a forgettable mess

Rating: 3/10 (12 June 2012)

I hate to sound cynical, but I couldn't help thinking (as I left the theater early) that someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble to create a movie and a whole theory of evolution just so as to lay a little schlock horror - sci-fi on everyone. Prometheus is basically just that. The whole Alien series is, in fact, arguably just that. And so try as one might to find a little meaning here, to find comfort and some peace of mind about our place in the universe, I just can't. I can't get past the main 'raison d'être" or reason for the existence of this series. Its to creep you out, basically. Always has been. So prequel or no prequel, (and expect sequels to this prequel I guess) - what should one expect now and in the future? BTW, what do you get when you make a sequel of a prequel - you get the ORIGINAL MOVIE BACK! Heh heh, well maybe eventually, but of course no one would stand for that. In any case, unless someone wipes out the entire Xenomorph population, horror - sci-fi is what you are going to get, plain and simple. Slimy aliens invading human bodies, plain and simple.
Which is not to say you can't TRY and elevate the bottom line here. Lord knows, they've gone to a lot of effort to do that over the years. It does help some, but in Prometheus, the story is so weak and poorly thought out, its hard to care. I've enjoyed reading about Space Jockeys and Xenomorphs and really its an elaborately thought out world. But none of this gets translated from print to movie here as the visuals take over, adding a superficial gloss to everything while smothering any depth and insight. Yeah, the visuals at times were nice, but cynical me also looked at them like they were mainly a set up, i.e. setting me up to think I was going to see a movie more akin to 2001: a Space Odyssey than a horror - sci-fi one. This kind of ticked me off, actually. I mean, I'd enjoy spending an evening contemplating our origins as 9ft tall, hairless creatures that look sort of noble and serene. Except that I can't connect spiritually to them at all not knowing anything about them other than the fact that they are careless with their bioweapons. What does this all say about our lives here on earth? Our future, our destiny? Nothing that I can tell..but do try and avoid grabbing cobra like reptiles when you see them in the future.
So, but I tried to like Prometheus at the onset. I was in the mood. But there was not a kernel of quality, original filmmaking for me to grab onto. Man travels to a distant planet to investigate his species origins here on planet earth. OK, what else? They send a team of young and seemingly talentless individuals as well as some corporate types. What else? They start getting attacked by the same slimy creatures that killed off their species ancestors. Will we ever learn?? Anyway, I did notice that the blonds here were sort of the bad guys, almost like Nazi stereotypes. Why, I don't know, but Ridley Scott does like to equate teutonic looking gods and goddesses with androids. He did it in Blade Runner. But bad guys too? - I mean, what was their motive here? That was never really explained too well. Anyway, and the rest of the characters were even more forgettable. They did inexplicable, unscientific things. They behaved like amateurs. No one really seemed to have a well defined role nor credentials to back it up. Most of the time, they seemed to react to their surroundings more or less like children - prodding and poking things to see how they work, etc. And you know what, I almost found myself saying "they deserve to get attacked by alien reptile creatures!". As descendants of noble looking but careless 9ft humanoids, perhaps that is their fate. And is that perhaps OUR OWN fate as well someday? While others may have somehow found a deeper philosophical message in all of this, that is mostly what I left the theater concluding - that we humans are nothing more than careless, warm, oxygen breathing cavities for opportunistic slimy creatures. We are, after all, the stuff of those poor, unfortunate Space Jockeys. And that is the comforting message that I will sleep on tonight. Its not about Religion nor our exalted place in the universe. Its about victims and predators. And that man had to travel millions of miles just to find that out is really depressing. Why couldn't everyone have just stayed home and read a good novel about man's achievements here on earth instead? Thats kind of what I wished I had done tonight anyway....