Well! Mr. DNA! Where'd you come from?

[rinue]

Saw Prometheus and found it deadly boring. The writing was so poor that the events on screen were essentially random; I couldn't feel anything about them. It was like the characters were written by someone who had never met a person. The exploration of themes barely reached the level of Power Point buzzwords.

I suspect (without any evidence) there will be a five hour director's cut to fill in some of the gaping plot holes and absence of motivation, a la Kingdom of Heaven, because that's the only way I can imagine a director justifying what I saw. (Never mind that some of that stuff couldn't be closed up with even eight hours.) If I'm right, it doesn't make me any more forgiving of the film, because it means I was expected to spend $8 to spend 2 hours to watch a commercial for the real film.

Ah well. At least I didn't have any investment in this being good; I know Ridley Scott is hit and miss, and Prometheus didn't take anything away from Alien. I didn't read any reviews beforehand; I don't, usually, with science fiction. I don't trust the sci-fans to know film crit, and don't trust film reviewers to have read the SF canon. I did check the reviews afterward and think they're mostly batshit, but am pleased with Empire's Ian Nathan for giving me the phrase "sterling Fassbinderiness."

Comments

[valancy_jane]

C was also horribly disappointed. (I did not go as the baby, during the last loud movie, just about killed me with kicks. I was not going to risk it at this stage; my bladder is barely intact as it is.) I was not entirely shocked, but the depth to which it failed did surprise me. Confusing, really.

[rinue]

Ridley Scott is not an auteur; it's somewhat silly to talk about a "Ridley Scott" movie, because he does not write his own scripts or consistently work with the same people. He's a gun for hire and an ex-cinematographer. He cares about how a movie looks, not so much what it means or what it feels like. His visual style is great, but if you ever listen to him talk about his movies, and what he thinks people are feeling or what he thinks the themes are, you realize quickly that he's not very bright when it comes to non-visual thinking.

The author of Prometheus was the author of the first couple of seasons of Lost, someone notorious for throwing a bunch of open-ended half-baked sci-fi and philosophical ideas at the screen, never resolving or connecting them, and hoping people are distracted enough by one or two that they mistake it for "deep" instead of "sloppy." (He was fired, but I stopped watching Lost before they got around to firing him. I did not consider the show salvageable.)

I think a lot of people were blown away by the effects, which feel more real than a lot of what we've been seeing lately by virtue of being practical instead of computer generated, by the presence of very good actors you want to trust, and by the desire to see spacefaring sci-fi, which has been thin on the ground. I also think there's an "emperor's new clothes" aspect where no advanced critic wanted to say "this didn't make sense" and be called stupid.

[valancy_jane]

I also think there's an "emperor's new clothes" aspect where no advanced critic wanted to say "this didn't make sense" and be called stupid.

Interesting all, but v. amused by this, as C said something similar. :D