Ripley's Believe it or Not (mostly not)

Rating: 1/10 (8 June 2012)

More is definitely less.
There's an old maxim in creative writing. Never TELL your audience - SHOW them. That maxim has been both ignored and abused in the case of Prometheus. The filmmakers show you too much and explain just about everything too. Director Ridley Scott's return to the Alien universe is mostly non-triumphant. On revisiting a flame he he first ignited in 1979, one done with a great minimalist and atmospheric effect, Scott has betrayed his success by employing a genuinely odd and disjointed script, perfunctory direction and an endless hall of monster's closet scares. Ridley is much better than this. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find if he's ever been worse.
Prometheus is a concept film, wrapped in leftover sets and costumes from Avatar and spiced with Creature from the Black Lagoon. Despite how hard the movie tells the audience twe are watching is an Alien "prequel," (or by the end he's trying to tell us its a prequel to a prequel), I'm hard pressed to find any substantive connection to Alien, Aliens or even the jumbled Alien3. Those films were at best, riveting. At worst, in the case of Alien 3, boring. I will stop there with comparisons because all that followed Fincher's mess really don't bother mention and I believe this one could fall into that category.
Exposition is at a premium here but development is scarce. From the first scenes, mystery is left to the dogs and before we can immerse ourselves in the unknown, voluble lectures of the plot yet to unfold are given ad nauseum. Prometheus is essentially two films. One is a concept of human origin, the other, and the majority in general, is an endless series of monster's closets. Just when things settle down and it feels as if we could be watching an actual science fiction movie, the jumpy music cues, gooey scares and terrible dialog set in. Then there's the other half. A nebulous origin story - one that could be interesting - is buried under rubber chicken on the string gags. Oh but there are mysteries. Why do they keep taking the helmets off? Why bother having them at all? Why did nobody ask Liz about her quickie operation and that nasty "leftover?" That's just the short end of it. How can we trace our DNA to these tall aryans? Then what the heck were the Neatherthals and all the other humans we share nearly identical DNA with? The script displays the trademark ravenous touch for dead ends of writer Damon Lindeloff, one of the head writers of TV's LOST. He should stick to television or perhaps working the McDonalds drive up, or would he screw that up too? Deus ex machina is at a premium, character exchanges are laughable, scenes pace with the tempo of a video game commercial and I still can't count how many endings the movie had. That last "reveal" was certainly a laugh, because a lot of the people in the theater found it funny.
But it's not all bad. Noomi Rapace is a decent match for Sigourney Weaver and proves yet again, even in the face of a terrible script, she will pull off anything handed to her. Just like in the superior Swedish Dragon Tattoo film, her unwavering commitment to her character shores up a meager story and holds us to the end. Michael Fassbender too gives a noteworthy play as the android and gives Lance Henrickson's turn in the same boots a run for his money. I don't know what Charlize Theron and Guy Pierce were doing here but she and everybody else are simply cashing a paycheck.
Where did humans come from? I don't know but the mystery of who bankrolled a script this bad is a conundrum worth solving. It is pretty obvious why Ripley never wanted people to know where the Aliens came from. She saw Prometheus and knew it sucked. Ripley warned us and tried to save us, but we had to ask. Now we know Ripley, now we know.