SF Movie Reviews – Prometheus, Into Darkness, etc.

I did some SF movie watching/catching up lately, and here are some short reviews:

Prometheus

I bought Prometheus for a 1000 yen (cheaper than watching it at the movies here) and luckily did not spend more money on it, since I am asking myself this: Why, oh why, Ridley Scott, did you think you had to make “Alien” again? First of all the movie contains a horde of overused SF plot-lines – humans meet superior species, superior species tries to kill us for no apparent reason, big company boss abuses his power… and so forth. Then, why again? Alien was great, let it be. Why the need to explain how the ship with the “navigator” got there and how/why it was infected by the “alien” species? Sometimes it is nice to have a prequel to understand how it all came to pass, but in the “Alien” case this seems so unnecessary. Now, if the original “Alien” had been a bad movie, I might still swallow that the director felt the need to make a “better” prequel. But the original “Alien” happens to be one of the best and most acclaimed SF/horror movies ever made and while making sequels is sort of a necessary evil this prequel seems like sacrilege to me.

Nothing can make up for the awesome scene where Kane “bears” the alien, also not the admittedly admirable action of the female lead getting into a med-box and having her alien surgically removed via caesarian section while being conscious and then stenciling the wound shut. Since there was Kane and his “child”, this in principle awesome scene just becomes a tired rip-off of the epic original. And that is, at least in my opinion true for the entire movie, it is a tired rip-off of its epic original and belongs into the category: movies that should not have been made.…

Oblivion

Well, the concept was not bad and the clarification at the end more or less cool, however the way to that one moment of coolness was much too long. Somehow the story was too thin and could have been told in half the time. This is the problem with let me call it “idea-based” science fiction. You have one cool idea and nothing more and then you are trying to make a novel out of it or a movie when in fact your one cool idea delivers only enough material for a short story. For me Oblivion was a classic example for that – spoiler alert. The one cool idea is that the Cruise character and his science officer or whatever function she served on their ship got captured by the evil aliens and they made thousand of clone copies of the two and sent a whole army of Cruises back down to earth without the copies knowing anything about each other and thinking they are all unique. All the other ideas, drone gone bad, destroyed planet, resistance fighters and evil aliens we have seen a million times before. In my opinion that one cool idea did not justify a full movie.

Cloud Atlas

Interesting, but I don’t think I understood it. I could not see a connection between the six or so stories in different time periods. Maybe I was too tired, the screen in the airplane was too small or I did not understand everything due to the lousy sound quality on a plane, but I for my part did not see a connection between those stories. Each story in itself was interesting to a varying degree and it was fun to see the same actors all over again in different costumes, especially Hugo Weaving as a bad-ass female nurse in the old people are breaking out of an asylum story was hilarious, but no clue what that asylum story had to do for example with Neo Soul. Also, the Neo Soul story was just a tired rip-off of the classic Soylent Green.

I would have liked to understand the big picture and it would have been cool if there had been one, if anybody got it, let me know.

One other remark though, I did not like the characters in this movie too much. They were all too much victims and passive and suffering needlessly. Why did the guy with the music piece kill himself? His motivation was not apparent to me. The guy who got poisoned on the sailing ship just lay around suffering, not once asking why and trying to end his suffering, his black friend had to do all that for him. Tom Hanks in the last episode as well, instead of whining, do something. He does in the end, but less whining would have made this character more likable. So, if anybody can tell me what the red thread was in those six or so stories I’d be grateful, I haven’t discovered it.

John Carter of Mars

Hmmmm…. Nice piece of science fantasy but I am not surprised that it flopped. Though this story might have been sensational in its time and though George Lucas has massively taken story elements from it, the thing is that Star Wars is thirty years old and to shoot something like John Carter of Mars now was just the wrong time. Had it been released instead of Star Wars it would have become cult I suppose, but not thirty, almost forty years on and not after the horrible Phantom Menace which had all the desert chases and aliens that resemble the Tharks. It’s a nice story and its well done, but it just comes forty years too late.

And now the highlight!

Star Trek – Into Darkness

I sat in the “Star Trek” from 2010 with the new crew expecting to hate it, but then the movie turned me around and I loved it, especially the new Spock, Uhura, Bones and Scotty. Therefore my expectations to this second movie with the new crew were very high.

It was a good movie but I am a little disappointed that they rehashed Khan Noonien Singh yet again.

It was a strike of genius to revive him in the “Wrath of Khan” and I agree that “Wrath of Khan” is one of the best Star Trek movies as general opinion seems to be. It was dangerous to revive the story yet again and considering that danger they did quite well, but nevertheless this second movie with the new crew did not surpass the first.

Though quite different in appearance than Ricardo Montalban, Benedict Cumberbatch did a great job personifying Khan. But the recurring theme of the gone bad admiral was boring and in general I was disappointed that they didn’t find anything else to rehash. To revive it once = Wrath of Khan = awesome, to do so yet another time?…

There are plenty of other story threads the writers could have picked up.

The parallels to Wrath of Khan notably the sacrifice of Kirk instead of Spock were thus predictable and did not produce an ounce of emotion.

It threw me though totally how Kirk was realigning the warp coil – banging with his feet against delicate equipment in high radiation, what hilarious nonsense.

All in all the movie was fun and had some great elements and funny puns but the first with the new crew was definitely better.

Here is my personal Star Trek movie ranking by the way:

First Contact

Wrath of Khan

The Voyage Home

Star Trek (new crew)

(Everybody hated it but I liked) Nemesis

Into Darkness

The Undiscovered Country

Generations

Search for Spock

Insurrection

Star Trek the motion picture

The Final Frontier

What’s your ranking?