Ancient Astronauts and The Old Ones At the Mountains of Madness & Prometheus | Podcast

0:08 Welcome, fellow cosmic explorers, to the Cosmic Chronicles Podcast, where imagination meets reality and science fiction comes to life. I'm your host, Quinn, and I am once again joined by my co-host James. What's going on, James?

0:23 Hey, what's up?

0:24 If you would like to sponsor this podcast, you can email us at cosmic chroniclespodcast at gmail.com. You can also find our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel as well. We are both big fans of both works, and there are a lot of similarities between the two of them.

1:08 In this episode, we discuss both Lovecraft's short story and Ridley Scott's epic science fiction movie and compare them to each other.

1:18 So let's start with the author himself. Who is H.P. Lovecraft?

1:23 So H.P. Lovecraft was a writer from the 1920s, kind of a bizarre figure, kind of a bizarre man. He had a lot of personal flaws, but those personal flaws allowed him to write really terrifying stories and stories that were rooted in real fears that he himself possessed. So Lovecraft mainly wrote horror, thriller, mystery stories, but he is credited with inventing or at least popularizing the genre of cosmic horror, what we call today sometimes Lovecraftian horror.

2:08 And it is horror that is focused on things of an existential nature, things beyond human perception, you know, deep horrors, deep fears hidden beyond the stars, hidden beneath the uh ocean, uh the fears of things that are far beyond our control, things that are at a scale and at a level of complexity or at a level of intelligence that compared to humans and anything that we can do is um is kind of mind-blowing to us.

2:39 So Lovecraft is known for popularizing or inventing cosmic horror. And as I said, he had a lot of personal flaws. One of the main ones was that he was very xenophobic. Um, he feared really anything that he didn't have a lot of knowledge on. He feared the unknown, and that is what really manifest in his stories.

3:01 So much of the root fears in his stories is based on the fear of the unknown. So I think that Lovecraft's kind of inherent strangeness as a human being definitely contributes to the way his stories feel. And he's obviously been very, very, very influential in the horror genre and the science fiction genre since then, although he was not famous, successful, or popular at the time of his life.

3:28 He was never rich off of his works, he never was well known, he only came to popularity posthumously. And also recently, I would say in the last 20 years or so, Lovecraft has had a significant resurgence.

3:43 So, what are some of the main themes of Lovecraft's work?

3:47 The main themes of Lovecraft's work include things like isolation, like I said, the fear of the unknown, uh cosmic dread, uh secret forgotten history of the world, the idea that there are these evil entities, malevolent forces beyond our comprehension, the idea of forgotten, uh tainted, abnormal ancestry, um Lovecraft dealt with fears and themes related to just the existential nature of existence.

4:24 And these are themes that manifest in basically all of his stories in some shape or form.

4:31 So let's get into the short story at the Mountains of Madness. What is it about?

4:36 So, as I said, At the Mountains of Madness is one of my all-time favorite Lovecraft short stories, and one of yours as well.

4:44 Yeah.

4:44 At the Mountains of Madness is about an expedition to Antarctica by some scientists and explorers, and about what they find there, and what they uncover about the secret slash forgotten history of the earth and the beings that used to rule over the earth. And this unfolds in a very like slow but very compelling way that like drives you along in the story.

5:14 You want as as you're delivered bits and pieces of information as the story goes on before we reach a huge crescendo at the end where we have this huge info drop, and it's just a very, very satisfying story. You feel like you're on this expedition with them as they uncover these mysteries. So that is a basic idea of what the story is about without giving away too much initially.

5:36 The Mountains of Madness specifically refers to this mysterious quote unquote mountain range that they uncover in Antarctica that shouldn't exist. It's taller than Everest, and it's just very, very strange, and there's an epic quote from when they first uncover it that I really like a lot. In the whole spectacle, there was a persistent pervasive hint of stupendous secrecy and potential revelation, as if these stark nightmare spires marked the pylons of a frightful gateway into forbidden spheres of dream and complex gulfs of remote time, space, and ultra-dimensionality.

6:22 I could not help feeling that they were evil things, mountains of madness, whose further slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. So I feel like this quote really evokes the terror and the mystery of the mountains, and it really represents the fact that in this scene we are passing over into a new realm, the realm of the old ones.

6:51 We are moving beyond the dominion of man and into the dominion of something that's much more ancient and mysterious and powerful.

6:58 So Lovecraft is often associated with horror. But is Lovecraft science fiction?

7:05 I think that Lovecraft can be science fiction. At the Mountains of Madness certainly is science fiction. The Dunwich Horror, not so much. So I think that Lovecraft has supernatural elements in his stories, and then he also has science fiction elements in his stories, and then also sometimes he blends them together.

7:25 Um, and it's that age old saying, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And a lot of times when Lovecraft is talking about certain things, they're described in a magical sense, and he's talking about things like spells and incantations and demons and things. But we also have to remember that these things are being relayed through the lens of human beings who see certain things a certain way.

7:51 We can't actually comprehend these beings and and even their languages and the way they communicate.

7:58 So in this story, they find something hidden in Antarctica. What is it that they find?

8:04 Well, the specific the main thing that they find hidden is an ancient city, a huge ancient city in Antarctica that should not exist. It predates all human cities, it predates civilization. It is ancient beyond belief. And they also find bodies uh what seem to be animal bodies, they think at first, but there's something very bizarre about them.

8:35 They are no species, unlike any species that has ever been uncovered or seen on Earth before. And within this huge cyclopean city, they find also hieroglyphs that detail this ancient, forgotten history of the world that does not concern humanity.

8:53 So where did the beings who built the city come from and how did they get here?

8:59 So this is a very interesting question. So we learn in the short story that these beings were called the elder things, and the elder things are in fact some of the bodies that the scientists uncover and start to dissect. And the elder things, like all of the old ones that once inhabited the earth, came from beyond the stars.

9:26 Um these were, I guess, human-like beings in the sense that they were intelligent and that they built cities and that they had technology, but they reached an apex of technology that surpassed us even at our greatest level. Um as I said, they had the ability to move through the stars. Now, exactly how they moved to the stars and exactly how they got here is a little bit ambiguous.

9:55 Um, and we kind of have to take pieces from all sorts of Lovecraft stories and piece it together to try and understand how the elder things and the other old ones moved around. In Call of Cthulhu, it very specifically says that it was heavily tied to the alignment of planets. Um in this book, it says that somehow the elder things were able to traverse the interstellar ether through use of their wings.

10:24 Um, but I don't think that Lovecraft literally meant they were flying through outer space with bat wings. Like if I had to guess, it has something to do with kind of like, I don't know, maybe they produced a rift in space-time, or somehow a gateway was opened up, a portal was opened up. And this would kind of explain, I think, why the call of Cthulhu mentions that their ability to move was tied to the alignment of stars.

10:50 It's kind of like they had like a interstellar roadway system or something like that, just as speculation, because it's like I said, it's kept pretty vague in this story and throughout the entire mythos of Lovecraft, how exactly they came to Earth. But we know they came from distant regions in outer space, or perhaps even more distant, perhaps even from other dimensions or other region or other uh realms of existence.

11:15 Can you speculate on why they came to Earth?

11:18 Well, that's an interesting question because I don't know if this is something that's ever really touched on or specifically hinted at. But if I had to guess, if I had to get into like a really uh speculative territory, we know that the great old ones, their language was the language of thought. They communicated with thought.

11:36 So perhaps there was something cosmically special about the earth, because we know they fought over the earth, among themselves, even. Um, so perhaps the earth was, I don't know, a nexus of psionic energy, a nexus of thought, cosmic energy for whatever reason, and that was the specific reason. We know that Cthulhu is called something like the great sorcerer or great priest.

12:01 Um he was casting quote unquote spells on the universe and causing some kind of change to occur. And um, perhaps the alignment and the position, the specific place in the cosmos was important for whatever reason. Obviously, there was something about the earth that drew them here. Um, as to what exactly that is, I think will always be left for interpretation and speculation.

12:26 So you mentioned they had to battle for the earth, and one of the things that they battle in the book is Cthulhu. How are these elder things related to Cthulhu and the great old ones?

12:40 So it's loose because in the mountains of madness, the elder things are also sometimes referred to as the old ones, but then in the Call of Cthulhu and other things, they talk about the great old ones. So perhaps they were like of a similar class of being, but I feel like it's heavily implied that Cthulhu is like the big bad amongst them.

13:00 Cthulhu is very, very powerful. Um, he's a great magician of the universe. Um, and it does mention in the Mountains of Madness that the elder things went up against the pre-human spawn of Cthulhu and they battled for dominion of the earth. The exact relationship is unknown. These could just be like totally unrelated like groups of beings that just happen to be coming for the earth at the same time, or they could have, I guess, deeper history uh within the cosmos, within the macroverse.

13:34 Um, it's it's a pretty it's it's something that's pretty much left for speculation, I think. There's not a lot of concrete uh information about how all the old ones relate to each other within Lovecraft's actual original mythos. Now I know various authors later on have written things in Lovecraft's mythos that has gone on to connect the old ones to each other and even invent new old ones, um, you know, parent figures to creatures like Cthulhu and Azathof and stuff like that.

14:06 But as far as Lovecraft's actual intention, I think that the vagueness of it relates to the fact that everything that we know about this history comes from, you know, translations of translations and people that kind of understand what they're reading, but it's also written in languages that were never meant for human comprehension, and they're all like pieced together from scraps and bits of information.

14:29 So there are some contradictions and are things that we'll never that are just like holes in the data, um, as there were as there is just like in actual history. So, what kind of technology did the Elder Things possess? That's an interesting question. The Mountains of Madness definitely mentions that they had energy weapons that worked by means that we don't understand.

14:52 So they were in the great wars between the Elder Things and the Spawn of Cthulhu, they fought with these energy weapons. And they also had the ability to traverse the stars, and it the way that operated almost seems like magic, but it was definitely like some form of technology, if you really think about it.

15:10 Um, and they had other form means of technology, like means of you know building actual cities in ways that like we don't understand how they like if you look at the way the way the construction of things like relay is described, or the way the construction of the city um in the mountains of madness is described, this is these are not human building methods, so they obviously had some form of technology that was very, very, very, very advanced.

15:35 And it does mention that their technology was far more advanced than anything that humanity had reached, at least by the time of Lovecraft, and probably by now as well.

15:44 There's an interesting part where the narrator suggests that if they had different senses, that it might have changed the way the art is experienced. He says that certain touches here and there gave vague hints of symbols and stimuli, which another mental or emotional background in a fuller or different sensory equipment might have made a profound significance to us.

16:09 So that's tied back kind of to their incomprehensible nature and kind of how advanced their technology was. You know, they were human-like in a lot of ways, like they wore armor, um, they were farmers, uh, they had agriculture, they had sufficiently advanced, you know, like bioengineering, you know, biological technology.

16:30 You know, they they they farmed what the book calls saurians, which Yeah, it suggests they might have had dinosaur farms. Perhaps dinosaur farms. They were around when the dinosaurs were around. Before the dinosaurs, long before the dinosaurs even came around. So and in the and also there are things like the shaggas, uh, also, so that hint at their biological uh engineering prowess as well.

16:52 So they had very, very advanced technology, a lot of it that's incomprehensible to us. It's almost like their technology is also art in some cases. Perhaps if we did have you know a higher degree of senses, there would be more, like even more details hidden within it. I kind of it kind of reminds me of like, it kind of makes me think of how like you like a computer chip or something, how we can store data on a computer chip, but a primitive person can't read that data without you know the proper sensory equipment.

17:23 You need a computer to hook the data into to read. Um and also it kind of reminds me of a quote from Dune as well. Uh, what senses do we lack that we cannot see and hear a hidden world all around us? Um, so yeah, I think that's really interesting. And certainly their technology was like hyper advanced compared to anything that we have.

17:45 So it's revealed that the elder things are responsible for the creation of life on Earth. How did that happen? Why did they create life on Earth?

17:56 Well, initially they created things like the shagath for their own purposes to serve whatever purpose they need. Like a shagath, it seems like it's almost something that can be kind of programmed to produce whatever they want. And as a biological byproduct of the shagat's, all life on Earth was eventually formed.

18:16 And this is implied to be completely accidental. And this occurs long after the elder things disappear. I mean, like the the biological material over billions of years is implied to become us eventually. So the shaggots are the biological parent of all life by accident, you know, like so. I think that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate, like kind of terrifying thing.

18:40 Because humans, we're always asking ourselves, where do we come from? What's the meaning of our existence? And in this story, Lovecraft is saying there is no meaning of our existence. We're literally a biological accident. And yeah, that's kind of depressing, but just really, really makes for a great, you know, turn in a story, I think.

18:58 So you mentioned shoggaths. Can you explain what those are?

19:02 So shogoths are like these big bubbling masses of goo, and initially they were created to be the slave class of the elder things. They just did whatever the slave whatever the elder things wanted. I think they could produce certain biological material that was uh that the elder things needed. They just did whatever they were commanded to do by the elder things, but eventually there was some kind of revolt, and the shoggits gained their own independence, and the race of the Elder Things fell, and they presumably fled back to wherever they came from, though, as we see in the book, some of them did get left behind, and some of them were in fact preserved in the ice for billions of years, perhaps.

19:48 So the Elder Things left this city. Where did they go?

19:52 That's a good question. So, where did they go, and then also like kind of why did they go? So it implies that, like, I guess there was a rebellion of the Shagas. Maybe whatever they were doing, maybe it all just became like too hostile. Maybe they lost the war against Cthulhu and his pre-human spawn, because we do learn from Cthulhu that Cthulhu is still here waiting to regain his dominion over the earth.

20:16 So it implies that the elder things lost. So I imagined that after they lost, perhaps some of them stayed in their city for a while, but obviously there was this rebellion, and eventually maybe it all just got too chaotic to maintain, and they went back into, I don't know, the outer dimensions of the macroverse, returned to whatever realms of existence they initially came from.

20:39 Um so that that seems, I guess, the most likely place where they would have won, I think.

20:45 So at the end of the book, the character Dan Forth.

20:48 The student.

20:49 The student he sees something out the window of the plane, and it makes him go mad. What what is it that he sees?

20:59 So this is something that's left kind of open for interpretation. Now, it does mention when they were looking at the hieroglyphs, that there was some unnamed evil at the center of an even greater mountain range just beyond the mountains of madness. Like some unspeakable unnamed evil. And I've always thought, ever since I read this, that that is what Dan Forth saw.

21:29 I did a short video essay on At the Mountains of Madness years ago, and in that video, that is also what I speculated, that he looked back at this unnamed place of evil. He looked into whatever it was, and it made him mad. Now we talked about the idea that the Elder Things traveled through like kind of an opening in outer space.

21:51 In Francois Berenger's version of At the Mountains of Madness, which I highly recommend, it's fully illustrated, he depicts. That scene as Dan Forth looking back, you see, and you see like this kind of almost this distortion of outer space, and it looks like almost like another place.

22:11 Looks like a portal.

22:12 A portal, right? And you see it kind of like this tentacle monster. And I I it gave me the impression that if Dan Forth looked into that place, of course that would have ripped his mind apart. It kind of reminds me of Stephen King's It. Now, it is, if you don't know, like Stephen King's take on a Lovecraftian horror, in my opinion.

22:35 Um, and in that book, the creature it can sometimes show people its deadlights. And all the deadlights are the gateway into where it came from, the macroverse, right? And just by someone of a of a simple mind, like a human, glimpsing that macroverse and being forced to experience the chaos and and and just like the macroscopic nature of it and just the complexity of it all and the contradictions of it all, it it breaks them and it breaks the mind.

23:06 So Dan Forth looked into the indescribable, the unthinkable, and the unknowable. And after looking in, he couldn't let go. The abyss stared right back into him. And that's essentially what happens to Dan Forth, in my opinion. And that's kind of a common trope in Lovecraft's work. It happens often. Once someone becomes privy to these unseen things, once someone becomes privy to the unseen world, um it it leaves a mark.

23:38 Um, it's almost like a disease that infects until it consumes completely. It's terrifying. It's almost like the it's the infectious power of knowledge. Um, you know, people say ignorance is bliss. I think Lovecraft's work kind of exemplifies that. It's it's kind of the height of that you don't want to know kind of energy.

23:58 You'd be better off not knowing the truth kind of energy.

24:02 So the whole point of this story, the narrator is trying to warn people against going back to Antarctica, and he wants to keep this a secret. Why would he want to keep this a secret?

24:15 The well, one, I think he doesn't want people like exploring Antarctica and unleashing something. You know what I mean? Um, because if if more people go there and more explored, there's a chance that you know the shogats get out. I mean, that the elder things get out and come after us or something like that.

24:33 And also, I think it it goes back to that idea that maybe we're just better off not knowing where we came from. Maybe the truth of where we came from is just too terrible. So that's the essential idea. There are terrible things lurking there that we don't want to unleash, and maybe it's just better not to know.

24:51 So I think that's where Dan Forth is, and that's where Dyer is coming from, um, because he's looking at what happened to Dan Forth. Like he doesn't want the fate of Dan Forth to you know be transferred to like all of humanity. And something is still there. There are things still there. So us going there and just like moving things around and peeking around, maybe there's darker things that might take notice, like the unnamed evil at the more distant mountain range.

25:17 What is that thing? He can't keep it secret forever. He's trying, he's only he's delaying the inevitable, really. But yeah, I get where he's coming from. So what I like about At the Mountains of Madness is that it kind of evokes this sense of exploration and discovery that's kind of less possible in the modern era.

25:38 It kind of like makes me think of like back in the day when like, I don't know, maybe archaeologists were discovering like all these species of dinosaurs for the first time, and the sense of like awe and wonder that that must have evoked.

25:52 How crazy would it have been to learn about dinosaurs and not knowing anything about dinosaurs? I know that must have blown people's minds.

26:01 It must have been insane. Yeah, it's yeah. And it kind of I've I've thought about this like my whole life, basically. It's like we live in the world of like technology and satellites where we can like scan the entire globe and we have all this information and history, have all this access to history and information.

26:21 But back in the time when Lovecraft was writing this story, there was still like this sense about the world. There was this sense of mystery about the world. We hadn't unearthed every corner of the world at this point in time, and so that's like that's a great avenue for Lovecraft to venture into to kind of like explore these ideas, right?

26:40 So, like we talked about in the last episode about how space was one of the great primal mysteries, and also the ocean was one of the great primal mysteries, one of the great primal gateways, because they're both like kind of like inaccessible to us, but they're there and they're so prominent. The past is kind of like that as well.

27:02 The past is like a vast ocean of mystery, and Lovecraft in this story and through a lot of his stories is able to fill that with so many like horrors and fears and terrible things. Um, and I think that probably like digging up dinosaurs for the first time probably evoked that same sense of in people.

27:20 Like, there is this like there were other rulers of the world, there is an ancient world before our world that doesn't exist anymore. So, yeah, I I I get what yeah, so that's really, really a cool way to think about it, I think.

27:34 Do you think they'll ever make an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness?

27:39 I sure hope so. Um, honestly, Guillermo del Toro's version, I hope I still hold out hope for that that comes out one day. And obviously, that didn't get made because Ridley Scott was making Prometheus at the time, and I think him and Guillermo are friends, and I think Guillermo thought that At the Mountains of Madness would be too similar to Prometheus, so at the Mountains of Madness didn't get made, but Prometheus is kind of like a a pseudo adaptation in a few ways.

28:08 It's got some similarities, but it's not like a direct adaptation or anything like that.

28:12 Well, let's change gears to Prometheus. Why don't you give us a summary of what Prometheus is about?

28:20 So Prometheus takes place in the same universe as the Alien movies. Um, and it's kind of like a semi-prequel to Alien, but essentially scientists realize that in all these different places on Earth there are these cave paintings and drawings from ancient humanity, early humanity, pointing to one particular planet in one particular star system, and they go on this huge vessel called the Prometheus, funded by Whalen Corp of Alien fame, and they go to the planet which is called LV223.

29:02 And the planet is called this for a very specific reason. It is a direct reference to Leviticus 223. Say to them, For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, that person must be cut off from my presence.

29:29 I am the Lord. So the planet's name directly references that quote for a very specific reason, which we'll get to in a little bit. So essentially they get to this planet, um, the what they think initially might be the homeworld of the engineers, but they eventually uncover that it is in fact not the homeworld of the engineers.

29:50 On this planet, they uncover various things. They they they notice that some catastrophe has occurred, something happened to the engineers on this planet. Um and they slowly uncover the mysteries, and they and as they are exploring the planet and the structure on the planet, things start to go wrong for them.

30:10 So that is just a basic synopsis without giving away too much initially.

30:15 So then what are the main themes of the movie?

30:18 Well, I think the main themes of Prometheus include things like hubris, not only human hubris, but also the hubris of the engineers, which is kind of explored as well. The engineers were creating biological weapons and it got out of hand in the same way that humans sometimes produce technology that gets out of hand and it kind of bites us.

30:38 The engineers mate met the ultimate fate at the hands of their own technology. It's also about greed, you know, the greed of the Whalen Corp. Um, it's about the origin of life on Earth. It's about God versus man and who is God and who is mortal. Um, it's about consciousness and you know, biological life versus artificial life, and which one is superior or or inferior to the other?

31:03 Um, you know, it explores that idea with the character David. Um so yeah, I think those are the main themes of Prometheus.

31:11 So why is the movie called Prometheus, and who is Prometheus?

31:16 So the movie is called Prometheus in a direct reference to the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mankind, and for this he was punished. Now, this story has been retold in various different places, various different myths throughout human history. Another example of this same story is the Garden of Eden.

31:45 Um the forbidden fruit represents the knowledge of God. Um, and for for partaking in the forbidden fruit, mankind is punished. Um and and Prometheus reflects these ideas as well. They are going to this planet to consume the knowledge of the gods, to learn where they came from, and for this, they are punished as well.

32:09 So I think that is essentially why the movie is called Prometheus. It is kind of the desire to know that burns us in the end.

32:20 At the beginning of the movie, an engineer is on Earth a long time ago, and he sacrifices himself and presumably creates life on Earth. Did he create all life on Earth, or do you think he just infected proto-humans to guide their evolution along?

32:37 So I guess it's up for interpretation. We do see like some greenery, some algae. So we know that Earth isn't totally devoid of life, but it could potentially be devoid of animal life. So if I had to lean in one direction and I don't know either way, I would say that they seeded all life on Earth, potentially, in the same way that, you know, in HP Lovecraft's story, the shoggats seed all life on Earth.

33:08 So what do you think their initial plan with Earth was?

33:11 I think it was probably a scientific experiment. Although that opening scene, there does seem to be kind of something religious about it. There's a ritualistic nature in the way that scene um plays. Like the engineer walks out in a robe and he takes it off and he has um this goo in kind of the ceremonial like jar almost, the ceremonial container.

33:36 Um so it's almost like a religious thing that's occurring here. So perhaps they were a particular religious sect of the engineer race, or perhaps they were on, or perhaps it was um specifically just like a scientific experiment that they later decided to terminate. But either way, they did eventually decide to terminate the whole project.

34:01 Why did this happen? Um, so that is to me the more interesting question. Why did they decide to terminate and why did they decide to come back and kill humanity, even though of course they didn't get to that point, but they made the decision. So it does mention at some point in the movie that this the point in which they decided to terminate was about 2,000 years ago.

34:26 Now that aligns pretty clearly with the death of Jesus.

34:33 Right. So we can assume that the engineers started life on Earth through sacrificing themselves. They visited and guided humanity in the form of various gods, and Jesus was their last appearance. They must have not liked our reaction to him. Either they got pissed off at how we killed him, or that after his death we went right back to fighting wars, perhaps because those wars were fought in his name.

34:57 Well, I think it's I think it has something to do with the fact that we killed him. You know what I mean? They sinned, they potentially sinned or inspire this man, um, and then we like totally reject the wisdom that they're trying to give us. And because of that, they're like, okay, we've tried multiple times with this experiment of ours, but it has gone sour, and now it's time to terminate.

35:19 And I think the idea of them um being either themselves religious leaders or like inspiring and influence the religious leaders ties into the theory that the whole thing from the beginning was a religious thing that was occurring as well, you know. Because I can't imagine that everybody on the engineer planet or the engineer, what I think is probably like an engineer like interstellar system, I feel like they probably inhabit more than one planet.

35:47 I can't imagine that all of them want the same thing. I all of the engineers that exist aren't involved with the Earth project. You know what I mean? Not it's this is a specific group of them. And if you're gonna do something like this, seeding a whole planet, probably have a motivation for doing it.

36:04 And for big things like this, oftentimes that motivation is is is religious in nature. Like they're they're doing something that's greater than themselves. So I can I could totally see it being a religious thing, and I can totally see them trying to see if they could lead a race of people down a specific path, failing at that and deciding that it wasn't worth it.

36:26 So what do you think the black goo is? It seems like a biological weapon that breaks down DNA and reforms it, but it seems to have a different function depending on who uses it. Because when the engineer drinks it in the beginning of the movie, it breaks down his body and creates life on Earth. But when the humans consume it, it turns them into a monster.

36:51 Well, I think it's technology that we don't understand, right? I I feel like the black goo is some form of biological technology that can be programmed with whatever purpose the engineers need it to do. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like the shagas in At the Mountains of Madness. The shagas could kind of be biologically programmed to do whatever they needed them to do.

37:16 So it's it's it's biological technology and the way it actually operates is a little bit obscure, but that's what I think it is. It's kind of like a canvas for like whatever. And perhaps maybe when it doesn't have specific instructions, it behaves in random ways that are kind of unpredictable or something like that.

37:36 And then also we know that the substance had to be volatile itself because it's ultimately what destroys the engineer base on that particular planet.

37:45 I think that it might be something that they found and that they were experimenting with. Not something that they invented, because the black goo reminds me of the life seed from Mountains of Madness. And who created the creators? Perhaps this is where everything comes from, and this is their god.

38:04 That's really interesting, and it kind of makes sense if they found it that they would be like this particular religious sect of they definitely religious, they seem spiritual.

38:16 It's almost like they are worshipping the black goo. They have them in fancy canisters lined up in a hall with monuments.

38:23 Yeah, exactly, exactly. There is a spiritual aspect to this. So maybe it is something that they found, and maybe it is something that they have been experimenting with that's interesting. But I tend to think personally that the engineers might just be a naturally forming race of beings that just got to a sufficient level of advancement where some of them went out and decided to create more life potentially.

38:47 And that doesn't mean that they didn't like find the quote unquote life seed, let's just call it the life seed black goo. Doesn't mean that they didn't actually find that somewhere, but I do I do see this as like I feel like they progress probably naturally. I don't think they necessarily need a creator.

39:03 Because I was thinking of the panspermia hypothesis, which suggests that life or the building blocks of life originated beyond our planet and was spread throughout the universe through comets, meteors, and other celestial bodies.

39:17 So perhaps all life is the product of the black goo? Like that like that like black that black goo and its fundamental essence is the seed of all life in the universe.

39:28 Yeah.

39:28 That's really interesting. And I didn't even think about that. That kind of like ties it all together. Because we know from Prometheus that the engineers and humans, we literally have their DNA. So maybe that's something that maybe that's what the black goo does. It's it it's an assimilator of DNA and it's a changer of DNA, and it's something that passes on DNA.

39:50 It's like the catalyst for life.

39:52 Yeah, well, I I wonder, like, that's interesting because I wonder if in the alien universe now, in the Prometheus universe, if we uh uncovered another species of sentient beings and we tested their DNA, would it be like, oh, they are also related to the engineers? You know what I mean? Because that that would mean that the live seed has been passed on from species to species to species to species.

40:17 And it's kind of something that's maybe like terrible if it's like not used right, but it can also be something that's very effective and beautiful because it brings life. So we've been mentioning creators and gods and stuff like that. And one of the big questions that I ask myself while I watch Prometheus is why does the character David exist, the android?

40:38 And I think he exists for a very, very clear reason. You notice in the scene where he encounters the engineer, he says something like, hmm, he's mortal, or something like that. Because, okay, so the humans are there to find their god, to meet their own god, their creator. David's already met his creator and been just utterly disappointed by us.

41:01 We have disappointed David. So it in in in in in some way, I think he was disappointed to see that the engineer wasn't this supreme being because he sees himself as better than his creator, and he like is he's he's essentially immortal, he's a lot smarter than his creator. So I guess David was hoping that like he was gonna find, like, in a way, like almost like his grandfather god, in in in in I think, in some in some way.

41:31 So I think David is there to bring up the question does it really matter if you meet your creator? And really, should you meet your creator? Because if you do, you're probably just gonna be disappointed. And that's the thing that's honestly what's interesting about it is that's what happens to Waylon at the end.

41:51 As he's dying, his final words are there's nothing. He meets his creator, and like David, ultimately he's disappointed. He comes to the edge of the universe to meet his creator, and he's ultimately disappointed. So it's like, is it even worth it? So I just find David to be a very, very fascinating character, and I really like the way this character is handled in Prometheus, because we see very clearly that he is sentient, that he is conscious, that he is absolutely aware.

42:22 Um, so I feel like that gives a lot of weight to like his interactions with the people around him and the things that he does.

42:31 So David is portrayed as a villain. But do you think that he is evil in any sort of way?

42:37 Evil, no. I think he's he's deeply curious, and he's not really that concerned about humans that much, because he does, I think, ultimately feel superior. And I think for most of the movie, he's just taking Wayland's orders, his father's orders. Uh but if we're talking about Alien Covenant, which is the sequel to this that I don't very much like because it doesn't answer any of the questions that it promises to answer.

43:01 Alien Covenant, I definitely do think he takes a turn to being evil, but that's a whole different discussion. And that's not this version of David, in my opinion. So evil, I don't think he's evil. No.

43:13 Why do you think the engineer kills Wayland and attempts to kill David towards the end of the movie?

43:18 Okay, well, in a deleted scene for Prometheus, it totally gives you the reason why. And basically, Waylon basically begs the engineer for eternal life. He says, I he basically says that he deserves life and that he deserves to live. And of course, this offends the engineer. This goes back to the Bible quote that we mentioned earlier.

43:40 So Leviticus 22 3. I'm going to read it one more time. Say to them, for the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am not. The Lord. So Whalen is coming to the engineer with these demands and this hubris thinking that he deserves eternal life for whatever reason.

44:10 And the engineer is just like, look at this disgusting thing that we created. I can imagine that the engineer is just reminded of the reason that they wanted to destroy us in the first place. They're like, Can you believe these these rats that we made that we were going to exterminate are now coming demanding things of us?

44:29 Yeah, so he had to be snuffed out, and I feel like that is the exact reason that Weyland is killed. He's punished for his hubris, essentially. And of course, David was just the messenger, so you know. So he had to go too.

44:41 You don't think the engineer saw David as his creation's creation, and that had something to do with it?

44:47 I don't think the engineer had any particular like malice towards David. He probably like recognized him and recognized what he was. And perhaps he was like, uh, it's a curiosity, but I think that scene is mainly was out of anger towards Weyland, because he kind of like, doesn't he snatch David's head off and hit Wayland with it?

45:07 So like Weyland's creation becomes the instrument of his own death. So it's kind of like this weird irony. Um, but yeah, I don't think that was done out of malice or hard feelings towards Dave David himself. I think, I think, if anything, the engineer's like, huh, a curiosity, a mechanical man, like, ah, what is this?

45:26 He's like a tool, you know.

45:27 Well, I think David represents the culmination of knowledge that humans have acquired. And it goes back to the title of the film, Prometheus. We have this god that is mad that humans have also gained the ability to create life.

45:42 Yeah. Yeah, and and then also to come to the stars seeking them out. And he's kind of like, Yeah, like you you you will be punished for this knowledge that you have acquired. You will now be punished for it. Yeah, it totally goes back to the title. Absolutely.

45:56 So at the end of this movie, we are given no answers. Well, some answers, but more questions. And it implies that these questions will be answered in the next film.

46:09 As we all know, that does not happen, which is why we actually chose to omit Alien Covenant from this discussion.

46:16 It's more fun to contemplate this film not knowing all the answers. Kind of like how Mountains of Madness is more terrifying when you don't truly understand the nature of the elder things. But do you think we will ever get answers to this movie?

46:32 Well, I think Ridley Scott really wanted to do a Space Jesus movie. That was his original idea, and he just kind of got roped into doing an alien prequel. I recommend to everybody on the internet to check out Comic Book Girl 19's Prometheus videos. She's got two of them out there, and they're absolutely great.

46:53 They go into detail about the production of the movie and some behind-the-scenes things, and I really think they're really great to understanding these movies. So I think that Ridley Scott wanted to do that. He wanted to explore those specific ideas, but kind of got shoehorned into doing an alien movie.

47:08 So I think that if he could, maybe he would. And I would love to see uh an actual exploration on the engineers and their actual motivations. I would love to see that. So the question is, I don't know, maybe, maybe.

47:21 Well, he is making a third film in this trilogy. It comes out next year.

47:25 And I didn't know that.

47:26 Alien Romulus, I think it's called.

47:28 Alien Romulus.

47:30 So interesting title, but they put Alien in the name, so it makes me think it'll just be an alien movie that has nothing to do with the engineers.

47:39 That's the red flag, and that was kind of the problem with obviously Alien Covenant, is that it doesn't satisfyingly answer any of those questions, and it just gives you like the the standard alien xenomorph type stuff, and you know that's fun, but it's not like what we wanted from Prometheus, actually.

47:54 So I'm hoping that maybe the third one, I'm definitely gonna go see it. We're big Ridley Scott fans, so we're definitely gonna see it. So yeah.

48:02 So let's talk about the similarities between Prometheus and at the mountains of madness.

48:08 Alright, so there's there's a lot. So um the big one is that Earth was seeded with life. So in at the Mountains of Madness, you've got the accidental seeding of life by the elder things via the shogoths. And then in Prometheus, you've got the engineers seeding life intentionally.

48:28 The intentions of the creators are kind of reversed in these stories. In Mountains of Madness, the elder things accidentally create human life while constructing the shogoths, while in Prometheus they intentionally create humans, but accidentally create shogoths or xenomorphs.

48:45 I guess you could say that, but I don't know if it was accidental or if like that was gonna be the method by which they destroyed humanity. You know what I mean? Was humanity just gonna have like a race of xenomorphs taking it over? I don't know. I don't it's it's it's like I said, it's it's pretty vague, I guess.

49:00 But that go but that does go back to another similarity between Prometheus and at the Mountains of Madness, because we have this advanced race of beings, like the elder things, that have a creation that goes wrong. We know that the Shogats rebel and gain their independence, and we know that something very, very, very bad happened to the engineers on um that planet where they were bioengineering this black goo or whatever.

49:25 Um, so they were sufficiently advanced, but their technology ultimately turns on them and kind of like screws them over significantly. So that's a major similarity. And then obviously we've got the ex the expedition to the unknown place. So I think Lovecraft perhaps couldn't he wasn't he didn't have the idea of space exploration on his mind.

49:50 You know, that wasn't something that he was really thinking about. So like the most remote place that he could come up with was Antarctica. But really, the planet LV223 is just another version of Antarctica, but it's a modern version of Antarctica because, like I said, we we've satellites scanned every part of the planet, but space is the final frontier.

50:11 So I think the expedition to like this distant place, this realm of mysteries, is is is a very, very, very key similarity. And then, of course, the fact that in these places they discover these ancient structures and like weird like hieroglyphics and and weird art stuff, and they discover all this evidence of like this ancient race that was very technologically advanced.

50:34 Um, so yeah, the similarities go on and on and on and on, basically. And of course, we talked about like the life seed and the black goo, um, the genetic bioengineering that both races of ancient beings engaged in. Um, both stories kind of have the theme of you know the acquiring of knowledge um being also met with punishment, because like we mentioned the fact that Dan Forth looks back and he sees, but he's punished for seeing.

51:03 So this the similarities between At the Mountains of Madness and Prometheus are pretty expansive and they go deeper than most people think. I think a lot of people um I think you could read At the Mountains of Madness and watch Prometheus and maybe not see all the similarities if you're not really thinking about it.

51:20 But once you catch on to them, you can very, very clearly see um how Prometheus is definitely inspired by At the Mountains of Madness to some degree.

51:31 So do you believe in ancient astronaut theory?

51:34 Well, believe is a strong word. I think it's I think it's an interesting idea, and I I don't discount anything, so I'm willing to believe in it if the evidence shows itself, but I think it's a cool idea. So ancient astronaut theory is, of course, the idea that the Earth was visited by aliens in our past, and that these beings um helped us out with, you know, maybe like the pyramids or helping us acquire certain knowledge, um, teaching us agriculture, like helping form us into a civilization, essentially.

52:04 Um, and usually this idea is accompanied with like the concept of perhaps that there was a sufficiently advanced human civilization on Earth and that we'd lost a lot of that technology and information. But yeah, that's essentially ancient astronaut theory. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with ancient aliens and how kind of it gets a little out there, but you know, I think there's some cool things in that pile of weird things.

52:29 So, how about you? Do you believe in ancient astronaut theory? No. No, I do not.

52:35 It's fun to think about. I've read Chariots of the Gods and looked into some of Graham Hancock's work, but the more I look into it, the more I roll my eyes at it.

52:45 Yeah. I mean, honestly, it seems like Graham Hancock might have been reading a little bit of At the Mountains of Madness, because there's a lot of like correlations and similarities between like, did you just read At the Mountains of Madness and then just make this a little bit because he does say that the ancient civilization once lived in Antarctica, I think.

53:03 Yeah.

53:04 Yeah.

53:04 Well, what other works do you know of that have been inspired by At the Mountains of Madness?

53:10 Well, a major one is the thing. I think that's a great example of one that's been inspired by At the Mountains of Madness. Of course, it's different, but it takes place in Antarctica, and you've got, you know, you're digging up like a monster out of ice. Um, you've got you've got a lot of the qualities of At the Mountains of Madness in that story.

53:29 And the thing is absolutely a fantastic movie. And we are moving into uh autumn uh in the United States. It's fall time, so it's like Halloween time around here, and I think the thing is a perfect, perfect, perfect Halloween movie to watch. And I think it's a great one, and it's definitely inspired by At the Mountains of Madness.

53:48 You got the scientific expedition, the team, and the monstrous things occurring, and yeah, I really like it a lot.

53:55 Have you seen the new one? Do you like it?

53:58 I have seen the new thing. The new thing is actually a prequel to the original one, and um it basically just like kind of fills in the gaps. I don't think it's really necessary, but if like if you've seen the thing and you love it and you just like kind of want to know what happened like right before that, then because there's a lot of mysteries in the original of the thing.

54:18 You we know that the thing originally was dug up by a different team of explorers and scientists, and basically the prequel is the story of the people that originally dug it up, and you know, I I enjoyed it for what it was. Um, but you know, the original is obviously superior.

54:37 I got one. It's been a while since I've seen it, but it's a sci-fi movie called Mission to Mars, and I'm pretty sure when they go to Mars they find structures built by an ancient race, and it heavily implies that there was once a civilization on Mars that seated Earth with life. But I have not seen it for a while, so I don't know if I can recommend it as a good movie, but I remember finding it a lot of fun when I was a teenager.

55:04 I just think that idea is just brilliant because it really just like checks human narcissism. Like how we think that we've dominated the planet and how like there is nothing greater than us that has come before. So like Lovecraft introduces this idea of like, no, we're actually nothing compared to what has existed in the past, and we actually could never even comprehend how powerful they were.

55:29 So I just think that's just just a fantastic concept to play in as a storyteller. So At the Mountains of Madness is a great science fiction horror story, and Prometheus is a pretty decent movie, though it has its problems. I still really love it. Um, and it's been really fun doing this podcast and talking about two of our favorite things.

55:56 So, thanks so much for listening, guys. As I said in the beginning, you can find us wherever you find your podcast, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, and Spotify. Don't forget to also subscribe to our YouTube channel. We will be posting episodes every other Friday. Thanks for listening, guys.