"you don't hate me. i'm just making jokes about robot mpreg. everyone else is actually writing it."
Hello, internet. Today I saw Prometheus. I was going to wait and see it with chiasmus, but she's away this weekend and all the people talking about it had me too intrigued to wait. (Though I will see it again with her, probably.)
Unspoilery review: It was good but not great and I found it sort of personally unsatisfying. The main problem is that it didn't know what kind of film it wanted to be.
The movie I wanted was scifi-horror, like the original movies. I wanted there to be long, tense moments and people running around space ships being afraid. I wanted more "in space, no one can hear you scream." That's...not really what it was. I would say it was an existential scifi movie with horror and family drama elements, and while that might be some people's cup of tea, it wasn't really mine? I was never bored by the movie, but it felt kind of lacking at the end.
The problems were all with the script--the acting was pretty good (credit where credit's due: Fassbender was really excellent--much better than I was expecting. Idris Elba shone in what little he was given to do. Charlize Theron was great. Noomi Rapace wasn't...awful, but her character was no Ripley.) and the effects were AMAZING. It was visually stunning. But the script...yeah.
I would break the movie down into three stories that they tried to make into one: The Weyland Corporation's quest for immortality and the ensuing internal conflict between David, who is intrigued by this quest and willing to help Weyland (if for his own purposes), and Vickers, who wants Weyland to accept death so that she can carry on in his stead. I think this plot thread intrigued me the most and, tragically, it's the one that gets the least attention, I think. I had wondered pretty early on if Vickers was Weyland's daughter and it brings something very interesting to Theron and Fassbender's scenes. Vickers is openly resentful of David, whom Weyland calls "the closest thing I'll ever have to a son," while making no mention that he DOES have a daughter. David doesn't like her very much either, and seems generally disdainful of humanity, or at least humanity who are disdainful of him. He cops a sarcastic sort of attitude with all of the humans who dismiss him and his constant comparison of the humans' questions for their creators to his questions for humans was a little anvil-y, but made a decent point.
(I have to be honest--all of the art/fic/bullshit about David 8 leading up to this had made me very, very sour on the whole CONCEPT of David 8 and I had to begrudgingly admit at the end of the movie that his was the character I thought had the most interesting plot. I almost don't want to admit this here because I'm a bitch and don't want to be lumped in with the ravenous fans who were getting on my nerves, but there you have it.)
The most interesting thing, more of a surprise to me than the revelation that Vickers was Weyland's daughter (as I said, I caught that one pretty quickly), was that David wanted Weyland dead, too. He and Shaw have this (paraphrased) conversation near the end:
Shaw: What happens to you when Weyland dies?
David: I'll be free.
Shaw: Is that what you want?
David: Don't we all want to see our parents die?
David doesn't want Weyland to be alive any more than Vickers does, he's just more willing to put up with Weyland's plans. I thought there was a lot to be done with their relationship and I liked what I saw, but, like I said, it's tragically the least explored of the three plots.
The second story is the main plot and it was the one I liked least and where a lot of the movie's failings come from. It follows Drs. Shaw and Holloway and their quest to find the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Their story sets up the overarching story for the movie. They see a series of cave paintings from different times and different places. They all seem to refer to beings from another world, the same beings from the same other world. Weyland Corp's spent a lot of money figuring out where that other world is and now they're off to find it so they can ask their makers' the great questions of "why are we here?" and "What comes next?"
(See? I so wasn't even kidding about "the great question of life, the universe, and everything.")
Their story has a lot to do with ~*having faith*~ and ~*the questions of being human*~ and ~*why are we here*~, all the usual existential bullshit. This story would have been more satisfying if any of those questions had been answered, but, of course, since this is just a summer blockbuster, they weren't. So in the end, we just have the bulk of the story of the movie taken up by people sitting around whining about the great question and being sad when they realize they won't get a chance to ask it.
(For my money, David gives the best answer I think any human is ever likely to get. When Holloway asks, "Why are we here? Why were we made?" David asks him, "Why do you think humans made robots?" and Holloway goes, "To prove that we could." And David goes, "Well, there you have it.")
The third story is, of course, the horror story. There's a big bad biological weapon out there and they're investigating it and people are getting infected and people are trapped in dark rooms, etc. This one was also mostly undeveloped. There were not NEARLY enough scares in this movie, guys. Seriously. I wanted it to be so much scarier. I mean, yeah, an alien can only pop out of John Hurt's stomach once, but still. We could have had some tense moments in dark corridors, but no. The scares were minimal. There wasn't even that much suspense or tension.
Also, character-wise...we never really see these people gel as a team and there wasn't a lot of chemistry between the cast the way there needs to be in a good ensemble film. We're told there are 17 crew members. Most of them are red shirts and if they had names, I didn't know them. They could have scaled down the cast a lot and it would have made the film feel smaller, which would have been good, in this case. Making the cast smaller has the effect of sort of giving it a personal, claustrophobic feel which is good for this kind of horror movie, where the lack of connection to other people is an important part of both the plot and what makes it creepy.
Overall, there was stuff that was super interesting, but most of it got shunted to the side to make way for a lot of existential drama. It's not very scary, if you're worried about that, but there is one scene of sort of...medical gore, I guess? There's a scene with a medical procedure that's kind of gross. I'll give you details if you're interested. But it wasn't bad and wasn't boring, just not the horror film I wanted. In a way, it kind of reminds me of the prequel to The Thing that came out last fall. I'm glad I saw it, it wasn't bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original.
If I were rating the Alien movies in order of how much I liked them, it would look like this:
1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Prometheus
4. Alien 3
5. Alien Resurrection
6. Anything crossed over with Predator
Also, if anyone tries to tell you it's not a prequel, they're lying. You can definitely see it without having seen the other Alien films (although there are lots of little references and stuff), but it also definitely leads into the other films, most notably because the last few minutes of the movie show you how the creepy looking things we see in Prometheus morph into the alien we all know and love from the first movies. There's a proto-facehugger and a proto-chestburster, but the end has them mutating into the more familiar HR Geiger-y form.
Unspoilery review: It was good but not great and I found it sort of personally unsatisfying. The main problem is that it didn't know what kind of film it wanted to be.
The movie I wanted was scifi-horror, like the original movies. I wanted there to be long, tense moments and people running around space ships being afraid. I wanted more "in space, no one can hear you scream." That's...not really what it was. I would say it was an existential scifi movie with horror and family drama elements, and while that might be some people's cup of tea, it wasn't really mine? I was never bored by the movie, but it felt kind of lacking at the end.
The problems were all with the script--the acting was pretty good (credit where credit's due: Fassbender was really excellent--much better than I was expecting. Idris Elba shone in what little he was given to do. Charlize Theron was great. Noomi Rapace wasn't...awful, but her character was no Ripley.) and the effects were AMAZING. It was visually stunning. But the script...yeah.
I would break the movie down into three stories that they tried to make into one: The Weyland Corporation's quest for immortality and the ensuing internal conflict between David, who is intrigued by this quest and willing to help Weyland (if for his own purposes), and Vickers, who wants Weyland to accept death so that she can carry on in his stead. I think this plot thread intrigued me the most and, tragically, it's the one that gets the least attention, I think. I had wondered pretty early on if Vickers was Weyland's daughter and it brings something very interesting to Theron and Fassbender's scenes. Vickers is openly resentful of David, whom Weyland calls "the closest thing I'll ever have to a son," while making no mention that he DOES have a daughter. David doesn't like her very much either, and seems generally disdainful of humanity, or at least humanity who are disdainful of him. He cops a sarcastic sort of attitude with all of the humans who dismiss him and his constant comparison of the humans' questions for their creators to his questions for humans was a little anvil-y, but made a decent point.
(I have to be honest--all of the art/fic/bullshit about David 8 leading up to this had made me very, very sour on the whole CONCEPT of David 8 and I had to begrudgingly admit at the end of the movie that his was the character I thought had the most interesting plot. I almost don't want to admit this here because I'm a bitch and don't want to be lumped in with the ravenous fans who were getting on my nerves, but there you have it.)
The most interesting thing, more of a surprise to me than the revelation that Vickers was Weyland's daughter (as I said, I caught that one pretty quickly), was that David wanted Weyland dead, too. He and Shaw have this (paraphrased) conversation near the end:
Shaw: What happens to you when Weyland dies?
David: I'll be free.
Shaw: Is that what you want?
David: Don't we all want to see our parents die?
David doesn't want Weyland to be alive any more than Vickers does, he's just more willing to put up with Weyland's plans. I thought there was a lot to be done with their relationship and I liked what I saw, but, like I said, it's tragically the least explored of the three plots.
The second story is the main plot and it was the one I liked least and where a lot of the movie's failings come from. It follows Drs. Shaw and Holloway and their quest to find the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Their story sets up the overarching story for the movie. They see a series of cave paintings from different times and different places. They all seem to refer to beings from another world, the same beings from the same other world. Weyland Corp's spent a lot of money figuring out where that other world is and now they're off to find it so they can ask their makers' the great questions of "why are we here?" and "What comes next?"
(See? I so wasn't even kidding about "the great question of life, the universe, and everything.")
Their story has a lot to do with ~*having faith*~ and ~*the questions of being human*~ and ~*why are we here*~, all the usual existential bullshit. This story would have been more satisfying if any of those questions had been answered, but, of course, since this is just a summer blockbuster, they weren't. So in the end, we just have the bulk of the story of the movie taken up by people sitting around whining about the great question and being sad when they realize they won't get a chance to ask it.
(For my money, David gives the best answer I think any human is ever likely to get. When Holloway asks, "Why are we here? Why were we made?" David asks him, "Why do you think humans made robots?" and Holloway goes, "To prove that we could." And David goes, "Well, there you have it.")
The third story is, of course, the horror story. There's a big bad biological weapon out there and they're investigating it and people are getting infected and people are trapped in dark rooms, etc. This one was also mostly undeveloped. There were not NEARLY enough scares in this movie, guys. Seriously. I wanted it to be so much scarier. I mean, yeah, an alien can only pop out of John Hurt's stomach once, but still. We could have had some tense moments in dark corridors, but no. The scares were minimal. There wasn't even that much suspense or tension.
Also, character-wise...we never really see these people gel as a team and there wasn't a lot of chemistry between the cast the way there needs to be in a good ensemble film. We're told there are 17 crew members. Most of them are red shirts and if they had names, I didn't know them. They could have scaled down the cast a lot and it would have made the film feel smaller, which would have been good, in this case. Making the cast smaller has the effect of sort of giving it a personal, claustrophobic feel which is good for this kind of horror movie, where the lack of connection to other people is an important part of both the plot and what makes it creepy.
Overall, there was stuff that was super interesting, but most of it got shunted to the side to make way for a lot of existential drama. It's not very scary, if you're worried about that, but there is one scene of sort of...medical gore, I guess? There's a scene with a medical procedure that's kind of gross. I'll give you details if you're interested. But it wasn't bad and wasn't boring, just not the horror film I wanted. In a way, it kind of reminds me of the prequel to The Thing that came out last fall. I'm glad I saw it, it wasn't bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original.
If I were rating the Alien movies in order of how much I liked them, it would look like this:
1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Prometheus
4. Alien 3
5. Alien Resurrection
6. Anything crossed over with Predator
Also, if anyone tries to tell you it's not a prequel, they're lying. You can definitely see it without having seen the other Alien films (although there are lots of little references and stuff), but it also definitely leads into the other films, most notably because the last few minutes of the movie show you how the creepy looking things we see in Prometheus morph into the alien we all know and love from the first movies. There's a proto-facehugger and a proto-chestburster, but the end has them mutating into the more familiar HR Geiger-y form.