Friday, June 15, 2012

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

[Warning: contains spoilers]

The mythological and philosophical ideas co-writer Damon Lindelof shoehorns into Prometheus are intriguing ones, at least in theory. It also helps if you have never read the work of H.P. Lovecraft, seen Mission to Mars or understood 2001: A Space Odyssey. Prometheus is the cynical variant of the latter two works and a diluted take on the extreme nihilism of the former. In the bleakness of Prometheus' suppositions about humanity's origins is also a crushing limitation set by Lindelof's deficiencies of imagination. This film suggests a despairingly predestined meaning of human life, but also a grand plan more or less identical—in concept and messy, insane execution—as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that hangs over the Alien franchise and, in pre-merger iteration, this prequel as a spectre of the all-too-human military industrial complex.

This could have been fodder for savage cosmic comedy, one that actually could play off the Promethean myth referenced, obviously, by the title. Prometheus' great crime was in giving man the power of a god, in giving mortals the chance at equaling, and perhaps bettering, immortals. The great thing about Greek mythology is how repulsive the gods are. They are belligerent, venal, venereal, and vain to the point of incest—for who else is worthy of a supreme being than something with that being's bloodline? They are deities unworthy of worship other than as a means of staving off death in their thoughtless rampages. If Lindelof ever went any deeper into his mythological fetish than merely connecting a web of references in dense but ultimately facile subtext, he might have truly reflected the nature of the gods Prometheus rebelled against and made something wonderfully deconstructive. That would require a willingness to treat the material with any kind of earnestness or thought, however, and Prometheus is instead one of the most tediously ponderous blockbusters in years even as it also routinely fails to invest its ideas with any severity.

Ridley Scott opens the film with helicopter shots of what one can assume is planet Earth in its infancy, volcanic eruptions cooling in torrents of sulphuric water. Straight-down shots of hardened magma give the impression of veins carrying the planet's lifeblood to its still-forming body. At a waterfall, an alien creature drinks a black fluid that dissolves him, depositing his DNA into the foaming waters as the credits roll. These moments represent the one time Scott's direction achieves any kind of visual grace, a humble beginning that is, though more explicit than the start of 2001, agreeably mysterious and captivating in a manner not unlike Kubrick's masterpiece.

Then, the movie abruptly cuts to the year 2089 as a group of scientists in Scotland discover a cave painting of a star pattern that matches exactly with ones they found in archaeological digs across ancient civilizations all over the world. The two in charge of the expedition, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her husband Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), date the painting at 35,000 BCE. Later, Charlie says it is 35,000 years old, either because he likes nice round numbers or because he cannot add Common Era to Before Common Era. Elizabeth, for her part, is a Christian despite being a scientist in any capacity but especially a scientist who may have found the way back to humanity's decidedly non-spiritual maker. Her faith becomes a recurring issue only insofar as it allows the film to add yet more half-formed wisps of religious thought.

They track the primitive star maps to a distant moon capable of sustaining life, and the Weyland Corporation funds a covert expedition to meet God. The crew of the titular ship instantly sets in motion a series of problems that spiral ever further out of control as the film progresses. Not to harp on the many ways in which Prometheus suffers compared to Alien, but consider the casting of the two movies. Alien is nearly revolutionary this regard, populating the Nostromo with character actors who look like working class stiffs in space. Everyone on the Prometheus is a star, with the exception of some particularly red shirty fellows who might as well baste themselves in marinade for the benefit of whatever will inevitably consume them in 15 minutes. Everyone in Alien and its sequels tends to be referred to by their last names, stressing how work and assignment forces these people together. Everyone in Prometheus is, despite being strangers hired for a mission for which they are given scant information, on a first name basis.

Once the ship lands on the moon, everything falls apart. As is usual with Lindelof's writing, the supposed depth of his mythological and philosophical wonderings can only be facilitated by characters who do the stupidest thing at every turn. Charlie, upon learning the atmosphere inside a strange installation clearly erected by some sentient species is technically breathable, removes his helmet with no worries for bacteria or any other contaminants which his body would be wholly unprepared to fight. Our two redshirts inexplicably get lost on their way back to the ship, then play around with an actual lifeform they meet on an alien planet as if it were a stray dog. And though these two were always destined to die, they are helped along by the horniness of the ship captain (Idris Elba), who leaves his post monitoring two of his men out in the field to get some nookie from Vickers (Charlize Theron), the Weyland representative.

But hey, at least the film asks some big questions, right? True, compared to most blockbusters, Prometheus aims considerably high in what it wants to say, or what it thinks it's saying. Sadly, at no point does Prometheus follow through on any of its ideas, instead presenting a bunch of theories and leaving them to be argued over for years on Internet forum as false proof of depth. The opening images of the "engineer" sacrificing himself to give life become an endlessly referenced theme, with one character even saying, "Sometimes to create, one must first destroy." But it's not even correct to call this a theme, as it plays no part in the actual story of Prometheus. The nearest the movie comes to building on this notion are in the actions of David (Michael Fassbender), an android who seems to start his emotionally removed, superior outlook at Ash's "I admire its purity" speech in Alien and only goes madder from there. A dissatisfaction constantly lines Fassbender's otherwise impassive, eerily welcoming face as he follows his own agenda during the expedition, a sideplot potentially more complex than the philosophical reaching of the primary story. David brings up ideas worthy of the depth of Blade Runner, a creature essentially going to meet his grandparents and perhaps eager to carry out the mission implied in what they left behind to enjoy his own existence. Infuriatingly, though, these threads are the least explored of the film, David's behavior so ungrounded it is only justifiable as a manifestation of Oedipal impulses, which is too simple and human a box in which to place a robot.

After a time, an uncomfortable, pathetically self-serving subtext emerges in the crew's search for the great answers of our existence. Charlie, who shares surnames with the actor who played Sawyer on LOST, in blatantly a stand-in for LOST fans irritated by that show's own inconclusiveness and false promise. The crew of the Prometheus makes mankind's most significant discovery, and all Charlie can do is pout that they only found alien bodies, not their living selves capable of definitively answering all his queries. Lindelof sets Charlie up to look like a fool for this, and soon he punishes the character for his stubbornness. I'm not the only person to pick up on this, but there's something particularly infuriating about Lindelof dragging down another franchise to get out lingering feelings over his main gig.

But then, Prometheus bombastically displays all of LOST's worst traits. The self-satisfied, meaningless appropriation of religious and mythological symbolism. The characters who serve at the pleasure of the plot, rewritten on a whim to facilitate some new development.* The assumption of emotional investment in a story that openly prioritizes deep, arching mysteries over character growth. In addition, Scott ports over the worst of his own tendencies. He's clearly happy to be back in science fiction, but he has CGI mounted on such a ludicrous scale that the film falls flat, most egregiously in a storm of dust and static electricity that is shot with unforgivable incompetence in spatial relations. (I wish Scott's brother Tony had handled this scene; he would have turned the flying shards of metallic dirt into a Pollock painting.) And while everyone wanted to avoid regurgitating all the franchise's iconic imagery, this results in a lot of roaming around nondescript tunnels and too-shiny ship cabins (what happened to that incredibly tactile, lived-in quality of the Nostromo?). The only time the film looks interesting or has any sense of shot rhythm, in fact, is when it actually does reuse some of the old imagery and symbolism, especially on a set that will be instantly familiar to fans.

I didn't want to drag Alien into this too much, but that film illustrates everything Prometheus gets wrong. Though this new film aims at profound questions about the nature of humanity and a dark truth that could be behind it all, Alien manages to address the same ideas fluidly through its plot-driven story. It crystallizes the vicious nihilism this film cannot bring itself to fully endorse: on the one hand, the Nostromo had to contend with a perfectly evolved killing machine that existed only to kill and reproduce. On the other was the heartless corporate power that came to govern humans, a capitalistic juggernaut willing to destroy its own species for the sake of profit and expanded power. Alien is a film so bleak that the only two moral acts of selfless concern—bringing the infected Kane back on-board the ship and Ripley going back for that damn cat—are so out of place as to seem insane. The only victory in Alien is survival at whatever cost, and they respond organically to this trauma. In forsaking profundity, Alien achieves it; in desperately pursuing it, Prometheus falls laughably short. As with LOST, Prometheus will be defended for posing complex questions, but the explanations, hidden as they are in the promise of a sequel, are so easily gleaned from this lame collection of heady sci-fi tropes that, taken with its two-dimensional plotting and banal direction, Prometheus emerges a failure not for its obscurity but its simplicity.


*This is especially true of David, whose intriguing, sinister arc is dumped in the last few minutes in favor of inexplicable acquiescence, even pleasurable, willing cooperation.

13 comments:

  1. As you could probably guess, I disagree with your position...but reading this review does make me wonder about something:

    In almost every paragraph, you compare the film to something else (LOST, Alien, Blade Runner, 2001).

    How does this film play for you on it's own...forgetting for a few moments about all of those other properties?

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    1. On its own merits it is a sad mess. There are sudden narrative leaps, unfocused themes and no courage of conviction. The movie wants to make a nihilistic statement but lacks the stones to actually convey that sense of despair, and there's not a shred of tension in this.

      But how can I forget those other properties when all this film is is a collection of other work? Prometheus has no identity of its own outside of its references, would be fine if it were made well. I'm not saying Prometheus is a POS because it's not as good as Alien or Blade Runner. I'm saying it is actively trying to be these things and it fails miserably. Lindelof has to spin some overly complicated yet thin story to add what he thinks is new subtext when it was there all along, and he tacks on material from other works without making it his own. This film reminds me a lot of Saving Private Ryan, which tried to mix a bunch of established ideas into something new and is instead a directionless shambles.

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  2. Favorite line: "Everyone on the Prometheus is a star, with the exception of some particularly red shirty fellows who might as well baste themselves in marinade for the benefit of whatever will inevitably consume them in 15 minutes."

    Also loved: "After a time, an uncomfortable, pathetically self-serving subtext emerges in the crew's search for the great answers of our existence. Charlie, who shares surnames with the actor who played Sawyer on LOST, in blatantly a stand-in for LOST fans irritated by that show's own inconclusiveness and false promise. The crew of the Prometheus makes mankind's most significant discovery, and all Charlie can do is pout that they only found alien bodies, not their living selves capable of definitively answering all his queries. Lindelof sets Charlie up to look like a fool for this, and soon he punishes the character for his stubbornness. I'm not the only person to pick up on this, but there's something particularly infuriating about Lindelof dragging down another franchise to get out lingering feelings over his main gig."

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  3. Miiiiiiiiiiiight be time to think about getting over LOST. Just a thought. ;)

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  4. Actually I thought the comparisons to Lost were interesting. I loved that series at first and found myself increasingly disappointed, partly because I thought that program, which was well cast with interesting characters and an intriguing premise, just tried to do too much. I felt hammered over the head over all the philosophical/mythical stuff they were trying to include. I haven't seen Prometheus, so the comparison helped me "get" why you didn't like the film. It sounds like they tried to do too much and couldn't pull it off. I wish more writers and movie makers would focus on excellent storytelling, trust the strength of the story, and allow philosophical themes to arise naturally from that story instead of forcing them into the plot.

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    1. Thank you, Stephanie. I mainly brought up Lost because I think there are certain themes here that are clearly applicable to how that show unfolded and was received, and I think a lot of that show's failures are mirrored in the script here. And I don't necessarily mind philosophy over story (some of my fave filmmakers are Malick, Dreyer, Bresson and Tarkovsky), but when the film in question still fancies itself a brilliant yarn, it makes the disconnect all the more apparent, especially when the philosophy itself is poorly handled.

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  5. Everything that might frustrate me about Prometheus I'll just pin on Lindelof as a testament to how much more I do not want to watch LOST. I agree with a lot of what you said, essentially that there's just too much Lindelof and so little room for nuance. My biggest beef, for example, was the lack of real drama/sense of irony over Elizabeth's infertility and subsequent "pregnancy". But I won't hold it against Ridley for not being able to make redeeming narrative out of the mess. With more length/steady pacing and a re-written ending Prometheus could have been as good as it wanted to be. I just have to wonder what decision pitted Lindelof with Scott in the first place.

    As unlikely as it looks that Prometheus were to have a director's cut, would you consider watching it? Or is it that far beyond saving in your opinion?

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    1. Justin, I'm glad you asked this. I thought about tagging a paragraph on that but I didn't want to box myself in on an opinion. I think I would give the other cut a chance, but I'm also not sure about calling it a director's cut. The two times Scott's films have been truly improved by an alternate cut were the times he openly expressed dissatisfaction with the version that hit theaters. He spent 25 years toying with Blade Runner until he got what he wanted, and he vastly preferred the DC for Kingdom of Heaven. With Prometheus, he only seems to have even conceded to a longer version out of dissatisfaction on some viewers' part, not his own. I'd still give it a chance, but I highly doubt a mess this big can be salvaged. It's trying too hard to be vague and to save stuff for a sequel anyway.

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  6. I never even watched 'Lost', but I shared all of Jake's frustrations with 'Prometheus': the script's inability to follow through on its supposed big ideas (the fact that its concept of creationism relies on Von Daniken's 'Chariots of the Gods' is particularly cack-handed), the flatness of both cinematography and direction in numerous scenes, and the "Screenplay 101" approach to characterisation and motivation. A scene that had me face-palming (SPOILER ALERT) was Charlize Theron's exit from the escape pod right into the path of a ship the size of a shopping mall falling from the sky - this from a character who gives a speech about eliminating risk and immolates a fellow crew member because of a suspected infection. Comparisons with 'Alien' are an easy critical option, but unavoidable because, thanks to the repeated use of tropes from that movie, we're never allowed to forget that we're watching a prequel to 'Alien' - but Jake nails it in this review: the characters in 'Alien' felt like real, working class people doing a shitty job and just getting on with it; the characters in 'Prometheus' never act like anything else than characters in a movie.

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    1. And what about Vickers being so prepared and yet having a medical pod only configured for men? That's a plot hole, which is why I didn't bring it up in my review (it's easy to find holes like this), but the script is riddled with lazy convenience at every turn, which only further hobbles its half-baked, unoriginal philosophy. I'm actually worried this film will become a new Matrix, a hodgepodge collection of unformed ideas to make a cottage industry for lazy philosophy profs trying to connect to their bored students/get a book deal.

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  7. Easily the best Prometheus review I've read.

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