Prometheus (2012)
Almost everyone dies because they go to what is guessed to be the wrong planet (nothing is really explained in this movie), either from poisoning by an unknown substance and then getting flamethrower'd (1 death - I'm not really sure why in a world with FTL people would still be using flamethrowers - guessing it has something to do with the timeless "fire kills everything" mantra), encounters with an unexplained lifeform (2 deaths) and being killed off in the last 20 minutes of the film because they're unimportant (everyone else).
What we have here is a stunning eye-candy film directed by the great Ridley Scott that is about as firmly linked to the Alien universe as a dead rat is to the floor during a hurricane. Not to worry, that's actually a good thing. People going to see this movie and hoping it wouldn't be a rushed run-through on how Alien got to be (such as me) were pleased that they took a whole new direction here. Anyone expecting a coherent or interesting plot (such as me) were bitterly disappointed that such a well-financed, well-marketed film would turn into a fiasco of poor actor performances with a very superficial plot that makes the movie simply a big trailer for the next installment.
Prometheus's strengths are indisputably stunning visuals, an excellent setting and overall atmosphere and a detailed post-production. The weaknesses are unfortunately numerous. Poor writing, frustratingly little explanations of what is going on and a drawn-out 2-hour length that seems mostly to be due to unimportant/trivial interactions between the crew and little character development. All in all, it's quite disappointing, and worst of all somewhat boring. Oh, and it's shown exclusively in 3D (no one's going to see it twice so they had to squeeze as much pennies out of us as possible), but only the title credits are worth noting as being a good use of 3D (and that's one use more than any other 3D-ized movie).
To sum everything up, it's not very entertaining but it looks pretty good. If the film spent more time actually going somewhere instead of building up towards the "to be continued..." ending, it would have been decent. I'd suggest to the people who cite the promotional campaign and say "it's a prequel to Alien" to actually go watch the movie and disillusion themselves, but I can't even recommend it as lesson in marketing, let alone as a film worth watching.
Rating: 1.0 / 5 Posted at: Jun 22, 2012 @ 02:30:03
