Tuesday 5 June 2012

Prometheus | Ridley Scott goes supergalacticspaceoperaish

Prometheus. Seriously?

The most hyped movie of the year?



Spoiler warning... 
Well it got me off my seat to go to the cinema and pay an exorbitant ticket price, including the cost of some 3D glasses (the 2D showing was sold out, sold out would you believe? That's what happens when the director himself goes on the record saying the flat screen version is the best, I guess.).

I did like the trailer. But I wasn't in love with it. The cast seemed a bit....big. And on watching it, the film comes across as having a lack of focus.

Scott clearly likes an ensemble piece. the first Alien was one... who'd ever heard of Sigourney Weaver in 1979? You really didn't know who was going to survive. That was one of its major selling points.

Spoilers...




But he doesn't pull this off, not entirely. Idris Elba, he's great. But his character is a mite cliched and a mite under written. Charlize Theron, well...ditto. She's a great villain. But here she wasn't the villain. And she wasn't sexy enough, either.

Prometheus has some great, great scenes. And it has one really brilliant character in David, played by Michael Fassbender. But the script is lacking.



More spoilers...








Why are there two leads -- the archaeologist couple. And why is he so darned spoiled brattish?

The faith thing, left me cold.

I don't think I was meant to sympathise with Charlize Theron and her flame thrower that much. Was I?


Also, why are there two prologues... The suicidal alien? The Isle of blinking Skye?

Neither was necessary, indeed I think the first detracted from the scene when they remove the helmet from the severed alien head... I mean. Wouldn't that have been more powerful not knowing what the alien guy looked like?

As for the They Are Humans revelation. it was so flagged up in advance -- partly by the prologue -- that it lost all impact.

Storytelling
The disappointing thing, and the weird thing is that a film by Ridley 'Blade Runner, Gladiator Alien' Scott is let down by its storytelling. By characters that aren't quite right. A flow of scenes that feels disjointed.

But wait a minute. I need to say sorry. I'm griping. This film is actually quite spectacular and regardless of the flaws the two hours raced by -- it felt shorter, for instance, than the marathon tedium of awfulness that is the current Spiderman trailer (what have they done there, turned it into Gossip Girl?) It's not perfect, but so what.

And didn't everybody slate Alien when it first came out? And Blade Runner....


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