Prometheus

This is my third time watching the film. I figured that the film might age better with multiple viewings. I was wrong.

Prometheus is the most beautiful stupid movie I have seen. It pains me that the script for this movie is so weak because the visuals that Ridley Scott has created for the movie are so captivating. Here’s another way to look at it, in the hands of any other director, this film would have tanked at the box office – or may have been a direct-to-video release. Ridley Scott and his style is the attraction of this film. This film also highlights one of Ridley Scott’s weaknesses: He’s a director that is only as good as the script that he works with. Scott is a pop singer who doesn’t write or know how to write their own songs.

I watched Alien the night before watching Prometheus and it is and interesting comparison of these two films in the Alien universe by Ridley Scott. Alien is sci-fi horror, while Prometheus is sci-fi adventure. Alien aims to thrill and scare; Prometheus has grandiose delusions of being a deep film about the origins of mankind. Alien has a tight story with a good twist and a crew that is fleshed out; Prometheus has a meandering story with too many open-ended uninteresting unanswered questions and a crew that is completely forgettable.

The “scientists” in the film are idiots. How can I count the ways? When arriving at the planet, they don’t survey the planet from orbit. They rush into the atmosphere and by mere chance discover straight lines. The sun is about to set on this alien moon and it’s Christmas, so lets all go rushing into an alien cavern that is unmapped. They had those flying mapping probes, why not send those in first? Facepalm. Once on the planet and in the caverns, the scientists disregard all science and remove their helmets because why? What about airborne pathogens that you clearly have not tested for?

When the biologist runs into an animal that looks like a white cobra, his first reaction is not to run for it, but to get closer and try to touch it? Huh? The geologist, who does look like a flunky, enters this cave looking system on a planet light years from Earth and… immediately wants to go back to the ship. What?

Other dumb stuff from the movie: A zombified team member returns to the ship (what was up with the zombification?)…What does the crew do? Yea, they open the door. Or how about when a long ship is starting to roll on you, what do you do? Do you try to outrun it or do you try to run out of its way? Yea, these idiot scientists try to outrun it and then one is saved in a lucky Charlie Chaplin moment. Oh look alien buttons we know nothing about, what should we do? Yea, push them of course. Ugh.

I do not have much faith in Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant. I have a strange feeling it will be more of the same.