A painting of me

Prometheus

   18 June 2012, early evening

An alien spacesuit

Reviews of Prometheus have been more mixed than I thought they would be. I suppose it has a lot to live up to, being a sort-of prequel to Alien, directed by the man himself Ridley Scott. I’ll be upfront and say I enjoyed the movie. Suck it, haters.

Prometheus begins with some strange Alien dude eating some strange fluid that ends up destroying his body as he watches a spaceship fly away. He falls into a river and dissolves away. The implication is that this is the source of life on Earth. Fast forward a long time and you have scientists discovering cave paintings about these Aliens, figuring out where they originally came from, and then heading off on a grand adventure of discovery. Like the original Alien, that all turns to shit.

There are countless nods to Alien throughout the film. So many so there isn’t much point trying to list them. So many that comparisons are inevitable. The basic structure of the entire film mirrors Alien, more or less. The problem here is that Alien is clearly the better film: it’s far more focused and coherent. Prometheus suffers from exploring too many mysteries and being a bit half-assed about resolving them. I don’t think every single question a movie asks needs to be spelled out clearly on the screen, but a film should probably make more of an effort than Prometheus does. Putting that aside, there is still a lot to like about Prometheus. The specials effects are amazing. It’s visually stunning. There are several great actors in the movie, who probably could have done more with a better script. Michael Fassbender continues to be awesome, and Charlize Theron continues to be omega-hot. The film is much faster paced than the original alien. Things get weird much quicker. (The movie opens with an alien, after all.) You can tell the film maker and his team were trying to out do themselves when it came to grossing out the audience. It isn’t enough to simply have an alien rip out of someones guts. Here I think Prometheus is most successful. You leave the movie not wanting to touch anything, wishing you could seal up all your orifices.

Go watch this film.

The official Prometheus website.

Comment [3]  

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    This is a fascinating (and a little bit heartbreaking) story.

     # [1]
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    To sum up, this is my reflex film. It’s what I turn to when there is no other hope. Though there are many very good reasons to love this film, my enthusiasm is now well beyond the bounds of rationality, and I won’t have it any other way.

    I need to watch this movie. I feel the same way about Chungking Express. (For example, re-reading my review of the film made me feel more than a little bit happy.)

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  • Man Up, Bieber. 

    Justin Bieber is now 18 years old. Which means, technically, he’s an adult. But the question remains: Is he a man? (If you just laughed, congratulations: You’re mean.) GQ sent Drew Magary to spend one wild night with the Beeb in Los Angeles right after his big birthday, with explicit orders not to come back until we knew the answer.

    Spoiler alert: not really a man.

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    My coworker pointed me to this reddit thread this morning. In his game the world in 3991 AD “is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation. There are 3 remaining super nations … each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.” This is pretty damn amazing.

     # [2]
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    I supported the project on Kickstarter some time ago. The film seems to have gone on to gain much acclaim. I assume this is because of my contribution. It actually played at HotDocs this year, but I didn’t get a chance to go see it. Today the guys behind the film released the film for digital download. Everyone I know who has seen the movie has said it’s pretty great, so you might want to check it out. Being a backer I got to pick up my free copy. I also got a free copy of the soundtrack, by Jim Guthrie of Sword & Sworcery fame.

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