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I'm tired, and half of this probably sounds stupid. Which is probably what Ridley Scott said as he was writing Prometheus. The list of nonsensical plot points and dead ends my wife and I came up with as were driving home from watching this film kept us talking the entire way. And yet I can't say I didn't enjoy it. That being said, I need to vent. 1: Edit: This one made sense to me in the morning. In the opening scene, the Engineer is seeding Earth with life by ingesting some of the good. At least, that seems to make the most sense. So, no real complaint here. 2: I think someone, somewhere else on SA already said this, but what was the big drat deal about finding the cave painting in the opening when only a few minutes later into the film they reveal that there are many of these? Apparently these archaeologists are thinking to themselves "Well, seven depictions of this same event could be coincidence... but eight? Great Scott! Related, why are multiple early civilizations on Earth being given road maps to a weapons development planet in the first place? The notion that it's so the Engineers can infect us is nonsense: they already know where we are and don't need for us to come find them. This is the equivalent of a pedophile giving a kid with mild brain damage, and a tricycle with two wheels, a map to where he works; that kid ain't gonna figure out how to pedal 2/3s of a trike any time soon and by the time he does, you've probably forgotten that you even knew him and he's not even a kid any more anyway. So he shows up at your office and you get so pissed you tear the head off of his Elmo doll and give him a loving concussion with it. And then you decide you're going to gently caress up his house. What the hell is wrong with you, you monster? 3: In the orientation briefing it's revealed that Peter Waylend is dead. Of course, we eventually learn he isn't. The deception is pointless since Peter is looking to A: Maybe not die of old age and B: Meet his makers. Neither of which are sinister motivations worthy of the subterfuge. What would've been wrong with saying "Oh, I'd also like to go." 4: David infects Charlie for no apparent reason. David is only there to do what Peter wants, which does not involve murdering members of the crew Peter specifically picked out. There's no motivation for it and no reason David should suspect that infecting a crew member furthers any purpose of his. 5: Scottish mohawk guy becomes a zombie. Biologist nerd gets his arm broken and gets mouth-raped by one of the penis-cobras. Which either impregnates him or just hollows him out. We're never clear on this. And furthermore, shouldn't he know better than to go loving around with something that's pretty clearly showing off some kind of threat response? Yeah, you could argue that he didn't know, but what did you think the hissing dick was trying to tell him? Elizabeth gets pregnant with an alien. Charlie well, I guess that's hard to say since his infection was brought to a sudden end. What exactly does the magic goop do? It reminds me of the T-virus in Resident Evil, which also just did whatever the hell it did without any explanation. In RE that makes some sense: it's a video game (well, and a rapidly-declining movies series) and you weren't playing it for the techno babble. Prometheus's intent seems greater than just showing characters blowing things heads off though. I've seen it suggested that the lack of any explainable qualities or understandable use for the stuff was intentional. I don't see that. It just feels like nobody bothered. Knowing less about the Engineers is fine, and you could argue that without knowing a set purpose for their funky toxic slime it further obscure just what they were trying to do, but that's all thrown in the toilet when the captain bluntly states that it's a bioweapon. And yes, he could be wrong. But the line feels like an attempt to explain this to the audience. Or rather if the intent here was to keep the stuff a mystery, having a single line declaring a reason behind it, with no rebuttal, breaks it. 6: It is irrelevant that Elizabeth can't get pregnant. That this bothers her seems like either a miscarried  attempt at characterization or a clumsy way of explaining why she shouldn't have been pregnant. The former goes nowhere and the latter doesn't serve a purpose. It's not like we go into this assuming otherwise, and it's not a stretch of the imagination that the hi-tech gizmos on the ship would have picked something up if she were pregnant to begin with.7: Okay, but Elizabeth is pregnant, or something like it. Apparently nobody can chase down and subdue a woman slowly meandering down the halls of a well-mapped spaceship, or even make an attempt to figure out where she went. And then the alien proto-facehugger thing is removed, everyone is perfectly chill with that and nobody stops to ask, "Gee, Liz. You were recently carrying an alien lifeform in you. We called him Bill. What happened to Bill anyway?" There's also no reason why David, or anyone for that matter, would want to impregnate her with an alien life form. Again, nobody has any motivation to do this. You can argue the greedy corporations want bioweapons angle but you'd have to draw that solely from the Aliens films. There's nothing here to push that agenda. And if that wasn't enough, there's no reason for David to think that she could even get pregnant with an alien to begin with. And yet I 3/5'd this because it utterly nails the sensation that you are a little worthless poo poo dealing with (potentially very dangerous) things you have no way of understanding. It's visually great and you never feel comfortable, even if half of it makes no sense. Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 07:22
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