Two Decent Enough Movies!
So, this weekend, we finally got around to our Netflix. Prometheus and Safety Not Guaranteed.
First off, Prometheus, which is a prequel of sorts to Alien, directed by Ridley Scott (and Ridley Scott's "vision"). It didn't get many good reviews. I'm going to rip it a new one, even though I liked it. Yes, spoiler alert, I liked something.
The movie starts off with a lumpy steroid user standing next to a primordial glacial deluge. He drinks some nasty looking tea, watches his spaceship fly away, and then his head starts to bubble. He falls into the waterfall and his corpse totally breaks down, even to the genetic level. Just as a warning, this shit will never be explained or revisited. This is a problem throughout the movie.
Some archaeologists are in Scotland, they find a cave. With 35k year old cave paintings. They are happy because a guy is pointing at some dots in the painting. Next, a spaceship of presumably human origin is slipping across the vastness of space. Inside, an android who looks remarkably like Michael Fassbender is doing creepy android things. Learning languages, watching people's dreams as they sleep, modeling himself after Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The latter is never really addressed again, except in one bit of dialog where he says "something from a movie I like." They could have elaborated more on this. Like in really cool ways. Didn't.
The ship makes planetfall, flies past some more awesome cinematography. Lands by a mound with a skull head on it, which is later called "The Pyramid." They rush out to the pyramid to check it out. I'm sorry, but a lot of people have criticized this moment in the film. I thought it worked. They've been in hypersleep for over 2 years now. They aren't going to be thinking too rationally. Totally believable. Now, why they hired 17 of the most emotionally unstable, erratic people for a trillion dollar mission? Have you ever heard of Richard Branson? Let's move on. So far, my suspension of disbelief is still hanging there.
They go to the pyramid in some really kickass vehicles, in some totally kickass environment suits. They find some kickass scenery with nifty holographic projector things that apparently record and replay just about everything--fyi, don't use the employee restroom in the pyramid. It creates a ghost effect which teaches them what happened, sorta, two thousand years before. Of course David, the Michael Fassbender-bot 3000, starts fucking with literally everything he can get his mitts on. Opening doors, pods of weaponized cancer goo, EVERYTHING. Nobody ever says, "Hey! Skinjob! Knock that shit off!" A sandstorm rolls in, making they have to make a hasty departure, with two guys getting lost in the process, ironically enough, of buggering out while the buggering out was good. Needless to say, they get buggered by monsters in the caves. Yes, that's a spoiler. Once again, cool effects, irrational humans. Back in the Prometheus, they hook juice up to the Engineer's head (big steroidy alien guy) and it 'splodes.
David spikes main scientist guy's champagne with weaponized death shit and watches as his mild case of pinkeye turns him into a guy with a terminal case of the mumps. He also impregnates his girlfriend who can't have children, and she escapes the android who wants to bring her home with an alien baby inside to deliver in an Earth hospital. She reprograms a medical pod for a c-section and squidzilla is born. Main scientist lady leaves her baby squidbillie hanging in the fun-grabber (she got lucky. One quarter, first grab got her Early!!). Back at the pyramid, everyone is dying, Charlie Theron torches infected science guy, another guy shows up to kill everyone and gets run over by a truck. Shot. Torched. Etc. Let's just say, typical monster movie things are now happening that the beginning set into motion.
Old guy shows up. Charlize Theron's dad, who is basically Richard Branson, wants to live forever and has had the android go rogue, looking for the engineers. He found one still alive and a ghost-holo thing on how they navigate the stars in these big hookworm ships, loaded to the gills with weaponized death. Apparently they don't like humans. It is not elaborated as to why. Maybe because we aren't all lumpy and shit. They take Old Guy (Pierce) to the ship, where the Lumpy Engineer is awakened. He rips off David's head, beats the shit out of everyone and starts to do his preflight...no, he just starts firing up the engines. Because you know after 2000 years of sleep, he's pretty sure his cargo is all in place and his spaceship will actually work. Main scientist lady and Charlize Theron run away from the ship. The scientist lady tips off Prometheus. The captain and his pilots fly the ship into the hookworm before it can leave atmo, and knock it out of the sky. Charlize ejects and starts running away from the ship. It starts rolling like a hula-hoop towards the leading ladies. It parks on Charlize Theron, who near as I can tell, her only crime has been being a dutiful daughter (son?) to Old Guy, and being kind of grumpy. Like so many others her character is just not explored. Her striped stockings roll up and Dorothy gets her shoes.
Science lady also has the ship fall on her, but she's next to some rocks, so it's all good. She goes to the lifeboat pod where Charlize had been living during the voyage, and where the med pod was (why it was set to male occupant only is not explored or explained) only to discover that Early Cuyler has turned into the Kraken (think Pirates of the Carribean, not Clash of the Titans). Then David's severed head radios her to tell her that Lumpy is mad and is coming at her. Lumpy busts into the pod, and is eaten by his creation, sorta, squid baby with its freaky vagina dentata clitopenis face. It's like a bad acid trip Ursula K. LeGuinn had once.
Science lady goes back to get David's head, learning that there are more ships. She wants answers and flies away in a hookworm to the Engineer's home planet to get them. Presumably with a bunch of weaponized death on board. Last scene shows the Engineer's body giving birth to an Alien.
I loved the cinematography, the vehicles, the costumes, the world building, but the characters were largely unexplored. Details came and went without elaboration, and the horror tropes were thick in the middle. It was a big-budget b-movie, which in a good way created more questions and got me to thinking, but in other ways was a let down and just plain lazy. One thing I thought could have worked beautifully, but wasn't in this, was how Prometheus was just a link in the chain between Blade Runner and Alien.
Now, Safety Not Guaranteed is a movie right up there in my opinion with Another Earth, Moon, or Monsters. It's mundane SF that is character driven (Ridley Scott, you and Ridley Scott's vision should be taking notes). It's about an intern who works for a indie magazine who gets recruited to track down a guy who claims he can time-travel. I'm not going to dissect it like I did Prometheus because it's a wonderful story, and I'm going to let you enjoy it on your own. The whole movie is about time-travel in some capacity. It's familiar. Lived-in. Rent it today. Another example of how an indie movie can tell a better story with a fraction of the budget of a big-name Hollywood movie.
First off, Prometheus, which is a prequel of sorts to Alien, directed by Ridley Scott (and Ridley Scott's "vision"). It didn't get many good reviews. I'm going to rip it a new one, even though I liked it. Yes, spoiler alert, I liked something.
The movie starts off with a lumpy steroid user standing next to a primordial glacial deluge. He drinks some nasty looking tea, watches his spaceship fly away, and then his head starts to bubble. He falls into the waterfall and his corpse totally breaks down, even to the genetic level. Just as a warning, this shit will never be explained or revisited. This is a problem throughout the movie.
Some archaeologists are in Scotland, they find a cave. With 35k year old cave paintings. They are happy because a guy is pointing at some dots in the painting. Next, a spaceship of presumably human origin is slipping across the vastness of space. Inside, an android who looks remarkably like Michael Fassbender is doing creepy android things. Learning languages, watching people's dreams as they sleep, modeling himself after Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The latter is never really addressed again, except in one bit of dialog where he says "something from a movie I like." They could have elaborated more on this. Like in really cool ways. Didn't.
The ship makes planetfall, flies past some more awesome cinematography. Lands by a mound with a skull head on it, which is later called "The Pyramid." They rush out to the pyramid to check it out. I'm sorry, but a lot of people have criticized this moment in the film. I thought it worked. They've been in hypersleep for over 2 years now. They aren't going to be thinking too rationally. Totally believable. Now, why they hired 17 of the most emotionally unstable, erratic people for a trillion dollar mission? Have you ever heard of Richard Branson? Let's move on. So far, my suspension of disbelief is still hanging there.
They go to the pyramid in some really kickass vehicles, in some totally kickass environment suits. They find some kickass scenery with nifty holographic projector things that apparently record and replay just about everything--fyi, don't use the employee restroom in the pyramid. It creates a ghost effect which teaches them what happened, sorta, two thousand years before. Of course David, the Michael Fassbender-bot 3000, starts fucking with literally everything he can get his mitts on. Opening doors, pods of weaponized cancer goo, EVERYTHING. Nobody ever says, "Hey! Skinjob! Knock that shit off!" A sandstorm rolls in, making they have to make a hasty departure, with two guys getting lost in the process, ironically enough, of buggering out while the buggering out was good. Needless to say, they get buggered by monsters in the caves. Yes, that's a spoiler. Once again, cool effects, irrational humans. Back in the Prometheus, they hook juice up to the Engineer's head (big steroidy alien guy) and it 'splodes.
David spikes main scientist guy's champagne with weaponized death shit and watches as his mild case of pinkeye turns him into a guy with a terminal case of the mumps. He also impregnates his girlfriend who can't have children, and she escapes the android who wants to bring her home with an alien baby inside to deliver in an Earth hospital. She reprograms a medical pod for a c-section and squidzilla is born. Main scientist lady leaves her baby squidbillie hanging in the fun-grabber (she got lucky. One quarter, first grab got her Early!!). Back at the pyramid, everyone is dying, Charlie Theron torches infected science guy, another guy shows up to kill everyone and gets run over by a truck. Shot. Torched. Etc. Let's just say, typical monster movie things are now happening that the beginning set into motion.
Old guy shows up. Charlize Theron's dad, who is basically Richard Branson, wants to live forever and has had the android go rogue, looking for the engineers. He found one still alive and a ghost-holo thing on how they navigate the stars in these big hookworm ships, loaded to the gills with weaponized death. Apparently they don't like humans. It is not elaborated as to why. Maybe because we aren't all lumpy and shit. They take Old Guy (Pierce) to the ship, where the Lumpy Engineer is awakened. He rips off David's head, beats the shit out of everyone and starts to do his preflight...no, he just starts firing up the engines. Because you know after 2000 years of sleep, he's pretty sure his cargo is all in place and his spaceship will actually work. Main scientist lady and Charlize Theron run away from the ship. The scientist lady tips off Prometheus. The captain and his pilots fly the ship into the hookworm before it can leave atmo, and knock it out of the sky. Charlize ejects and starts running away from the ship. It starts rolling like a hula-hoop towards the leading ladies. It parks on Charlize Theron, who near as I can tell, her only crime has been being a dutiful daughter (son?) to Old Guy, and being kind of grumpy. Like so many others her character is just not explored. Her striped stockings roll up and Dorothy gets her shoes.
Science lady also has the ship fall on her, but she's next to some rocks, so it's all good. She goes to the lifeboat pod where Charlize had been living during the voyage, and where the med pod was (why it was set to male occupant only is not explored or explained) only to discover that Early Cuyler has turned into the Kraken (think Pirates of the Carribean, not Clash of the Titans). Then David's severed head radios her to tell her that Lumpy is mad and is coming at her. Lumpy busts into the pod, and is eaten by his creation, sorta, squid baby with its freaky vagina dentata clitopenis face. It's like a bad acid trip Ursula K. LeGuinn had once.
Science lady goes back to get David's head, learning that there are more ships. She wants answers and flies away in a hookworm to the Engineer's home planet to get them. Presumably with a bunch of weaponized death on board. Last scene shows the Engineer's body giving birth to an Alien.
I loved the cinematography, the vehicles, the costumes, the world building, but the characters were largely unexplored. Details came and went without elaboration, and the horror tropes were thick in the middle. It was a big-budget b-movie, which in a good way created more questions and got me to thinking, but in other ways was a let down and just plain lazy. One thing I thought could have worked beautifully, but wasn't in this, was how Prometheus was just a link in the chain between Blade Runner and Alien.
Now, Safety Not Guaranteed is a movie right up there in my opinion with Another Earth, Moon, or Monsters. It's mundane SF that is character driven (Ridley Scott, you and Ridley Scott's vision should be taking notes). It's about an intern who works for a indie magazine who gets recruited to track down a guy who claims he can time-travel. I'm not going to dissect it like I did Prometheus because it's a wonderful story, and I'm going to let you enjoy it on your own. The whole movie is about time-travel in some capacity. It's familiar. Lived-in. Rent it today. Another example of how an indie movie can tell a better story with a fraction of the budget of a big-name Hollywood movie.