Saturday, June 09, 2012
Prometheus: Unbound by logic
The first thing to say is this is a spoiler alert - if you go and see "Prometheus" it will spoil your day. More strictly speaking, I will be ridiculing in as much as my limited powers of withering sarcasm allow what laughingly passes for a "plot" in the "film", "Prometheus". The use of "scare quotes" could get bothersome here, so for safety, just assume everything has them.
If living on planet Earth has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it is a grave mistake to "eagerly anticipate" anything: school summer holidays, birthdays, a new flavour of chewits, 2000AD's "project X", and in this specific case, Ridley Scott's much anticipated very definite (not "sort of" as some reviewers would have you believe) prequel to the 'Alien' franchise. I say 'franchise', in the sense that it's often used to refer to films with, and there are no hard and fast rules here, more than 3 installments, but also in the sense of the lowest rent Milly's Cookies or Pirate Pete's Cornish Pasty's franchise - redundant ex-bankers sinking their remaining cash into a sure-fire passing trade, lacklustre, bought-in, train station commuter-stooge filling stodge kitchens.
For the avoidance of doubt, this will be a negative review.
Personally when I go to a restaurant, I don't like to review the menu in advance - I like to be surprised. When I see a trailer for a film that I want to see, or strikes me as interesting, I deliberately avoid any "making of" documentaries and I eschew reading other people's reviews, and I most certainly don't google it to read up on what it's about - why bother going to see it then? Just in case.......you know.....I start to eagerly anticipate or anything. And so it was with "Prometheus" - the involvement of Ridley Scott and Michael Fassbender (to my mind, one of the most, and I KNOW what you're thinking, 'magnetic' actors around - the only working actor that seems to have any of the vibe of '70's De- Niro or Keitel, or big-screen presence at the moment) and the trailers certainly whetted my appetite. Unbeknownst to me, my avoiding reading anything about the plot was entirely successful because in fact, there isn't one.
Ok, so to cut to the chase - I'm not even going to bother with the usual conventions about who the actors are, the rough structural outline of the plot, comments on the technical proficiency of the special effects and comparative analysis of the acting performances, erudite comments about the self referential reuse of lines, shots and plot events from the previous films in the "franchise" (sigh), high level views of placing this in the canon of science fiction/schlock horror, and in the canon of Ridley Scott's work, I'm just going to come right out and say it: WHAT THE FUCK RIDLEY?
I can't remember where - but I DID read - Ridley Scott isn't even (by his own admission) a "fan" of science fiction. It's all about, like, yeah man, you know, the script, it has to be the right project blah blah fucking blah. A strange thing for the director of "Blade Runner" and "Alien" to say, you might think. Perhaps, but "Alien" was actually a horror film, not really science fiction, so in fact he's only ever done one science fiction. I'm including "Prometheus" in that.
The film opens with what might be a world in the light of alien suns (perhaps a bit reminiscent of the 2001 so called Jupiter landing sequence) or might be.......Earth? Before the advent of life? Why would I say that - one well ribbed looking alien consumes some vile X-files looking black slime as a space ship departs, promptly disintegrating into the bargain, as, in a CSI like internal shot, what looks like DNA splits up and disintegrates too, but from which strands emerge, and wash away in a flooded cataract..........(that's a waterfall, let me save you the bother of looking it up).
Later (in the year of our lord 2089, that's just 67 years from now), a mission funded by a dying/dead billionaire heads to the stars on the say so of a couple of archaeologists who claim humanity is being invited by alien looking giants to visit them, and this part isn't clear, somewhere inside/outside the galaxy (I mean who cares, inside/outside the galaxy, it's a detail - I know you think I'm nit-picking, but bear with me) because the aliens are the ones that "created us". Hmmmmmmm.
After 2 years in suspended animation, everyone re-awakes on arriving at the moon of a gas giant (wow, how technically scientifically correct) and the mayhem ensues. The first place they randomly look on the planet, a strange structure is found and everyone goes wandering off alone to meet whatever penetrative-phallocidally induced grisly comeuppance best befits their first utterances on awaking from hyper sleep. I mean: not even a Star Trek like diagnostic, or planet wide scan to detect the structures. Oh, yes, that's right, Micheal Fassbender's severed head maniacally reveals they are EVERYWHERE on the planet later. Oh yes, he's a robot, he's a robot. Yawn. Oh, and yes, the atmosphere is 3% carbon dioxide, which means you can't just breathe it, oh no. That could kill a human after a few minutes of breathing it. So says the scottish doctor. Wow, I wonder how many NASA advisors it took to work that into the script. It's nice they are making it sooooooo realistic for us.
A severed alien head does have a diagnotic run on it though - which chillingly reveals....dahn dhan DAHNNNNNN....the alien's DNA and human DNA are identical. And I don't mean CHEMICALLY identical or anything, I mean - exact match in OVERLAY. It was that kind of graphic where one DNA "pattern" get's picked up and laid on top of another and they both flash like, red, and stuff. Who writes that kind of software......? The future seems replete with people willing to spend their time generating "red alert" and "self destruct" avionics and overlay graphical interfaces. Maybe I should get into that now.
Anyhow, errr, wow....? I think?
Meanwhile people are being infected with bits of alien slime in champagne by robots called David (awwwwww), rah! rah!, people are having sex, people are being killed, people are being taken over by aliens and killing other people, people are being impregnated by people infected by alien slime so that worms come out of their eyeballs (cooooool), people are having squids surgically removed from their impressively flat tummies which get staple gunned up again, fly-boy captains are suddenly not going to let this crap get back to Earth, people that have only spoken one line in the entire film are again piping up to let us know they are with the captain, 'dead' billionaire Charlize Theron daddies are coming back to life to have pedicures done and find the secret of eternal youth from our new alien overlords, and other people we didn't even know were on the ship are suddenly on the - actually rather small so how is all this happening without anyone else spotting it and wondering - wow, isn't there a lot happening on such a small ship - ship.
Eventually, and mercifully, but not soon enough, everyone is killed, including revivified aliens, and suddenly very large recently delivered squid babies, except Noomi Rapace. Who promptly leaves with Michael Fassbender's severed head, for who knows what perverse purposes, on a commandeered alien space ship for pastures new.
That's it then - anyone got any questions?
Err, yeah, actually. What. The. Fuck. Was. That. Supposed. To. Be? Someone please explain.......
Supposedly.......
1. 4 billion years ago before the advent of life on Earth, large giant aliens "seeded" the waters of Earth with their own DNA from a willing "volunteer". Presumably he wasn't up to seeing how Ridley Scott would treat of this story, or knocking one off into the waterfall - his was the wisest decision methinks. And never mind that 4 billion years ago Earth was a lifeless nightmarish hades-like miasmic soup of volcanic, meteorite bombarded brimstone, with maybe some free water but who knows? It certainly wasn't just a tad chilly, with a hint of rain, warranting the use of an alien cloak.
2. 4 billion years of evolution later..........and it just so happens that humans evolve from that proto slime with exactly the same DNA as these aliens. Hmmmmmm. That's really not the way it works, even on a lay-person level.
3. Somehow, throughout human history, these same giant aliens, THEMSELVES completely unchanged over 4 billion years, but presumably who have been checking in every billion years or so on the progress of evolution on planet Earth, just to see if anything approaching intelligent life had emerged, these aliens have caused various civilisation and peoples to create identical looking murals for archaelogists to discover and conveniently mis-interpret as "invitations" to the stars.
Although, it wasn't an invitation to the alien's luxury crib, oh no, it was a military bio-weapons installation. That's a bit odd.
4. On arriving with mistaken said invite, humanity in the form of a Scholls sponsored expedition, finds all the aliens were about to launch an attack, using bio-slime, on lil'ol' Oith. Aww, why you wanna go an duu summin lahk thad nahhhhh? Oh yes, "they created us" (4 billion years ago remember) and now they want to "destroy us". Sometimes, Fassbender portentously opines, you have to destroy to create. Yes, that's it, they changed their minds. Well, it happens, doesn't it?
Maybe they kept visiting the ancient Mayans, pointing up to the stars and saying things like "I don't see why it's always us making the effort in this relationship - you know - you could come and visit us too sometimes, and see our really new neat bio-weapons installation we built - it's really cool you know and we spent ages tricking it out - why wont you come?".
Those Mayans - always with the "ohh, you know we'd like to, but the kids are sick, and we have that, err, thing you know, sacrifice, we need to go to....look we promise we'll call you......".
Eventually an alien just gets the message you know - "they don't like us". Yeah, with your blue eyes and muscly six-packs, and advanced god like technology that doesn't change in 4-billion years.
5. And JUST when the aliens decide - right we've had enough, we're going to stockpile weapons and FIRE them at the Earth to rid it of current life, and replace it with something better (and who knows, maybe that's already happened a few times) then what happens - well wouldn't you know it - the bio slime turns on them all and kills them, JUST before they can initiate the launch sequence. Well whaddaya know.
Typical.
I kid you not, as near as dammit that's what the plot is supposed to be. And, I'm making massive interpolations here, I'm trying to make sense out of the vast incomprehensible nothingness in-between the ears of whoever wrote this dross.
I mean, even IF you say "oh you idiot, the disintegrating alien wasn't on earth 4 billion years ago, it was just a few million years ago when homo-blah blah blah first appeared, they were responsible" it does nothing to improve the time line or the plot.
I'm all for suspension of disbelief - ok, it's 2089, when the best possible advancement I can imagine is going to be V562 of the iPhone; ok, so they have (possibly, it's never clear) intergalactic travel and suspended animation - it's a sci-fi film - I'll roll with that. Ok, it's a small ship, and (just like in the execrable 'Event Horizon') all sorts of weird and wonderful things are happening and Damascene conversions occur with no one the wiser, fine: worse things happen in Shakespeare.
But ALL the above overall plot nonsense. Give me a break (but not a broken arm). I mean this would ONLY make sense if some sort of "Intelligent design" bollox was being put forward as an explanation, that humanity had only existed for a few thousand years as a result of experimenting, but highly temperamental aliens who didn't quite get the god-like treatment they felt was their just desserts from the idiots they created, even after having pointedly warned them of the death and destruction that awaited them from the stars for displeasing their alien overlords, and so decided to eradicate them, but yet the script writers or editors or director or producers had, for some inconceivable notions of shame and fear at harking back to 'Alien Versus Predator' and/or "300 years of Darwinism"(1) decided to try and get by without actually ever mentioning it as a concept or introducing it into the film......oh for Pirate Pete's Pasty's sake.....heat me up some 3 day old cheese and reconstituted onion PUR-lease......
Do us a favour Ridley - keep your 69 year old, past-it beak out of science fiction, and every other honourable genre of film, and go back to making "sense" in TV commercials - it clearly best suits your remaining talents.
Prometheus had his liver eaten daily by an eagle for stealing fire from the gods until he was freed. Seems like a small price to pay for never having to have endured this space junk.
NOTES
(1) The mission biologist, who is the only person with the temerity to invoke "Darwin" in the film is symbolically mouth-fucked by a "yes-it-really-IS-meant-to-resemble-a-phallus" alien. It's not obvious from that description, but he does also end up dead. In a second, brilliant, sideswipe at geology, the self confessed money grubbing-gold digging (sic) geologist, present for who knows what the hell reason, that tries to help out his biologist companion, has his face sprayed/jizzed with alien acid, and becomes the spider-walking homicidal dead, only to get his Glaswegian head crushed by a moon buggy. So much for science then: that should have Dawkins' eyes watering, send the right message to those mealy mouth bio-geo-scientists that insist on spoiling the party with their "evidence", and have the creationists just rolling in the aisles.
If living on planet Earth has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it is a grave mistake to "eagerly anticipate" anything: school summer holidays, birthdays, a new flavour of chewits, 2000AD's "project X", and in this specific case, Ridley Scott's much anticipated very definite (not "sort of" as some reviewers would have you believe) prequel to the 'Alien' franchise. I say 'franchise', in the sense that it's often used to refer to films with, and there are no hard and fast rules here, more than 3 installments, but also in the sense of the lowest rent Milly's Cookies or Pirate Pete's Cornish Pasty's franchise - redundant ex-bankers sinking their remaining cash into a sure-fire passing trade, lacklustre, bought-in, train station commuter-stooge filling stodge kitchens.
For the avoidance of doubt, this will be a negative review.
Personally when I go to a restaurant, I don't like to review the menu in advance - I like to be surprised. When I see a trailer for a film that I want to see, or strikes me as interesting, I deliberately avoid any "making of" documentaries and I eschew reading other people's reviews, and I most certainly don't google it to read up on what it's about - why bother going to see it then? Just in case.......you know.....I start to eagerly anticipate or anything. And so it was with "Prometheus" - the involvement of Ridley Scott and Michael Fassbender (to my mind, one of the most, and I KNOW what you're thinking, 'magnetic' actors around - the only working actor that seems to have any of the vibe of '70's De- Niro or Keitel, or big-screen presence at the moment) and the trailers certainly whetted my appetite. Unbeknownst to me, my avoiding reading anything about the plot was entirely successful because in fact, there isn't one.
Ok, so to cut to the chase - I'm not even going to bother with the usual conventions about who the actors are, the rough structural outline of the plot, comments on the technical proficiency of the special effects and comparative analysis of the acting performances, erudite comments about the self referential reuse of lines, shots and plot events from the previous films in the "franchise" (sigh), high level views of placing this in the canon of science fiction/schlock horror, and in the canon of Ridley Scott's work, I'm just going to come right out and say it: WHAT THE FUCK RIDLEY?
I can't remember where - but I DID read - Ridley Scott isn't even (by his own admission) a "fan" of science fiction. It's all about, like, yeah man, you know, the script, it has to be the right project blah blah fucking blah. A strange thing for the director of "Blade Runner" and "Alien" to say, you might think. Perhaps, but "Alien" was actually a horror film, not really science fiction, so in fact he's only ever done one science fiction. I'm including "Prometheus" in that.
The film opens with what might be a world in the light of alien suns (perhaps a bit reminiscent of the 2001 so called Jupiter landing sequence) or might be.......Earth? Before the advent of life? Why would I say that - one well ribbed looking alien consumes some vile X-files looking black slime as a space ship departs, promptly disintegrating into the bargain, as, in a CSI like internal shot, what looks like DNA splits up and disintegrates too, but from which strands emerge, and wash away in a flooded cataract..........(that's a waterfall, let me save you the bother of looking it up).
Later (in the year of our lord 2089, that's just 67 years from now), a mission funded by a dying/dead billionaire heads to the stars on the say so of a couple of archaeologists who claim humanity is being invited by alien looking giants to visit them, and this part isn't clear, somewhere inside/outside the galaxy (I mean who cares, inside/outside the galaxy, it's a detail - I know you think I'm nit-picking, but bear with me) because the aliens are the ones that "created us". Hmmmmmmm.
After 2 years in suspended animation, everyone re-awakes on arriving at the moon of a gas giant (wow, how technically scientifically correct) and the mayhem ensues. The first place they randomly look on the planet, a strange structure is found and everyone goes wandering off alone to meet whatever penetrative-phallocidally induced grisly comeuppance best befits their first utterances on awaking from hyper sleep. I mean: not even a Star Trek like diagnostic, or planet wide scan to detect the structures. Oh, yes, that's right, Micheal Fassbender's severed head maniacally reveals they are EVERYWHERE on the planet later. Oh yes, he's a robot, he's a robot. Yawn. Oh, and yes, the atmosphere is 3% carbon dioxide, which means you can't just breathe it, oh no. That could kill a human after a few minutes of breathing it. So says the scottish doctor. Wow, I wonder how many NASA advisors it took to work that into the script. It's nice they are making it sooooooo realistic for us.
A severed alien head does have a diagnotic run on it though - which chillingly reveals....dahn dhan DAHNNNNNN....the alien's DNA and human DNA are identical. And I don't mean CHEMICALLY identical or anything, I mean - exact match in OVERLAY. It was that kind of graphic where one DNA "pattern" get's picked up and laid on top of another and they both flash like, red, and stuff. Who writes that kind of software......? The future seems replete with people willing to spend their time generating "red alert" and "self destruct" avionics and overlay graphical interfaces. Maybe I should get into that now.
Anyhow, errr, wow....? I think?
Meanwhile people are being infected with bits of alien slime in champagne by robots called David (awwwwww), rah! rah!, people are having sex, people are being killed, people are being taken over by aliens and killing other people, people are being impregnated by people infected by alien slime so that worms come out of their eyeballs (cooooool), people are having squids surgically removed from their impressively flat tummies which get staple gunned up again, fly-boy captains are suddenly not going to let this crap get back to Earth, people that have only spoken one line in the entire film are again piping up to let us know they are with the captain, 'dead' billionaire Charlize Theron daddies are coming back to life to have pedicures done and find the secret of eternal youth from our new alien overlords, and other people we didn't even know were on the ship are suddenly on the - actually rather small so how is all this happening without anyone else spotting it and wondering - wow, isn't there a lot happening on such a small ship - ship.
Eventually, and mercifully, but not soon enough, everyone is killed, including revivified aliens, and suddenly very large recently delivered squid babies, except Noomi Rapace. Who promptly leaves with Michael Fassbender's severed head, for who knows what perverse purposes, on a commandeered alien space ship for pastures new.
That's it then - anyone got any questions?
Err, yeah, actually. What. The. Fuck. Was. That. Supposed. To. Be? Someone please explain.......
Supposedly.......
1. 4 billion years ago before the advent of life on Earth, large giant aliens "seeded" the waters of Earth with their own DNA from a willing "volunteer". Presumably he wasn't up to seeing how Ridley Scott would treat of this story, or knocking one off into the waterfall - his was the wisest decision methinks. And never mind that 4 billion years ago Earth was a lifeless nightmarish hades-like miasmic soup of volcanic, meteorite bombarded brimstone, with maybe some free water but who knows? It certainly wasn't just a tad chilly, with a hint of rain, warranting the use of an alien cloak.
2. 4 billion years of evolution later..........and it just so happens that humans evolve from that proto slime with exactly the same DNA as these aliens. Hmmmmmm. That's really not the way it works, even on a lay-person level.
3. Somehow, throughout human history, these same giant aliens, THEMSELVES completely unchanged over 4 billion years, but presumably who have been checking in every billion years or so on the progress of evolution on planet Earth, just to see if anything approaching intelligent life had emerged, these aliens have caused various civilisation and peoples to create identical looking murals for archaelogists to discover and conveniently mis-interpret as "invitations" to the stars.
Although, it wasn't an invitation to the alien's luxury crib, oh no, it was a military bio-weapons installation. That's a bit odd.
4. On arriving with mistaken said invite, humanity in the form of a Scholls sponsored expedition, finds all the aliens were about to launch an attack, using bio-slime, on lil'ol' Oith. Aww, why you wanna go an duu summin lahk thad nahhhhh? Oh yes, "they created us" (4 billion years ago remember) and now they want to "destroy us". Sometimes, Fassbender portentously opines, you have to destroy to create. Yes, that's it, they changed their minds. Well, it happens, doesn't it?
Maybe they kept visiting the ancient Mayans, pointing up to the stars and saying things like "I don't see why it's always us making the effort in this relationship - you know - you could come and visit us too sometimes, and see our really new neat bio-weapons installation we built - it's really cool you know and we spent ages tricking it out - why wont you come?".
Those Mayans - always with the "ohh, you know we'd like to, but the kids are sick, and we have that, err, thing you know, sacrifice, we need to go to....look we promise we'll call you......".
Eventually an alien just gets the message you know - "they don't like us". Yeah, with your blue eyes and muscly six-packs, and advanced god like technology that doesn't change in 4-billion years.
5. And JUST when the aliens decide - right we've had enough, we're going to stockpile weapons and FIRE them at the Earth to rid it of current life, and replace it with something better (and who knows, maybe that's already happened a few times) then what happens - well wouldn't you know it - the bio slime turns on them all and kills them, JUST before they can initiate the launch sequence. Well whaddaya know.
Typical.
I kid you not, as near as dammit that's what the plot is supposed to be. And, I'm making massive interpolations here, I'm trying to make sense out of the vast incomprehensible nothingness in-between the ears of whoever wrote this dross.
I mean, even IF you say "oh you idiot, the disintegrating alien wasn't on earth 4 billion years ago, it was just a few million years ago when homo-blah blah blah first appeared, they were responsible" it does nothing to improve the time line or the plot.
I'm all for suspension of disbelief - ok, it's 2089, when the best possible advancement I can imagine is going to be V562 of the iPhone; ok, so they have (possibly, it's never clear) intergalactic travel and suspended animation - it's a sci-fi film - I'll roll with that. Ok, it's a small ship, and (just like in the execrable 'Event Horizon') all sorts of weird and wonderful things are happening and Damascene conversions occur with no one the wiser, fine: worse things happen in Shakespeare.
But ALL the above overall plot nonsense. Give me a break (but not a broken arm). I mean this would ONLY make sense if some sort of "Intelligent design" bollox was being put forward as an explanation, that humanity had only existed for a few thousand years as a result of experimenting, but highly temperamental aliens who didn't quite get the god-like treatment they felt was their just desserts from the idiots they created, even after having pointedly warned them of the death and destruction that awaited them from the stars for displeasing their alien overlords, and so decided to eradicate them, but yet the script writers or editors or director or producers had, for some inconceivable notions of shame and fear at harking back to 'Alien Versus Predator' and/or "300 years of Darwinism"(1) decided to try and get by without actually ever mentioning it as a concept or introducing it into the film......oh for Pirate Pete's Pasty's sake.....heat me up some 3 day old cheese and reconstituted onion PUR-lease......
Do us a favour Ridley - keep your 69 year old, past-it beak out of science fiction, and every other honourable genre of film, and go back to making "sense" in TV commercials - it clearly best suits your remaining talents.
Prometheus had his liver eaten daily by an eagle for stealing fire from the gods until he was freed. Seems like a small price to pay for never having to have endured this space junk.
NOTES
(1) The mission biologist, who is the only person with the temerity to invoke "Darwin" in the film is symbolically mouth-fucked by a "yes-it-really-IS-meant-to-resemble-a-phallus" alien. It's not obvious from that description, but he does also end up dead. In a second, brilliant, sideswipe at geology, the self confessed money grubbing-gold digging (sic) geologist, present for who knows what the hell reason, that tries to help out his biologist companion, has his face sprayed/jizzed with alien acid, and becomes the spider-walking homicidal dead, only to get his Glaswegian head crushed by a moon buggy. So much for science then: that should have Dawkins' eyes watering, send the right message to those mealy mouth bio-geo-scientists that insist on spoiling the party with their "evidence", and have the creationists just rolling in the aisles.
# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 3:10 PM
