as promised / threatened, i'll finally write an explanation for why i Insist On Calling It That
summary -- metroid prime 3 features substantial symbolism of cancer and reproduction that comes together to create a tokophobic nightmare where "you" are forced to give birth against your will to something which threatens to consume and sicken everything you love. it is motherhood at its most fatal, with something inside you draining your life, and leaving you isolated.
this fits into the tradition of metroid being a game series about femininity, in this case exploring the anxiety surrounding birth and the mother's health after the fact. through the metaphorical nature of the "wombs" involved, it explores the topic while also rejecting the narrative that femininity is defined by a literal capacity to give birth.
let's get into it, shall we?
Introduction
it's not hard to see that the metroid game series has lots of symbolism and themes about femininity and life as a woman. i would argue that, in fact, every metroid game has this as a theme. for ones like metroid other m, it's pretty overt (the title written as an acronym is MOM...) and for others, like metroid prime pinball, i sound like a crazy person while explaining it.
for the prime games in particular: prime 1 is about environmentalism / gaia / mother earth. the second game is one i would like to dodge for the moment since my tagline for it is seemingly unrelated to feminimity (and would take too long to explain). the third is the subject for today. and, as observed by my esteemed colleague metroidprimepics, prime four is already chock full of yonic symbols. (but, given the regression in feminism in recent years, that last one has me worried. tiktok tradwives have come into existence since prime 3's release in 2007, and the focus on psychic abilities seems to be gearing up for the theme to be the divine feminine. eek. lots of room for a fumble.)
does this make every metroid game "feminist"? no. definitely not. the pin-up poses for the finish screen that serve as a "reward" in many of the early games come to mind. and, despite its hidden gem narrative features, metroid other m is infamous for its sexism. and as we'll discuss in the appendix, some of the horror elements of prime 3 amount to cashing in on the patriarchal message that the uterus is taboo, mysterious, or even grotesque: the monstrous womb! or, also, the fanged vagina that threatens to demasculate!! ooga booga booga. it's a mixed bag, and i try to not get blinded by the fact that having a strong woman protagonist doing science and working machinery left me enamored with the series from a young age.
that being said, and something that is important to keep in mind going forward: i actually do not think that metroid prime 3 was intended by the writers to have any overarching, grand message by using this symbolism. i am the absolute last person to say something like this, BUT i still argue that the meaning is created even without intent by the creator.
in my opinion, metroid's exploration of femininity is attained by you, the player, experiencing the episodes of Samus' life. it is moreso: check this out, than it is didactic. her being a bounty hunter, and ending each game with "see you next mission" or similar, makes the serial nature of this experience clear, which is why i find it apt to call this entry The Uterine Cancer Game of the series.
the rest of the essay is separated into two main parts, the first of which will be the cancer imagery. "separated" is a strong word here, since inevitably i will discuss the reproductive themes in the process, and the first section sets up conclusions that are drawn in the second.
Part 1: The C-Word
this one is actually probably clear even from the start, and the length of the section is moreso due to the plethora of examples, which i haven't seen compiled anywhere before. anyways:
phazon is something which grows to consume and corrupt everything it touches, all in the effort to replicate itself. the common vernacular suggests a phrase: phazon is a "cancer" upon the universe. the details are where things get fun.
first, let's compare how phazon looks visually between the three games:
hardware limitations and time crunches could explain the differences, of course, but let's look assume that's not all. we see that phazon smooths until it is much more of a sludge. less a substance, more biotic. prime 3 is notable in that phazon comes in a variety of shapes and textures, and it moves to having sufficient phazon corruption produce biological structures that are literally phazon incarnate:
...something not really featured in the earlier games outside of Dark Samus / Metroid Prime herself. this culminates in the third game where we learn that Dark Samus is actually just a sort of "evangelizer" of phazon, and that Phaaze, the actual source of all phazon, is a literal LIVING PLANET with the sole direction of its sentience being to reproduce itself as much as possible. that sounds an awful lot like cancer---most forms involve unrestrained and pathological reproduction of cells that ends up overexpending the host's nutrients and vitality, clogging up actual functions and homeostasis to the point of death.
Phaaze and the leviathans it uses to corrupt other worlds pose the scarier possibility that cancer could grow indefinitely after your death, or even be contagious.
so, phazon = cancer, got it! with that, what happens in this game?
well, Samus' evil child / twin, infects Samus and her newfound besties with phazon, so that their bodies are literally producing it internally, unlike the space pirates who are merely under its mind-controlling effects, called "corruption". Samus' besties unfortunately ALSO become corrupted by the phazon growing in them, and end up fighting to defend the leviathans and assist Phaaze's objective to corrupt the universe.
in Samus' case, she resists becoming enthralled, and fights to kill every leviathan that reached the Galactic Federation, before going to the source and killing off phazon once and for all.
however, each leviathan she kills exposes her to blasts of highly concentrated phazon, which in turn cause the phazon inside of her to grow, leaving her more and more grotesque. as the player you will likely find yourself worrying that you/Samus will not end up making it, with the rate things are going.
a particularly apt way of creating this fear, is that the phazon growth literally advances in stages, and is quite reminiscent of a tumor. below are images that show each time the phazon in Samus grows, usually after killing a leviathan. the last one shows when Samus steps on the planet Phaaze and experiences a sudden worsening of her condition.
notably, this occurs in four major stages---the initial one is present when Samus wakes up from her coma (note the medical setting and the medical consultation vibe of that scene) but not seen until just before it grows after defeating the first leviathan on Bryyo, the first major area/planet explored in the game. in this respect, each of the four planets of the game correspond to the stages (I, II, III, IV) of Samus' "cancer". tendrils begin to emerge, suggesting the threat of metastasis, and the size of the tumor becomes alarming, comparable to a large carcinoma. in this last stage on planet Phaaze, the game mechanic is that waiting too long literally results in her death. interesting!
each planet has a progressively higher difficulty level, and as such requires the player to use hypermode (the ability that Samus gains from having phazon grow internally) more and more. the animation that plays when the player dies from spending too much time in hypermode or waiting too long on Phaaze literally depicts the tumor suddenly exploding and spreading everywhere, making the metastasis analogy stronger. not to mention that this type of "game-over" is referred to as "terminal corruption" in-game.
oh, and the four stages are also accompanied by changes in Samus' appearance, as seen in her reflection while using the scan visor---one can see purple veins on her face, and that her eyes eventually develop blue auras and cateracts. another, more noticeable visual change is that her armorsuit also becomes "iced" with phazon, and the visor itself becomes more and more opaque. once again notice that there are four variants. finally, the exploration of the GFS Valhalla and taking the fight to Phaaze are evocative of Samus seeking out her "cure", since ultimately her corruption is completely reversed (visualized by the tumor suddenly shrinking into nothing) after defeating Dark Samus.
(no metroid prime 3 analysis is complete without showing those images off)
as many of us know from personal experience, cancer is frightening. the idea that one's own body can turn on them that way, and watching it slowly wear away at a loved one (which includes oneself) is heart-breaking. there can be devastation even if one recovers fully---Samus' survival but mourning for her lost companions underscores this.
and so, the visuals, gameplay mechanics, and story progression of the game, all combine to evoke imagery of a battle with cancer. along the way, though, some of these same things we pointed out can be identified with aspects of reproduction and child birth. this is partially unavoidable, since cancer is endogenic to the patient, and thus can be interpreted as a sort of "monstrous birth", as it were.
Part 2: Am I Gregnant?
cancer is something born from the patient, a consequence of unrestricted but pathological reproduction, that should have been inhibited, but now cannot be. the cause is a malicious cell that goes unnoticed by the immune system oftentimes, because it is literally you.
cancer symbolism can be related to the idea of the "monstrous birth": in this case, your child--something reproduced from you, though not necessarily birthed--is something abhorrent and/or threatens to kill you. Rosemary's Baby is a classic film that features this idea, but the baby does not threaten the mother, and instead the horror lies mostly in the mother's treatment by the people around her. she experiences extreme isolation and dehumanization, seen only as a vessel for the child of satan. (fun fact: one of the background actors in that movie became a cult leader). the death of all of Samus' fellow bounty hunters also serves to evoke some of this post-partum isolation, and the ending cutscene of Samus remembering each of them means that her loneliness isn't something to just ignore.
related concepts are tokophobia (the fear of childbirth), and the very real and grave risks on maternal health associated with childbirth (which in turn can motivate or exacerbate the former). imagery on these topics includes general death during childbirth, ektopic pregnancies, osteoporosis and bone diesease from depletion of calcium of the mother from multiple childbirths (often overlooked consequence upon maternal health actually!), or from the social dimension, how impregnation was a tool used to subjugate women.
in our case, the draining of the mother's vitality by the child is of especial interest, and this theme is in fact featured in many stories (easy example is The Giving True, or a favorite of mine, Fehérlófia) and is often not even framed as a "bad" thing. i won't take apart that last bit since we'll be here forever... and i should at least try to minimize my personal viewpoints in this section and dodge the thorny matter of moralization.
in any case, the "siphoning" aspect's relevance should be clear from the draining of cancer / phazon corruption mentioned above. (and after all, the titular monster of the game series' dinstinguishing trait is to suck the lifeforce out of its victims when in its larval stage)
it can be interesting (and divisive) to characterize the "child" (literal or metaphorical) in a "monstrous birth" scenario as evil---one could play devil's advocate and argue that it merely wants to survive and grow. that, after all, is Phaaze's objective. is it so wrong that it wants to live? (yes, because in living it destroys. the answer is easy in Phaaze's / cancer's case).
metroid prime 3, however, really cements this connection and makes them equivalent. the low-hanging fruit is of course that Dark Samus is Samus' literal evil offspring, born against her will by metroid prime stealing her genetic material at the end of the first game. they have a very special mommy/daughter relationship <3
but that was already present back in metroid prime 2, so that idea isn't exactly new. what is different, is that Phaaze / the carcinogenic aspect wasn't known in these first two games. phazon was just this really weird awful substance that showed up on two different planets... and a meteor was involved in both cases. the big reveal is of course, that the meteor was the key and that Phaaze, a living planet is to blame.
this planet's whole schtick is it is trying to make copies of itself with these meteors (the leviathans). Dark Samus makes the threat of Phaaze much greater, though---and in this respect the negative impact of the "child" on the "mother"'s health is pretty immediate and concrete. what compounds this is that Dark Samus corrupted Samus (not a leviathan) and imagery that accompanies this, is that the tumor growing in Samus greatly resembles the puddle of phazon that Dark Samus is born from in the secret cutscene at the end of the first game:
on top of this, the cutscene that shows the growth of that tumor in Samus after she defeats each leviathan has some curious features that also increase the reproductive imagery. a spark flies in from a tube or vascular structure and then implants inside the tumor, which is seen embedded in an unknown location in Samus' body.
this imagery is highly suggestive of the process of embryonic implantation. a cluster of cells have attached to the uterine wall, with the spark flying inward suggesting insemination. granted, the latter part usually happens once, and before the formation of a blastocyte, but i digress.
on top of that, the first time we see this cutscene, we have a moment that actually makes the metaphor a bit more obvious. immediately afterward, Samus kneels to the ground and takes off her helmet to vomit, with the vomit itself appearing very phazon-like. it's of course very suggestive of morning sickness in early pregnancy. the gif below is zoomed in from the actual cutscene in the game, which is taken at a distance.
so, via Dark Samus we get how this is a narrative of Samus birthing, metaphorically, and against her will, a demon child that basically ruins her life until she kills it. and said child is associated with a "cancer" upon the universe. at this point, then, i could stop: this is indeed the uterine cancer game. and as noted above, these games are more explorative than didactic, so there really isn't too much of a conclusion to draw, besides, perhaps, that life as a woman is really fucking hard.
but! there's still more symbolism to share! all of the above covers Samus' experience. but there is a LOT of uterine / reproductive imagery associated with Phaaze and the leviathans that i don't want to skip over, so the next section is a sort of "appendix" that's allllll about that! wahoo!
Appendix: The Monstrous Feminine
this next section will mostly be a "slide deck" with some light commentary. it is worth noting at the start here, though, that a lot of the forthcoming are textbook examples of the monstrous feminine, a set of horror archetypes first collected and analyzed in the work of Barbara Creed. i make no illusions of being intelligent enough to dive into full social theory, so i will just leave it at: "check out that wikipedia page and you'll start seeing it". or better yet, consider reading the full works.
but in short: in horror, feminimity is typically associated with victimhood. however, when monsters or horror elements are present which are specifically feminine, they tend to tap into reproductive imagery, framing it as frightening and taboo, or, in the case of vagina dentata (the fanged vagina), it is something that actively castrates. related is the fact that in a lot of horror media, variations of reproductive anatomy and creatures of indeterminate gender tap into intersexism and transphobia to shock the audience. for many of us, though, this can also be an empowering experience as we imagine ourselves as a powerful being lashing out at an unfair society. like i said, there's a lot to be said about this, and i will not attempt todo much beyond prime your own thoughts on the subject (badum tss).
anyways, metroid prime 3: the uterine cancer game, features plenty of this, specifically in the horror elements it creates for phazon and the living planet Phaaze. patriarchal society already views reproductive organs as taboo, and considers the uterus, ovaries, and vagina straight-up vulgar. so, by combining structures resembling those organs with the cancer-like nature of phazon, retro studios got instant creepiness points for their game.
so! as a result, there are quite a few examples of ovarian, uterine, and vaginal shapes and imagery in phazon corrupted lifeforms. this is slightly separate from the main themes discussed above, since it's mostly just for the horror element, if you ask me. but! it does make the tagline of "the uterine cancer game" all the more apt. let's get into it, shall we?
Phaaze: Monster Mama
the living planet Phaaze's goal is to reproduce itself by creating leviathan seeds. once the seed embeds itself in a planet, it begins a forcible conversion process, and after enough time the afflicted planet becomes a Phaaze clone. the rape imagery is pretty immediate here. on top of that, as Samus makes her way down to the final battle with Dark Samus during the battle of Phaaze, she finds a room called a "genesis chamber" (from greek "γένεσις", origin. compare with "γέννησις", birth). in this room is what the scan visor identifies as a "serpentine womb" (so, textbook monstrous feminine) which is an elongated organ that gestates an infant leviathan near Phaaze's core before sending it upward to the surface, where it will grow further before being launched to infect another planet.
the baby. (leviathan, that is)
the scan visor text for the serpentine womb. particularly notable about this segment is that Samus literally kills this leviathan infant and destroys this womb to gain access to the final area. abort that thang!!!!
i forget the context but at one point on twitter metroid fans used this as evidence that Samus is pro-choice, and cheers, i'll drink to that! also, is it just me, or am i now realizing that the charged hypermode shot... looks vaguely ejaculative. hm.
and here is some concept art and individual renderings of the serpentine womb! on the right you can really see the upper section, somewhat flagella-like.
so yeah! Phaaze is a planet filled with poisonous wombs for growing its evil leviathan babies. speaking of, when they get to be fullsize, there is a lot of reproductive imagery in the leviathan seeds!
My Cute Little Demon Babies: the Leviathans
the leviathans end up being massive creatures, and in terms of gameplay when they crash into a planet Samus eventually ends up flying into them and battling the phazon core of each, a weird shrimplike giant eyeball thingy inside of a huge chamber (also called the phazon core). these chambers are chock full of reproductive imagery, and pulse with life (since it is literally inside a living thing). for one, in the corners there are these long structures that resemble a uterus with birthing canal. it's hard to catch them in one shot, and i don't have means of capturing my own gameplay footage at the moment, so this is borrowed (as i'll cite in the credits / acknowledgements at the end).
a feature of the leviathan seeds is that beating the boss guarding the phazon core within grants Samus a new upgrade which she tests on some corrupted structures that emerge. for the urtraghus leviathan seed, two structures which resemble elongated fallopian tubes with lumpy ovaries at the end (that suddenly grow spikes! cancerous or yeowch factor, take your pick) descend that need to be destroyed with the hyper grapple ability:
and finally, for all of the seeds, once you destroy these structures that test your newly gained ability, the actual phazon core itself (confusing, i know) emerges from a fleshy diaphragm in the ceiling. while it makes its way out, it resembles a breaching head. once it is through, there are also umbilicus-like structures connecting it that can be seen. the birthing imagery is thus pretty clear.
Samus' response to seeing this phazon core is, of course, to give that leviathan a late-term abortion.
The GFS Valhalla: the KLAR Nebula and the Metroid Hatcher
it's established in the very beginning of the game that a space pirate attack on a Galactic Federation vessel undergoing a training mission, the GFS Valhalla, is the start of the game's events. later on, you obtain the coordinates to explore the derelict ship, and a key part of the game is reaching one of the innermost chambers to obtain crucial information. the GFS Valhalla is one of the most horror themed areas in a metroid game (and used to scare the hell out of me as a kid). most of the horror is from jumpscares, Unsettling Music, a shit ton of phazon metroids (and you can see hundreds of them outside the ship) and Galactic Federation marine corpses in various twisted positions. good stuff! there are two features however which are relevant to the purposes of this essay.
the first, is that the wreckage of the Valhalla is located in the KLAR nebula (emphasis Fleet Admiral Castor Dane), which makes all of the lighting reddish and offputting. the nebula can be seen through some of the windows and holes in the ship's hull, and even better during the cutscene that plays when Samus arrives there. real life nebulae definitely look strange, but in the case of the klar nebula, there is an almost amniotic look to it (certainly cell-like at the very least). the reddishness might even carry connotations of stillbirth.
either that, or just red blood cells! but still, red lighting and a creepy organic look to it. nebulae really are quite strange in real life too, just to reiterate.
inside the GFS Valhalla there is a miniboss that ranges in difficulty from formidable to trivial depending on the upgrades that you have at the time of your visit: the metroid hatcher! with the x-ray visor and nova beam it is literally a oneshot kill. if you don't have those upgrades though since you explored the Valhalla early, or you find the other two optional metroid hatchers earlier in the game while exploring for bonus items, you might have a rougher time, and in the process see the hatcher's capability of birthing phazon metroids from its maw (hence the name). that last detail, in addition to... just looking at it? ...makes it clear that yup, that's meant to be a vagina with teeth.
i don't think i really have to explain this one too much. so i guess i won't (im running out of steam here)
to end things off, let's just look at a random critter that you find on the GFS Valhalla and on Phaaze: the jelsac! if you get too close to it or shoot it enough, its gelatinous body grows and explodes, which does significant damage if you're nearby. and the shape and bursting nature of it are kinda similar to water breaking at the start of labor.
and actually i just ran out of pictures for this post. so, go check out the metroid wiki instead!
anyways! hope that you enjoyed the read, and hopefully now it is clear why i insist on calling it The Uterine Cancer game. let's go home kids.
Credits and Acknowledgements
especial thanks goes to the metroid wiki (and its wonderful admin @/bearborg) which provided most of the images in this post, and has good further reading. next i'd like to extend my thanks to my colleague @/sablegear0---her metroid writings and anaylses are always a delight to read, and in my posts leading up to this essay she has shared some very good ideas and showed her support for me sitting down to collect all of this.
i'd also like to thank @/metroidprimepics for providing additional images (and places to link to!), and, actually, for helping me remember that this symbolism exists. the last time i played corruption before this year was in 2014, and so i had forgotten a lot of these details until i saw posts on metroidprimepics' blog. the final image and video source is Pelis Juegos on youtube, who has a collection of all of the cutscenes in prime 3.
Cool and awesome chosen ones get sent to the Flesh Pit for their deeds.
I managed to forget that the final area was gonna be fleshy. If I had a nickel for every one of my favorite game(s) of all time that ended in a flesh pit, I'd have a nickel and a half because Mementos Deapths Persona 5 is not as fleshy and also technically Royal's last area is the exact opposite so like
Had this idea for a while and finally executed on it. I thought the timing was something to capitalize on. It’s based on a joke in a Discord server I’m in.
