oh, promotheus… (slightly revised)

[random_walker]

although i'm sure several folks have done this already, i'm going to post about prometheus because it's on my mind. yes, it's a horrible movie, but i liked some of it. note, i took an emergency bathroom break in the middle, so i might be missing something, or a justification for something. spoilers abound, so click through at your own discretion. one comment: ridley scott previously hired two independent scripts for blade runner, and sort of mashed them up. it worked then, and so i suspect he did the same thing for prometheus. it didn't work this time.


stupid things:

• the convenient plot-device storm in the beginning would have ripped everyone to shreds. end of movie.
• the android's deliberate infection of the protagonist's partner was unexplained and seemed to have nothing to do with his primary agenda.
• this primary agenda was moronic. surely you'd resuscitate your near-dead CEO after you've isolated the fountain of youth.
• putting the previous two together, i guess the android resuscitated Mr. Weyland as a measure of last resort since the protagonist aborted his original plan. however, this was not in any way explained or even hinted at, and nonetheless it's still dumb even as last resorts go.
• to wit, a pivotal element of (what i presume to be) the android's original "plan" was this: to have the infertile protagonist impregnated by her lover, who had been infected with alien bioweapon super-dna, and then put her in cryo-sleep to preserve the fetus so that it could be dissected/analysed back on earth. there are so many things wrong with this.
  1. how would super-dna of any type induce fertility in the receiver?
  2. having sex under these circumstances seems highly unlikely, and the android (apparently) did nothing to ensure that this would happen.
  3. why would the bioweapon dna be compatible with human dna? yes, the alien dna is compatible, but that's not what happened here.
  4. what would the point have been anyway? if the purpose is to save Weyland, then clearly just the raw goop would seem to have been just as useful for that purpose as a fetus. and if they really needed a fetus, a more rational and equally sociopathic plan would have been: to take the glop home and then impregnate some random orphan in a secret highly-secure Weyland laboratory.
• send the goddam mapping device into the caves before entering them.
• vickers's relation to Weyland, which apparently existed for all of 30 seconds.
• any scene with any tension was so contrived as to be unconvincing.
• there are many more, these are just the most fundamental to the plot. the other stupidities were… yes, stupid… but they were also the standard narrative stupidities that are always used, to make a film two hours long instead of four hours long, so i will forgive them.

things i liked:

• the medpod scene. that was just an awesome reworking of the worthwhile themes of the original alien, although it was painfully clear that it was meddled with: shaw would have asked for an abortion, not a c-section. edit: okay, i've thought about this some more. the size and late term would have ruled out a D&E, and the acidic blood would have made a ``partial-birth'' (D&X) abortion even worse. the c-section followed by xenoinfanticide was probably the safest approach. then again, this is the same kind of informed caution which would lead one to not bypass one's respirator before scanning the atmosphere for pathogens. speaking of contagion: see what happens when stupid things get written into a movie? it ruins the good parts too.
• they credit dan o'bannon, whose schlocky and mostly forgotten 80s film dark star served partly as the basis for alien
• the mapping orbs were cool, and their moronic application does not detract from that.
• vickers was hard-hearted but rational and not-a-sociopath, so she could have been a significant thorn in weyland's side as well as a decent foil to shaw. unfortunately, they did nothing with this.
• flamethrowers!
• the 3-d was done well for the most part.
• i think the faith/creationism part wasn't as bad as everyone claims. scientists are a bit irrational, but this is a difficult topic to analyze especially in a movie like this.
• finally, it was ambiguous as to whether shaw herself was a real person with real memories, or whether she was "programmed" for the mission in cryosleep. this was tantalizing to me. we clearly learn that she's not a replicant, since the medpod would have pointed that out, but her memories may still have been manufactured. this would actually explain a lot, but even if it were true, there would have been no fucking indication whatsoever that this was the case in the movie. thus, i must discard this interesting premise which i thought the movie was setting up in the intro.
• edit: the android was very well-acted, if not particularly well-written.

**/5.