July 2012
Why Prometheus (the movie) sort of let me down. Look I liked it a lot, but too many unbelievable things take a movie from hard-sci-fi to hokey sci-fi.
Here's my review on Prometheus. I liked it but I have a lot of technical issues with it. Well also plot issues too.
I hear, after the movie, that there is a longer opening scene with the engineer that gives his life to the waterfall. Maybe that would be important to see, eh Ridley? I'm almost always for longer movie scenes.
Moving to the first ship scenes- the dream peeping by David was too vague. Liz's dream didn't fully explain her religious background and grounding enough. Later on we hear how she thinks the paintings were "an invitation". That's a big leap to take without a little more explanation of why she thinks it's exactly that and not something more benign.
The red hair Scottish guy is immediately a turn off. It's OK to have characters you hate, but for this guy to claim he's a scientist of any fashion is beyond belief. He's angry, he's not interested in the rock he's now landed on, and he's a scared pussy. Maybe in the future wages are so low, people will do any crappy job, even being flown to another planet to do some exogeology, and they'll still be angry. Either way, he sucks as a character. His happy go lucky friend is nearly as dumb but more likeable.
The landing scene was pure beauty. I loved it. The ship's design is great.
When the crew went to explore, it seemed sort of rushed. No science expedition like theirs should be rushed, not to start. Minor point.
Exploring the temple is when breakdowns begin. Why are they taking off their helmets on a foreign planet, with unknown and unmeasured biologic agents or bacteria/virus/insects. The scotty freaks out and wanders off. #1 Rule of horror movies is don't leave your group alone. So he takes a friend at least. With their fancy mapping floating balls they still can't find a way out till.. never.
The exploration of the human head temple is fine. The race back to the ship from the silica particle storm is dramatic and realistic. The rescue of the engineer head and Shaw is good.
So Shaw and friend experiment on the engineer head. David plays with the black goo. Halloway is so sad about not meeting a live engineer within the first 2 hours of their exploration of 1 template that he's drunk asap. What a poor crybaby. How does this guy make it as a scientist at all? Science is a lot of patience and trial/error and a lot of error and wrong directions. To be bummed about that so soon seems really unplausible. He should have been happy drunk and got tricked by David.
Shaw and Halloway have some nookie time, and now Halloway's infected and so is Shaw.
Back in the temple, Scotty and friend are still freaking out over bodies and being lost. Stumbling around, one of them sees the mutated meal worms from the dirt. Like some kind of mentally retarded 4 year old, he wants to touch it or play with it. He can be interested, but it's like he's coaxing a puppy to come to him. It's extremely silly. Then it attacks him, the believable part. They should have had him interested from afar, keeping a distance or recording video, etc. I think it would be more realistic for those things to have snuck up on them (in a non-JAWS threatening way perhaps) and attacked a guy. Or, they clumsily stumbled on one and startled it and it attacked their leg and crawled up them or something. So nice guy gets the worm in his helmet, OK. Scottish guy gets a facefull of acid blood, that's OK and he falls into the emotion-enhancing-mutating black goo. Plot points are good enough on the last 2 things. Maybe Scot should just be dead now.
The team heads back out from the ship, goes to the temple again. Halloway is disintegrating, and they turn around. So far so good. Back at the ship, Charlize incinerates him because of clear biological contamination. But, that's a sham since Shaw says they all could be infected. At least someone is thinking about all the exposure they've had.
Shaw's pregnant. David sedates her. She wakes up, escapes. It's surprising the med-chamber couldn't automatically do a c-section or abortion. Computers would have a huge enough database for all the procedures, not just for males. Dumb. Dramatic tension is fine though.
Icky octopus removed. Shaw's stapled back up and barely bleeding, somehow walking after having major surgery and cutting her abdomen muscles. Impossible.
Even more strangely, she stumbles into Weyland's room, and not a single person says "what they hell happened to you?" David knows, but no one even mildly reacts to another person, nearly naked, bloody, sweating, falling over. Are they all unhuman? Simply inhumane?
There's a battle from newly-revived Scottish guy who attacks the ship's cargo bay. This doesn't move the plot forward in any way except to kill off any extra actors, and put some more blood/action in the film. Its completely contrived and unncessary.
Now the whole clan of who's left goes to visit the live engineer. The wake up and dialog scene are truncated. There should have been some subtitles for the discussion David and the Engineer have. I think it was OK to have it be vague, but text would be nice. The engineer killing everyone is plausible, Shaw escaping is fine.
Engineer ship taking off is cool, very cool. The human ship crash is a nice scene.
Charlize getting crushed, as a concept is acceptable, but how she gets smashed is goofy.
Shaw goes back to the yacht. The octopus is now about 300-400 pounds, after not having any food to eat locked in the med room. How does it grow so big and strong? Totally unbelievable. Screenwriters get an F minus for that. Engineer coming to attack Shaw, hm OK I guess. Why he's so concerned or even knows about her is a mystery. Maybe he would be more concerned with getting to his 2nd ship hiding under the surface. Anyways, he's overpowered by the octopus, and gets face-hugged. I'd believe the smaller facehuggers more. It's just too big a monster! What did it eat in the last 12 hours? The law of thermodynamics still applies!
Now Shaw rescues David's head. Still walking around with stomach muscles and those staples. Androids live for several hours so no plot hole there.
But now they find a 2nd Engineer ship, which was at the 2nd temple. But, are there more hibernating engineers on that ship like the first one? There could be 3 of them in the 2nd ship! Does Shaw kill them? Maybe the hibernation failed? What is she going to eat on her voyage? Can she repair David at all? If not, how is she going to navigate or even understand the ship?
So many poor plot holes and dumb plot devices. The coolness of it just barely won out over my major missives with the plot points here.
