Prometheus

And a group of scientific diplomats and their escort departs on a trillion dollar mission financed by Weyland Corporation towards a planetary alignment discovered by a team of archaeologists upon several ancient culturally isolated works of art.

In search of those who brought life to their home world.

But their investigative proclivities awake volcanic slumbering behemoths whom are intent upon annihilating their planet.

Which has functioned as their laboratory for millennia.

In the end, only a devoted non-denominational Christian (whose faith still burns) who at one point initiates a self-inflicted abortion and a brilliant amoral android who was responsible for infecting her husband with the fertile extraterrestrial virus, remain.

Still determined to make contact.

Still driven, to carry on.

Ridley Scott's Prometheus has its moments but on the whole functions like an amorphous geyser, patiently stratifying different levels of neuroses before startlingly expelling their searing undulations.

Several approaches to handling the unknown are precipitated, each exemplifying differing degrees of prohibition.        

Thereby carnally creating within a paranoid social constellation.

And intergalactically quarantining exploratory consonance.

The Curse of Frankenstein

Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is at it again in Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein, a Hammer Films production. Having grown audacious after reanimating a small dog, the Doctor sets his sights on the construction of the perfect human being, to be made up of parts cut away from fitting lifeless specimens. His partner and former tutor Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) contends that his path can only lead to evil but Frankenstein refuses to heed his warning and proceeds unabated. But the local crop of corpses will not supply a top rate brain which leads Victor to wine and dine a revered scientist (Paul Hardtmuth as Professor Bernstein) before murdering him later on in the evening. Krempe discovers what he has done and in the ensuing struggle damages the sought after material. Is this what causes Frankenstein's creation to act childishly and violently or was it the fact that it was brought back to life in the first place that guaranteed its inability to cognitively function?

Having subverted the laws of nature.

Fisher's film doesn't answer this question but does provide those searching to see Peter Cushing play someone besides Grand Moff Tarkin with the chance to watch him at work early on in his career. His performance is convincing enough even though several scenes could have benefited from additional takes, and more crafty editing, and another round of dialogue adjustments, and a keener insight into the logical timing of key events which move the action along. But The Curse of Frankenstein isn't about editing and dialogue and presenting captivating enticing scenes. It's about shooting a readymade script in as little time as possible in order to capitalize on the product, reinvest, and do it all over again and again while cultivating a receptive audience and slowly learning to enhance your constructions as time steadily passes.

And spending most of the budget on the lab, wherein there are many pretty scientific instruments and bubbling beakers and frothing 'fermentations' and a Frankenstein (Christopher Lee).

Desperately seeking life.

Source Code

Duncan Jones's Source Code maintains a peculiar relationship with law and order. The overt dimension is sound enough: transport someone back to a moment in time located within an alternative parallel reality and have them discover information that can help stop terrorists when they are transported home. This is what Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) does in subsequent 8 minute intervals throughout as he tries to find out who planted a bomb on a passenger train bound for Chicago. Each time he is sent back, he's encouraged to detect the necessary information by any means necessary, with no concern for the effects his actions might cause to that alternative parallel reality. Hence, in order to fight terrorism in one reality criminal acts can be committed in another. If these alternative parallel realities don't exist this isn't a problem, but if they do, and they obviously do insofar as Colter is repeatedly transferred to them, it is an extremely serious problem, serious enough to destabilize source code's legitimacy. Justifying your pursuit of law in order in one dimension by any means necessary in another is distasteful to say the least and Source Code would have been a stronger film if this fact and its associated ramifications had been brought to the forefront.

Altered States

Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is a scientist committed to experiencing/discovering the first thought, the foundational ontological kernel. Conducting experiments with sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs, he comes closer and closer to unlocking existence's primordial governing secret. But as he approaches this void, he sacrifices his wife and family, not permitting domestic comforts to conflict with his pursuit of knowledge. Then, as his genetic structure begins to deteriorate and his blackouts engender carnal repercussions, he must battle reality's constitution and embrace the overwhelming power of love; after briefly transforming into an apelike creature.

As scientific-poetry deconstructs the relationship between professional and personal responsibility, Ken Russell's Altered States melodramatically illustrates a thesis regarding what it means to be human. Its synthesis of art and science can come across as naively sentimental, multifaceted and interrogative, cheesy and distorted, or incredibly uplifting, depending. Can you maintain a substantial "I" without reciprocating a loving partner's devotion? According to Altered States's depiction of the humanistic universe's physiological construction, the answer is "no," you cannot.

Cube

Vincenzo Natali's Cube presents a group of strangers who wake up within a byzantine death trap with no choice but to work together to gain their freedom. Their prison is a giant cube in which some rooms are safe and others contain malicious contraptions designed to quickly end their lives. Enigmatic clues are provided the deciphering of which will enable them to pass through unscathed. As the trapped individuals begin to solve the puzzle, it quickly becomes apparent that a particular form of human nature is their own worst enemy.

The characters are divided into two camps, one nihilistic, the other content with the order of things. Paranoid anxious dialogue delivers extreme points from both ideological stances as their confines suffocate their more polite characteristics. One character decides that they must take control and takes it upon themself to lead. Believing in a strict, necessary, veracious, immutable relationship between things and the ways in which a particular school of thought has defined them, they consider themself to be a representative of austerity and therefore the purist candidate for leadership. Trying to apply the guidelines of a master-narrative to their random circumstances rather than negotiating and aligning themself with the organized structural ambiguity leads to violence and madness, and the laissez-faire nihilists must cope with this determined beast. But passively accepting their situation and progressing patiently and calmly does not guarantee them success, for the designs of the cube cater to both reason and madness alike where only the innocent can survive. According to the ridiculous ending anyways. The logic built into this ending works with Cube's structure however, Natali positioning himself within the very same technosocial-predicament he examines, like Rousseau in a pernicious futuristic state of nature, and delivering the predictable stereotypical solution (the fact that the villain somehow returns) that so often is designated "correct" by its designer's dementia.