Phew! This HAS been a day!
"The (space) journey, metaphorically, is about a challenge to the gods," Scott said. But Scott's ambitions with Prometheus go far beyond simply restarting a hit franchise. The British director said the film's storyline, and script by David Lindelof, was partially inspired by the writings of legendary Swiss sci-fi writer Eric van Daniken.
Van Daniken, author of 1968 bestseller Chariot of the Gods, is best known as the first proponent of the so-called ancient astronaut theory, which holds that aliens kick-started civilization on earth. "NASA and the Vatican agree that is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way," Scott said. "That's what we're looking at (in the film), at some of Eric van Daniken's ideas of how did we humans come about."
Space Jockey's kick-starting civilization on Earth is a plot device from the Harvest script, or at least very similar too it, provided they don't just retread other Ancient Astronaut stories. In Harvest, it is insinuated that the planet being 'harvested' by the Space Jockey's may in fact be Earth, but it would have to be removed from the Derelict's plot, unless that crash is still present. Its very curious and this may be how Spaihts' ideas remained a prominent idea in the later drafts.
Also Riddles confirms the ship is named 'PROMETHEUS' which also is similar to SHADOW 19, but then again, nothing else is indicative of SHADOW 19, thus far. He also states that the use of the word, as a reference to myth is quite deliberate.
"Scott also confirmed, as we've previously only speculated, that Prometheus is the name of the ship in the movie and that the ship is sent out into space by a large company much like the "company" (Weyland Yutani) we know from the Alien franchise."
SOURCE:
alienprequelnews.com
and etc.
I remember reading CHARIOTS OF THE GODS when I was younger and there is still a lot of speculation now, regarding this type of stuff.
What I dont like is that this is very much also the plot of STARGATE and hope we don't have to deal with anything similar to that.
Interestingly enough, I found this on WIKIPEDIA:
"A 2004 article in Skeptic magazine[1] states that von Däniken plagiarized many of the book's concepts from The Morning of the Magicians, that this book in turn was heavily influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos, and that the core of the ancient astronaut theory originates in H. P. Lovecraft's short stories "The Call of Cthulhu" and "At the Mountains of Madness"."
This is a good point, that I would not have noticed when I read CHARIOTS, because I hadn't yet read much, if any, of Lovecraft's CTHULU MYTHOS. At least, not until later.
Many of us have noted and admired the way influence of the CTHULU MYTHOS on ALIEN. So I think we should all love that we are seeing more of that here.
I was actually wondering if AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, didnt get cancelled, in part, due to similarities with PROMETHEUS.
I'm smiling.
Bring on the dancing horses!