Prometheus [2012] -- Horror // Sci-Fi

Grade: C
Stars: 7.0

"Prometheus is a reboot prequel to Ridely Scotts Alien. The movie doesn't feature the Alien, but is still gorgeous to watch."

Gosh this movie was a disappointment. I actually prefer the trailer to the film. The coherent narrative was at least refreshing, but to be honest the themes, and even genera felt schizophrenic at best. Was this sci-fi, horror, chiller, philosophical, action, or just an overly self-indulgent smorgasbord board of bullshit from our lovely friend the writer / director / religious zealot Ridley Scott.

Now, I'm not going to rip into Scott that much, but let's be real here... Prometheus, compared to what it S/could have been, was a disaster. The characters were extremely weak to say the least, and all of them felt incredibly forced, and fake. Notwithstanding the main character, an actress who did a great job, although her accent was a bit obnoxious, every other character felt as cliche as the movie did holistically. It was absolutely a sum of it's parts and it's parts were broken, uneven, mismatched and straight up confusing.

Look, this movie was certainly no Alien, but it was worlds and bounds better than A.V.P. Of course, we all know only the ORIGINAL Alien was directed by Scott, but with that said, it may have been for the best. Prometheus was not advertised overtly as a prequel and I think that was the correct decisions. It is simply the same universe, but the story is, for all intents and purposes, completely stand alone.

Sure, we got a look back at the xenomorph (Alien) and unlocked some secrets about the "SpaceJocky" (can't explain it, go google it) but did the movie really have to include either? No. Not at all. In fact, the "Alien" featured in this movie was little more than an homage / tribute to the first film.  And you know what, that pissed me off. This movie had such amazing potential to be an absolute world shattering revelation movie where we see the Alien's genies in our (relatively speaking) life time and how it progressed to now classic 'Alien' film that preceded it...in the future...in space...

The plot is super meh. It's trying so hard to be something it isn't...profound. It was not true to it's roots and felt like a shitty Indian Jones knock off in space. The characters run around having seemingly random bad shit happen to them (snakes in the suit? wtf?), chased by holograms (wtf?) and I think the worst offended The fucking zombies. WHY THE FUCK WERE THERE ZOMBIES?!

Yeah, we can go on several chat forums and see what the self proclaimed experts take on it is, but if I have to resort to getting my answers from an external source (Donny Darko exempt) then I can't help but write the movie off as poor editing / writing.

Oh and one more thing, why the fuck was Guy Pierce even in this movie? It's so utterly pointless, since they dressed him up all old and shit. He must have asked for the part...it made no sense to cast him. None.

Alright, so without giving away spoilers of the (shitty) plot, onto the good stuff.

Visually, this movie is breath taking! I saw this in theaters and damn was I impressed. From the moment that giant space ship touches down on our pseudo-earth we know we're in for a serious ride. The visual effects are equally impressive, as I'm sure much of the story's cogent writing team was sacrificed for Ridley Scott's nonsense and a large CG budget. Yes, CG. The lack of aniamatronics largely disappointed me, but at least the CG was decent enough. None of that flashy lens flare J.J shit.

The movie didn't really feel scary, but did it at least sorta kinda-ish make you wonder about ...all that...profound like...stuff ...like ...life and ..stuff... I guess? I don't know, the movie was pretty subpar.

To wrap it up, this movie is a very interesting unique experience. It's not necessarily that fantastic, but in it's own rite it's pretty decent. I wish it had kept to a genera and stuck to it, or kept to a character and stuck to it, but it was over the top, balls to the wall, brutal, and did at least resemble Alien, even if it didn't capture anywhere near the emotion that Alien did.

I'd recommend this movie to just about everyone actually, although it doesn't come highly recommended. It's just a decent sci-fi 'horror' film (I think) and it opens a lot of interesting philosophical questions (where did we come from....where are we going etc).