Cinema review: Prometheus

The Alien prequel.

I had expectation for this one, high expectation. I always try to not bet sucked in the hype surrounding something but every now and then it’s inevitable.

Many have talked extensively about the plot. In a few words, it doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe the original idea that Ridley Scot had was working but what we got on the screen was a muddied mess. The most griping aspect of it is how the characters behave. We can survive an over complicated mythology, even accept monsters pointlessly complicated and behaving in an incomprehensible fashion, but the main characters, the humans, we should be able to understand them.

Their whole behavior is more than puzzling, is stupid to the point of self harming. It’s so bad that the salient points did become internet memes. It’s so bad that you want to throw sharp objects on the screen. It’s that kind of bad.

Then you look at the screenwriter and you realize that it was inevitable. Damon Lindelof, also known as the man who ruined Lost completely, wrote it. The continuing career of Lindelof is a mystery to me. He writes so badly, his mythologies are just messes created by randomly adding “cool” stuff, his characters inane and absurd.

But not everything is terrible in Prometheus.

Scott craft spectacular vistas, haunting sceneries and gorgeous places. After all these years we all somehow forgot how good Scott is when he is playing this game. The whole alien setting is perfectly realized and perfect in its “alieness”.

All the actors do a very good job with the terrible lines that they’ve been served. Noomi Rapace in particular got the short sticks with what are clearly the worst lines but somehow she manages to sell them.

Charlize Theron brings tons of attitude with another excellent interpretation while Michael Fassbender is the best android in ages, a shame that these wonderful characters had to do such an amount of stupid things.

Conclusion: The ticket is worth it just for the amazing visuals but the story is really stupid.