Prometheus 33⅓: The Final Insult.

GET THIS BLURAY 1TS LIKE AWSOM

This is the third time I've posted about this production, and to be honest my opinion of it hasn't gone up since last time, in fact its probably dropped from my previous review.

Why continue talking about it if its so average?

Because to me and perhaps to you too, the issues with it are almost more interesting than the actual movie itself, and also I have no life, no life at all.  So open wide like a toothy, foof-faced squid thing that's been locked in a spaceship for hours with no one noticing until its required by the plot, and to quote Plinkett, lets dive right in shall we...

I'd hoped the home release would fix some of the obvious problems with this production. Apparently I was once again hoping for too much and it really hasn't fixed it at all, and much talk of late in the press about the studio execs, sinister like those of the Weyland-Yutani Corp itself, tampering with this officially mediocre movie and at least hinting that 'its basically all the studios fault'.

I'd group the errors under perhaps 3 headings; concept; story and editing. We could talk about the production design etc, which was mostly great, not enough Giger, particularly woefully short in the creature dept... But as Sir Ridley Scott pointed out in an interview for Alien, "it's all window dressing", meaning that doesn't necessarily make or break the movie, it to me is just disappointing but I can look past that if the fundamentals are right.  So lets concentrate on the important aspects.

It's very simple, we just want your money over and over and over again. It's what we call a trilogy. 

Concept: The initial concept according to the original scriptwriter as interviewed in empire was a proper Alien prequel, set on the same world as in Alien, with the same ship and everything. Clearly, based on Spaihts inteview, in order to facilitate the begining of a new-and-legally-distinguishable-from-Alien franchise, this had to be changed, on direct order from the higher-ups, above even the director and owner of the production company for the project - Scott Free Productions - Sir Ridley Scott.

So were higher-than-production-level decisions to blame for the problems in the following areas?

Story: Following the change in concept, Damon Lindelof is brought on board to help accomplish the script chages, I guess its what you'd call a shake and bake colo... I mean story.

While the studio allegedly initiated the changes, I really couldn't care less if its an Alien prequel or not and I and many others personally, largely blame Lindelof for many problems with the story, the stupid stuff that characters do, their poor decision making and lack of professionalism - just plain lack of common sense above everything else, that makes no sense. And other stuff that also makes no sense, which I detail with excruciating precision in my review, perhaps I'm being unfair but I can't help but draw comparisons between Prometheus' plot lines and those of Lost.  However without seeing what came before, its hard to determine exactly what idea came from where, and where problems really originated... In fairness the whole thing may have been completely broken from the start and Lindelof fixed it up as best he could, for all I know.

Lindelof of course proved his creativity with hit series Lost, which however was also a series that many (brave, brave souls who stuck with it until the very end) felt was ultimately unsatisfying, meandering and made up as it went along. I personally found its plots had complicated and interesting beginnings  but always leading to mediocre, rushed and uninspired difficult endings, endings that make no sense, which is the last hour of Prometheus to a tee.

These problems are largely compounded by the final factor:

Editing: I'm not talking about timing or anything minor, but like something really important happens in a particular scene, but after that the really important thing is never mentioned even once, I have a hard time believing that such experienced movie makers would mistakenly forget about that thread to move onto the next part as quickly as possible. Interesting beginnings leading to mediocre endings... Sounds like a line from the movie itself, how about non-existent endings, even?

It felt like the complete movie was not shown at the theatres, that to perhaps cut the movie down to 2 hours some really vital things were cut out.  Not the first time this has happened, but then consider the incredibly slow start: Was there nothing that could be cut from the introductory hour to make the meat of it make more sense.  I mean you can call it an artistic decision, but it's clearly at the expense of telling the actual story.  The story, the concept of Prometheus the movie is not really terribly complicated, yes we get it as our long time friend Erich Von Daniken would point out: IT IS NOT A NEW IDEA.  Why labour that point and leave so much else unanswered?   Alien had a long intro, but since the actual plot was straightforward and not a million different threads to begin, explore and resolve it could afford to do this.

Why, for example, did a scene that Lindelof wrote to explain the android infecting the idiot with the black goo get left on the editing computers hard drive? Eh? But I dunno, perhaps that would have still seemed like a dick move even with it explained - As I mentioned in my review, what kind of moron would run an uncontrolled experiment like that, which would be far more likely to endanger the ship, the crew and in effect Weyland, than provide him with eternal or extended life.  So Lindelof explains why something didn't make sense.  Unfortunately here even with the explanation I guess it still doesn't make sense.  Lindelof provides plenty of sorry excuses in this article right here.

So did someone forget they were meant to be telling a story here? Not likely given the calibre of people and money involved. Would I be too cynical to suggest that perhaps this was done precisely to put the scenes in later in the home release? or make them available to watch at least on the blu ray.  Ya know, the scenes that might make certain things actually make sense so it can be marketed as the thing that fixes this broken film.  Is this something that Sir Ridley, known for resisting studio demands or allowing his work to be watered down would even allow?

Am I unfair in suggesting there might have been certain money over art choices made there?  There was a time before directors cuts, where the theatrical release was the best thing that a creative team could condense into two hours or less. Over the last few decades since Alien started messing up cinema bathrooms, home releases are more important, its also more important to obviously milk those sales for as much as possible, movies have always been shrewdly marketed.

Extra value, extra scenes and / or run-time are expected, demanded in the home formats, and thats fair enough but perhaps this time it was ultimately at the expense of the original release, which may have been deliberately crippled, to add the value back in later.

If true, it's the movie equivalent of the reprehensible practice by games publishers of holding back video game content just to make it a downloadable add-on later... Where people are deliberately sold an inferior product that they will have to spend more money on later, to get the product as intended. But why do this, people aren't stupid, I won't be the only person asking this question, Erich probably has a few too, but he's locked away safely for the time being until The History Channel commissions a new series of the excellent and not stupid at all guff-fest that is, Ancient Aliens.

So there may be suit / money / marketing related issues with the editing, I can't say for sure, I am of course only asking questions.... But the other answer to these problems is that a director, whos work I've mostly enjoyed and who has made at least two really wonderful Science Fiction epics had made some awful mistakes with his latest work... I mean it's easy to pick a lone gunman and pin everything on him.

There are other problems with the movie too, but I bet no one at the studio strenuously insisted that the characters can only run in one direction at the end. I mean, I wasn't there, I don't know what happened but there are problems that are probably harder to pin on 'the suits' than others... From the Empire interview, its easy to get the impression that the problems were all due to decisions made from somewhere above the production staff, and I doubt that's entirely true, blame has to lie to an extent with everyone involved, its never just one person, so whether its Damon Lindelof, or Ridley Scott or faceless execs that cop the blame depending on who you talk to, perhaps there were problems at every level, which is the only way you can explain all the issues with the final product.

Its biggest problem, is that unlike its predecessors/sequels and, due to its many failings in many areas it fails to represent any sort of believable reality; often possessing all the cohesion of a free-forming dream more than a well thought out movie.  The hype over the home release being the saviour for many a confused movie-goer is just a distraction from the fact that the movie is basically broken and messed with too much at its core for any amount of extra scenes, extended run-time or alternative endings to fix. It was never going to live up to the hype, we expected loose edges, but at least the basics should have made sense.  Is this the final insult to an audience who expected so much?