sevenswells (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sevenswells) wrote2012-06-17 11:42 pm
sevenswells) wrote2012-06-17 11:42 pm
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Prometheus: a space travesty
So, yeah, I saw Prometheus. Suffice to say I was not pleased.
Please don't tell me that the film "brings more questions than answers" and that I didn't understand its point. It's not about the "metaphysical" questions that don't find answers, it's about basic common logic that just doesn't work in the plot. There are movies that are supposed to be a bit obscure and provoke questions and thoughts, and then there's just shoddy writing. Guess in which category Prometheus falls in.
The more I think about it, the more it makes me angry.
It's not just that the plot was moronic and incoherent, the characters poorly built, vacant and devoid of charisma; it's the fact that I think Scott made this movie to re-introduce Christianism and the notion of divinity in the Alien verse, which was initially a nihilistic one: "in space," said the catch phrase at the time, "no one can hear you scream."
That was the point in the first Alien to me: when you face a creature like this and you're lost in space, there is no god, there is nothing: just brutal and absurd violence, no help, no escape, no providence. You die horribly because fuck you.
And now with Prometheus we have this scientist who travels through space to meet her literal makers, and she still wears a Christian cross even though by that point she must have realised that Jesus being the son of God was bullshit if she actually believed in her own theory, and after meeting the dudes responsible for all life on Earth (who turn out to be more than a bit douchey), she still asks for her cross. And she anounces the date in the voice-over monologue at the end with "in the year of Our Lord 2093". What the hell?
Why mention a Christian cross at all? What did it have to do with anything if it wasn't just shameless proselytism on Scott's part? Why, when the biologist of the team (also a moron like the rest of the so-called "scientists" of the team, but only at that moment I felt he had a point) tells Shaw "what about Darwinism? You can't just shit on hundreds of years of evolutionism like that, do you have anything other than a few cave paintings to back up what you say?", she answers "I chose to believe!"? Say what? Is that supposed to be an answer? I'm sorry, where did you get your doctorate again?
Prometheus is a betrayal of the first Alien's philosophy. Not only an offensively badly written film, but the perversion of a pure and interesting concept.
ETA: Fucking shit I was right: http://collider.com/prometheus-2-sequel/172444
"The Prometheus crew calculates that the Engineers decided humanity was to be destroyed 2000 years ago, around the time of Jesus Christ. That specific date is not insignificant in relation to the Prometheus follow-up and answering the question of why our race was targeted for destruction" (Quote from the article)
“We definitely did [have that in the script], and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it. Guess what? They crucified him.’”(Quote from Ridley Scott himself)
I have no words.
No, in fact, I have: Please Ridley Scott, please stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
Moreover, if you put together this video:
And this review by Maddox, you don't even have the complete list all the plotholes and incoherences and logic!fails contained in Prometheus. I swear, I could list even more of them. God.
I don't understand this era we live in. No, honestly, I don't. This crap, a prequel to The Thing, a remake of Total Recall... Why? Is our age the doom of pop culture? Where we keep repeating stuff and make it less interesting that it was?
Please don't tell me that the film "brings more questions than answers" and that I didn't understand its point. It's not about the "metaphysical" questions that don't find answers, it's about basic common logic that just doesn't work in the plot. There are movies that are supposed to be a bit obscure and provoke questions and thoughts, and then there's just shoddy writing. Guess in which category Prometheus falls in.
The more I think about it, the more it makes me angry.
It's not just that the plot was moronic and incoherent, the characters poorly built, vacant and devoid of charisma; it's the fact that I think Scott made this movie to re-introduce Christianism and the notion of divinity in the Alien verse, which was initially a nihilistic one: "in space," said the catch phrase at the time, "no one can hear you scream."
That was the point in the first Alien to me: when you face a creature like this and you're lost in space, there is no god, there is nothing: just brutal and absurd violence, no help, no escape, no providence. You die horribly because fuck you.
And now with Prometheus we have this scientist who travels through space to meet her literal makers, and she still wears a Christian cross even though by that point she must have realised that Jesus being the son of God was bullshit if she actually believed in her own theory, and after meeting the dudes responsible for all life on Earth (who turn out to be more than a bit douchey), she still asks for her cross. And she anounces the date in the voice-over monologue at the end with "in the year of Our Lord 2093". What the hell?
Why mention a Christian cross at all? What did it have to do with anything if it wasn't just shameless proselytism on Scott's part? Why, when the biologist of the team (also a moron like the rest of the so-called "scientists" of the team, but only at that moment I felt he had a point) tells Shaw "what about Darwinism? You can't just shit on hundreds of years of evolutionism like that, do you have anything other than a few cave paintings to back up what you say?", she answers "I chose to believe!"? Say what? Is that supposed to be an answer? I'm sorry, where did you get your doctorate again?
Prometheus is a betrayal of the first Alien's philosophy. Not only an offensively badly written film, but the perversion of a pure and interesting concept.
ETA: Fucking shit I was right: http://collider.com/prometheus-2-sequel/172444
"The Prometheus crew calculates that the Engineers decided humanity was to be destroyed 2000 years ago, around the time of Jesus Christ. That specific date is not insignificant in relation to the Prometheus follow-up and answering the question of why our race was targeted for destruction" (Quote from the article)
“We definitely did [have that in the script], and then we thought it was a little too on the nose. But if you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it. Guess what? They crucified him.’”(Quote from Ridley Scott himself)
I have no words.
No, in fact, I have: Please Ridley Scott, please stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
Moreover, if you put together this video:
And this review by Maddox, you don't even have the complete list all the plotholes and incoherences and logic!fails contained in Prometheus. I swear, I could list even more of them. God.
I don't understand this era we live in. No, honestly, I don't. This crap, a prequel to The Thing, a remake of Total Recall... Why? Is our age the doom of pop culture? Where we keep repeating stuff and make it less interesting that it was?
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Now, it sure as hell is a bad thing when it's done poorly, but the fact is that remaking and rewriting and inventing prequels and sequels to already existing works is part of the artistic history of this era, I think, and when well done it can be as thought-provoking and engaging as any "original" (for a given value of the word, obvs) piece of work.
Doesn't excuse Prometheus from being a piece of crap, though. It's certainly disappointed a lot of people around me — I think I'll go see Snow White & the Huntsman instead. (Dark and gritty reimagining of a traditionally cheesy fairytale with lesbian undertones and two female main leads? Damn.)
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The second problem I have with those remakes/prequels/reboots, is that I've yet to find one that really convinces me and brings a different perspective/originality to the work they're derived from. Honestly, it looks to me like they're just preying on nostalgia of the times where the good stuff was made. And, well, it doesn't work for me, not even on a nostalgic level. Nobody takes risks anymore, or sometimes, like with Prometheus, they do it to ruin absolutely everything that was good about the original work.
On the other hand, I guess the good thing about these decades is that we have Korra, for example. And that *is* a good thing, the kind of fantastic original new exciting EPIC stuff that I'm asking for. I don't think it compensates for all the horrible, offensive, depressing or just deeply unoriginal crap that our times are capable of producing, but at least it's something.
I think I'll go see Snow White & the Huntsman instead. (Dark and gritty reimagining of a traditionally cheesy fairytale with lesbian undertones and two female main leads? Damn.)
Hahahaha, I'm sorry in advance for what you're about to go see, darling.
I went to see it with Diane and Christelle, specifically for the femslash, and well, I wouldn't say the two minutes where we got some were worth the long hours of our lives that we lost for them.
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One reboot I'm looking forward to, for instance: the new Spider-Man movie, which looks amazing. I detest both Tobey McGuire's and Kristen Dunst's acting, and it was mostly for the pleasure of watching Spidey flip through the air that I watched the pre-reboot movies; but I've loved Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone's works for a while, and they're both excellent actors who seem to be making a really enjoyable and interesting movie (which finally a Peter Parker who's snarky and sassy and Peter instead of, well, emo!boy). Hopefully this time this will be a case of the reboot actually being better than the originals.
I've never seen Korra! I've never seen A:tlA, either, for that matter. They're worth watching, then? I'm a little wary of animated stuff these days.
As for SW&tH, well, damn. I wasn't aiming for it to be great stuff, but if it's really that bad... it's funny, though, it's gotten some great reviews so far.
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