Posted on 06/18/2012 1:21:42 PM PDT by pabianice
Well, I just saw "Prometheus."
***************SPOILERS******************************
First, forget the professional reviews. They have either been paid for, or the reviewers have some personal problems.
First, the good. The CGI and set production is great. Vivid colors, beautifully lit, every background detail is unimpeachable. This movie is the latest proof that movies have been given-over to looks over everything else.
Now, the bad. This movie has been given over to CGI and FX. The plot is incoherent and the characters act so stupidly that it is impossible not to laugh at what are supposed to be the most dramatic scenes. A robot is frequently the most human character.
The plot is wafer thin. We first see an alien making his body explode next to a waterfall as a huge flying saucer hovers overhead. Then on to AD 2089, where computers match ancient cave paintings to a constellation a la "Stargate." Then we see a ship entering orbit around a planet in 2093, bearing 17 explorers who have come to check-out the planet at the center of a distant solar system. The first laugh comes from the timing. The movie would have you believe that in just 80 years from now we have corporations sending-out huge FTL ships bearing people who have been in hypersleep while traveling 500,000 light years in two years time. Makes Star Trek look conservative. This nonsensical timing makes you think of Obama ending the manned space program and just detracts from the plot.
Now, the crew. The crew looks, acts, and sounds like mental patients at a half-way house. The very cream of scientific humanity, we are led to believe, most of whom signed-on to this suicide mission without having been told what the mission is. The ship's captain has apparently watched too many "Miami Vice" reruns. The corporate boss on board is the done-to-death beautiful ice princess who lacks any humanity. Perhaps I spent too much time in the real Navy, but all this ship of doofuses did was make me laugh. Zero situational awareness and just plain stupidity. Whomever wrote the script is completely clueless about military operations. Hell, even police operations.
Anyway, the ship lands and immediately the crew runs out to investigate the dangerous-looking, mysterious structures that look like giant termite hives topped by the figures of human heads. Weapons? Of course not. These are "scientists." Oooo… the tension! The movie then descends into a very bad Nightmare on Elm Street parody. The crew gets lost inside the hive. Duh! What do they do? They take-off their helmets and leave them behind because they discover that inside the air is breathable. No matter that the next chamber may be poisonous and kill them all. Real SA.
In short order they find lots of alien bodies a la the giant figure on the pilot’s seat in the alien spaceship from the movie of that name. Something bad has happened here, people! They manage to snag the head of a dead alien to cart back to their ship when out of nowhere a mob of T5 tornadoes appears and makes the crew hustle a mad dash back to the ship. Of course, there is the compulsory people-caught-in-a- whirlwind scene that has zero drama. And two crewmen are left stranded in the hive until the wind abates. Of course, both are soon eaten horribly by monsters. I expected them to have red shirts on under their spacesuits.
Back aboard the ship, things go from bad to stupid. The friendly robot -- for no imaginable reason -- poisons some champagne with alien spores and then gives the drink to one of the brainless crewmembers. Of course, he soon metamorphosises to a hulking, super-strong alien with black goo squirting out of his arteries while he tries to kill the rest of the crew. Been there, seen that. And, per 100 previous monster movies, he proves almost impossible to kill. Soon, the entire crew is fighting giant alien exploding heads and one becomes pregnant with an alien baby. In perhaps the film’s most gripping scene, this poor woman she uses an automated medical care unit to give herself a caesarian as she screams in pain and watches the monster be dragged from her innards while the blood really flies. If any of this seems familiar, it’s because the film is supposed to be a prequel to the classic “Alien” from 1979.
But wait! There’s more! The robot figures-out how to reanimate the remaining alien humanoid in stasis. As Arnold Schwarzenegger says in “The Last Action Hero,” Big Mistake! The reanimated alien is a murderous psychopath whose DNA is human, hence the first scene of the exploding alien at the waterfall. You see, the aliens seeded their own DNA onto Earth, creating humans. Don’t worry about the whole “Then where did the rest of life on Earth come from?” question. It’s best at this point to stop asking questions about the plot of this movie.
In short order, the nusto alien kills almost the entire remaining crew by pulling their heads off (obviously didn’t read the “We Come In Peace” primer). We then learn that he is on the way to Earth with a cargo of black goo that kills everything. His reason? You got me. But it makes the crippled story line at least move in some direction. So, the scientist who just had a caesarean done by the machine becomes the last one standing, trying to get what is left of the crew to destroy the angry alien’s ship before it can launch on its way to Earth and kill everyone. I was kinda pulling for her since she has just had her two foot long incision stapled up by an industrial milling machine and it has just gotta really, really hurt. The alien’s ship is, of course, a duplicate of the one the crew of Nostromo found in “Alien.” Get it?
Anyway, it gets even more confusing and violent and I’ll let it go at this point. Suffice it to say that the “Alien” movie stuff really spills out of everywhere (and I mean “spills”) and the angry alien is stopped from going to Earth. “Prometheus” even lets loose ends fly so there can be a sequel. If they can find someone who can actually write. I hope it’s not the team that wrote this bomb.
This may have been a good 80 minute movie. But at 2+ hours, it’s just a prolonged disappointment.
BTW, I have no connections to the movie industry. I am just disappointed that science fiction has fallen so far from Harlan Ellison, Arthur Clarke, Larry Niven, Ray Bradbury, Philip Dick, Robert Sheckley, and so many others. Save your money and wait for this to come to cable next January. With a couple of cold ones in you and sitting on your own comfy couch, it probably won’t seem as bad.
“I expected them to have red shirts on under their spacesuits.”
:D
I liked Men in Black III. I won’t waste money on this one.
The Engineers were on that backwater planet to safely
hold the spores which became the "monsters" and then the
well known alien AFTER it passed through the
Engineer (a species which created life on Earth,
and then for some still unknown reason got
really upset and decided to whack Earth entirely).
IMHO, it is a good film.
I can’t believe that this was the best script available for this story. I was really looking forward to see this film and it was a huge waste of time.
Well, I liked it. The only real fault I found with it is that they didn’t really give any of the characters other than the android and Dr Shaw any depth, or any reason to give a crap when bad things happened to them. As far as I know, the answer as to why they wanted to kill all humans will be answered in the sequel, when the protagonist reaches the engineer’s home-world for some answers, as indicated by the storyline.
For what its worth, the music and soundtrack by Marc Streitenfeld is every bit as haunting and beautiful as Jerry Goldsmith’s was for “Alien”...
Who needs a plot when you have really expensive special effects?
Have not seen it but couple friends did and they thought it was good.
I liked it. But it’s not a movie that spoon feeds you, you actually have to think about it. If you think about it then you realize it gives 90% of the back story for the Alien franchise and sets the first movie almost to the frame. But you gotta think. Maybe that’s why this guy didn’t like it.
It has been over 50 years since we landed on the moon and I am still waiting for my flying car.
This movie is the latest proof that movies have been given-over to looks over everything else.
Now, the bad. This movie has been given over to CGI and FX. The plot is incoherent and the characters act so stupidly that it is impossible not to laugh at what are supposed to be the most dramatic scenes.”
This problem is as old as Aristotle’s Poetics.....
> I can’t believe that this was the best script available for this story. I was really looking forward to see this film and it was a huge waste of time.
If you think this was a waste of time, you should watch Battleship.
Battleship is the suckiest film I’ve seen in years. Watching the tennis channel is more exciting and more believeable.
I had a flying car when I was 16.
But I found the bouncing and flipping to be not worth the trouble as we made contact with the ground again a few seconds later, and again and again...
Sucked!!!
I saw it, no suspense, no horror, little action.
1 Great Riff... “I love rocks”
Great effects
Odd stuff that makes no sense
Water check, Temp in goldielocks region check, fear of Biological infection.. nope.
guy making map... gets lost ?
quad tracks racing in dust of truck ?
Random Holovids of what happened before...pure plot deviceium
Major Medical device that has only male programming.. guess the SOFTWARE upgrade for BOTH genders was too much for a TRILLION dollar project to absorb.
Capt of ship decides these things are not getting of planet.. why let the people that want to help them go into the site ?
It’s not great but not as bad as this makes it out to be. One of the great things about Blade Runner was some of the deeper open-ended questions the movie probed and didn’t answer. It made you think. I believe Ridley was going for that again here but didn’t quite pull it off. A plot hole is not a deep metaphysical question - it’s just a plot hole and this flick leaves too many of them hanging out there unaswered. I wouldn’t be surprised if I watched it again on DVD I’d see some really obscure clues in the background which would help but which no person could really be expected to pick up on the first time watching this special effects extravaganza. I give Ridley props for trying but I hope next time the execution is better script wise. I’d give it a 6 or 7 out of 10.
I’m with the reviewer. It sucked. And I DISLIKED the heroine and her imbecilic boyfriend IMMENSELY.
There was suspense and some horror.
The guy wasn’t making maps, he carried the machines that when released fed data back to the main ship which made the maps.
The holovids aren’t that random. Think about our own surveillance systems, think about how useful it would be to crime investigations if you could replay the “tape” over the place instead of on some TV. The day we get that technology cheap our surveillance systems will do it.
It wasn’t a major medical device it was a RARE medical device, and it wasn’t bought by the project it was bought by the expedition monitor for personal use.
By the time the capt decided these things weren’t getting off the planet people were already into the site.
Same here, and we were told the same, everyone really like it.
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