Going off some bad information, I forced everyone who saw Prometheus with me to stick all through the end credits, after which I was expecting the kind of post-credits teaser you sometimes get after giant blockbuster movies (think the schwarma scene after The Avengers, for a recent example). There was no final scene, of course, but there was at least an intriguing mention of the website Whatis101112.com, which seemed to be connected to the mysterious Peter Weyland and also indicate something happening on October 11 this year.
That site went live over the weekend, and right now it's only bringing up more questions than answers. The main feature on the site is actually a book cover, but first let's get to the video it includes, which features the young version of Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce) that we first met in his futuristic TED Talk. In this video he appears to be giving himself a pep talk before that very speech; take a look below:
"I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all." That's what Weyland is whispering to himself in that clip, and that leads us to the main image from the page: a book cover for Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, a book that the website claims "deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science." If you've seen Prometheus, you'll probably recognize a couple of parallels there, and i wonder just how much deeper the mythology is now going to get after the movie has opened, an unusual move for a movie but not totally unexpected given the depth of the side material for Prometheus writer Damon Lindelof's TV series Lost.
There are a lot of intriguing hints in here, but not many concrete answers-- just like Prometheus itself! We'll keep an eye on the action at What Is 101112 and maybe figure out just what Weyland and company are planning to bring to us this October. This week we review Prometheus and then discuss it in detail, with spoilers. Plus a lightning round about voice performances and tidbits about 50 Shades of Grey, Sherlock, Lola Versus and a fan-cut Star Wars.
