"Prometheus" -- a real disappointment

Regal Cinemas | 6/18/12 | Vanity

[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.

[tbw2]

Why did the android give the alien / “engineer” bio-weapon to the male archeologist? Why kill one of the two people who were the spirit of the expedition?

[RaisingCain]

Well, to be fair, the android poisoned the schmuck who kept insulting him throughout the film. I suspect the android was acting under orders, and was aware of what the Engineers were doing to a much deeper degree than anyone else.

[tbw2]

The daughter of the owner of the company may have chosen to have the prototype in her personal life pod in case she needed help and didn’t have a doctor.

[discostu]

2 reasons. He wanted to make life just like people, and the archeologist accidentally gave him permission when he said he’d do anything and everything for the mission. David probably didn’t think it would kill him.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I’m still going to see it. I like Ridley Scott’s stuff, but I have come to realize that I will likely see a “beautiful” movie, but not a “good” movie at the same time.

[RaisingCain]

As for why the Engineers wanted to wipe out human kind. I suspect they were developing a biological super weapon, hoping to use mankind as the basis for creating it, or at least testing it out. The alien always takes on the characteristics of the host it infects. Infect a bunch of dogs, they come out a little different. Infect a human being, it comes out adapted for human beings, with high intelligence. Of course, those were the latter Xenos, the end product. The messed up though in accidentally getting infected themselves. Probably on the Derelict that the Nostromo found, the weaponized DNA had gone its full course, leading to an Alien Queen who laid the eggs.

[31R1O]

Did you see The Fantastic Mr. Fox? I thought it was great. I know that some folks around here can’t stand George Clooney but politics aside he is a great (voice) actor in the film. It helps if you can appreciate Roald Dahl’s twisted sense of humor.

[dr_lew]

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.

Is the 500,000 figure from the movie? Our galaxy is 100,000 lys across. Perhaps a nearby dwarf galaxy ? Was this covered in the movie ? ( That's a joke. )

[Gen-X-Dad]

Best review I have seen explaining all the plot holes ...

Red Letter Media talks about Prometheus - SPOILERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0

By the way, it had a 70% box office drop off from week 1 to week 2. People were excited about it as far as an intelligent Sci-Fi prequel to Alien/Aliens and instead got migraine inducing plot holes with some cool A+ settings and eye candy. It is definitely being killed off by word of mouth and internet reviews.

[whd23]

It has been over 50 years since we landed on the moon

As a citizen of the future, do you have any good stock tips?

[PapaBear3625]

It has been over 50 years since we landed on the moon and I am still waiting for my flying car.

Then again, it was less than 40 years from the Wright Brothers (1903) to the first jet fighter (1942, the German ME 262)

[dr_lew]

Well, according to blastr, they were stated to be 300 trillion kilometers from earth, or about 31.7 lightyears. Then swiftfilm quotes Neil Degrasse Tyson ( a tweet I guess ) saying that Charlize Theron says they are "half a billion miles" from earth ... which is more like a light-hour, of course. I would guess that the 500,000 lys s/b 500,000,000 miles, and is based on this quote.

[Oztrich Boy]

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

1. Constrained by plot continuity, Aliens was set in 2179, 57 years after Alien.

2. 1790

1845

1876

[tbw2]

I thought it was related to the android’s comment of wishing to kill his “parents”, but that didn’t seem to fit since Weyland was his maker.

[DollyCali]

I too enjoyed it and for cinema think you just go to be entertained.

If you want perfection in data etc. Just go watch a documentary or read a history book

Sci Fi is that.. grown up fairy tales that take your imagination fun places.

I can’t disagree with the reviewer just think that super analysis can ruin a lot of things (including relationships!)

[publius911]

Bookmark

[Teacher317]

I almost walked out of the movie several times. What a joke. At the final insult to our intelligence is at the end... once I finally might have a shred of respect for a character... the lone survivor wants to travel, NOT back home to earth, but to the alien planet, to ask them WHY they want to erase humanity on earth... as if 1. they'll understand her language, and 2. care enough to answer even if they did. Those who seek extermination are not likely to take the time and trouble to answer their victims' whiny pleas of "why???"

(I really thought she was going to ask to go to the alien world to throw their weapons back at them, in a last great act of defiance. THAT I could have respected!!! Not once in the entire movie did a single character make a single decision that I could have agreed with or admired. Utterly pathetic writing.)

Dare I add in the spoilers of the trillionaire who assumes that "meeting his creator" will automatically result in his creator saving him from death, even though his creator created him to be mortal? How about the science crew that doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word "quarantine" on a foreign world? (This horribly bad re-hash of Alien seems to forget that each of the Alien movies had quarantine issues in them.)I vented to my siblings for an hour about the myriad of stupid scenes and lines... and Ridley Scott's promises that this is NOT a prequel to Aliens was squashed pretty nicely at the end when the Alien with a mouth-inside-a-mouth came out of the humanoid's chest cavity... UGH!!!!

[JoeProBono]

[Eye of Unk]

I still wonder why Caterpillar never actually made these in real life, I would think the military would go ape shit having these.

About the film, it was a slight disappointment but that was overshadowed by the stunning visuals. Not a bad movie, just a poorly written one.

Now Battleship was a fun movie, I liked it the same way I like cheese puffs, tastes good but you know you cannot live off them.

Hollywood is getting a bit leery of the social networks getting bad word of mouth out faster than they can teaser hype the film. They held back on the US release of John Carter because of bad reviews, but I loved John Carter and I have seen it at least three times now.

Now if you want a truly bad movie then look at Ghost Rider Two, now there is a film I saw, hated it and won’t buy the Blu Ray disc till its in the bargain bin. The movie just stinks of being made by a possible Russian mob trying to become the Hollywood of the Motherland.

Reviews of movies are getting to be like political polls, depends on who is paying for the reviews. And I hope to see more movie reviews here on FR.

[Norman Arbuthnot]

I did not think Prometheus was all that bad. It did not meet the high expectations that many sci fi fans had for it, myself included, but I still found it to be an entertaining film, albeit a flawed film. Prometheus was good, but not great imo. We have come to expect greatness from Ridley Scott, so it was a bit disappointing that this film did not measure up to Alien or Blade Runner. However, I think Prometheus is worth seeing on the big screen because of the outstanding special effects and production values. Scott did not disappoint in the FX dept. As many have noted, the plot has a lot of big holes in it, but the film moves along at a brisk pace, so I didn't think it was boring. The cast was strong overall and did a good job, given what they had to work with. Michael Fassbender, playing the android David, was especially good, although Fassbender is always good. I think the film tried to combine riveting action and spectacular special effects with high minded questions about the nature of man's origins and did not really succeed very well with the last part in my view. Scott and writers Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts may have bitten off more than they could chew with the last part. This film does not present the intellectual challenge of something like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but again, I thought it was an above average sci fi overall and fans of the Alien films in particular will probably find it interesting.