Prometheus - Review

So I’ve just seen Prometheus, and I am disappoint!

No Spoilers

TV’s Michael Fassbender gives the standout performance as the is-he-isn’t-he evil robot David. It’s exhilarating, scary, gory, and the design (with one exception - more later) and VFX are exquisite. hats of to my friends at MPC & everyone else who was involved at the other facilities.

But the script, by some guy and LOST’s I-have-a-huge-amount-of-time-for Damian Lindaloft leads a lot to be desired and lets it all down a bit.

Sorry.

Spoilers from here

No really, stop reading unless you’ve seen it.

The main thing is that it’s waaay too on the nose. ‘Look, you have a part of the ship with its own life support, for later in the film!’ and ‘Wow, a Plothammer 4000 medical couch for later in the film!’ Yes you have set stuff up. But ideally you hide it in a piece of business, not just stand there doing it.

Characters are stupid. The one person who can’t get lost (the guy doing the mapping) gets lost because he’s needed to by the story.

People take there helmets off, because there is breathable air, and keep them off, even when they know that there is alien biological activity, and that their presence is affecting it. Having one hothead to it for the plot is fine. Let that decision come back to bite him! But have everyone do it? Sorry, no.

Talking of the crew, they have an underlying problem. In Alien, they are unprofessional, rough, ready, space truckers. There are thousands like them, this is just a space McJob so it fits. However in this film they are a crack team put together by the world’s richest man for a mission that may impact all mankind; yet they’re still (mostly) all space truckers. Feels very wrong. Plus they (i.e. we) all get briefed together coz they don’t know why they’re there. Again, lazy exposition.

Weyland being on board & Charlize being his daughter were just non-events. Keeping Weyland a secret served little purpose, so the relelation he was onboard did likewise. And Charlize being is daughter we pretty obvious from the moment they met… Sure, these were both new peiices of information, but they didn’t surprise anyone, but acted as if they should be.

And lastly (for now) any film with a mutant baby in is crap. It’s such a cheap shot. Please.

Oh yeah — my problem with the design; not enough Giger. The Space Jockeys (okay… Engineers) looked awesome, as did their spacecraft. Everything I could have hoped for. A great extension of the Giger aesthetic (although if they are just suits, it makes little sense that that aesthetic would ever appear in a future creature’s genetic makeup…) However none of the other creatures looked like they come from anywhere near the same ballpark. The proto face-hugger just looked like a standard squid (it’s mouthparts when we see them were very impressive though). The proto-Alien at the end of the film looked strange & kinda beaky. It’s pointy head annoyed me too. But mainly it didn’t have a single Gigerism in it anywhere. I just wish it looked like it came form the same part of the universe, that’s all. Just a hint of the holes or cables or other features he fills his creatures with. Just so it looked like a distant cousin.