EPT
I guess I'll start with my initial reactions. The first time we see Prometheus it tells us it has a crew of 17, this immediately worried me, we've got two hours and 17 different characters, so therefore we're unlikely to get to know most of them and they'll probably just be one dimensional alien fodder. Part of where Alien was clever was that it didn't take long to get to know all the characters, while you may not know each of their names immediately, you'll always recognise them and have an idea of what each character is like as a person, how one might react in a situation based on the personality they have, even how they feel about other characters. So personally I think in general you want either lots of characters and the main ones highlighted, or very few characters so you'll know them all, 17 is not a good number for this. And it turns out that they are mostly shallow morons.
The film makes the dumb mistake of introducing a few characters by trade immediately ("Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration") so we'll know what some of them do but won't know what kind of person they are or care about them in any way or form. In AvP a character will have a minor purpose and then be killed once that's done, eg. the translator guy who reads some inscription and then, as he's served his purpose, is killed in the next scene, Prometheus is similar, the characters are one dimensional plot devices who have no internal conflict or turmoil or anything that makes them human, or even any redeeming qualities. I had no emotional attachment to any character so if one was threatened or even killed I really did not care. They were also utterly inept as I will explain in spoilers shortly.
Not only or the characters bland, their dialogue is awkward and uninteresting. In Alien we suspect a relationship or some connection between Ripley and Dallas, we see who's friends with who and some characters get annoyed by others. Nothing so interesting happens between the characters here, they are stale and emotionless making them impossible to relate to. Also the religious over-tones from the main character really annoy me, I dislike this in films, especially in sci-fi, it takes away some of the mystique. We have to be told everything, there is nothing to infer, if the main character just wore a cross, fair enough, but it keeps alluding to it. We do not infer relationships between people, if it's not entirely obvious anyway it's stated by a character. Same for the story, we do not infer what's going on, it's never a mystery, we're always quickly told or shown. It's mindless.
Avatar was the first time we saw something in 3D, and while it was lacking in story originality or general interesting-ness and bulging in clichés, the visuals were truly unique, this was something we had not seen before. But Avatar was three years ago now, so this effect has worn off, when I now see a film in 3D the visuals no longer really impress, I'm used to it. This film adds nothing at all to that, if we've learned anything from the Star Wars Prequels it's that lots and lots of special effects don't make a film any good. So big massive visuals even in 3D don't add much to Prometheus, there's nothing new, no aliens pop out at you making you jerk your head back, nothing at all pops out at you which I think is the best use of 3D. There are no shocks or moments of tension at any point, occasional uncomfortableness but nothing scary or tense. The 3D is just a pointless gimmick and adds nothing to the film.
This film was riddled with homages to Alien, but unfortunately references to a great film do not make a film great. In fact, a film could have no references to another film an still be great. So having all these similarities to Alien just made me think of the Star Wars prequels with Lucas' idea that they should be like poetry and each stanza rhyme, and if you want me to enjoy a film you sure as hell shouldn't make me think of the Star Wars prequels. Unlike Alien, it unfortunately has made the common error of mixing up horror and gore, whereas in Alien you wonder what exactly the alien did to Lambert, here you see everything making you never really fear anything. The entire film is devoid of tension and suspense.
From the trailer we know the basic premise, Prometheus is going out to look for something about human origins. What bewilders me is they send a science vessel out but then only 3 or 4 of the actual crew know what their mission is, just as they arrive at their destination are the rest informed. You'd think on a mission that's this important, and that has potential for first contact with an alien civilization everyone would be pretty well briefed and trained. But instead they wait until they get there and have two archaeologists explain where they are and why. Considering they say this expedition cost a trillion dollars this seems like a bit of an oversight to me, if I invested a trillion dollars in a project I think I'd want my staff to be able to plan for more than a few hours. This was okay in Aliens, as they sent marines and secretly they wanted the bioweapon of the alien, so secrecy was okay, but in Prometheus it's ridiculous. Their actual mission (as in the spoilers below) is also quite a stretch, it's based entirely on a hunch and really doesn't seem to make any sense.
The following will contain spoilers indicating how dumb the characters and plot are.
+ Show Spoiler +
So if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the Charlize Theron character with the stupid line "I'm Meredith Vickers and it's my job to make sure you do yours" (sadly that's about as clever as the dialogue ever becomes...). Unfortunately Meredith Vickers is one of worst employees imaginable and apart from standing around having a stick up her ass I don't remember her doing her job at any point. When two people are stranded on the moon and token black captain is monitoring them, her and the captain go off to her quarters to prove to him she's not a robot, so now nobody is monitoring the two lost characters and when they find something and report it there is no one listening, and I don't think it's the captain's job to be banging you Meredith, and while I didn't see his mission briefing, as I mentioned earlier, he didn't either. The only job she actually did was not let an infected character back on the ship...which wasn't really her job at all, she should have been making sure some security guy was doing that. Later on she meets the old guy who looks like an alien out of the original series of Star Trek. The way they are talking you think, oh she must be his daughter. So then, at the end of the scene where she calls him "Father" and some dramatic music plays you don't think "Oh my god, Darth Vader is Luke's father! WOW!" Instead you think, "oh, so this character who I didn't care about and assumed was the daughter of the old guy (who's reveal that he was on the ship was also completely predictable and unsurprising) actually is the daughter of the old guy I don't care about." So that explains why she is there at least, because she's definitely not making sure other people are doing their jobs.
So our biologist friend, who I'm going to call Bob Vance, and the geologist who I'm going to call Randy Marsh (who according to wikipedia "has become unstable after many missions", sounds like this trillion dollar investor is really getting the best crew for his money) are on the initial expedition to the moon and get scared when they see a big room so decide to head back to the ship because Randy Marsh is "a geologist and only cares about rocks and no one else here cares about rocks" and Bob Vance goes despite the fact that we've established he's an evolutionary biologist, namely a Darwinist, and has the possibility of not only discovering an alien species but a possible evolutionary link to humanity on a different planet. Then a storms breaks out and the captain tells the others to come back to the ship. Despite the fact that the captain was watching all their webcam feeds and had a big map showing where each one was it was only when the other 4 got back to the ship that he realised Bob Vance and Randy Marsh are still on the surface, I guess he forgot about them because he was too busy wondering if Meredith was a robot or not. Even though they were lost you'd think they'd just like say, "hey Captian, as you've a big-ass map could you direct us out of here?" But if we've learned anything about the portrayals of scientists in Hollywood it's that they are entirely incompetent in every way except for their subject area which they know absolutely everything about without ever having to consult a text book, so they just stayed lost.
While lost they come back to the big room that made them scared earlier except this time they explore it as the script-writer ran out of ideas. The biologist comes across a reptilian creature, from how the film portrays it, this is probably the first contact with an alien life form in the history of our species, so like I'm sure any self respecting biologist would do upon first contact he starts calling it a beautiful girl and trying to touch it.... I'm sure this is just standard procedure when you first see a hissing snake on an alien world though. So then much to the surprise of the audience, the hissing snake attacks them.
As mentioned earlier there are two archaeologists, as well as a biologist and a geologist and a medic, no need for a chemist or a physicist, we don't want people who know things about chemistry or the universe here, that would be silly, it's okay though cause the archaeologists also know everything about biology and chemistry and DNA and performing experiments on dead alien heads, so all bases are covered. Anyway, as there's two of them, and as they're a couple, the male character will have to die horribly as he's not really necessary and that will allow the female character to be upset and "grow". So surprisingly the male character dies horribly as he's not really necessary and that allows the female character to be upset and "grow". Turns out one of the only things we know about them as a couple from clunky awkward dialogue is that she can't have children. So therefore before the film ends she will have to get pregnant, a bit like in the Avengers when Captain America tells Iron Man he'll never be a hero cause he'll never sacrifice himself for the greater good so by the end of the film Iron Man will definitely sacrifice himself for the greater good, or like in Avatar when they say that dragon creature has never been tamed so you know by the end of the film he'll be tamed by the main character or like in...every fucking clichéd film ever.
So the robot, who's a lot like Ash from Alien because the writers are incapable of having an original idea, infects male archaeologist and he has sex with Elizabeth and she gets pregnant. The crew are going to put her in stasis so they can help her when they get back but she escapes and goes to some emergency surgery thing we met earlier. Even though she's got an alien inside of her and should be quarantined nobody bothers going after her. After her surgery and a little squid comes out of her, her abdomen is stapled back together and she runs out of the room, pretty decent staples really. Then you wonder why nobody is outside the room. Or when she meets characters later they don't go, "hey Elizabeth, what happened the alien inside you?" Or "where is it now?" Or "How are you running around so much with staples holding your abdomen together?" Instead they just carry on as normal as if nothing had happened her. Elizabeth and male archaeologist are the entire reason they went on this trip, I suppose they don't want to make her feel self-conscious.
You see they found symbols in different cultures that were always the same and looked like a tall man pointing to a star cluster. Therefore that means that they were created by this species from that star cluster. How does Elizabeth know they created them and didn't just visit them? Oh, "because she chooses to believe that." Not only that but she convinces a rich dying old man that that's the case so he funds a trillion dollar expedition. I'd have bought the idea if they just thought this was an alien species who visited them so they were going to investigate that star cluster, but how the fuck could they know they engineered them? Well I choose to believe that the world is flat so I think I'm going to convince someone to fund a trip for me all the way around the world so I can see if I'm right or not. Did I mention she was a Christian? I hate religious overtones in films. So irritating.
So anyway, because she's the main character and chooses to believe this there's no doubt that she is right, also just so happens that because this is an Alien-like film and she's the female lead then she'll obviously be the only survivor, unless you count the robot who's head still talks after it's ripped off --a little like Ash in Alien, or Bishop in Aliens as the writers are incapable of having original ideas. Turns out though that the engineers decided they made a mistake creating humanity and thought it would be a good idea to use some bioweaponry to kill all of them. One of them decided to go into stasis though, possibly because some aliens were on the loose, and when the humans woke him up decided he might as well go back to killing humanity even though this seemed to be thousands of years later. Seeing as they were so advanced you'd think he'd put like an alarm clock on his stasis cell so that he wouldn't have to rely on someone randomly waking him up. And seeing as lots of time passed it might be worth checking with his superiors if they still wanted humanity destroyed. Nah, fuck it, I'll just kill 'em all instead.
The film slugs on in it's boringness until that alien squidy thing that the one who can't give birth gave birth to infects the engineer and humanity is saved. Elizabeth and robot's head go off to find more engineers either to find out why they want to kill humanity or to use their bio-weapons against themselves leaving it open for a sequel where we can have more excruciating torture.
All the other unmemorable characters were killed stupidly at some point or another but we didn't care cause we didn't know them or even recognise most of them, there's only 10 or 11 characters used so why have a crew of 17? Why not 100 and then you can have as many nameless people as you want or else leave it at 10 or 11.
So our biologist friend, who I'm going to call Bob Vance, and the geologist who I'm going to call Randy Marsh (who according to wikipedia "has become unstable after many missions", sounds like this trillion dollar investor is really getting the best crew for his money) are on the initial expedition to the moon and get scared when they see a big room so decide to head back to the ship because Randy Marsh is "a geologist and only cares about rocks and no one else here cares about rocks" and Bob Vance goes despite the fact that we've established he's an evolutionary biologist, namely a Darwinist, and has the possibility of not only discovering an alien species but a possible evolutionary link to humanity on a different planet. Then a storms breaks out and the captain tells the others to come back to the ship. Despite the fact that the captain was watching all their webcam feeds and had a big map showing where each one was it was only when the other 4 got back to the ship that he realised Bob Vance and Randy Marsh are still on the surface, I guess he forgot about them because he was too busy wondering if Meredith was a robot or not. Even though they were lost you'd think they'd just like say, "hey Captian, as you've a big-ass map could you direct us out of here?" But if we've learned anything about the portrayals of scientists in Hollywood it's that they are entirely incompetent in every way except for their subject area which they know absolutely everything about without ever having to consult a text book, so they just stayed lost.
While lost they come back to the big room that made them scared earlier except this time they explore it as the script-writer ran out of ideas. The biologist comes across a reptilian creature, from how the film portrays it, this is probably the first contact with an alien life form in the history of our species, so like I'm sure any self respecting biologist would do upon first contact he starts calling it a beautiful girl and trying to touch it.... I'm sure this is just standard procedure when you first see a hissing snake on an alien world though. So then much to the surprise of the audience, the hissing snake attacks them.
As mentioned earlier there are two archaeologists, as well as a biologist and a geologist and a medic, no need for a chemist or a physicist, we don't want people who know things about chemistry or the universe here, that would be silly, it's okay though cause the archaeologists also know everything about biology and chemistry and DNA and performing experiments on dead alien heads, so all bases are covered. Anyway, as there's two of them, and as they're a couple, the male character will have to die horribly as he's not really necessary and that will allow the female character to be upset and "grow". So surprisingly the male character dies horribly as he's not really necessary and that allows the female character to be upset and "grow". Turns out one of the only things we know about them as a couple from clunky awkward dialogue is that she can't have children. So therefore before the film ends she will have to get pregnant, a bit like in the Avengers when Captain America tells Iron Man he'll never be a hero cause he'll never sacrifice himself for the greater good so by the end of the film Iron Man will definitely sacrifice himself for the greater good, or like in Avatar when they say that dragon creature has never been tamed so you know by the end of the film he'll be tamed by the main character or like in...every fucking clichéd film ever.
So the robot, who's a lot like Ash from Alien because the writers are incapable of having an original idea, infects male archaeologist and he has sex with Elizabeth and she gets pregnant. The crew are going to put her in stasis so they can help her when they get back but she escapes and goes to some emergency surgery thing we met earlier. Even though she's got an alien inside of her and should be quarantined nobody bothers going after her. After her surgery and a little squid comes out of her, her abdomen is stapled back together and she runs out of the room, pretty decent staples really. Then you wonder why nobody is outside the room. Or when she meets characters later they don't go, "hey Elizabeth, what happened the alien inside you?" Or "where is it now?" Or "How are you running around so much with staples holding your abdomen together?" Instead they just carry on as normal as if nothing had happened her. Elizabeth and male archaeologist are the entire reason they went on this trip, I suppose they don't want to make her feel self-conscious.
You see they found symbols in different cultures that were always the same and looked like a tall man pointing to a star cluster. Therefore that means that they were created by this species from that star cluster. How does Elizabeth know they created them and didn't just visit them? Oh, "because she chooses to believe that." Not only that but she convinces a rich dying old man that that's the case so he funds a trillion dollar expedition. I'd have bought the idea if they just thought this was an alien species who visited them so they were going to investigate that star cluster, but how the fuck could they know they engineered them? Well I choose to believe that the world is flat so I think I'm going to convince someone to fund a trip for me all the way around the world so I can see if I'm right or not. Did I mention she was a Christian? I hate religious overtones in films. So irritating.
So anyway, because she's the main character and chooses to believe this there's no doubt that she is right, also just so happens that because this is an Alien-like film and she's the female lead then she'll obviously be the only survivor, unless you count the robot who's head still talks after it's ripped off --a little like Ash in Alien, or Bishop in Aliens as the writers are incapable of having original ideas. Turns out though that the engineers decided they made a mistake creating humanity and thought it would be a good idea to use some bioweaponry to kill all of them. One of them decided to go into stasis though, possibly because some aliens were on the loose, and when the humans woke him up decided he might as well go back to killing humanity even though this seemed to be thousands of years later. Seeing as they were so advanced you'd think he'd put like an alarm clock on his stasis cell so that he wouldn't have to rely on someone randomly waking him up. And seeing as lots of time passed it might be worth checking with his superiors if they still wanted humanity destroyed. Nah, fuck it, I'll just kill 'em all instead.
The film slugs on in it's boringness until that alien squidy thing that the one who can't give birth gave birth to infects the engineer and humanity is saved. Elizabeth and robot's head go off to find more engineers either to find out why they want to kill humanity or to use their bio-weapons against themselves leaving it open for a sequel where we can have more excruciating torture.
All the other unmemorable characters were killed stupidly at some point or another but we didn't care cause we didn't know them or even recognise most of them, there's only 10 or 11 characters used so why have a crew of 17? Why not 100 and then you can have as many nameless people as you want or else leave it at 10 or 11.
This is one of the most disappointing films to come out in a long time due to the hype. Terrible plot, dialogue and characters who you have utterly no connection with or attachment to make this like another AvP. If you still wish to go see this please leave your brain far far away.
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my hype for this movie just died good review any way thanks.
