lack of a Lovecraft flavor so I sincerely hope that Covenant is more akin to Alien, which, as Omega pointed out, was very Lovecraftian. O'Bannon himself also posited that AtMoM influenced Alien a great deal.

And keep in mind, Shaw is reportedly dead in this film. And the idea of finding our makers. Is that really going to be such a omnipresent theme, this time around?

[Ingwar]

Why are we talking about flutes, here? I'm confused.

David uses flute to activate ship console because musical sound can be described mathematically as a language/communication.

[Nyarlathotep]

A true fan of Lovecraft would have greatly enjoyed Prometheus, because that movie indeed succeeded to incorporate that  cosmic horror of the unknown and unknowable very well

Absolutely not

Alien was rife with Lovecraftian elements and was by itself a resonating echo of At the Mountains of Madness, Prometheus capsized all that by the very intention of its original writer -- Spaihts -- who claimed that the story had to be relatable, thus the hinge of it -- the Space Jockey -- had to become relatable in order to drive said "relatable" story. Combined with Scott's 90s-born idea that the Derelict Pilot was a suit, there came the Engineers

"if you were to try to reach back in time for the history of the universe we glimpse in the original Alien, you are inevitably concerning yourself with the affairs of non-human beings — both the deadly predator that is the through-line of the Alien franchise and the enigmatic dead alien giant that is the great mystery at the beginning of Alien... [they] are interesting entities not fully explained, but to keep an audience interested in those things it couldn't be abstraction, it couldn't be a purely 'alien story' about things we can't relate to. It was going to have to be connected to our own story. Somehow the story of those creatures was going to have to be connected to the human story, not just our history but our fate to come." (Spaihts, The Furious Gods)

so what you have is the complete reversal of the thematic where in deep space you don't find other things but you find your makers/original ancestors or what have you who look exactly like you do. That's Von Daniken. Instead of finding unknowable things in deep space humanity finds itself. Deep as shit all you want (fits with the film's pretentiousness) but Lovecraftian it ain't, and any parallel to At the Mountains of Madness is purely superficial

I elaborate more on the matter here

Perfectly said good sir.

[NickisSmart]

Why are we talking about flutes, here? I'm confused.

David uses flute to activate ship console because musical sound can be described mathematically as a language/communication.

That still doesn't answer my question. What does this have to do with Covenant or Lovecraft? Take the flute elsewhere.

[OmegaZilla]

That theme of fruitless exploration and madness is completely devoid in Prometheus

fruitless exploration and reaching for god is a theme as old as romanticism and pre-romanticism

descent into insanity is hardly if at all present since no one goes really insane (unless you count the spontaneous sacrifice "you'll pay me on the other side" junk as such) the only survivor still holds onto her religious values to go and find god


the passive-aggressive attitude will do your arguments very little

[NickisSmart]

Romanticism is a proper noun, by the way.

And the idea of fruitless exploration in Prometheus isn't present because, while they don't find a benign maker, they still find a maker and Shaw heads off to Paradise. Is the journey utterly fruitless anyways? Maybe, maybe not. You could make the argument. But if they really wanted to hammer it home, that everything is fruitless and meaningless, then I think Prometheus failed in that regard. The only fruitless exploration in that film is that of its own ideas.

"the passive-aggressive attitude will do your arguments very little"

I could say the same about yours. Doesn't mean it's true, anymore than your claim is.