Review - Prometheus

Review - Prometheus (2012)




Okay, yes. You're not on the wrong blog. This is indeed the War Blog, and this is a review of Ridley Scott's Prometheus. I realize I could have just as well posted this on my personal webpage, but I chose to upload it here. Because it fits the "War" theme.



Let me tell you why: Prometheus is part of the bloody war on my intelligence!



Prometheus - which, despite all evasive maneuvers of its director clearly is an Alien prequel - opens with "scientists" (and I'll use this term very loosely with these people) finding clues all over the world that our ancestors throughout the times were fascinated with a particular star system. The painted/scratched/baked/pillow-laced signs are said to be the Zeta-Reticuli system and, just like that, the Weyland-Yutani corporation sends out a trillion dollar mission to check out the the potential destination on the M-class moon LV-223. There they enter a realm of horror.



I had actually been looking forward to Prometheus. If nothing else Ridley Scott's movies usually have extremely great production values and impressive optics, and since it was more than obvious this was to be an Alien prequel I was looking forward to experiencing a similar atmosphere (James Cameron's Aliens also did a good job of replicating the dark and claustophobic atmosphere). That being said, I'd be hard pressed to point out another director who so wantonly demolishes the legacy of his own classic. Aside from stunning visuals and a competent score this movie is a complete mess.



This starts with the setup. We have a privately funded mission to another star system with the explicit objective of contacting an alien race believed to be powerful enough to have bioengineered mankind. There are no diplomats on this first contact mission. There is no military security detachment to simulate even the pretense of being able to defend themselves. And the starship they travel on - probably the single most expensive piece of equipment in the history of humankind - is completely unarmed. It flies through real space - things like the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt and the uncharted void between stars - and it doesn't even have something like lasers to defend against micro-asteroids! For a universe often lauded for its "realistic" outlook on space travel and technology this is a serious hickup. Even the interstellar starship Von Braun in the classic videogame System Shock 2 had a military destroyer ride piggyback on it - just in case. And these were the same people who created and set loose homicidal AI's. Twice! If you're outsmarted by these guys in the security department you do kinda have a problem.The plot itself is a mess. Asked the rather important question "Why do you think this moon is the origin of our creators and what proof do you have that we had creators in the first place?" our main character, the archeologist Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace) blithely answers that she has no empirical data to back up her thesis and simply choses to believe that. Yes, you heard that right. That's the motivation for the trillion dollar trip. I remember leaning over to a buddy of mine in the movie theater and commeting "That's not how science works!"


In fact, that should have been the catch phrase for the whole movie. The whole science crew acts in such an amateurish and utterly dumb fashion that not only do you very quickly wish a gruesome death upon each and every one of them, you also have to wonder how a bunch of morons of that caliber a) got degrees and b) got aboard an interstellar mission like Prometheus' one in the first place. One might kinda have thought that after spending a trillion on the ship Weyland-Yutani would spend a few bucks more to get trained and responsible specialists and not a bunch of lobotomized hobos from the academic bargain bin.



As a matter of fact, they all should've died within the first hour of the movie. No, I've got an even better idea. This should've been the movie: after an hour Michael Fassbender's "David" (one of only three characters who act like there's actually neurons doing their thing in their heads out of a cast of eighteen) goes through the ship and shoots everybody except the captain with a shotgun. The second hour of the movie would then feature Idris Elba (the captain) and Charlize Theron (the corporate representative) have hot, steamy sex while Michael Fassbender perfects his "Lawrence of Arabia" routine. Much better movie. Okay, joking aside, Idris Elba, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender are the only remotely intelligent characters of the movie - and Fassbender is playing a sociopathic robot. Now that I think about it, he'd make a great T-1000 for a Terninator movie...





Hi. I'm David. Could you stupid meatbags please die?

"Lawrence of Arabia" is on the TV right now. Thanks.

The stupidities include but are by far not limited to:


Taking off your suits' helmets in an alien environment just because the air is breathable. Because there's no way there could be bacteria, viruses or funghi just waiting to kill the crap out of you.
You bring pistols and short-range flamethrowers on a mission where the only expected quantity you plan to meet is a race of dudes twice the size of a human who are all buit like The Rock. God forbid you bring something that, you know, actually could reasonably kill such a mountain of a man.
The whole movie's "spiritual" question (Where do we come from and why?) is succinctly answered by David during the first half of the movie: man created him simply because he could. Why should the reasoning of another, technologically more advanced race - who clearly aren't the metaphysical "God" - be any different?
It's more than stretching my disbelief that the one guy out of all the people possibly to get lost in the Alien compound is the friggin' CARTOGRAPHER. He's the one who has mapped the place. He should have a way better idea than anybody else where to go!

And that doesn't even touch the monumentally stupid "C-section for an alien squid" part of the movie which Shaw goes through. Or when the alien starship crashes in the end and starts rolling towards the survivors like a giant donut of death none of them, you know, step to the side!



The only thing that fit in this movie aside from the visuals is the ship's name: Prometheus. In the end, it did bring the fire. Other than that the movie is mess full of pseudoreligious kitsch and deplorable/totally forgettable characters and a plot so stupid MST3K would be hard-pressed to do a riff on it. For me Prometheus so far is the disappointment of the year. Ridley Scott seems to have lost his mojo. I already dread the inevitable sequel. If you want to know what else is wrong with the movie, watch Spoony's exhaustive review below.