Ridley Scott to direct 'Raised by Wolves', Sci-Fi drama series

[Ingwar]

What a finale!

Spoiler

[close]

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/raised-by-wolves-season-2-ending-explained/

Spoiler

"For a human being is like an inverted tree. That is why he is called ant[h]ropos by the Greeks, that is, 'turned upside down'. For real trees thrust their roots, as it were the head, downward into the earth, from which they draw their nutriment, but they expand their branches upward. On the contrary, human stretch up their heads, as it were the roots, into the air, from which they breathe." (William of Conches, A Dialogue on Natural Philosophy, 6.23.4)


In essence, what we see here is an inverted TAU symbol, and it could also represent a hanged man, especially with tree and serpent symbolism below...

[close]

Also, we are born upside down.

[Enoch]

So Marcus is reborn here...

[Nightmare Asylum]

Spoiler

Yep, definitely leaning towards Marcus as we know him being dead dead here, with the "Sol" signal essentially now piloting his body. Three different layers to this being now, what with the original Caleb's body, Marcus' face, and now the entity "Sol" driving it all.

As for the comment a few posts above about the hanged man, I don't think any of the tarot cards we've seen in either season have been explicitly evocative of that (though the Mithraic painting in season one's Caleb and Mary flashback, of course, was), but this one strikes me as interesting yet again:



Last season we saw hooded figures gathered like this in a sort of ritual watching what seemed to be a (failed) ancient attempt at birthing a serpent, and in today's finale we saw a very similar gathering of hooded figures watching the tree transformation ritual. Both the serpents and the trees are directly linked to "Sol," so I'm guessing these flashbacks/tarot scans are depicting ancient "Believers" who underwent these trials very willingly (rather than having to be conned into their roles, like Mother and Sue were) and were opposite Grandmother's opposing Technocrat faction that sought to de-evolve humans in order to save them from "Sol."

[close]

https://twitter.com/SiddhantAdlakha/status/1504645015196377089

[zalexis]

S1 art by Æiden Swan (including 110 cave paintings)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/125687197/Raised-by-Wolves

[Nightmare Asylum]

S1 art by Æiden Swan (including 110 cave paintings)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/125687197/Raised-by-Wolves

Oh wow, there is some insanely cool work in there.

Spoiler

Do I spy what looks to be a season two sea creature variant of the de-evolved humans here?

[close]

[Xiggz456]

Overall I think I enjoyed season 1 a bit more but needless to say this season was still extremely interesting and beautifully shot with very solid cgi.

There's still echoes of this feeling like a spiritual sequel to Covenant, especially with

Spoiler

Mother being trapped in a cryopod while an apathetic android looks down upon her!

[close]

I'll be giving it another watch and binge both seasons back to back now that it's complete. Looking forward to season 3!

[Nightmare Asylum]

Ridley Scott talks androids, apartheid, and the point at which 'the human race is in f---ing trouble'

https://ew.com/tv/ridley-scott-raised-by-wolves-blade-runner-alien/



https://twitter.com/NiamhAlgar/status/1504940697526358032

[Enoch]

This series turned out to be a rather complex beast, there is a deeper narrative behind all this.
I don't have time to elaborate, but to those interested, go check Jakob Böhme's work (especially "Aurora") and William Blake's "Urizen". It will explain the main conflict in the show.

A lot of the imagery and symbols in the show are directly inspired by the aforementioned thinkers and their works.

In essence, the whole premise of the show revolves around this:

In one interpretation of Böhme's cosmology, it was necessary for humanity to return to God, and for all original unities to undergo differentiation, desire and conflict—as in the rebellion of Satan, the separation of Eve from Adam and their acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil—in order for creation to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more perfect than the original state of innocence, allowing God to achieve a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part of, and distinct from, Himself. Free will becomes the most important gift God gives to humanity, allowing us to seek divine grace as a deliberate choice while still allowing us to remain individuals.

Now look at William Blake's imagery and try to connect it with RBW imagery, you will see that the connection is pretty obvious:





There is a cycle in Blake's work, a cycle of "Consumed and Consuming", it seems to be no way out of it as long as one remains imprisoned in the circle.  But it is difficult to decipher who is playing what role in the show. It's rather complex, but I will try to connect the loose threads after watching both first and the second season back to back.


There are a lot of connections if you dive deep enough but look at this analysis of Urizen for example:

...After this fall Urizen builds yet another world based not on the mathematical measurements of the crystal spheres but on the "Cumbrous
wheels" (FZ VI.196)^ of Vortices in a Void. Urizen weaves a Web of Religion to connect these Vortices one to another, and it branches all around Los's Heaven. He then forces Ore who has now become a serpent to climb up into the Tree, to be crucified, in order "that he might draw all human forms / Into submission to his will" (FZ Vll/aJ.164-65).^ This is the Serpent temple, the religion that demands human sacrifice and war.

You need to remember one thing, all stories are just about human consciousness in the phase of evolution and development. It is the same with this one.

The Entity might just turn to be advanced consciousness/ God who understands that existence continues by maintaining the constant battle between opposites. He is now creating opposites because life is waning because of human and other robotic interventions... They want permanence, constant happiness, bliss... all that causes stagnation, there is no movement... Maybe there is even duality within the Entity itself... I don't know, it's quite contradictory.


Praise Sol

[Nightmare Asylum]

https://twitter.com/Josh_Ryba/status/1490654090954690562
https://twitter.com/Josh_Ryba/status/1491290734838054913
https://twitter.com/Josh_Ryba/status/1491664398536134658
https://twitter.com/Josh_Ryba/status/1495687435895906304
https://twitter.com/Josh_Ryba/status/1495688198466551809

EDIT: More, via Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZyVAa8sKC4/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaCAWWqs4Km/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaO3JhsMjpf/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca1nQV4Pcyl/

[Ingwar]

SPOILERS!

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I feel like I am talking to the ultimate authority on androids in pop culture with Alien, Blade Runner, Prometheus, and Raised by Wolves. And there were even more of them here in season 2 of Raised by Wolves with new characters like Vrille and Grandmother. What are the themes that you love to explore and consider by playing with all these humanoid robots?

RIDLEY SCOTT: You know, people think I'm a science-fiction fanatic, and I wasn't as a teen. There was one or two that I thought were okay and I could describe as being interesting. But oddly enough, the very best early sci-fi for me, we're talking way before Kubrick, right? Because Kubrick really hits the gong, and you go, "Holy s---. This is it. Now there is a real world here." But the one I think is probably the best to watch, funny enough, is called On the Beach. Nevil Shute did a great book which was made into a very, very good movie. Even now it works, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. It's really fundamentally about where we could be in a year if we don't watch it, which is fundamentally about post-atomic warfare, where the only place left untouched by the cloud is Australia. It all takes place in Australia. If you haven't seen it, watch it. It's great.

So when I saw 2001, it actually literally was seminal in many respects for science fiction, full stop. I think it totally influenced Star Wars, completely influenced George Lucas. Totally blew me away. But the most important thing was the first real encounter with a brain and HAL. HAL was the star of the goddamn movie, and HAL was representing the corporation. Didn't give a f--- about the human beings on board, which in fact I think Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett copied, certainly were influenced by that for Alien. That wasn't me. That was already in there with O'Bannon and Shusett. But little by little, I started to get fascinated by the logic of AI capability and AI certainty. It's now well and truly here, in fact probably has been here 10 years.

So now we go to Blade Runner, and Blade Runner is a marvelous way of actually cooking that notion. That's not really in the book at all. That was a completely enlarged upon and polished upon, honestly, with Hampton Fancher and myself as we evolved the screenplay. And so I think Roy Batty [played by Rutger Hauer], who was in a way the equivalent of Harrison Ford in the movie, led a completely different possibility for the idea of androids, right? And somebody invented the words "more human than human," which is really where we are right now with [Raised by Wolves creator Aaron Guzikowski's] big, grand idea.

There's a scene in the Raised by Wolves season 2 finale where Campion says he loved this robot girl Vrille, and his robot Mother asks him why he would choose to love a machine. So this is a machine who raised a son asking him why he would choose to love a machine. What do you make of these heady connections humans and androids are making on each other here?

Well, isn't it touched on the biggest question of all which we still have to sort out, apartheid? Same thing. It is exactly the same thing. It's the same thing as having the right to be and feel who you want to be, whether you are a cross-dresser, whether you are gay, whatever, you should be allowed to be what you want to be in what we would call a free world.

So already that is the bedrock, the basis of great evolution. The possibilities of where you can go with that are terrific. And so the idea at some point that you're dealing with a personage who may be asexual, in terms they don't even look either male or female, but are so nice. You have an affection towards them. Then you can say, "Oh my God, I love them." So where do you go from there? That's a great question, and I don't know how to answer it.

And when the android, who is the servant, sits there and looks at his master or mistress thinking, "You know what? They're not really that smart, but they're kind of cute. I can pat this one on the head." Suddenly the reversal of who is master and who is below that can change position.

So much of the show now, especially after this season 2 finale, is not just how androids coexist with humans, but rather how they interact and exist with each other.

As soon as you are able to converse with and connect with a serious AI, and say, "Okay, you're AI number one now. Your first task is to design a superior AI to yourself. That is an order." And it says, "Ready when you are, boss," and starts to do it. When that next one is complete, the human race is in f---ing trouble. And you won't know it. You will not know it until it starts, everything starts to tumble.

There's a scene in the season 2 finale in which Father and Grandmother disagree over whether ignorance indeed bliss or is there bliss in the curiosity of seeking out more knowledge. Which do you all believe is true for most people?

I think ignorance is stupid, because do something about it. You could f---ing well think. If you've got half a brain, ignorance becomes lazy. I think ignorance can be described as lazy, providing you have a brain, you can function, you are functioning. And even against the challenges of a very difficult world, if you are in that difficult world, others are doing it and emerging, coming out of unthinkably tricky and hard and tough situations and evolving. And from that, they become very special people normally, right?

So when it's there, it should be an inspiration. And if you're coming from really low down the rung but have the smarts to see where you ought to be and where you can take it, then it's not blissful, not lazy. It becomes either you're afraid to speak out, afraid to move, afraid to make a decision to move yourself upwards and onwards, so that becomes a decision. If you are inept on a level of intelligence, or you are simply not blessed with being smart, then that's forgivable. But I never believe ignorance is bliss. I don't connect bliss with ignorance, never connect them.

Does drive inherently make someone unhappy because they are always trying to achieve more?

What is built in people in different forms and different strengths is ambition. And ambition is certainly almost chemical. Someone who's got serious ambition is an abject up-and-goer on a clock-by-clock, day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. And in a funny kind of way, they are fortunate to be blessed with that. And then there are others who simply are happy with what they've got and happy with their lot and nonetheless intelligent, but will settle for less.

But then you cross into settle for less. Do I see people around me settling for less? So the whole world is less than it could be. So these have all become huge discussions. You always need the leaders, in a way. The better word to say is the entrepreneurs, is the thinkers. And if you are a thinker who likes to sit on a log, think about it, and then the healthiest thing they can do is be the voice of advice to say, "I'm not going to do it, but this is what you guys should be doing." There's so many layers of evolution. This is called evolution, right? And it's the evolving process.

Once again, go back to Kubrick, who tried to answer the question of religion, and I think he came the closest to it with 2001, with the monolith, which was a floating, eternal object of, in simple terms, education. It would land, something primitive would touch it and get this big, quantum goose forward into the next phase, and suddenly use a shinbone as a weapon. That's massive. That one idea is so big. And then it beats the s--- out of the animal that morning. Instead of arguing and snarling at it, it killed it and used the shinbone as a weapon. That is so genius as an idea. I went, wow. Maybe it's the best cut in cinema history.

How involved are you still at this point in terms of overseeing story and direction on this show?

Aaron is the master builder, and I'm like the house painter. I paint the house and put the nails in. So to go back to the first season, I knew we were developing it, and I've had a lot of this over the years, really specifically because of Blade Runner, that I thought, okay, yes, a kind of interesting idea, but it's a tough one to crack because there are so many versions of that idea of robotics, androids, replicants.

Ash was a robot on board a ship to protect the ship. What's great about it is that when it has a logical backbone to it, that gives it strength. And when I read the pilot, I went... It was such a great, logical idea of the building blocks of earth, which we can see where we're going right now unless we do something about it, and then what next and what next? And to do that, how do you insulate the future, the survival of the human race? I thought, my God, that's a great idea of putting two androids in charge of 12 eggs. So to me, I thought, what a fantastic platform to evolve. And that's why I said, "Listen, if you like, I'd like to [direct] the pilot."

It was great forming what I call the nuts and bolts and the cosmetics of shoring up a very big and grand idea that you've got to shore it up, otherwise it's going to weaken. And I think it worked very well, the combination worked very well to set the pace with Aaron's script. The hardest single thing to do is write, full stop. Doing what I do is a lot easier, I think. I've tried to write, and of course I can write, but my God, it would be impractical. I'd have done one movie in my entire career if I'd written it. That would've taken so long. I haven't got the brain for writing, funnily enough. So my hat comes off to Aaron every time, who comes up with these and doesn't weaken on his tactics and storytelling, because it is like mathematics. That's what's wonderful.

I know you're a very busy man, but any chance of getting you back in the director's chair for season 3?

Always that possibility, because I just love to work, you know? And I'm now a month in on this [Napoleon]. I'm already a month in. I've got three months to go. I discovered a long time ago that once I've filmed something, I've got it, and I've said, "Okay, that's a wrap." I'm seeing it every day is what I've done in an editing room. Every weekend I'm watching a cut happening. So frequently, and by the way, you can only do this with a really good editor, I leave them to get on with it because then I'm seeing a cut on the weekend. And because I'm clean, I haven't been sitting in the room agonizing over a shot here or there, we think we will have a director's cut honestly five or six weeks after production, not a year. So I then realized I twiddle my thumbs, and that's why I've now decided to move on, and I can do things while things are happening. So I'm already thinking, prepping another TV show.

https://ew.com/tv/ridley-scott-raised-by-wolves-blade-runner-alien/

[Nightmare Asylum]

So, outside of the major dangling plot threads left to be picked up on (hopefully) next season, anyone have any specific concepts from the second season that you're looking forward to seeing further explored? For me, it's absolutely Father's 'botanitech' discovery, and the various applications that could very well have as the show progresses. I'm also wondering if perhaps it could end up feeding into the prophecy, in that maybe the city that is key to the prophecy might actually end up being grown...

[zalexis]

I forgot to mention there is additional concept art from Fred Mpuuga (inc.including The Tarantula, Med Bay, Father's Shed) on his Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/fredmpuuga

Also, Joshy Ryba's work shared there (https://www.artstation.com/joshryba) is in much better rez than on his IG. And he has 2 extensive storyboard to screen videos on his site:
Ice Tower: https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1e9ad8_4943ec90510f419d8feee15b6a80f300/720p/mp4/file.mp4
Sue Dream: https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1e9ad8_fe4c9cbeccf84a58b9d12aa5ced7e6ad/720p/mp4/file.mp4

[zalexis]

There's been loads of BTS pics from cast & crew but I've lost track of was shared here and what not. I save all of them in Imgur albums for who's curious (link to source in the caption). I just updated most of them

Main cast & crew
* Mother: https://imgur.com/a/WuFkwcg
* Father: https://imgur.com/a/tfPhiq0
* Marcus: https://imgur.com/a/FRC3dsE
* Sue: https://imgur.com/a/WqeKpgh
* Decima & Vrille: https://imgur.com/a/wJlXeYt
* MIX: https://imgur.com/a/SYw4OSp

Mithraics:
* Furfur: https://imgur.com/a/JEYVEFh
* Den: https://imgur.com/a/P97IrL0
* Bartok: https://imgur.com/a/2B110jl
* MIX: https://imgur.com/a/O4ArqER

The kids:
* Vita: https://imgur.com/a/PzAa4ma 
* Campion: https://imgur.com/a/jX3pDHL 
* Paul: https://imgur.com/a/fvmZqDZ
* MIX: https://imgur.com/a/plfRA4W

* Atheists: https://imgur.com/a/f3vgENK
* Crew MIX (album: https://imgur.com/a/dI7CXay

On set:
* Tropical zone flora: https://imgur.com/a/ftMWivm
* Kogel Bay / coastline: https://imgur.com/a/dh0urhS
* The mountains: https://imgur.com/a/ZwTBZ97)
* Nerva's Arena: https://imgur.com/a/Pb6ZtEW
* Pentagonal temple: https://imgur.com/a/FQEy5zi
* The Tarantula: https://imgur.com/a/WfrHq5l
* On location MIX: https://imgur.com/a/JPYoMRv
* In studio MIX: https://imgur.com/a/Jci0j69

* FX: https://imgur.com/a/sWxlSi5
* Episodes: https://imgur.com/a/TUzDEyi

And here are just some of the actual IG posts (I saved all of them already) to give u an idea if u don't want to bother w/ the imgur albums. There are more but as I said I've lost track of what was shared here and what not.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbXl_46qjjl/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbXgQJJAqQX/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbXEHlwsvY3/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbS-uyqjffW/

[Nightmare Asylum]

Love that shot of the Neanderthal-esque humanoid makeup application, and all of the various BTS looks at Vrille.

Billy is excellent too - he really feels like the intersection point between Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road's aesthetics.

[Immortan Jonesy]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbXlSI-qdVB/

Man, that Neanderthal-esque makeup is so Elder Enguineer.