Notes on Prometheus

This is a compiled version of Review: ‘Prometheus’ is a Visually Stunning Epic Failure that trashes the movie like there is no tomorrow!

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Scott’s latest film, Prometheus, pulls back the curtain on this 33-year old mystery, and what is revealed is truly horrifying: a thoroughly vacuous prequel to the series he kicked off, masquerading as a film about the cosmic origins of humanity.

What was touted as the next genre-defining sci-fi masterpiece is instead a completely unoriginal mash-up of other movies, and the architects of the film seem to think that we are too stupid to notice.

A gifted world-builder and an excellent shooter, the success of his films has always hinged on the quality of his screenwriters.

While stunning to look at, Prometheus contains none of the class or the evenness of tone of the first Alien, nor the substance of the lofty subject matter it portends to explore.

Itis a silly movie, filled with characters and situations that aren‘t remotely believable, driven by blatantly obvious plot developments and devices.

…and a legion of disposable stock characters

…a plot stolen wholesale from Brian De Palma’s idiotic 2000 space-bomb, Mission to Mars. … If you view them side-by-side, the core stories, settings, and numerous set-pieces are virtually identical.

Also shamelessly stolen are characters, concepts, themes, and designs from Dark City, Contact, Stargate, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Indeed, finding a single original idea in the entirety of Prometheus is a chore.

Where Scott & Co. have innovated on these stolen ideas is by making their characters — who are all bizarrely unfazed by the philosophical weight of their mission and discoveries — do ridiculously dumb things. When they see black alien ooze, they touch it. When they find a giant severed alien head, they bring it on the ship and perform inexplicable experiments on it in an open environment with no protective clothing. When the answers Charlie seeks are not immediately offered by the alien temple — which would be an earth-shattering discovery in its own right — he foregoes further inquiry and gets drunk. When members of the science team are lost in a gigantic, danger-filled alien structure, the mission leaders all go have sex. When a giant wheel-shaped object is rolling toward a couple of characters, they don’t run right or left, but stay directly in its path, like the security guard and the steamroller in Austin Powers. There isn’t a moment in the film where the human characters do something that humans would actually do…

But, the humans aren’t the only dummies here. The aliens–who all resemble buffed, albino Woody Harrelsons–are just another version of the brutish, humanoid killing machines we see in garbage like this year’s Battleship. You would think that aliens who engineered human beings–and who have some unstated reason for wanting to wipe us out–would be smarter than the Xenomorphs from the Alien series. They aren‘t. Apart from having spaceships–and technology that conveniently shows pixilated holographic recordings of their fate to people who happen to drop in and push the right buttons–there is nothing advanced about them. They weren’t even smart enough to keep their deadly bio-weapons safely locked-up, choosing instead to keep them in jars on the floor. This is the equivalent of keeping buckets of poisonous snakes, viruses, and toxic waste in your family’s minivan. What advanced race would be that careless?

Some may argue that this is the point of the film–the cynical notion that all civilizations, on Earth and elsewhere, ultimately become warlike and self-destruct. Open up a history book and turn on the news, and I can see their point. I would suggest, though, that in the case of Prometheus, what’s responsible for the vacant barbarism of the aliens is merely the limited imaginations of their authors.

And it is not entirely their fault. We are only human, and though we are continually making discoveries about the universe we live in, the big questions will surely elude us. Screenwriters and directors are not scientists, and will likely fall back on the kinds of formulaic, non-scientific ideas that would occur to people who work in the entertainment industry. But, because of this, when we tell stories that speculate on things beyond our knowledge, perhaps less is more.

Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke wisely never revealed the alien intelligence that drives the path of mankind in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Their greater purpose remains a mystery.

There are many more problems worth chronicling, but the film’s ultimate failure is that there aren’t any real characters to invest in.

Alien worked because of Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ellen Ripley. She was a normal person like you and me, who found enormous inner strength when thrown into the middle of the ultimate claustrophobic nightmare, with nowhere to run. There was a woman and her fear, and nothing to save her but her wits and an indomitable will to survive. She was the opposite of the Xenomorph, the opposite of the murderous android, Ash. Ripley was human, and she embodied the very reason why scientists would travel to distant worlds to find out who and why we are.

Prometheus has no Ellen Ripley, no humanity, and as a result, says absolutely nothing about us worth hearing.

Frowning Bear

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