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lydyWarning, lots of spoilers. But really, you don't want to see this movie anyway. Honest. And, too, if you haven't seen the film, this may not make a lot of sense, 'cause all I'm gonna do is rant. I'm not going to try to explain. Not that there's enough explanation in the world to cover this movie.
First of all, just setting aside all of the really dumb things in this movie, the bra technology is a fucking cotton gauze bandage wrapped around the tits and held in place with those nifty bandage hook things? Really? Really? I mean, ok, when they're just getting out of the cryotank and all, maybe they're wearing something stupid 'cause nobody knows how cryopreservation works and all, but when the main character strips down for her rather abrupt C-section, she's still wearing that same damn thing? How can I count the ways wrong with this? The only reason, the only only only reason you would be wearing a tit-sling without shoulder straps is because you are wearing a strapless evening dress and you don't want the bra straps to show. Every other good reason to wear a bra includes, you know, distributing the strain. Which a gauze wrap does not do.
Which leads me to the C-section, as long as I'm on minor nits. The female big wig has a fancy auto-doc in her private suite which is not programmed for girls? Really? Really? Ok, maybe it's really there for dear old dad, but c'mon, surely you could load up the girl-ware, too? Why on earth wouldn't you? And this magical auto-doc, which doesn't speak girl, is able to remove the "fetus," without making any serious mistakes, even though it's expecting a guy's innards? Really? Not to mention the girl in question then able to run around and perform any number of serious physical stunts mere moments after a C-section. It's that magical an auto-doc, but it uses fucking staples? Really? If it can knit abdominal muscles that well, then what the hell are the staples for?
Backing up a bit, if that was a scientific expedition, I'm Bridget Bardot. These people are idiots, careless, foolish, and don't _document_. They charge in, mess about, do nothing systematic at all, and get killed. I'm totally ok with the getting killed part. They totally deserve it. Really. You do not walk into the scientific site of the millennium and wander around without maps, without taking notes, pick up random bits, then run off with a head. Oh, and speaking of the head, what was that weird magic that made it come to life and then explode? And how on earth do they expect carbon dating to work on an alien planet with an alien? Say, what? And nobody thinks it a bit strange that there just happens to be a hologram of people running away which leads them to this interesting body? But, you know, why should they? It's not like the film makers thought that part through, either. Unexplained holograms, for no reason, say what? Might as well have been ghosts. Hell, maybe they were ghosts. Would have made as much sense. Maybe more.
Then there's the whole alien ship thing, which the robot finds by being able to read the weird writing. How? How is he reading that writing? I mean, there isn't even the vaguest attempt to explain that. Look, people, we can't read fucking Etruscan, and that shit is both human and only a couple of thousand years old. Hell, we even know a lot about the people who killed the Etruscans, and we can't read it. How the hell can we read alien writing? Which leads me, ever so briefly, to the robot being able to speak alien because he studied a bunch of languages and has somehow deduced the Ur language. So fucking stupid it makes my head hurt.
The aliens have human DNA. So, why do they look humanoid but not human? And how did they determine that their DNA is older than ours, but the same? The beginning sequence shows an alien basically decomposing and becoming one with the water supply which presumably is where humans come from, at least, I think that's what the deal is. Except that this makes so little sense it hurts to think about it. There's a brief acknowledgment that there's a bunch of science that supports evolution, but then moves on from there without bothering to explain why, if we've been engineered by this other species, we have so many close genetic relatives on Earth. You know, like pigs and dogs and such like. Never mind the rest of the primates, man.
There's a lot of build-up about trying to answer the questions where do we come from and why are we here. If we were made, who made us and why. The robot asks the very sensible question, "Why do you care?" Then he asks an even more sensible question, "Why did you make me?" What he gets back is a completely useful and honest answer, "Because we can." So why, why, why does anybody think that the motives of an alien race are going to be more comprehensible and useful than that? Why is this answer dismissed as inadequate? Either the aliens are sufficiently human their motives are likely to mirror ours, in which case, we have our answer, or they aren't very human, in which case our hope of understanding them is pretty slim, and certainly not going to give us a sound-bite answer.
Look, if aliens made me, I'd be deeply fascinated by it all and want to chat with them, too. I get that part. But I don't think it will suddenly answer all the Big Questions. And I would approach them both cautiously, and I would document the fuck out of my encounters. I would not go wandering around blindly, hoping for the best, believing that somehow this was all destined or something. And I certainly wouldn't assume that they could cure death. I mean, what in the world causes anyone to believe that? Where does this come from?
So, about this magic robot. How come he's still functional once his head has been ripped from his body, anyway? Oh, well, a very minor bit of stupidity, I'm sure. But ok, so the revivified alien's first action is to rip in two the one person who speaks to him. He then goes on to kill everybody else, too. So, explain to me why the main character thinks that it's a good idea to go on and try to find more of these guys to ask questions of? Seriously? If this guy is any example, they're just going to rip her and the now bisected robot to little bits as soon as they encounter them. These are not people who are particularly into talking, near as we can tell. What makes her think she'll get answers this time? I suppose the ending is supposed to a) feel hopeful and b) set up a sequel. All I can think is, what the fuck you doin'?
And something I didn't notice on my own, but which another reviewer pointed out. The beginning of the film has the main character and her boyfriend finding cave paintings and the like that show the way to this planet that they go to. I didn't follow that explanation at all, something about galactic clusters, I think, but I suspect it made no sense, anyway. Any gate, if life was seeded on Earth by this alien decomposing, how the hell did all these cave paintings and the like know to show this whatever it is that points the way to the alien planet. Or, alternatively, if the aliens came back and helped the primitive people make these pictures, why? Near as anyone can tell, the damn planet is a munitions dump. So, why are we leaving coded maps with primitive people to a munitions dump? WTF? Why, why, why?
There's also the damn cross and an bit about God that keeps on intruding, but not in any way that's useful, merely annoying. It's not clear what the scientist who wears a cross really feels, other than she "believes." What, exactly, she believes in I was not able to divine. Nor, really, did I care.
There's more dumb than this, actually. It's a world of dumb with dumb helper. But I seem to have run down.
Really, if you saw this movie, you have my sympathies. The last time I wasted this much time at a theater was _Starship Troopers_, which was even stupider, but you know, _Prometheus_ is a close second.
First of all, just setting aside all of the really dumb things in this movie, the bra technology is a fucking cotton gauze bandage wrapped around the tits and held in place with those nifty bandage hook things? Really? Really? I mean, ok, when they're just getting out of the cryotank and all, maybe they're wearing something stupid 'cause nobody knows how cryopreservation works and all, but when the main character strips down for her rather abrupt C-section, she's still wearing that same damn thing? How can I count the ways wrong with this? The only reason, the only only only reason you would be wearing a tit-sling without shoulder straps is because you are wearing a strapless evening dress and you don't want the bra straps to show. Every other good reason to wear a bra includes, you know, distributing the strain. Which a gauze wrap does not do.
Which leads me to the C-section, as long as I'm on minor nits. The female big wig has a fancy auto-doc in her private suite which is not programmed for girls? Really? Really? Ok, maybe it's really there for dear old dad, but c'mon, surely you could load up the girl-ware, too? Why on earth wouldn't you? And this magical auto-doc, which doesn't speak girl, is able to remove the "fetus," without making any serious mistakes, even though it's expecting a guy's innards? Really? Not to mention the girl in question then able to run around and perform any number of serious physical stunts mere moments after a C-section. It's that magical an auto-doc, but it uses fucking staples? Really? If it can knit abdominal muscles that well, then what the hell are the staples for?
Backing up a bit, if that was a scientific expedition, I'm Bridget Bardot. These people are idiots, careless, foolish, and don't _document_. They charge in, mess about, do nothing systematic at all, and get killed. I'm totally ok with the getting killed part. They totally deserve it. Really. You do not walk into the scientific site of the millennium and wander around without maps, without taking notes, pick up random bits, then run off with a head. Oh, and speaking of the head, what was that weird magic that made it come to life and then explode? And how on earth do they expect carbon dating to work on an alien planet with an alien? Say, what? And nobody thinks it a bit strange that there just happens to be a hologram of people running away which leads them to this interesting body? But, you know, why should they? It's not like the film makers thought that part through, either. Unexplained holograms, for no reason, say what? Might as well have been ghosts. Hell, maybe they were ghosts. Would have made as much sense. Maybe more.
Then there's the whole alien ship thing, which the robot finds by being able to read the weird writing. How? How is he reading that writing? I mean, there isn't even the vaguest attempt to explain that. Look, people, we can't read fucking Etruscan, and that shit is both human and only a couple of thousand years old. Hell, we even know a lot about the people who killed the Etruscans, and we can't read it. How the hell can we read alien writing? Which leads me, ever so briefly, to the robot being able to speak alien because he studied a bunch of languages and has somehow deduced the Ur language. So fucking stupid it makes my head hurt.
The aliens have human DNA. So, why do they look humanoid but not human? And how did they determine that their DNA is older than ours, but the same? The beginning sequence shows an alien basically decomposing and becoming one with the water supply which presumably is where humans come from, at least, I think that's what the deal is. Except that this makes so little sense it hurts to think about it. There's a brief acknowledgment that there's a bunch of science that supports evolution, but then moves on from there without bothering to explain why, if we've been engineered by this other species, we have so many close genetic relatives on Earth. You know, like pigs and dogs and such like. Never mind the rest of the primates, man.
There's a lot of build-up about trying to answer the questions where do we come from and why are we here. If we were made, who made us and why. The robot asks the very sensible question, "Why do you care?" Then he asks an even more sensible question, "Why did you make me?" What he gets back is a completely useful and honest answer, "Because we can." So why, why, why does anybody think that the motives of an alien race are going to be more comprehensible and useful than that? Why is this answer dismissed as inadequate? Either the aliens are sufficiently human their motives are likely to mirror ours, in which case, we have our answer, or they aren't very human, in which case our hope of understanding them is pretty slim, and certainly not going to give us a sound-bite answer.
Look, if aliens made me, I'd be deeply fascinated by it all and want to chat with them, too. I get that part. But I don't think it will suddenly answer all the Big Questions. And I would approach them both cautiously, and I would document the fuck out of my encounters. I would not go wandering around blindly, hoping for the best, believing that somehow this was all destined or something. And I certainly wouldn't assume that they could cure death. I mean, what in the world causes anyone to believe that? Where does this come from?
So, about this magic robot. How come he's still functional once his head has been ripped from his body, anyway? Oh, well, a very minor bit of stupidity, I'm sure. But ok, so the revivified alien's first action is to rip in two the one person who speaks to him. He then goes on to kill everybody else, too. So, explain to me why the main character thinks that it's a good idea to go on and try to find more of these guys to ask questions of? Seriously? If this guy is any example, they're just going to rip her and the now bisected robot to little bits as soon as they encounter them. These are not people who are particularly into talking, near as we can tell. What makes her think she'll get answers this time? I suppose the ending is supposed to a) feel hopeful and b) set up a sequel. All I can think is, what the fuck you doin'?
And something I didn't notice on my own, but which another reviewer pointed out. The beginning of the film has the main character and her boyfriend finding cave paintings and the like that show the way to this planet that they go to. I didn't follow that explanation at all, something about galactic clusters, I think, but I suspect it made no sense, anyway. Any gate, if life was seeded on Earth by this alien decomposing, how the hell did all these cave paintings and the like know to show this whatever it is that points the way to the alien planet. Or, alternatively, if the aliens came back and helped the primitive people make these pictures, why? Near as anyone can tell, the damn planet is a munitions dump. So, why are we leaving coded maps with primitive people to a munitions dump? WTF? Why, why, why?
There's also the damn cross and an bit about God that keeps on intruding, but not in any way that's useful, merely annoying. It's not clear what the scientist who wears a cross really feels, other than she "believes." What, exactly, she believes in I was not able to divine. Nor, really, did I care.
There's more dumb than this, actually. It's a world of dumb with dumb helper. But I seem to have run down.
Really, if you saw this movie, you have my sympathies. The last time I wasted this much time at a theater was _Starship Troopers_, which was even stupider, but you know, _Prometheus_ is a close second.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 09:44 am (UTC)Just in case you need the concise version:
Date: 2012-07-30 10:08 am (UTC)Shamelessly Stolen from Andrew Ducker
no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:09 am (UTC)Annnnnd that is the part where I would want to start stabbing things and not stop stabbing. Unless some of this other stuff happened first. Thank you for warning me. Uff da.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 04:12 pm (UTC)One bit I think I can shed some light on. The biotech that the aliens had was self-adaptive and designed to create an end result. There were two forms of this. The first was intended to recreate the alien race through the process of evolution. That is where humans came from. Why did the aliens want this? My guess is that they wanted something on which to test their second form of the technology.
The second form of the technology was to create something that was as "fit" as possible. If you have a culture based on evolutionary technology, it makes sense to explore how good you can get it. This explains why the alien in the first four films adapts to its host the way it does. It explains why the technology affects the worms as it does and how each generation is one better. (Interestingly, it also implies that the big scary alien we know is the standard "natural" state for ideal life forms in the universe... an idea which needs exploration.)
I'd love to see a Prometheus 2 that combines the Alien world with the Predator world in more of an exploratory perspective. Sorta like AVP meets the original Star Trek.
Your other quibbles are right on, and you missed:
1) Why would a team of people go into suspended animation, not know why and not know their own team until they got to the destination? That's just stupid... especially on an Earth-bound culture. (If they had already colonized and had to pick folks up from other worlds, sure... but that's not the case here.)
2) Why did the robot guy put a drop of genetic accelerant into husband guy's drink? That made no sense at all.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:32 pm (UTC)I have a theory that explains this and a few other things: the true purpose of the mission was not exploration, archaeology or anything like that. Instead, the mission was designed to be reality TV. A lot of things fit: not introducing the crew to each other until after they're already at the destination; choosing the crew for their sheer mayhem potential, rather than their competence; the 'host', David, who continually stirs the pot and introduces pointless chaos; the large array of helmet-cams that seem to go out at very opportune moments. The payoff works quite well, too: there's an "everyone has sex" episode, the list of survivors constantly dwindles, and there's even a special last-minute additional guest.
The question with this theory is, who's the audience? I think it's Weyland himself. It's no coincidence that he was born shortly after the birth of reality TV, so he's grown up with the stuff. I think his real intent with the mission wasn't prolonged life or historical knowledge or any of that; instead, he wanted to view, and star in, one last massively screwed up episode of reality TV before dying.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:47 pm (UTC)That's brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 09:01 am (UTC)Also, thanks for watching the movie so (some of) the rest of us don't have to! Signed, Still haven't seen Starship Troopers yet (and hoping to keep it that way)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 10:06 am (UTC)I certainly had a lot more fun writing my rant than watching the movie. So, silver linings and all that crap. Jiawen's theory that it was all a reality show actually makes more sense than anything else anyone has come up with. I like it a lot.