Quote Of The Day

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"

Thursday, June 07, 2012

Musings on Prometheus...

Having seen Prometheus twice now I think I'm more confused after the second watch. Plot holes (and SPOILERS) ahoy!

Mark Kermode was interviewing Ridley Scott on Mark Kermode film review on BBC Five Live and after the interview MK was musing about Prometheus being more 'Bladerunner' than 'Alien' as the film was more about robots and the nature of what it is to be human than it was about alien nasties running about.

Ridley Scott was saying that a proper Bladerunner prequel and sequel (I think) were both being written so I don't think we'll be seeing a crossover anytime soon. Does the team think Alien/Pometheus/​Bladerunner are all in the same universe?

Ridley also confirmed that the planet in Prometheus is NOT the same planet as in Alien. Same galaxy but different planet.

And this from my mate Chris (which I largely agree with):-

The caesarean scene was cool, though also completely over-the-top unrealistic (or rather, the scenes immediately following the caesarean).

The special effects were good, obviously, but I am never going to rate a movie highly based on its special effects. Saying that, the makeup used to make Guy Pierce look old was crap, and his attempt at trying to pretend to be an old man was equally crap. They could have CGI'd a better old geezer to play Peter Weyland.

The characters were either boring or unbelievable. The geologist with so many psychological problems that you wouldn't trust him with sweeping the streets let alone sending on an interstellar mission of possibly the greatest importance the human race has ever undertaken was particularly ludicrous. Charlize Theron's "Bitch Without A Cause" was a close second. The Ripley-a-Like was lame-as, interlaced with brief spurts of completely superhuman unbelievability (see aforementioned caesarean). Even David was just an "evil robot" - there was no real explanation given as to why he was acting like such an incredible cunt. You just had to presume that it was because he'd been programmed to, but the details of the motives behind this were completely opaque.

The behaviour of the characters in general was pretty random and unbelievable, with people who are supposed to be scientists completely flouting the most basic and obvious of safety procedures and otherwise just acting completely irrationally very obviously just to introduce the most contrived drama into the story.

The acting was mediocre at best, all from the Bog-Standard Action Movie School of Drama. Lots of "this is my angry voice!!!" stuff. Michael's mention of the self-sacrificial ramming scene at the end is a particularly good example of three actors who wouldn't know how to express their imminent death if someone put a gun to their heads. Even Fassbender's David wasn't particularly mind-blowing or anything - it was pretty standard "guy acting like a robot"; there wasn't anything particularly memorable about his performance.

The dialogue was uninspiring at best and downright corny at worst. Almost none of it sounded like real people talking to each other - it sounded completely like a script.

The actual storyline was disjointed and made little sense. There were multiple "plot points" (I use the term loosely) that were made to seem important but then later turned out to have almost no point or relevance at all (the previously mentioned 2,000 year-old Engineer head, for one; Doctor Holloway's poisoning for another; Peter Weyland's appearance and subsequent - and almost immediate - demise for a third). The "plot" seemed to advance mostly by the process of the characters jumping to irrational conclusions.

So the only parts we're left with that were any good are the special effects (Guy Pierce's makeup notwithstanding) and Doctor Holloway's face (and the face of the orderly who is looking after Peter Weyland... but he's only in it for about five minutes). And that's not enough to make even an average movie for me, I'm afraid.

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