I saw Prometheus over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. There have been many overly critical reviews going around, so perhaps this can function as a dissent. In addition to suspending your sense of disbelief (something necessary for engaging with any work of fiction), you must also be willing to accept a story which can support multiple interpretations, as not everything is spelled out. If you don’t like any kind of symbolism or theme in movies, this is not the movie for you. If you are irritated by characters that go to investigate dark hallways alone in horror movies, this is not the movie for you.
Some of the characters made bad (even stupid) decisions. Many reviews I have read latched onto these plot elements as flaws in the movie. However, people can be stupid, vain, greedy creatures who don’t necessarily think things through, even when they are spending trillion dollar space ship budgets (and this is when they don’t need to make split-second decisions). Consider Christopher Columbus spending Queen Isabella’s money (and all the other explorers that were not as successful). And speaking about some of the mercenaries, what kind of person rents their life to a megacorporation and risks death in a two-year suspended animation in order to make some money? Apparently, some people are only satisfied with stories about people who always make smart decisions (see The Alexandrian’s take, for example).
That being said, there were some problems with characterization in the movie. It was hard to feel sympathy for many of the characters, and some motivations were not terribly clear, especially for Charlize Theron’s corporate ice queen. Why was she there? What did she hope to get out of the mission? And, the captain’s final action. The motivation did not feel authentic to me for the captain, and it felt even less so for his subordinates, who, as far as I could tell from what came beforehand, were basically just hired technicians.
It is possible that Prometheus is one of the better cinematic adaptations of Lovecraft that has yet been produced, despite the fact that it is not directly based on any Lovecraft story. It is certainly more in the spirit of Lovecraft than either Alien or Aliens. I would also add that many of Lovecraft’s protagonists also make “stupid” decisions, and that this is part of the point. Humans tamper with an unknown and dangerous cosmos. To quote from Joe the Lawyer’s list of D&D rules broken by characters in this movie: “Never trust the unknown. Everything in the universe is fucking hostile.”
There are a few minor problems of pacing. I could have done without the entire section near the beginning depicting the android teaching himself about human culture while everyone else was in stasis on the ship. I feel like more mileage could have been gotten from the exploration of the alien ruins. And the writing was not spectacular, though I didn’t feel like it was bad enough to negatively affect the rest of the movie.
I can’t say for certain that the makers of Prometheus consciously meant to allude to Dungeons & Dragons, but there certainly seemed to be a number of references. For example (paraphrasing from memory here), near the beginning there is the following dialogue: “Before the adventure begins, Ms. Vickers would like to speak to you.” There is a “skull mountain” vista which looked like it was straight out of Holmes. I suppose these could just be coincidences. Also, the mapping robots. All I could think of here was that this is a DM with players who clearly don’t like mapping. Did I mention that the entire plot revolves around what is essentially an alien megadungeon?
In total, I think the visual power of this movie is enough to carry it for a viewer that appreciates such things. The score was good too, in an unobtrusive sort of way (I generally don’t like scores that call too much attention to themselves, with the exception of Kubrick, but then all bets are off with Kubrick anyways). And, if you play D&D-style adventure games about exploring dungeons, you will see a lot in Prometheus that is familiar, and probably get some ideas from it too (I certainly did).
 |
| Holmes cross section, just because |
My feelings about the film were sort of similar to yours. It’s flawed, but some of the complaints seem to set a bar that I find puzzling, given the bone-headed stuff people do in real life.
I read a series of books by Harry Turtledove a couple of years ago. They were based on the premise that the South won the Civil War, and then took that premise all the way through the Second World War. The story was told through the eyes of a number of point of view characters from all different countries and social strata. Turtledove’s strength was that the world that was built was convincing, his greatest weakness was that he wrote like a historian. Characters introduced in the first book had hopes, plans and dreams that were followed over the course of several books. And then, they’d die without fulfulling any of those hopes, plans or dreams. Which, when you think about it, is exactly like life. Turtledove didn’t write the stories with the idea of character arcs, or dramatic tension, he wrote them like they were real people – he wrote like a historian. Saying that people can act stupidly in real life, while true, does not excuse people acting stupidly on screen, unless it’s an established character trait. I think Chekov’s gun applies here, perhaps doubly so. If you shouldn’t introduce a gun in the opening act without firing it by the end, if you set someone up as an expert in something, you REALLY shouldn’t show them acting stupidly in regards to their area of expertise (Geologist who angrily asserts that he is all about rocks and mapping, then gets lost – I’m looking at you). There is definitely some Lovecraftian influence to the film, and there might be something to the idea that the point of the movie was that there are no answers to be found when you start asking the eternal questions, but if that’s the case, it was not clear because the impression I came away with was that there were answers to the questions, and at times, people seemed to have those answers but then forget them (David, now I’m looking at you). I dunno, I wrote a long writeup on the movie on my blog, and if you’re interested check it out, but overall it just didn’t seem to hang together. It seemed to be a movie that started off being one thing, changed gears to be something else, then tried to be both, while ending up being neither, which is consistant with the story of how the movie was made – it’s an Alien prequel! No it’s not! It is, but only sort of – not really, but it’s in the same universe! There were numerous rewrites, and it showed. My 2 cents.
you shouldn’t introduce a gun in the opening act without firing it by the end
This I actually don’t agree with. I realize that when working in any dramatic or artistic form, there is limited space, and an inch of canvas or a minute of footage is valuable. However, if everything has a purpose, the whole risks feeling artificial (which, of course, it is, but you don’t want it to feel artificial).
For example, when the scientist character mentioned that she was not able to have children near the beginning of the movie, I immediately predicted almost exactly what would happen in the end. It’s hard to get foreshadowing right.
Geologist who angrily asserts that he is all about rocks and mapping, then gets lost
Yeah, that was a bit silly. Such things should have been caught before the script was finalized (it would have been so easy to just have a different character get lost, for example).
I guess it’s all in how Chekov’s gun is applied – if it’s done hamfistedly, as it was in Prometheus, then yes, it can ruin things. If it’s subtly done, however, it can enhance a movie. When it’s masterfully done, it makes you want to watch the movie a second time to catch all the hints that were laid the first time around. Christopher Nolan does it masterfully. Dark City is a movie that does it masterfully. So I think Chekov’s gun is a worthwile principle to follow, as long as it’s done right.
The Christopher Nolan movie I’d especially recommend as one of the greatest examples of masterful use of Chekhov’s gun, foreshadowing & “fair-play” is The Prestige. That movie is just packed with stuff that, when you get to the end, you remember and think, “Why didn’t I notice that and see where it was going?!?”
@Ed
I love that movie. One of my favorites.
People making “stupid” decisions is an established horror movie trope. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is when those decisions are completely out of character.
The punk geologist makes a highly-detailed 3-D map of the entire complex and then somehow gets himself lost. The biologist gets freaked out and scared when he sees alien bodies, but then he gets all kissy-face with an alien cobra. The archaeologist becomes depressed and starts drinking because he discovered artifacts from a previously unknown alien civilization (an archaeologist’s dream!). These all further compound the characterization problems you mention in your post.
As for the Skull Mountain influence, the artists looked no further than some of H. R. Giger’s old designs:
PROMETHEUS Borrows Giger Designs From Jodorowsky’s Unmade DUNE
If my link isn’t acting right, you can copy the address to the article here:
http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/14/prometheus-borrows-giger-designs-from-jodorowskys-unmade-dune/
They’re making a documentary on Jodorowsky’s Dune. Which (almost) makes up for the fact that it never happened. Dali as the Emperor? Gah – I live in a fallen world.
The biologist and geologist were really mercenaries, though. They probably each had the equivalent of a master’s degree. Recall that they signed on to the mission without having any idea of what it was about. What kind of scientist would do that? They risked death in stasis (underlined in the script by the “no casualties” line when people were waking up).
@Tony
By the way, thank you for that “PROMETHEUS Borrows …” link. It’s very interesting to see those comparisons. I’m a big fan of Giger’s work.
@Brendan
No prob. I’m a big fan of Moebius and Jodorowsky in addition to Giger. I’d love to have seen the beautiful, confusing mess that Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been.
I think of the ashtray/trashcan things that are set X number of feet away from hospital doors in the US as monuments to human stupidity/stubborness. They are usually surrounded by smokers who work in the hospital where many of them no doubt spend time taking care of cancer patients.
Notes:
The android wasn’t studying “human culture”. He was learning all primative languages and calculating their root so he could speak to the engineers.
Vickers is an android. There is lots of evidence for this – weyland refers to the other android as ‘his son’ and she calls him father. More damming is the fact that she can slam the android against the wall, and her medical computer is designed to work with men only.
The captain explicitly says he would do anything to protect earth.
Yeah, I know the android was studying language, but I still think too much screen time was dedicated to it. There may be some cinematic quotation going on here too, but I can’t quite place it. 2001 perhaps? It’s been a long time since I have seen that.
I noticed the “male only” medical pod also, and at first assumed it was a mistake, but this interpretation is compelling. It also makes more sense why she is present on the ship.
Whatever the captain explicitly says, the motivation does not feel authentic to me (or that of his subordinates). But that is a minor flaw.
@-C
What about the sex with the captain though? Are we assuming that she is just a really lifelike android? That whole bit seemed to be focused around the idea of disproving that she was an android.
She wasn’t an Alien-type robot. She was a Blade Runner-type replicant.
(Ridley Scott has said that part of why Prometheus isn’t merely a prequel to Alien is because it’s also a sequel to Blade Runner — connecting the two.)
Has he actually said this? All I could find were internet discussions and rumors about Blade Runner 2.
I remember hearing him say that somewhere. I think it might’ve been in one of those pre-previews waiting-for-the-movie-to-start advertainment things they show in movie theaters these days. I remember seeing one of those about Prometheus a few months ago.
I assumed the “Male Only” bit meant that it was only there for her father?