fourteen hundred words in and I had to stop because I was exhausted, not because I was done
So! Anybody else seen Prometheus yet? I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT.
I saw it last night.
Had to let it sink in a little. Let me make a numbered list, it's soothing.
1. Fuck, I can't even decide what to put in #1. My head is a whirligig of conflicting emotions! I'm having a hard time sorting this stuff. Maybe I'll assign colours... this could get complicated. Also, colourful.
In that case, GREEN is where I must begin, because green is my favourite colour and also, in a nod to the Hulk, the colour of RAGE. -- but wait, I should put the rage last, or it will just green monster smash all over everything and leave rubble behind.
Let's do WHITE instead!
White is for--
Fuck it.
The things I liked about this film are: Michael Fassbender as David. Charlize Theron as Vickers. Idris Elba as Janek. The first scenes of David on the Prometheus. How everything looked. How everything looked like peen or vag. That bit with Noomi Rapace in the emergency medical pod.
Wrt Fassbender-- I was briefly into him during my XMFC fandom stint, but I've been kind of over him for a while for various reasons. Didn't see Shame or Jane Eyre or that Freud movie or anything. Don't find him sexually appealing. However, I was totally sold on his performance in Prometheus. He was fucking flawless and I love the character David like I love... like I love Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is what comes to mind. I have a robot thing, and this was a GREAT robot. Like Bishop from Aliens/Alien3. (Fassbender even has that same kind of weirdly skeletal appearance with the heavy-lidded eyes as Lance Henriksen. PERFECTION.) Anyway, great character played by a great, intense actor. Most sympathetic main character, too (most sympathetic character overall was Janek, but that was a really minor part for someone as powerful and awesome as Idris Elba.)
I appreciated Vickers a lot because almost all her choices made sense to me. I would have liked waaaay more of her with David, or more of her with Janek. In fact, with her as the protagonist, the whole film could have been a thing I would have agreed withENJOYED more. I would have loved to see her forced to get more ~organically hands-on. What if SHE'd had to cut an alien baby out of her own body?
Also, Charlize Theron is my queen.
Captain Janek and his spaceship-piloting sidekicks Chance and Ravel were the only non-scientist people (apart from that one security dude who had like two lines) introduced, and INCIDENTALLY, Janek and Ravel were the only non-white people. Look at that. They were also the only ones who didn't die due to their own stupidity, so that's a thing. Instead they made the big damned heroic sacrifice play. I don't even know how to work out the racial subtext of all that. (The names of the characters suggest they were cast ~colourblind~, and I know even less what to make of that.) I was so glad they were around, though, because everyone else was a fucking pretentious speechifying twit. They were characters that might have felt way more at home on the Nostromo or in the grunt squad of Aliens.
2. Things about the movie I felt super ambivalent about: Shaw. Noomi Rapace did nothing wrong playing her, but the character was written in a way specifically designed to make me hate everything about her. Whenever she shut up with the speechifying about Great Questions and Deserving Answers, though, I enjoyed myself. She was weirdly paced: physically fearless, but an emotional wet rag. Like, going by everything she SAID about stuff, she seemed like the type of blithering nitwit who'd be standing around like an idiot while the monster ate her head, but instead she just went total Spartaaaaaaaargh on anything and everything that got in her way, up to and including her own body. It was a bit hilarious how she was, like, climbing rocks and jumping and running and beating up things with a fresh wound in her abdomen. I'm sure it can be handwaved as future medical tech magic but whoah, that was some adrenaline rush. I hope she and David spent some downtime stapling her gut back together (and reattaching his head) once they got their giant alien death horseshoe in the air.
Holloway. For one, Logan Marshall-Green looks distractingly like someone else. Furthermore, the character felt weird and unmoored and... random. I don't even know. It feels more and more like I have to watch the movie again just to properly catalogue all the ways it annoyed and aggravated me. Hmmm... maybe Holloway should just go straight into the HATED IT category. He made that greatest of all film faux pas: he knew there was something wrong but he neglected to tell anyone about it. FUCK YOU, HOLLOWAY. His scene with David might save him from my complete wratheroni, though. There was proper truth-telling. "Because we could" was probably the least twerpy and most true line of the entire spectacle.
Those two science stooges, Fifield and whatsisface... Millburn. Those were some bizarre caricatures of people. I have no idea what the writers were even aiming at. The bitching and bickering and yelling might have been more entertaining, hadn't the characters been ABJECT DROOLING IDIOTS.
3. Things I hated like a hating hater that hates things: Everything anyone at all said that related to religion, God, souls or GREAT QUESTIONS. Several lines caused spontaneous ragey out-loud replies from me. (Weyland: "The one thing David does not have: a SOUL." Me: FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU. Everyone in the theatre: shhh, crazy lady. Shaw: "You don't understand because I'm a human being and you're not." Me: SHUT UP I AGREE WITH THE ROBOT AND I'M A FUCKING HUMAN BEING.)
While watching I kept getting this weird feeling like I was supposed to not only sympathise with Shaw's thirst for answer to her GREAT QUESTIONS and applaud her tenacity in pursuing them (the tenacity of a rabid weasel chewing on your balls, approximately), but AGREE with her that they were the most important GREAT QUESTIONS and that all beings with a soul would totally feel exactly the same. I kind of shrugged it off and concentrated on David and Vickers, whose motivations seemed far more genuine and compelling, but I felt very uncomfortable and meta-level annoyed. After the movie was over I fanwanked a bit that maybe the religious views weren't REALLY meant to be presented quite so strongly as I'd felt them, and I just overreacted because of my natural bias (the natural bias of being an atheist and, I don't know, aware of the existence of religions other than Christianity.)
However.
I was too generous by far.
Here's a post on Bleeding Cool that quotes Damon Lindelof , one of the writers, at length explicating the religious POV of the filmmakers. Let me put the most pertinent bit of his dickery here for your convenience:
"For example, when they do the carbon dating on the dead engineer and realise he has been dead for 2000 years then you wonder about when, 2000 years ago, the Engineers decided to wipe us out. What happened 2000 years ago? Is there any correlation with what happened on the earth 2000 years ago and this decision that was already in motion? Could a sequel start in that time period and contextualize what we did to piss these beings off?"
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING SHITTING ME.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING SHITTING ME.
I said that twice because the flames on the side of my fucking face are making it hard to concentrate.
Okay, okay, okay. Breaking this down. The reason the bald fishbelly-skinned alien giants decided to eradicate (and fail like total losers, ha ha) their seeded offspring, the fly motherfuckers known as the human race, is because of... Jesus.
Am I reading this wrong? Can he mean Julius Caesar? Can he mean Asterix? IS HE ACTUALLY FUCKING TALKING ABOUT JESUS?
IS RIDLEY SCOTT A BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN AND I DIDN'T KNOW?
My head hurts.
*mic drop*
Talk to me, people.
Also, I want some fanfic about the adventures of you know who and you know who else on the you know what having adventures in space.
I saw it last night.
Had to let it sink in a little. Let me make a numbered list, it's soothing.
1. Fuck, I can't even decide what to put in #1. My head is a whirligig of conflicting emotions! I'm having a hard time sorting this stuff. Maybe I'll assign colours... this could get complicated. Also, colourful.
In that case, GREEN is where I must begin, because green is my favourite colour and also, in a nod to the Hulk, the colour of RAGE. -- but wait, I should put the rage last, or it will just green monster smash all over everything and leave rubble behind.
Let's do WHITE instead!
White is for--
Fuck it.
The things I liked about this film are: Michael Fassbender as David. Charlize Theron as Vickers. Idris Elba as Janek. The first scenes of David on the Prometheus. How everything looked. How everything looked like peen or vag. That bit with Noomi Rapace in the emergency medical pod.
Wrt Fassbender-- I was briefly into him during my XMFC fandom stint, but I've been kind of over him for a while for various reasons. Didn't see Shame or Jane Eyre or that Freud movie or anything. Don't find him sexually appealing. However, I was totally sold on his performance in Prometheus. He was fucking flawless and I love the character David like I love... like I love Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is what comes to mind. I have a robot thing, and this was a GREAT robot. Like Bishop from Aliens/Alien3. (Fassbender even has that same kind of weirdly skeletal appearance with the heavy-lidded eyes as Lance Henriksen. PERFECTION.) Anyway, great character played by a great, intense actor. Most sympathetic main character, too (most sympathetic character overall was Janek, but that was a really minor part for someone as powerful and awesome as Idris Elba.)
I appreciated Vickers a lot because almost all her choices made sense to me. I would have liked waaaay more of her with David, or more of her with Janek. In fact, with her as the protagonist, the whole film could have been a thing I would have agreed withENJOYED more. I would have loved to see her forced to get more ~organically hands-on. What if SHE'd had to cut an alien baby out of her own body?
Also, Charlize Theron is my queen.
Captain Janek and his spaceship-piloting sidekicks Chance and Ravel were the only non-scientist people (apart from that one security dude who had like two lines) introduced, and INCIDENTALLY, Janek and Ravel were the only non-white people. Look at that. They were also the only ones who didn't die due to their own stupidity, so that's a thing. Instead they made the big damned heroic sacrifice play. I don't even know how to work out the racial subtext of all that. (The names of the characters suggest they were cast ~colourblind~, and I know even less what to make of that.) I was so glad they were around, though, because everyone else was a fucking pretentious speechifying twit. They were characters that might have felt way more at home on the Nostromo or in the grunt squad of Aliens.
2. Things about the movie I felt super ambivalent about: Shaw. Noomi Rapace did nothing wrong playing her, but the character was written in a way specifically designed to make me hate everything about her. Whenever she shut up with the speechifying about Great Questions and Deserving Answers, though, I enjoyed myself. She was weirdly paced: physically fearless, but an emotional wet rag. Like, going by everything she SAID about stuff, she seemed like the type of blithering nitwit who'd be standing around like an idiot while the monster ate her head, but instead she just went total Spartaaaaaaaargh on anything and everything that got in her way, up to and including her own body. It was a bit hilarious how she was, like, climbing rocks and jumping and running and beating up things with a fresh wound in her abdomen. I'm sure it can be handwaved as future medical tech magic but whoah, that was some adrenaline rush. I hope she and David spent some downtime stapling her gut back together (and reattaching his head) once they got their giant alien death horseshoe in the air.
Holloway. For one, Logan Marshall-Green looks distractingly like someone else. Furthermore, the character felt weird and unmoored and... random. I don't even know. It feels more and more like I have to watch the movie again just to properly catalogue all the ways it annoyed and aggravated me. Hmmm... maybe Holloway should just go straight into the HATED IT category. He made that greatest of all film faux pas: he knew there was something wrong but he neglected to tell anyone about it. FUCK YOU, HOLLOWAY. His scene with David might save him from my complete wratheroni, though. There was proper truth-telling. "Because we could" was probably the least twerpy and most true line of the entire spectacle.
Those two science stooges, Fifield and whatsisface... Millburn. Those were some bizarre caricatures of people. I have no idea what the writers were even aiming at. The bitching and bickering and yelling might have been more entertaining, hadn't the characters been ABJECT DROOLING IDIOTS.
3. Things I hated like a hating hater that hates things: Everything anyone at all said that related to religion, God, souls or GREAT QUESTIONS. Several lines caused spontaneous ragey out-loud replies from me. (Weyland: "The one thing David does not have: a SOUL." Me: FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU. Everyone in the theatre: shhh, crazy lady. Shaw: "You don't understand because I'm a human being and you're not." Me: SHUT UP I AGREE WITH THE ROBOT AND I'M A FUCKING HUMAN BEING.)
While watching I kept getting this weird feeling like I was supposed to not only sympathise with Shaw's thirst for answer to her GREAT QUESTIONS and applaud her tenacity in pursuing them (the tenacity of a rabid weasel chewing on your balls, approximately), but AGREE with her that they were the most important GREAT QUESTIONS and that all beings with a soul would totally feel exactly the same. I kind of shrugged it off and concentrated on David and Vickers, whose motivations seemed far more genuine and compelling, but I felt very uncomfortable and meta-level annoyed. After the movie was over I fanwanked a bit that maybe the religious views weren't REALLY meant to be presented quite so strongly as I'd felt them, and I just overreacted because of my natural bias (the natural bias of being an atheist and, I don't know, aware of the existence of religions other than Christianity.)
However.
I was too generous by far.
Here's a post on Bleeding Cool that quotes Damon Lindelof , one of the writers, at length explicating the religious POV of the filmmakers. Let me put the most pertinent bit of his dickery here for your convenience:
"For example, when they do the carbon dating on the dead engineer and realise he has been dead for 2000 years then you wonder about when, 2000 years ago, the Engineers decided to wipe us out. What happened 2000 years ago? Is there any correlation with what happened on the earth 2000 years ago and this decision that was already in motion? Could a sequel start in that time period and contextualize what we did to piss these beings off?"
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING SHITTING ME.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING SHITTING ME.
I said that twice because the flames on the side of my fucking face are making it hard to concentrate.
Okay, okay, okay. Breaking this down. The reason the bald fishbelly-skinned alien giants decided to eradicate (and fail like total losers, ha ha) their seeded offspring, the fly motherfuckers known as the human race, is because of... Jesus.
Am I reading this wrong? Can he mean Julius Caesar? Can he mean Asterix? IS HE ACTUALLY FUCKING TALKING ABOUT JESUS?
IS RIDLEY SCOTT A BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN AND I DIDN'T KNOW?
My head hurts.
*mic drop*
Talk to me, people.
Also, I want some fanfic about the adventures of you know who and you know who else on the you know what having adventures in space.