So… it’s been a week now, or close to it, since “Prometheus” opened. I made some comments in my previous post about my problems with the movie’s “plot”. At that time I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone who might want to go see the movie, but after a week I feel like I can post my thoughts more specifically. Especially since I really think this movie is one of the worst written “sci-fi” movies I’ve ever seen. So, WARNING! SPOILERS!!
I have been particularly hard on the plot of the movie. Here are my specific reasons for feeling this movie was so poorly written.
The entire concept of the movie is based on the fundamental premise that the “giants” or “engineers” who created humans on earth had spent time interacting with humans and helping them develop civilization all over the Earth, and in each case they had left a deliberate and highly specific “map” that would allow humans to one day locate their planet. The heroine of the movie and her boy toy interpreted this as a specific “invitation” from the engineers to visit their home world, presumably to get answers about the most profound and important questions in human history. “Why are we here?”, “What is our purpose?”, “What else can you teach us?”
But later we learn that the planet the engineers “invited” us to, was actually some sort of military base that was specifically built as a means of creating and delivering weapons of mass destruction (in the form of alien creatures) to EARTH! Yes, the “engineers” apparently deliberately communicated to EARTHLINGS where they were building the genocidal weapons which they would use to destroy Earth itself.
Why? What possible rationale would the engineers have for giving earthlings a map to the planet where they were building the weapons they would use to destroy Earth? The answer is that there is no such rationale. It beggars belief. It makes, quite literally, no sense whatsoever. It’s like the Aemricans in WW2 provided the Nazis with a map of where they were developing the atomic bomb. It’s not merely silly, it’s incomprehensible. And that’s the FUNDAMENTAL PLOT DEVICE of the movie.
Now… throwing that aside…
So a starship is built with ion engines that can cross 35 light years of space. (I think it was 35 light years, although this is unclear because the diagrams they show and other comments in the movie imply that the planet is halfway across the galaxy, or something on the order of 100,000 light years. Not that it matters. The engines the ship has could not possibly cover even 35 light years in anything less than generations. Clearly the writers simply have no clue what they are talking about in terms of space travel, propulsion or anything else.
But… much more important than the complete ignorance of distance and time considerations is this.
They flew the damn ship directly into the planet’s atmosphere!
This is more than bizarre. This violates pretty much every single precept of mission management, physics, logic and common sense. You don’t fly your interstellar spaceship onto the planet! You have smaller shuttles that you send down to the planet for investigation! Even if you might EVENTUALLY land the main ship, you sure as hell don’t fly across half the galaxy and then just nose down into the atmosphere and start flying around searching for things VISUALLY!
I can’t even begin to describe how totally and completely freaking insane this is. They literally were flying their whole spaceship MANUALLY through mountain ranges and canyons such that they DIDN’T EVEN SEE THE ENGINEER’S STRUCTURES until they were right on top of them.
Look. You have a spaceship. You are coming into a stellar system where you suppose an exponentially superior technological race has their HOME PLANET. You don’t even go into orbit around that planet at first. You park your ship somewhere and send probes in. Then, if you decide that it is safe to proceed, you might go into orbit around the planet, but you would dispatch some tiny mapping satellites which would not only map the entire planet in a few hours, locating any structures, for example, but would provide all of the navigational aids you might need when you actually send a scouting party down in a shuttle.
But no. They just fly straight in, drop into the atmosphere and start FRIGGIN LOOKING AROUND WITH THEIR OWN DAMN EYEBALLS to see what they can see.
Such complete and utter incompetence deserves to be eaten alive by aliens.
I could go on.
“Hey, let’s take our helmets off!” No worries man. Just do it.
“Joe and I are bored, we’re heading back to the ship.” Sure. Split the party. Nobody’s really in charge anyway. This is a “scientific expedition” there’s no need for discipline, logic or regard for physical safety while exploring the ruins of an advanced alien technology that appears to have been destroyed by mysterious attackers who might still be around.
Joe and his buddy get lost. I mean really? They can map an entire underground structure to the sub-millimeter level and beam the holographic image back to the main ship, but two guys in spacesuits can’t follow a breadcrumb trail back to their ship without getting lost?
“Hey, look, I’m an engineer who has just been revived from hibernation, and I can see that all of my comrades are dead, our entire military infrastructure has been compromised by the very genocidal creatures we were creating, who now appear to be loose on the planet, but who cares about that? There’s a friggin EARTHLING! KILL KILL KILLKILLLKILLKILLK!!!!!!”
I was on the verge of outright hysterical laughter at that point.
Just the high points.
Oh, so why did they land their entire interstellar spaceship on the planet’s surface anyway?
Because the directer apparently thought a violent ship to ship ramming scene would be just the perfect visual climax for his movie. That’s why.
In fact pretty much every stupid, idiotic thing that happened in the movie (and there were truckloads of stupid, idiotic things) were clearly put in the movie to force the plot to happen the way the director wanted it to go. Not because it made any sense at all. It just had to provide the right impact to the viewer. That’s all.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackNice rant. It’s really, really okay, Cosmic, if you don’t like this movie. No need to protest too much.
I’ve seen the movie and I actually agree it is not Ridley Scott’s best effort. I wouldn’t even call it a good effort, but I don’t detest it the way you do. It had some nice cinematic moments, but in the final analysis it was disappointing.
BTW, you’ve neglected a critical component of the plot in your analysis: the ‘Engineers’ apparently changed their mind about the human race and the heroine of the story was keen on understanding why. The Engineers’ assumed change of heart/mind is actually, as I see it, the fundamental plot device of the movie.
Also, I will expect to see a similar scientific analysis, e.g. flying their main ship into the atmosphere, etc., of all scifi films you see in the future. It seems you’ve been willing to suspend disbelief for other films in the past, but not for this one.
Anyway, like I said I was disappointed in ‘Prometheus’ for some of the reasons you cite, e.g. astronauts getting lost, lack of discipline on an important scientific expedition, etc. Ultimately, this film is a missed opportunity by a director who’s done great work in the past.
Dadman, I didn’t neglect the “change of heart” I just couldn’t list all the problems I had, and that one was just one of many. As near as I can piece together, the “change of heart” occurred some 2,000 years ago. Hint hint.
I won’t even address the difficulties inherent in any time line when having to travel and communicate across 35 light years…
When a sci-fi movie presents itself as thoughtful, profound, and most of all, important, I will hammer on its horrible failings too.
I have much lower standards for movies that present themselves as cartoons or comic books. This movie presented itself as the intellectual and artistic heir of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I hold such aspirations to higher standards.
One more thing on the “change of heart.” If you are somehow suggesting that the “change of heart” has some connection to the “invitation” and “map” that led to the planet they eventually visited, let me ask you the following questions:
1. The most recent “map” they found of the star system indicated by the giants in the drawings was carved into rock some 10,000 years before. That’s 8,000 years before the engineer’s “change of heart.” But the conclusion reached by the heroine and the captain, presumably accurate, is that the planet they eventually visited was chosen specifically to create their evil alien WMDs “as far away from their population centers as possible.” So, if they, 2,000 years ago, decided to build these alien WMDs, then why were they, 35,000 years ago pointing to a spot in the sky that must have been nothing but an empty planet at that time?
2. It is clear from the cave drawings that as late as 10,000 years ago the “engineers” were still interacting with humanity. For them to know that something had happened 2,000 years ago to cause their “change of heart” they must still have been monitoring the Earth. If they then decided to destroy the Earth humans, why would they set up some sort of military genocidal program 35 light years away? First of all, why not just nuke the planet right then and there?
3. This “change of heart” is so deeply and profoundly evil that the engineers don’t simply nuke the human race, they design and implement at great personal risk to themselves a race of parasitic aliens with a taste for human flesh, rear them on a planet 35 light years away, build an entire fleet of WMD delivery vehicles and then put at least some of themselves into hibernation for an indeterminate period of time. Why is their hatred so profound that they have to devise a means to individually torture and kill every individual human being in the most horrible, painful and degrading means possible?
I won’t even go into the question of why they would create these alien parasitic genocidal monsters without any means whatsoever of protecting themselves from them, and then leave the means of initiating the generation of millions of the monsters open to casual visitors who just happen to open a single door?
Sigh… when I say the movie beggars belief, I’m not kidding. There are layers upon layers of incompetence and stupidity in this movie. It’s like a tour de force of idiocy at every turn.
But yeah, the graphics were awesome.
You said– “…I have much lower standards for movies that present themselves as cartoons or comic books. This movie presented itself as the intellectual and artistic heir of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I hold such aspirations to higher standards…”
That’s it in a nutshell. Everyone who was a teen or a young adult who saw 1979 ‘Alien’ was BLOWN Away by a truly SERIOUS, DETAILED and WELL-SCRIPTED Sci-Fi flick.
Those of us in that set were poised and waiting for the first Serious Sci-Fi Event of the 21st century. Visuals AND Storyline. Ridley had to KNOW that there are countless online wiki’s detailing the Alien Universe alone– so that means– You Can’t ‘F’ it up.
But Instead– we saw:
Pop goes the Helmets! Oooh, Let’s bring the dead alien head back in a canvas sack. Umm, Cap– we’re watching a video of aliens running for their lives, and OH! BTW we found whole piles of their bodies…and the Captain doesn’t even think to say: “Seal ALL the Airlocks, NOW!”
I sat in my theatre seat and I couldn’t help but replay in my mind the tense and believable fear on the NOSTROMO when Ripley refused to open the airlock: “Bring him inside and we’ll all be contaminated..NO.” THAT was Sci-Fi Cinema!
To go from that dramatic, level-headed electrifying script in 1979 and in 2012 to devolve down to:
“Oooh, look at this cute snakey fella!”
And considering the Theatre absconded with $15 of my money, I was sadly disappointed. Ridley Scott is Dead to me.
MY greatest ‘This Script is Broken’ moment? When David called Dr Shaw to tell her the Engineer was coming after her…I was like WHY?
Especially when later we learn there are more spaceships. WHY would this supposedly hyper intelligent alien rampage after a lone human in her wreck of a PRIMITIVE spacecraft?
Then it hit me– Oh yes– The Hollywood Rulebook says: Alien Monsters must ALWAYS chase after lone female humans, losing all rationality in the process.
That said– I WILL get the DVD– the technical Visuals WERE amazing. Plus, Both the Rise AND Fall of something great should be memorialized.
Marach, the “he’s coming to get you” was another moment that I laughed out loud. Especially knowing that there were apparently several other domes that we all plainly saw when they first cruised the interstellar spaceship into the engineer’s WMD valley. Let’s see…. lone, wounded human with limited air and no apparent food, probably will live no more than a day or so… vs. go wake up all the other engineers in all the other domes.
“I go kill lone wounded female!”
I know I am going to be accused of hating, but this movie was seriously broken in terms of script, plot, story and remote plausibility.
And it really had a lot of promise.
I was not a fan of the original alien flicks, but at least they were halfway decently written and had a plausible story.
This was a wreck of enforced Deux Ex Machina idiocy for the sake of cheap cinematic thrills.
That’s why I really hated it.
The opening pre-credit sequence with the Engineer standing water-side was the most tantalizing part of the entire movie, which then completely failed to deliver on that promise.
The last 45 minutes or so were excrutiatingly painful. I would have left in disgust when the Ripley-era Alien tore through the Engineer’s body, if it wasn’t the end of the movie anyway.
This movie was a train wreck. For all the reasons stated above, and some.
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