I saw the film Prometheus this past weekend, which is a Ridley Scott-directed prequel to the film Alien and I really liked it.
Here’s what I liked specifically:
The Visuals
The film just looks amazing. Granted, I saw it in IMAX but it looked like it was made for the IMAX screen. Just the first couple of a scenes when they are going over the landscape of Iceland/Greenland was incredible. It was less of the tricks you see in big films and more of the awe you got from Avatar. No matter if you liked the film or not, it was just so *lush* in its appearance.
The Monster Scenes
First, I have a pet peeve that I hate it when aliens walk on two legs and have two eyes – and look a lot like humans. Nature is so vast that I seriously doubt that aliens in another solar system would look like us. So, i was happy to see that these aliens pretty unusual. Second, the scenes of the aliens attacking Dr. Shaw, the abortion, and the snake-like alien going after the geologists were incredible scenes. Plenty of films use $200 million dollars creating crap (looking at you Battleship and John Carter) but the money is well spent here as those scenes scared the crap out of me. They are probably the best scary monster scenes I’ve seen in the past 20 years. No matter what you think of the film and the plot holes, you have to admire that scene of taking the alien out of the belly is a great nod to the original Alien’s chest-busting scene and just incredibly entertaining.
The Sci-Fi Plots
On one hand there are way too many open questions remaining. That is kind of annoying. On the other hand, I appreciate them going right after the big questions in good ways. The origin of the human race defined by the guy in the first scene is an interesting take. Also, the quest for answers doesn’t remove faith but almost places more importance on it. The David character seemed like a much more interesting HAL. There was also the really cool auto-surgery machine. Then you have the biology of the aliens. Not to mention the thought that the Engineers wanted to kill the humans for their treatment of one of their own, who happened to be Jesus Christ (yep, they alluded to that and Ridley Scott confirms that’s one of the reasons). These kind of sci-fi films really get me. I love the conversation that is generated from them.
Note: i also loved the little red scouts that mapped out the entire cave. Those things are money and I wished they really existed.
While I love the ideas, i kind of hated the plot. I saw that the writer of this script is the same guy who wrote Lost and it has all the same elements of lots of sub-plots, too many unanswered questions and just being overly confused. I hated that about Lost and it is my biggest complaint of this film. Why did David give the goo to Charlie? Why did he take a canister? Why did he want to smuggle the alien inside Shaw back to Earth? Too many holes for me (but i didn’t let that get in the way of the rest of the film). Speaking of too many holes, this video summerizes every question you could have about the movie into a short few minutes. Apparently it was 30 minutes previously. I love this video
The Casting
Noomi Raplace seems right in place with Sigourney Weaver from the original as a badass heroine. But it is Michael Fassbender’s show. He was incredible as an android and was by far the most interesting character on the ship. You never knew if he was good, bad, merely a servant, or just curious.
The Marketing
This is an R-rated film with no major stars (at least none that most people have heard of) and people were dying to see it. I give most of the credit to the absolutely kick-ass trailers that were put out. They were truly a pleasure to watch.
These are all the things that come to mind when i think back to the film. I’d be curious to hear what you thought. My guess is that you either agree completely with me or thought the plot holes were just too much to overlook.
