In an earlier post that previewed this year's movies, I mentioned that I should see Prometheus since Alien: Covenant is due out later this year, and I often like Ridley Scott, and I generally like sci-fi. Last time Scott and
sci-fi were together, we got The Martian, one of the best movies of that year, and possibly one of
the best space-centric movies ever.
Prometheus could
not be more opposite of The
Martian in quality of writing, acting, or storytelling. It is exactly the sort of movie that rigidly structures all of its
dialogue and actions around achieving specific ends rather than telling a
story, playing out like a checklist to get to its labored ending, while sacrificing all
the elements of quality on the altar of its own self-importance.
Most movies that turn into suspense or horror have that painfully obvious moment where someone does
something stupid to set in motion the events of the story. In Prometheus, that moment is every minute of the whole movie. Somehow
someway, this big-budget prequel to the heralded Alien franchise manages to
commit every single plot-driving bad decision conceivable. For that reason,
this entire post is going to be an enjoyable hack job for me, providing that
genuine satisfaction that can only come from a dose of mordant scathing.
Oh but where to begin?
To start, chew on this:
paradoxically fantasy-driven scientists, who somehow convince an optimistic
billionaire to fund a space mission based on the infallible evidence of ...cave
drawings. They have faith that these cave drawings mean that
they were invited by their creators (presumably the self-destructive albino in
the opening) to come and seek them out. So, with overwhelming naiveté and
stubborn resolve, they set out to find their creators, confident of being
welcomed with open arms as to a long-lost grandparent. One of these scientists
is the unlikely mix of dreamy, religious, and scientific. The other is so imbecile that upon finding exactly what he had hoped to, he promptly engages in a brooding smorgasbord about the complete failure that he is.
Come to think of it, there's really no one to like in this crew. They're all either uncreative cut-outs of every stock character ever imagined, expendable idiots, or both. Even Charlize Theron is about as ineffectual as they come, being too cliché to even be a credible ice queen (which is saying something considering her history with that kind of role). She also has no real purpose other than to put a famous face in the film. The rest of the ragtag crew beg the audience to wonder how these people held employment anywhere, let alone as the leading minds of engineering, GPS mapping, or anything else. There's no one here to like, and no one here to genuinely hate; just a few you're not all that sorry to see go, and a few that seem like they deserved better.
Come to think of it, there's really no one to like in this crew. They're all either uncreative cut-outs of every stock character ever imagined, expendable idiots, or both. Even Charlize Theron is about as ineffectual as they come, being too cliché to even be a credible ice queen (which is saying something considering her history with that kind of role). She also has no real purpose other than to put a famous face in the film. The rest of the ragtag crew beg the audience to wonder how these people held employment anywhere, let alone as the leading minds of engineering, GPS mapping, or anything else. There's no one here to like, and no one here to genuinely hate; just a few you're not all that sorry to see go, and a few that seem like they deserved better.


Every single decision shown
onscreen is designed to enhance the plot, whether or not it's consistent with
the character or the situation. Most of the dialogue seems painfully forced and often out of place, while characters constantly contradict what little development they’ve had. Example, two characters decide to abandon the
survey team when they encounter a pile of extraterrestrial corpses that have
clearly been decaying for quite some time. A few moments later however, one of
these two expresses absolute infatuation with a live snake-like alien creature
that behaves in a clearly aggressive way. Dr. Shaw's whole purpose is to meet
the Engineers, humankind's creators, but even after acknowledging that they are
not who she thought they were and witnessing the carnage caused by them, she
obstinately decides to seek them out even further so she can ask them why they
want to obliterate humans. There is a glaringly obvious flaw in this plan,
but that’s where the movie ends.
I could go on and on picking
apart every last flaw of this movie, but since that would probably take about
as long as the movie’s runtime, ergo a colossal waste of time, I can be
satisfied with covering the basics. Suffice to say that this movie is a prime
example of overdone heavy expositional dialogue, plot devices, gratuitous use
of sci-fi tropes, and plot holes so large, they harpoon not only this movie, but others within the franchise. At the end of the day, Prometheus retells the same story we've already seen a number of times before: somewhere in space, an odd crew bring alien matter on board their ship, and pretty much everyone dies. Prometheus had
great potential as an origin story, but wastes it all with constipated
storytelling and laboring to lay the groundwork for Alien: Covenant, which will probably in turn tell that story again.
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