Prometheus

Released in 2012 under the direction of Ridley Scott on a budget of $130 million and distributed by 20th Century Fox; "Prometheus" was Ridley's Scott's return to the science-fiction genre after 30 years of period pieces, comedies, thrillers and war films. The hype for the movie was initially huge on it's release date, with many people initially predicting this movie to be the next "Avatar." As a reminder for any who aren't familiar with Scott's work, in 1979, Ridley Scott directed the quiet yet hair-raising sci-fi horror film "Alien," a movie that was made with a rather low $11 million budget, yet it went on to make over $100 million at the box office and received monumental praise over the years for it's combination of horror with science-fiction at a time when Star Wars dominated the genre. There followed three other sequels that ended up in the hands of James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet as well as crossover films with the Predator films that ended up in the hands of Paul W.S. Anderson (If you bother to look through my Movie Review folder, you might find my review on it) and the Strause Brothers. So naturally, the preliminary buzz was huge on this prequel to the Alien franchise and on it's debut opening…people were disappointed, even really pissed-off. How could this happen?

Plot: In the year 2089, archeologists (minus the hat, jacket, whip and charm) Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her boyfriend Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) make the discovery of a series of art from separated cultures that show a series of dots meant to indicate stars, they come to the conclusion that this is a message from these space aliens called "Engineers" to come meet with them (Yeah, Elizabeth is a devout Christian and yet her belief that these aliens want to talk to these humans sounds like something you'd hear from Scientology). They somehow manage to get funding from Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in old man make-up, though I imagine hiring an older actor would cost less) to go into space and find this planet that may or may not be the actual home planet of these Engineers. On the Spaceship Prometheus, there exists quote a few people you won't really remember, apart from a black guy captain (Idris Elba) and some mercenaries you won't remember, there's this uninteresting Weyland employee played by Charlize Theron who doesn't really offer too much to the film outside of being bitchy and mad all the time and David (Michael Fassbender) an android who tries to comprehend his understanding of humans and his existence. Anyways, they find an alien head, David turns from a good robot to a bad robot and manages to prove that everyone on the ship is an idiot before it culminates in "what-the-f*ckery" for the last hour of the movie.

Yeah…two writers wrote this movie, Jon Spaihts (writer of the abysmal "The Darkest Hour" which nobody saw) and Damon Lindelof (the same asshole who co-wrote "Cowboys & Aliens") and these guys gave us this? The movie tries it's damnedest to ask deep questions about religion and the creation of life, but it doesn't even bother to answer most of them or the answers they do give are unsatisfying in the slightest. There are also moments tin eh script that, in my mind, really don't add up or feel pointless, like, why did Weyland pretend to be dead? Was he a wanted criminal? Did all the mercies on board the ship have a grudge against the guy? There really is no reason narratively why he has to pretend he's dead. There's also no real reason for moments like that to happen and it shows the lack of attention Ridley must have had on this project to not question the screenplay.

Also, the ending was just thrown in to remind the audiences this was supposed to be a prequel to "Alien," it wouldn't bug me as much if they just had the courtesy to at least use a traditional puppet, but nope, just use a computer effect cause that's scarier than seeing something that looks like something you can touch.

Characters:

I'm not going to bother to list off the actors involved in this snore-fest of writing because these actors, with the exception of Michael Fassbender. Fassbender has really proven himself to be a versatile actor these last few years, from "Inglourious Basterds" to "X-Men First Class" to his rather forgotten role in "Shame." Fassbender channels a mixture of HAL9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey" with Data from "Star Trek The Next Generation," making him sound synthetic and robotic, but making his demeanor and character very curious about human culture as he strives off boredom by playing basketball and watching "Lawrence of Arabia," fascinated by Peter O'Toole so much so that he imitates the voice and combs his hair in O'Toole's likeness. However, unlike Data who found acceptance for his curiosity and was given help to find his answers, everyone is a complete jerk to David, for no discernible reason, which I guess makes him bitter enough to infect one person in the off-chance they could impregnate someone and do something or another, yeah, even I don't get it, but after that, he stops being interesting and becomes another Ash from "Alien."

All the other characters in this film are not worthing mentioning because they annoy the hell out of me and offer nothing but proof that Ridley Scott chose the worst screenwriters to make a movie of this philosophical and narrative magnitude. I don't hold any qualms against the actors, they are trying, but the script has such paper-thin characters that I'm surprised Ridley didn't at least stop the movie half-way and say "wait a minute, these people are idiots!"

Production: Just like "Snow White and The Huntsman" or the Transformer movies, the production is pretty much the movie's only saving grace. I won't deny it's a fantastic and beautiful movie to look at. The interiors of the space-ship look really cool, the visual effects done for the planet look outstanding and even some of the make-up effects look pretty cool at times, that is when they're not making a young actor look unnecessarily old when they could have hired an older actor and it would have cost less all things considering. The music is, all right, it's large and sweeping, but it's nowhere close to Jerry Goldsmith's original score from 1979. Though why the movie had to make a CGI Xenomorph is, I guess, for the sake of laziness. Though I will say, the movie does have some form of atmosphere, while it's not as chilling as the original "Alien," it feels huge and expansive, making you feel small, which is a feeling I haven't felt in Sci-fi films this day in age since so many sci-fi films these days are set on earth. Still, Ridley Scott's vision for visuals keeps this film from blending in among all the other big-budget CGI sci-fi fest made this day in age.

Bottom Line: I watched a review by Mark Kermode lately where he described the movie being sorta like "The Phantom Menace" and, call it ironic, I can see what he means by that. There was all this hype, all this buzz, so much advertising (you couldn't even turn on the TV or go online without seeing some advertisement for it. Once it eventually came to theaters, there seemed to be a split decision, there was one side of people that defended the movie and even went as far as to post videos online trying to explain it's philosophy, why the other half call it a pile of vomit and posted their videos explaining why it's BS. You could sorta putt me in the latter, but I remain on the edge of neutrality since, frankly, I don't think this movie deserves discussion, the answers it gives are not very satisfactory to the questions it clumsily asks. I don't mind sci-fi movies that ask deep questions about religion and the nature of mankind (just look at "Contact," another movie that people love and hate) but I could possibly care more if you can give me interesting characters that I can latch onto and that's what this movie fails in the most, the characters. Save for David, everyone feels shallow with poorly-written character motives forced into a movie that has a rather flat story that has enough holes to put in a sandwich. It's worth renting for curiosity's sake, if you can see the brilliance in this film and look past it's shallow screenwriting, then by all means, go watch it on Blu-Ray with the best HD TV you can find.

Final Rating: 1.5/5

Until next time, I'll keep the fires stoked for when we burn through celluloid again.