It’s no secret that I thought Prometheus was intellectually bankrupt effects porn even its ardent defenders* will abandon over the course of the next few years. So if the Vatican were to simply denounce the film as bad, it’d be easy to give them a pass. But their discontent, voiced in official Vatican paper L’Osservatore Romano, comes from a vaguely philosophical standpoint that’s worth noting for its undercurrent of bias. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

Prometheus “mishandles the delicate questions raised by … the battle eternal between good and evil in yet another attempt to steak the secret of immortality.” The newspaper also said that “the journey of Prometheus should instead symbolize the search for the supernatural,” referring to the original hero of Greek mythology who is said to have created man from clay.

For fuck’s sake. Prometheus, even in the manner it tackles creationism, is relatively inoffensive as far as horror goes. And to state that “the journey of Prometheus should instead symbolize the search for the supernatural,” is to completely disregard the artistic intentions of the filmmakers, misguided as Scott and Lindelof might have been. The reason the Vatican endorses torture porn junk like The Passion of the Christ and denounces body horror junk like Prometheus has everything to do with the reaffirming of their own belief system – creating a preemptive bias for anything artistically challenging they voice their opinion on.

It bears mention that Prometheus is a fictional film. I doubt that Ridley Scott truly believes muscular white aliens came down from space and created man only to obliterate us with biological warfare centuries later. And if he did, which would be sad, he’s not using the film to force those beliefs on anyone. As a work of fiction, it neither endorses nor denounces the Catholic Church.

I’ll agree that Prometheus is challenging, even if for the wrong reasons. But for the love of your god, at least judge a film honestly and not because its brand of fiction doesn’t line up with your brand of religion.

*Sometimes referred to as “philosophy majors.”

Source: THR