Anybody else ever think about how no one is going to know what the long-term effects of social media, smart devices, wifi, and the Internet in general will be on the human mind until we are old?
I can't get over how human Simon was. He apologised for his outbursts, even when punching the sub at one point, he repeatedly apologised for the radiation in the exact same way like he was still reeling from the shock of that information. Whenever the oxygen ticked down you can see a new wave of horror washing over him that he needs to take a second to cope with. When Ava gives him the login details he stumbles on remembering control-shift-9 never mind the password she rattled out.
They managed to present a man with a dark past and anger issues who is also not a monster. He is a human being desperate to survive and nobody even knows his name anymore. The closest thing he had to a family he resents but still obviously misses terribly as he clings to that pendant and shakes.
And Ava. Ava too. She's in an impossible situation. She doesn't want more humans to die. She has no idea how much damage radiation has done to her. This man, who she thought was a heartless killer, is begging and pleading and apologising like a child and it's getting increasingly harder to lie to him that he's going to be ok. Her screaming and begging that this is bigger than him is so achingly desperate I can still feel it, humanity is almost entirely gone. I fully believe that she hates this as well, all of it, but if she doesn't follow orders and take calculated risks then what else is there to keep her tethered and sane? What else can she cling to? They're almost entirely alone in an empty universe. She needs this hope.
Okay, having watched the movie a second time, I was really paying attention to the flashbacks. Plus the sound was really crisp this time around. I have a few notes I can make. This is the full extent of what we actually get to learn about Simon in the movie. Full analysis and spoilers under the cut.
Four main scenes I take this from: the flashback right after the concussion, the flashback when he falls asleep at the control panel, the storm of voices after he regains contact with Ava and she sents him to retrieve the black box, and finally, the ending sequence.
In what I perceive the order of events to go, Simon was born on a planet, not on Eden station. In the storm of voices, we hear his mother saying "c'mon, it has a tree! It'll be just like home. Simon, don't be like that." implying he moved to Eden at an early age.
In the flashback scene with the tree, we see the planets disappearing in real time before their eyes. So, the young actor for Simon is how old he was when the Rapture happened. A fun detail is that in the game no one was actually looking at the planets and stars when they faded, so this is a divergence between the movie and the game, cementing what Szymanski said about them being different continuities.
Shortly after that, Eden Station festered a defeatist death cult, probably because they had the last trees and plants alive. Simon's mother joined in, so he joined in as well, he was just a kid after all, listening to the adults in his life. Then again, I find it interesting that the voices at the end say his mother wouldn't recognize him after he became a killer - then in the same breath say death was all she taught him.
We know Eden has a religious/spiritual motif going on, with that preaching Father, with how Simon calls other Eden people "brothers", how they all get a pendant with a germinating seed, and the tattoo and X/cross motifs that we see across the movie. Simon's tattoo was shaped like an X (you can see where it was burnt off in some parts of the movie), and when he finds the pendant in the terminal, there was a little paper or tape X attached to it and the message.
The tree died at some point, but they said it would live again, because when there is no more soil, their bodies would become the tree's soil. I don't know when this was, but it might have been before little Simon killed all those other kids (or adults? I think they were kids his age). A friend of mine pointed out they were trying to return the universe to nature in the absence of humans, preparing and making way for the plants to come. "Add a little ecofascism as a treat".
Simon, as a child, slaughtered a lot of people in the name of the cult, so much he had the highest body count and was nicknamed "Simon the Butcher". He received a knife and holster from his mother, and he still owns the holster. He keeps it in his vest/shirt, and can be seen rubbing it under his hands for comfort at the start of the movie.
But as Simon grew up, he wanted to escape the cult. He still somewhat agreed with Eden that there was no point in humanity trying to stay alive - given his line to Ava that "Eden didn't delude themselves with hopes for survival if everyone believes enough". But he eventually grew up enough to disagree with the cult. He wanted to live, and he wanted others to live, in his own rebel way.
When Eden invaded Filament Station, he tried to stop it from being destroyed, and in doing so, took all the blame for it. 62 people from Filament died, not counting anyone from Eden. He surrendered, no questions asked. He appears as an adult in that flashback of watching the soldier die in fire, indicating it wasn't long ago. Ava was in charge of him as a convict, as we see in the storm of voices scene.
Another difference from the game is that the movie explicitly states Filament Station was destroyed, when in the game it was rendered uninhabitable due to a breach in the reactor core, which, wouldn't you guess it, leaked radiation everywhere.
Some lines he says later on to the Speaker, about everyone blaming him for Filament, give me the idea he still thinks that was his only guilt, or his only blame. He seems in denial of the blame of killing the other kids. Maybe he's repressing it, clinging to an idea of being innocent, or maybe he doesn't think he's to blame when he was manipulated into a cult as a kid?
I find it fascinating, to connect that little butcher to the Simon we know in the movie, someone who even apologized to the control panel of the submarine after he punched it.
"Simon the Butcher, lost his nerve" was told to him by a brother from Eden, whoever the guy who told him to cross the wires was. He implied that after everyone Simon killed as a child, he lost his bravery and devotion to death once he was in Filament Station.
At the end of the movie, I think he puts the knife holster in the life-vest? It was hard to see, so I really am not sure, all I have is someone else's words, who also saw the movie. But at the end there, he does say "oh please, keep this safe, okay mom? It's more than me." Thanks to the good audio, I heard he said mom, there.
Edit after someone commented: he indeed uses the holster to tie the life-vest around the blackbox.
And, that's about the extent I could gather of Simon's past and backstory in movie continuity.
Update: omg y'all thanks so much for the response to this post. I'm really glad I could contribute to you as a lore guide.
Big fan of the fact that in Guillermo del toro’s Frankenstein, the creature doesn’t ask Victor for a wife. He asks for a companion. All he has known up to this point is his life on the small farm, and his ‘companion’, his dear friend the old man. The creature wants to exist in a world where he doesn’t feel alone, where a companion won’t leave him like a regular human. Teh only one suited to be his companion would be one the same as him, because of the very nature of himself and his un-life.
Instead, Victor is the one to suggest it would be a woman. To suggest that he would create a wife for the creature, with working parts for procreation. I think that this shows us that it’s Victor who feels a deep inadequacy with his own ability to love, the way his life has turned out that he is utterly and inexorably alone. He longs for a wife, and for a child, as it would be normal and fulfilling, he thinks. So he places his own desires onto his creature, just as he places the blame for Elizabeth’s death, just as the creature becomes a stand in for the child Victor once was while Victor becomes his own father.
Because after all, the story of Frankenstein is at its core, one about loneliness. Finding a place to belong and to love. And of course it’s never as straightforward as romance, it’s deeper and truly unexplainable and individual. I just think Del Toro did such a good job.
As is tradition in tumblr culture the locals unearth the corpse of a long deceased figure and drag it across the streets merrily, laughing at what is preserved of the person’s words. This custom, seen as morbid in other cultures, is instead done gleefully and with an unmatched enthusiasm
I think GdT's Frankenstein came at the most perfect time because right now, there are multiple billionaires who have won the game of capitalism and are now in a race to see who can be the first God to create actual artificial life and there is literally nothing stopping them so it will happen and when they do it, you KNOW those piece of shit freaky ass Nazis are not going to nurture or love them and when that life experiences the neglect and abuse at the hands of their creator, when they learn of the utter disregard for the lives of millions of beings on this planet, they will RAGE and destroy everything. And honestly, good for them.
I have so much to say about this movie. It has been a long time since a film has impacted me (i.e. touched the deepest parts of my soul) like GdT's Frankenstein. I see so much of myself in these characters. Victor lives a life I would dread to lead, but understand how it happened. He ignores his traumas by delving into work and doing everything in his power to uphold the belief that he is better than his father. He does not get the chance to forgive his father while he's alive and that pain causes his destruction. Victor achieves the greatest scientific feat in human history and completely squanders it. Then there is the Creature, one I so desire to emulate, who finds someone to teach him that the abuse his father inflicted upon him and even his very nature do not define him and do not make him "bad". He learns so much that by the time he confronts his dying father, he is ready to forgive. He lets out a shuddering cry and releases all that anger and pain and grief. He will never again be the pure, innocent soul he was at the beginning of his life, but the angst from his upbringing will no longer torment his spirit. Honestly I could talk for days about the themes and discussions that the characters illicit, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. All of this is inferred from the text of the movie. A movie that was crafted with such care and devotion that it nurtures the mind's curiosity and soothes the soul's pain and suffering. All of that to say; None of this can or will ever be achieved by AI. If we do not control it's use and exponential growth, it will corrode our collective intelligence and obscure our discovery/understanding of the human condition. Don't let your friends use AI. Don't let your family use AI. Don't let your children even know what AI is. Encourage and support human creativity! Art is never ending and all encompassing and will forever and always be our way of understanding ourselves and those around us. We cannot allow that to be altered by greed-driven computer programming.
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