FASSBENDER.
RAPACE.
THERON.
You had me at Fass--
This was the movie I was most looking forward to this summer. And, well, I left the theater disappointed.
If you haven't seen the movie, this post contains SPOILERS.
Let's start with the positive, the movie is beautiful. The photography, production design, VFX, everything visual is gorgeous. And, story-wise, the movie starts out well. Two married scientists, Shaw and Holloway, discover cave paintings that solidify their theory about human creation. Fast forward to a space mission searching on for the Creators on the depicted planet from cave paintings. The exploration starts out slow which I didn't mind. Especially in thriller/horror movies, I think it's effective to start slow and ramp up the pace as you go along. The longer it takes for something to happen, the more tension has built up. Prometheus does a good job with that.
It's when stuff starts to go wrong for the crew that the movie derails on me. Now I've only seen the movie once and perhaps I missed a few things. Some of my issues with the movie might seem nit-picky, and I promise I didn't go into the movie expecting to dissect it, there were just a lot of things that rubbed me the wrong way as I was getting theater ass. Ultimately, I found this to be one of the most frustrating movies I've seen in a long time. You know how sometimes you see a movie that wasn't terrible but you didn't like it and you can't quite put your finger on why? Well, I knew exactly why I didn't like Prometheus as I was watching it.
First, the crew (and this crew was large, way too large) find a Creator head and bring it back to Prometheus, their ship. Shaw and Other Female Doctor analyze it. And Holloway, who's spent a good chunk of his life searching for human origin and finally found it, calmly sits across the room boozing it up. WHAT? Is he not a scientist? Why isn't he all up in that? He seems like he'd rather be at a honky-tonk on Earth.
Onto the Geologists (Broken Arm and Acid Face). Are they even Geologists? What are they looking for? I have no idea. They seem terrified by the life form reading, like they know about the existence of potentially-deadly alien life, but it's never clear why they broke off from the others or what they were doing.
And enigmatic David. I'm tired of evil robots. Robots aren't evil. They're neutral. Why wasn't David neutral? Why did he poison Holloway? David was just working for some old dude who didn't want to die. Why was he programmed to kill a scientist? It didn't make sense.
And then there's the Creators. Somewhere along the line some crew member drops a line about this not being the Creators' home planet. This is some dangerous shiz, and they were way too clever to use their own planet as a scientific playground. So why did the cave paintings point to this place? Maybe it's just supposed to be another of the movie's many unanswered questions, but it strikes me as a continuity error. And, as a Creator, if you made a race in the likeness of yourself how many tens of thousands of years ago, and then they just woke you up and spoke to you in your own language, would your reaction really be to kill them? Maybe answer a couple questions, ask a couple yourself, and then kill them. I don't know, just a thought.
There is supposed to be a noble moment near the end when Idris Elba and two other people decide to sacrifice themselves with the ship to stop the Creators from destroying the Earth. Okay. So, here on Earth in 2012, we have the technology to launch things at other things and blow them up, no manpower needed. More than a few decades from now, we won't have the technology to launch an object at another object, no manpower needed? And, more depressingly, why were those other two characters even in this movie? Except for that awesome moment when Idris asks the Asian guy for coordinates or something and his face is freaking out and he's clearly screaming his lines, but they ADR'd him to be calmly say, "I'm pulling them up," or something similar. Did anyone else notice that? I kind of want to see the movie again just for that line, 'cause that's funny stuff. But those two characters did nothing except steal screen time from Idris. How dare they.
And poor Charlize. What the hell was going on there? She crawls out of the hyper sleep, dripping wet and clearly ill, and immediately drops into push-ups while asking for status updates. Girlfriend doesn't need anyone to hold her hair when she pukes. This woman is badass. And then the movie utterly fails at doing the daddy-doesn't-love-me-jealous-sibling thing. And then we're supposed to cheer when she is literally crushed? Why? Because she killed Holloway after warning him 50 times not to come any closer? Because she followed THE EXACT SAME PROTOCOL THAT RIPLEY TRIED TO IN ALIEN? A villain who acts like a hero. Yikes.
And, finally, the confusion of Shaw. She never puts anything together. She never realizes that David killed Holloway, which seems strange. She doesn't seem terribly upset or surprised at the ulterior motives on the ship. Our hero doesn't need to put all the pieces together, but she should at least complete the parts of the puzzle that directly affect her. Also, she seems so sweet and accessible, yet has no relationship with anyone else on the ship, which makes it feel like everyone else is against her. I don't think that was the case but it was confusing.
The Surgery Scene. I know, what could be wrong with The Surgery Scene? Nothing! The surgery scene is a great scene for Shaw. It's gross but highly watchable (and I'm a little queasy). Unfortunately, it comes right after scenes where David drugs her, and Other Female Doctor and Another Male Doctor try to examine her, but she knocks them out. Then we have The Surgery Scene. And then Shaw discovers Weyland and decides to go meet the Creators and boom! EVERYONE was standing in front of the Creator, even though they all just assaulted each other. Awkward.
And also, if you're going to drop a line about humans not being able to survive on the planet's atmosphere without oxygen for X amount of time, please have a payoff somewhere. Anywhere. And also, if you drop a line like this, please don't have the Creator, with the same DNA as humans, able to hop about from one ship to the next in the open atmosphere, when it's been established that they breathe oxygen, too.
And, finally, ohmygodwhyhaveGuyPearceplayanoldman??? I mean, I know old actors play all the major roles in every single movie nowadays, so I'm sure it was near impossible to find someone over 60 in Hollywood looking for work. But TRY. Old people masks look like old people masks. He looked more computer generated than the Creators. Ugh.
I tried not to watch the trailer during the oodles of sports programming leading up to the movie's release. I could shift my eyes away, but I would still hear the music. That creepy, siren pulsing, techno-y music sounded perfectly terrifying. That music is not in this movie. This movie has a lot of...wait for it...french horn. Wow. I really thought they were going to go more cutting edge with the music. The french horn seemed wrong and distracted me more than once. I know it was an artistic choice to have a very '90's sounding, old-school score, but I think the movie would've benefited from more of a Chemical Brothers feel, since the look of the movie was so cool.
I hadn't seen Alien in many years and I watched it before seeing Prometheus. Perhaps the ship that the Alien crew comes across was not supposed to be the same ship as in Prometheus. But it looks just like it. Couldn't they have ended the movie with the last surviving Creator crawling back onto its ship and climbing into the Captain Chair (yes, that's its scientific name) before dying? I would've forgiven a lot if that would've matched up. I may have even smiled. But, alas, Prometheus ended and the chair was empty. Along with my expectations.
Prometheus feels like an episode of LOST; an episode near the end where the characters were as confused as the audience and for every question answered, three more questions pop up in its place. I think it's merely coincidence that Damon Lindeloff had a hand in the movie. Remember the whole Nottingham debacle? If not, please check out Sex in a Submarine's article, it's well worth the read. Ridley Scott makes the movie he wants to make. And that's that.
This is what I've taken away from Prometheus as a writer: you can make your story as confusing as you want, as long as it's clear how your characters FEEL about the situation they're in. I didn't know how Shaw was feeling about anything after the first act. I knew I wanted to root for her. I wanted her to find closure. But her character never seemed...anywhere, emotionally. If your character doesn't know where they're at, your audience won't care where they're going. And that is movie death.
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