Prometheus is an exceptionally well-done stupid movie. Imagine someone deciding to update the Wagnerian opera in all its epic scope and majesty for the twenty-first century, and then determining that the best theme for such an opera would be...Chariots of the Gods?. Prometheus is just like that.
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Minus the question mark!
In the grim meathook future of this film, corporations rule the planet, CEOs rule their corporations on whims, and women wear naught but Ace bandages as undergarments, the poor sexy sexy things. Two "scientists"--one of whom is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Papa's Crucifix (Will we ever be free of lockets and necklaces and brooches and rings of import and such in films??)--find some art in a cave in Scotland and other places, and one trillion dollars later they're on their way to space with a mincing homosexual robot and a Power Dyke along the lines of the gym teacher in Glee. It seems that aliens have created humanity, and now we're heading to their homeworld to say "Hey" and such thanks to the dying wish of ConHugeCo's CEO. Forget the fact that this sort of thing is like writing a letter to your vacationing neighbor that begins, "Dear Bob, I am writing to you not to disturb your holiday in Bali, but to let you know something you might be interested to hear--there is water pouring out from underneath your front door."
Once we get to the crazy planet, the gang trade proletarian quips while the science types traipse around the sets from various Alien movies. The robot comes too, because he has a sneaky agenda. Everyone has an agenda in the movie, though God knows what they are. Things don't get much more complex than "Find traps, spring them, have own face explode." Two unlucky scientists encounter a phallic-yonic eel--it kills one and dunks the other into a black pit of evil that makes him show up again later in the film for no reason. The other unlucky scientists have to stick around for the rest of the movie.
One guy makes a point of drinking a lot and ribbing the robot, which is very mean. This is like being nasty to the waiter on a first date. You're just going to end up eating spit. And this guy does. Then he has sex with Dragon Tattoo and things don't go well for either of them thanks to mincing homosexual revenge. The guy gets eye leeches and the woman gets impregnated with an octopus, and has to borrow the Power Dyke's Michael Jackson hyperbaric chamber, but...sucka!...it's designed for dudes only. (But but Power Dyke...listen, who cares.) So she has to go through a lot of tedious menu items before finding Remove Octopus. The surgery is very scary. This is not a movie for pregnant ladies. Eye Leech guy gets roasted by Power Dyke, who is Very Into Staying Alive. (This being a movie, of course she dies. Note that Alien 3 offers an exception to this rule! Alien 3 is much better than this film.)
Mincy finds a big white alien who is still alive in suspended animation, and then the secret is revealed! The old fart CEO is on the ship too--he wants to meet his maker before meeting his maker, you see. Maybe they'll be nice to him and give him a heart, or a brain, or a way home. (He already has a fair amount of movie courage, aka stupidity.) This does not go well, as the alien guy, who looks like Voldemort and Starchild and Frankenstein's monster goes all Frankenstein's monster on everyone. You would think that having had major surgery would make our heroine especially vulnerable, but you can't keep the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo down. She can leap across chasms and wrestle tentacles with the best of 'em.
The theme, once the homo robot has his head ripped off so that the alien can beat the CEO to death with it, has become clear--we live in an amoral universe. The alien decides to complete his deadly mission of destroying humanity by sending the famous monster from the earlier Alien franchise films to Earth to eat everyone. Surely, he just could have waited around for a bit as in the grim meathook future of this series we seem very eager to import aliens to Earth--and anyway weren't there already plenty of those aliens on Earth way back in 2004, and wasn't the CEO alive then and wasn't a CEO with his surname in charge of finding those aliens in Alien Versus Predator and wasn't...ah, who cares?
The theme falls apart rather instantly because after the proles sacrifice themselves, the Power Dyke gets smooshed and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo narrowly escapes the same fate! Funny how the Cosmic Space Bus just hits the baddies in such a grim and terrible future Planet of Only Death. Anyway, then Dragon Tattoo and the homo-head decide to get on another spaceship to go find the other aliens, because, well, not even hideous genocidal revenge, would have at least be interesting. No, she wants an explanation. So imagine one day, many years from now, there's a knock at your door at 3am, and when put on your robe and answer the door it's a former lab monkey who escaped from some experiments in Beijing, and it wants you to explain what the hell just happened to its life.
How's that gonna go for you? Not well, but if you happen to have Prometheus on DVD or downloaded onto your laptop, invite it in for some early morning chips and a very pretty awful movie.
Minus the question mark!
In the grim meathook future of this film, corporations rule the planet, CEOs rule their corporations on whims, and women wear naught but Ace bandages as undergarments, the poor sexy sexy things. Two "scientists"--one of whom is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Papa's Crucifix (Will we ever be free of lockets and necklaces and brooches and rings of import and such in films??)--find some art in a cave in Scotland and other places, and one trillion dollars later they're on their way to space with a mincing homosexual robot and a Power Dyke along the lines of the gym teacher in Glee. It seems that aliens have created humanity, and now we're heading to their homeworld to say "Hey" and such thanks to the dying wish of ConHugeCo's CEO. Forget the fact that this sort of thing is like writing a letter to your vacationing neighbor that begins, "Dear Bob, I am writing to you not to disturb your holiday in Bali, but to let you know something you might be interested to hear--there is water pouring out from underneath your front door."
Once we get to the crazy planet, the gang trade proletarian quips while the science types traipse around the sets from various Alien movies. The robot comes too, because he has a sneaky agenda. Everyone has an agenda in the movie, though God knows what they are. Things don't get much more complex than "Find traps, spring them, have own face explode." Two unlucky scientists encounter a phallic-yonic eel--it kills one and dunks the other into a black pit of evil that makes him show up again later in the film for no reason. The other unlucky scientists have to stick around for the rest of the movie.
One guy makes a point of drinking a lot and ribbing the robot, which is very mean. This is like being nasty to the waiter on a first date. You're just going to end up eating spit. And this guy does. Then he has sex with Dragon Tattoo and things don't go well for either of them thanks to mincing homosexual revenge. The guy gets eye leeches and the woman gets impregnated with an octopus, and has to borrow the Power Dyke's Michael Jackson hyperbaric chamber, but...sucka!...it's designed for dudes only. (But but Power Dyke...listen, who cares.) So she has to go through a lot of tedious menu items before finding Remove Octopus. The surgery is very scary. This is not a movie for pregnant ladies. Eye Leech guy gets roasted by Power Dyke, who is Very Into Staying Alive. (This being a movie, of course she dies. Note that Alien 3 offers an exception to this rule! Alien 3 is much better than this film.)
Mincy finds a big white alien who is still alive in suspended animation, and then the secret is revealed! The old fart CEO is on the ship too--he wants to meet his maker before meeting his maker, you see. Maybe they'll be nice to him and give him a heart, or a brain, or a way home. (He already has a fair amount of movie courage, aka stupidity.) This does not go well, as the alien guy, who looks like Voldemort and Starchild and Frankenstein's monster goes all Frankenstein's monster on everyone. You would think that having had major surgery would make our heroine especially vulnerable, but you can't keep the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo down. She can leap across chasms and wrestle tentacles with the best of 'em.
The theme, once the homo robot has his head ripped off so that the alien can beat the CEO to death with it, has become clear--we live in an amoral universe. The alien decides to complete his deadly mission of destroying humanity by sending the famous monster from the earlier Alien franchise films to Earth to eat everyone. Surely, he just could have waited around for a bit as in the grim meathook future of this series we seem very eager to import aliens to Earth--and anyway weren't there already plenty of those aliens on Earth way back in 2004, and wasn't the CEO alive then and wasn't a CEO with his surname in charge of finding those aliens in Alien Versus Predator and wasn't...ah, who cares?
The theme falls apart rather instantly because after the proles sacrifice themselves, the Power Dyke gets smooshed and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo narrowly escapes the same fate! Funny how the Cosmic Space Bus just hits the baddies in such a grim and terrible future Planet of Only Death. Anyway, then Dragon Tattoo and the homo-head decide to get on another spaceship to go find the other aliens, because, well, not even hideous genocidal revenge, would have at least be interesting. No, she wants an explanation. So imagine one day, many years from now, there's a knock at your door at 3am, and when put on your robe and answer the door it's a former lab monkey who escaped from some experiments in Beijing, and it wants you to explain what the hell just happened to its life.
How's that gonna go for you? Not well, but if you happen to have Prometheus on DVD or downloaded onto your laptop, invite it in for some early morning chips and a very pretty awful movie.