Cypher's PROMETHEUS Review

OK, so I went and saw Prometheus twice on opening day here, the showings were 3 hours apart and I saw the 2D version first. The 3D I can’t really say I saw that well, maybe it’s just me, but I really can’t say that I’ll be paying to see a 3D movie again, because I can’t really see it to be honest. My mate that came with me said it was awesome in 3D, but the story confused the hell out of him. I’m trying to educate him though ;-) I hate to say it, but I could SMELL Damon Lindelof’s taint on the movie the whole way through, all the way down to the Star Trek-ish music. And the “Alien DNA” that Ridley alluded to was definitely there, there was one scene when the storm was blowing outside the Prometheus itself that instantly reminded me of the Nostromo on LV-426. A lot of the sets reminded me of Alien as well, from the interior of the Prometheus looking like the Nostromo in some places, to the interior of the pyramid where Milburn dies. Now, on to the story itself…….. At the start we see a big white Engineer drink the same sort of black fluid that appears later on in the movie. He starts to disintegrate into the water, seeding our planet with life. OK, cool. Scientists find cave paintings all over the world, some of them as old as 35,000 years old, depicting people worshipping these enormous beings, who are reaching into the sky towards a group of stars that lead us to, not their home planet, but their military outpost? Why would they want us to go there? OK, so let’s put together an expedition and go find out what’s there, shall we? Cut to a couple years later, you see a fast moving spot of light go from one side of the screen to another. Fast ship, that. Then we see David wandering around the ship, watching movies, eating, learning languages, dying his hair? WTF? That really didn’t make much sense at all to me. Next, destination arrival is imminent. Kewl, we’re FINALLY there :-D But hang on, it seems that no one knows anyone else on the ship unless they were already acquainted, and the meeting between Milburn and Fifield only serves as a set up for the trouble they get into together later. The rest we see very, very little of, and aren’t given a chance to understand why they are there, except maybe Ford, and I still have no idea what her actual job was on the mission, suffice to say that I suspect she knew Weyland was on board the whole time. So really, I didn’t care for any of the characters except for David and Shaw, because there wasn’t enough development of, well, any of them. At all. So, they land on the planet after getting a briefing from Weyland, Holloway and Shaw, being told that we are there for the purpose of discovering where we come from ultimately. And they find out thanks to a decapitated head that they do a DNA test on later, and we share the same DNA as these “Engineers” so they must be our Gods. ‘Nuff said. Ridley said he wanted to explore the question of “Where do we come from?” Well, he answered that about halfway through. Now, Ridley, why was the ship on LV-426 there and what happened for it to end up there? Hmmmm? No comment? OK. I’ll try to stay interested, but you’re starting to lose me here………. You’ve probably (hopefully) seen it by now, so I’ll cut to the chase here. The movie felt rushed in a few places, there were parts that could have benefitted from a bit more time investigating the surroundings and the ideas. As I already said, they answer one of the questions via DNA testing. But why were they so pissed off at us that they were coming to kill us all 2,000 years ago with their cargo of “thousands” of urns full of black goo? Why try and link this to the Alien universe if you aren’t going to answer a couple old questions your fans have while asking several more of them in the process? Two words. Damon. Fucking. Lindelof. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie, but I get really frustrated when a supposed story teller leaves things open to interpretation ALL THE TIME. It’s not story telling in that case, it’s just being a lazy hack that is riding the coat-tails of someone else’s universe. Dan O’Bannon would be ashamed of what Lindelof has done here I imagine. So I’ll leave this here, I think you get the idea of where I’m going with this, and I’ll probably come back and add to this review after I see it a third time. Visuals- Can’t really fault it here, everything LOOKED great, except for maybe the Deacon, I’m still not sold on that one, pity there wasn’t more development of some of the creatures 9/10 Music- Too Star Trek-ish, not very brooding or menacing, in fact I wasn’t scared for one single second of the movie. 3/10 Characters- The only ones I gave any sort of crap about were Shaw and David. Milburn and Fifield were just a pair of dimwits. Who the FUCK would try to pet an alien cobra? Moron. 2/10 Story- They Lindelof’d the crap out of it, felt way too rushed in a lot of places, I consider myself to be an intelligent person and I love a well-crafted story, and if there is a sequel that has a few answers about what happened not only in Prometheus but also the original Alien, so be it, but we shouldn’t have to wait another 30 years for that. 2/10, and I think I'm being generous there. A lot of the speculation many of our members engaged in here for the many months before the movie came out could have been a far better story in my opinion. I enjoyed the movie, but I really can’t see it growing on me over time. 3/5. Or 6/10, whichever scale you want to use ;-) Peace and MTFBWY :-D