It’s been long enough, I think I’m safe to talk about this now – but just in case – WARNING Prometheus spoilers ahead!
I really wanted to like Prometheus. When I heard Ridley Scott was at it again I couldn’t wait. The movie looked like it was going to bring edge-of-the-seat suspense and tastybrain food. Sadly, I got neither. What I got was a story about the worst scientists ever making one of the biggest scientific discoveries ever.
Seriously, what scientist would be disappointed to find a moon with structures, clearly built buy intelligent beings, all thanks to some old maps they found in a cave back on Earth? But noooo, just because those intelligent beings weren’t there to roll out the red carpet for the humans when they arrived, the scientists get all sad.
And then they decide to just walk right into the mysterious structures without sending in a rover or a robot first to make sure it’s safe. I mean they do have robots after-all, one is a main character! The icing on the cake? When they discover that there’s enough oxygen in the air to breath they just take off their helmets like they never even heard of bacteria. Have they not seen or read War of the Worlds? Even the shitty Spielberg version?
Even at the end of the movie, when everything’s gone to hell, the remaining characters further prove (as Penny Arcade points out) that they cant even outsmart a giant wheel.
Now the idea behind Prometheus I like. I have no issue with the religious themes in this. I especially like the cues taken from Greek Mythology. One blog I read about the movie suggested that the “engineers” had discovered the “spark of life” and shared it with other worlds, just like the Greek Prometheus shared fire with man. The punishment for messing with the spark of life in the movie is the creation of the Xenomorphs. I really like that idea, it’s such a shame the movie surrounding it sucked.
I could have maybe lived with the characters being so stupid if Mr Scott had at-least made it scary. While the film was fun, and the special effects were beautiful, there was no fright to be had. Just a bunch of gore -
-and a squid thingy.
