Review of Prometheus
I
really wanted to like this movie. I've been looking forward to it for
months. I wound up not hating it, exactly, but it surely was
disappointing.
Any work of fiction requires the audience to
engage in a willing suspension of disbelief. We pick up a book or go to
a movie trusting the author to produce a credible and self-consistent
world, populated by believable characters. An author breaks that trust
when they do dumb things, or have their characters do dumb things. Too
much dumbness and the audience can no longer believe in the story and
all is lost: the fictional dream is broken and the reader or audience
feels cheated. Science fiction has the additional burden of making the
fictional world at least semi-plausible.
In "Stargate," for
example, we're willing to accept the premise that aliens visited Earth
during the time of the pyramid-builders in Egypt and left behind a
"gate" that lets people move between star systems. That's impossible,
of course, but for the purposes of the story we're willing to believe
it. Starting with that one impossible premise, most of the rest of
movie follows, and the audience can accept the fictional world "as
real"--at least on it's own terms.
In "Prometheus," almost from
the first scene we see things that are not just implausible; they are
downright dumb. Just for a random example, consider how they locate the
star system they visit There are these two archeologists who find a
half-dozen van Danekin-style cave drawings. From these drawings,
astronomers supposedly locate the one and only star system the cave
dwellers can be referencing. Sorry. That's just dumb. First, the cave
drawings are what you expect of cave drawings: big, pointy stars in a
constellation. This is supposed to be accurate enough for astronomers
to uniquely identify a star system? Beyond dumbness. Further, are there
multiple stars in the "star system?" If so, their positions would
change over millennia since they'd orbit about each other, yet they
stayed in the same constellation in all the drawings, whether from
30,000 years ago or 2000 years ago. That's dumber yet. It reveals
authors who are either contemptuous of their audience, or are too lazy
to think things through. Or maybe they are just dumb themselves.
Not
all the dumbness is limited to science. Toward the end of the movie we
witness a gigantic, ring-shaped spaceship crashing to the ground. Two
of our characters run frantically away. One of them falls, rolls over a
couple of times, and thus is saved. The other character stupidly runs
in a straight line and gets crushed. Uh-huh, check. Both the ideas
that you could save yourself by rolling over and that the other
character wouldn't think of swerving are just dumb.
I'll give you
one more example of dumbness before talking about plot disappointments.
The expedition lands on a planet with a lethal level of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, but when they enter a pyramid sensors report the
levels have dropped. One of the scientists says, "Cool beans," and
starts to take of his helmet. Dumb, but maybe the character is supposed
to be dumb. Indeed, all the other characters say, "No, that's dumb.
Don't do it." He does it anyway, takes a deep breath, and doesn't
explode or turn green or anything. So now of course all the
other characters take their helmets off. They do this after telling him
it was dumb to take his off. Of course, the other reason for wearing
helmets besides CO2 is to guard against biological contamination. The
screenwriters know this, since this fact plays a role in a later scene.
But here, they just have all the characters act stupidly for no reason.
It's hard to stay in a story when the screenwriters insult your
intelligence like this.
Now let's turn to the plot. I really
liked the mythic potential of the plot. It had echoes of "Stargate," an
implausible movie that I rather liked. But here, the whole thing is
just...jumbled. The first scenes show a solitary humanoid, with a
flying saucer hovering overhead, quaffing down some potion. We see him
tumble into a waterfall and his body comes apart, while the special
effects zoom down to a double helix that also dissipates. Later in the
movie, we learn that this humanoid--who turns out to be ten feet
tall--has "DNA identical to" humans. I'm not sure what that means,
since he's ten feet tall and appears to have gills, but I mention this
because of an inane interpretation Rodger Ebert gave to this
concatenation of scenes: he concluded that this meant that the aliens
were responsible for "bringing life to Earth." What? They have human
DNA so they brought all life to Earth? Incredibly dumb. That doesn't
even work as a metaphor. Instead, this is just a disconnected scene
that never really ties to anything else in the movie: it's obscurity
masking as depth. I guess the screenwriters thought we'd have forgotten
this scene by the end--or we'd be asleep.
A movie that focused
on the origins question could have been really interesting. This movie
raises the question but doesn't do anything plausible or interersting
with it. There are hints that the humanoids created us somehow, and
other hints that they were in the middle of a military campaign against
Earth when something went wrong and they went into suspended animation.
There's even a vague hint, from a subplot involving HAL--er, I mean
David, the on-board android--that they are derived from us. But the
movie doesn't do anything with any of this. It just plops out these
contradictory ideas with no depth or development to them. Bleh.
Since
the screenplay repeatedly fumbles the human origins plot, the
performances for this thread don't have much of a chance. Noomi Rapace,
who was stunning in "The Girl with Dragon Tattoo," does the best she
can with this dumb script. She portrays a strong, independent, and
resourceful female character, reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley
in the original "Alien." But the material is just...well, cartoonish.
Take the surgery scene: it consists of slice, extract, staple, here's
your alien, Mom. Then, after she takes a second to gas the loathsome
creature, she runs through the ship with her stomach stapled. Uh-huh.
The best actor in the world can't overcome that kind of world-class
dumbness in the script. She's not helped by her love interest, Logan
Marshall-Green, who seems to have graduated from the Paul Walker School
of Acting.
Counterpoint to the "human origins" plot is a "who's
my Daddy" plot involving the android, David, the corporate rep, Vickers,
and the super-rich old dude who financed the expedition, Weyland.
These three, each played by gifted actors, have the most interesting
relationships in the movie. Fassbender's amoral David is a marvelous
mix of HAL and Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia. (The overt reference
the movie makes to O'Toole's performance could have been meaningful if
the "human origins" plot weren't such a mess.) Charlize Theron gives an
icy performance as the on-board corporate executive, with just the
right nuance to leave us wondering if she's really an android. Guy
Pearce, even burdened with layers of droopy latex makeup to make him
appear ancient, does a credible job as Weyland. These three
actors--especially Fassbender--breathe life into a rather hapless and
predictable subplot. Clearly the screenwriters intended the "human
origins" plot to dovetail with the "who's my Daddy" plot. It's
unfortunate that the "human origins" plot is so poorly executed since
this concept certainly has potential.
Other than the performances
mentioned above, character development is also lacking--possibly left
on the cutting room floor. There are seventeen members of the crew, and
they are dysfunctional mix if ever there were one (another bit of
dumbness on a trillion-dollar mission). Under these circumstances,
there ought to be ample opportunity for minor characters to shine, but
the script fails yet again. At the end, for example, we have three
characters who make a heroic stand, sacrificing themselves for the
safety of humanity. However, two of the three had no more than one or
two lines of dialogue prior to that penultimate scene, cheating the
audience of any connection to them or their sacrifice. Dumb writing
again.
On the positive side, the special effects and visuals in
this movie are stunning. But, like so much else, they felt glued on as
opposed to part of a holistic artistic vision. The original "Alien"
derived much of its tension from the claustrophobic, brooding sets.
Shadow and light played with the audience to increase foreboding and
horror. Here, however, the sets and special effects looked more like an
entry on someone's resume for an Academy Award. Given the jumbled mess
of the script, one really can't blame the designers. As with the cast,
the woeful writing put them in a pickle: they didn't have much to work
with.
I really didn't hate this movie, despite the above. I just
expected so much more. At the end, it's merely another silly Hollywood
science fiction movie, without a compelling story line. It confuses
vagueness with mystery, obscurity with depth, and razzle-dazzle special
effects with adventure.
I'd see it again, but only because I love science fiction.
