Prometheus

"Big things have small beginnings."

The Alien franchise has had a relatively tumultuous existence since Ridley Scott’s original Alien in 1979. There have been three direct sequels and two crossover films, all with different writers, directors and visions of what constitutes an Alien film. As far as I am concerned, the best in the series is James Cameron’s Aliens, the first sequel in the series (blasphemy I know, but I don’t feel that the original Alien has aged very well). Prometheus is Scott’s return to the helm after 33 years; a return to the film franchise that more or less made his career and was his first wide release, big-budget movie. Scott has not exactly been knocking it out of the park in recent years; while many were successful, I did not much care for American Gangster, Robin Hood, or a few others of his more recent movies. I was apprehensive about Scott returning to one of the most beloved science fiction franchises of all time, but after the mediocrity of the last several entries, a return to his original vision was an enticing prospect.

Is Prometheus a direct prequel to Alien? Some things in the movie point to yes, others point to no. Scott says it “shares strands of Alien’s DNA,” and I suppose that’s an accurate summation. It takes place in the same fictional universe and events in this film lead indirectly into the events of Alien and its sequels, but this is a new story with a new agenda and the aliens are now in the background.

The movie takes place nearly 100 years into the future. Archaeologists have discovered similar paintings all over Earth that point to an identical formation of planets that they believe may hold the key to the creation of mankind. Trillionaire Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) has funded a mission to go explore one of the planets in the formation (a moon, actually) that can support life. After two years in stasis our heroes arrive on the moon and explore but it is not quite what they expected. The themes of the story are highly ambitious (perhaps overreaching) and it attempts to explore many themes at once. The movie is certainly not boring but it is a bit all over the place and often moves a bit too quickly. There are plot points that should have much more dramatic impact but they are quickly glossed over and it shoves you on the next set piece. I found this frustrating, almost wanting the movie to slow down so that I could appreciate it more.

Prometheus has a handful of scary moments but being a horror movie is not in its agenda. While Alien and its sequels were deliberately horror flicks, Prometheus is by no means a horror movie. I actually think the marketing was a bit misleading as it certainly presents itself as being scary, yet that is not at all the goal of the movie.

Noomi Rapace fronts the cast as Elizabeth Shaw, the leader of the expedition and one half of the archaeological team whose idea it was to go on the mission. Logan Marshall-Green plays Holloway, her other half, but who has differing motives as to the point of making the trip. Michael Fassbender steals the show as David, the android on the ship, and he pulls a lot of the same crap that Ian Holm pulled in the original Alien as the resident android. I found his character to be a bit inconsistent, as there are scenes where he is clearly a robot and speaks in a near monotone voice, but there are others where he exhibits what seem like genuine curiosity and excitement. I guess the androids in this universe are extremely advanced and you just have to take that at face value.

Charlize Theron plays Vickers, a Weyland employee sent to monitor the expedition. She spends most of the movie being a total bitch and yelling and frowning at everyone and has a very short character arc. For some reason her character spends a lot of time on the spaceship wearing heels, the most impractical form of footwear ever designed. Is there a nightclub on the ship that we are unaware of? Guy Pearce’s role as Peter Weyland is surprisingly minor; the character was actually given more exposure in the viral marketing leading up to the release of Prometheus than he was in the final film. The fictional TED Talk with Peter Weyland that was released to promote the film is probably about the same length as his scenes in the movie.

The overall production of Prometheus is remarkable. The special effects are stunning and the set design and props are convincing. The fact that the budget was only $130 million makes this even more impressive as most films of this scale are made for budgets twice and don’t look half as good. The movie was filmed in numerous practical locations in England, Iceland, Scotland and Spain and the locales are stunning. The movie was filmed entirely in 3D and I watched it in 3D, but the effect adds very little and I had entirely forgotten it was in 3D by the end of the movie.

I could have personally done without the religious undertones, but as the story deals with the creation of man on earth, I suppose they are necessary as alternative explanations. Shaw’s refusal to let go of her faith in Christianity, despite being faced with irrefutable evidence that she herself discovers that disproves it, was particularly maddening to me, though I suppose a realistic human response.

Spoilers begin

I found the introduction to be a bit nonsensical. The film opens with several minutes of scenes of mountains, fields and rivers in what I assume is an effort to show that this is a time when only the land was cultivated and there is no life yet on the planet. A lone Engineer disintegrates himself into a river to begin human life on the planet, yet this method would only explain the creation of humans on earth and not other animals. I recognize that all life on Earth started in the water and this method of creation jives with that, but why would only a certain group of cells eventually evolve into humans? If it’s Engineer DNA that started life, then every animal should also share DNA with them. Shaw discovers at one point that we share identical DNA with the Engineers, but humans do not share DNA with other types of animals. Perhaps there were other animals alive on Earth when the Engineer was creating mankind, but I feel like the introduction was explicitly showing that this was not the case.

I also had an issue with the movie’s inability to highlight some significant events that were very dramatic and important to the plot. The introduction to the fact that Peter Weyland is actually on the ship and still alive is oddly-handled and has no drama whatsoever. This is a fairly important plot point and it is discovered by Shaw accidentally stumbling in on them putting him into a wheelchair. There is also no grieving period for Shaw whatsoever when Holloway dies, a highly emotional event considering this entire mission was their idea and they had been together for what we assume is years. I suppose she didn’t have much time to grieve with an alien growing in her stomach, but a single scene showing that she at least felt some emotion would have been nice.

Spoilers end

Prometheus is not a grand return to the Alien franchise, but it does not try to be. You will be greatly disappointed if you walk into this film expecting an Alien movie. I have been reading other reviews over the past few days and I am amazed by the amount of people who are unable to judge the film on its own merits and insist on complaining how un-Alien it is and how let down they are. Prometheus is a grand, ambitious film that, despite its flaws, certainly gets you thinking, and there is much here to appreciate. 

The Avengers

"Have a care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days."

"He's adopted."

When I was a kid, like most kids, I had action figures of many of the Marvel characters. When I would play with them, I would come up with long, sweeping multi-part stories filled with one-liners and nonsensical plot twists. Some stories loosely followed their respective comics, but most did not (unless there was an Avengers / Ninja Turtles / Lego / Star Wars crossover I am unaware of). All of the stories boiled down the same basic structure: two characters have a melodramatic encounter, then fight, then two other characters throw one-liners at each other, then they fight, and so on. By the end, all of the characters had fought each other and resolved their differences and now had to band together to fight the ultimate source of evil (usually the Technodrome or some awesome Lego ship I had made). There was a final showdown, a lot of things exploded (were thrown across my bedroom) and the day was saved.

The Avengers film is the live-action film equivalent of a kid playing with his toys. In this case, the kid is Joss Whedon, an individual who is very much an imaginative child trapped in a grown man’s body. This is by no means a negative, as there is an amazing amount of creativity that shines in his projects (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse). Avengers is only his second directorial credit (Serenity, the film sequel to Firefly, being the first), but after watching the film, you would swear he had been doing this for years.

Story wise, The Avengers is a sequel to Thor. After being booted out of Asgard, Thor’s adopted brother Loki has made new friends in the Chitauri alien race who promise him an army to take over the earth in exchange for retrieving the Tesseract, a powerful energy source they are interested in. Once Nick Fury (Sam Jackson) realizes the earth is in danger, he activates the “Avengers Initiative” to bring a bunch of superheroes together to help save the earth. The story is simple but interesting enough to drive the plot forward and come up with a reason for the superheroes to be in the same room at the same time.

The movie’s biggest accomplishment is balancing the various personalities of the characters. Tony Stark continues to be the egotistical narcissist from the Iron Man films, Captain America always wants to do the right thing, Thor doesn’t say much (though his super-proper way of speaking is hilarious), and Bruce Banner is quiet and thoughtful. Speaking of Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo does a great job here and brings some depth to the character that maybe would have helped the character in the other awful Hulk films. His struggle is more personal than the other characters and he makes a great addition to the franchise. Ruffalo is set to reprise the role in several planned Hulk films, so if they manage not to screw it up, they could have something really great on their hands. Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Scarlett Johansson (Black Window) round out the cast, though they don’t do much, and it seems like they are almost setting up for a spinoff with just the two of them.

The script is surprisingly good and very funny; this is a movie that doesn't take itself seriously. The one-liners are bang on and I found myself laughing out loud more often than not. One exception is Black Widow; all of her dialogue is terrible for some reason, from “I’ve got red in my ledger” to “How is that a party?”  The film does a great job of balancing the science of Iron Man and the Hulk with the supernatural of Thor and making it not seem completely stupid. I will admit that when I saw the trailer footage of the giant flying alien snake smashing through buildings, I was very skeptical that this would just seem goofy. In the end it was goofy, but then again so is the whole film, so it fit perfectly.

If nothing else, The Avengers is a whole lot of fun. The story moves at breakneck speed, the one-liners are nonstop, and if you blink chances are you’ll miss something awesome. The special effects are fantastic and are the combined effort of every major special effects studio on the planet working together on the same project. There is little to complain about with this film; either you will appreciate its slapstick approach and huge explosions or you won’t. I certainly did.

With the exception of Iron Man (which very much stands on its own as a franchise), the other Avengers films have basically served as extended trailers to culminate in this film to bring them all together. All of them contained small scenes with Nick Fury that alluded an eventual full-on Avengers film. After seeing these scenes in the other films, I always thought attempting such a massive crossover would be a catastrophe. I am happy to say that I was wrong. Here’s hoping Avengers 2 is just as good.