Movie Moan - Just For The Taste Of It
Tue, June 19, 2012 It's time for our belated in-depth review of 'Prometheus' and, as usual, Jamie and Phil can't agree on anything. So join the wannabe Siskel & Ebert (with Queen Kristina in tow) as they spend a good 40 minutes on the finer points of the film, its pros and cons and where it definitively stands in quality compared to the rest of the 'Alien' series.
Our good friend Mr Shawn Robbins of BoxOffice.com also joins us but, honestly, found the film so forgettable that he struggles to come to Phil's aid in trashing it.
4 mins - Phil shares his epic battle from last week to get 'The Dark Knight Rises' tickets for opening weekend at the London IMAX. Plus, the 60's show is finally coming to DVD.
11:05 mins - The spoiler filled dissection of 'Prometheus' (with the wise words of Isaac Asimov to back up Phil's argument.
48:30 mins - Shawn and Jamie review 'Rock Of Ages' and Kristina ponders the alternate ending we never got.
53:40 mins - A loving and lengthy look at Kristina's choice of ye olde summer blockbuster - 'Batman Returns' (1992), including its rarely seen Diet Coke commercial.
Download the audio only version here:
Reader Comments (6)
Long time listener and fan. This is one of your best shows, just because of the (semi)civilized and thoughtful debate about "Prometheus." Three thoughts I want to throw in for you:
1. I think I can explain why David infected the Holloway character. It's clearly implied that David is taking orders that supercede Vickers's commands from Weyland (hence her being a "See U Next Tuesday"). When she demands to know what Weyland told David, he cryptically responds, "Try harder." I took away from that that he told Weyland about finding only dead engineers (part of the try harder) and a mysterious bio substance. At Weyland's command, he is supposed to experiment with it and see if it can create--or prolong--life. It's unclear whether he chose Holloway as his guinea pig or if Weyland ordered him too, but that is left up for the audience. Given he seems to have a robot-crush on Shaw, I'm guessing he chose to HAL Charlie.
2. I have to agree with Jamie on I can't imagine how someone who likes "Alien 3" is condemning the loose characterization of "Prometheus." While the Scott film had far too many "meat" characters waiting to go like it's a Jurassic Park movie, there were a group of central characters who were at least somewhat interesting, such as Vickers and her strained relationship with her dying father, Janek as the cynical blue collar captain who feels like he's from the first "Alien" movie, and Holloway. I also think David, a Peter O'Toole-quoting cyborg with a partial Oedipus complex and Elizabeth Shaw, a Christian scientist at odds with herself were very strong characters. In "Alien 3" all the characters not named Ripley are ENTIRELY interchangeable. Fincher did this on purpose by having them all look the same with shaved heads. Other than Charles Dance being Charles Dance (and Peter Postlewaite in the background), I couldn't tell any of them apart or understand who lived and who died. I didn't even realize the one who survived had a name until Phil told us!
3. "Prometheus" is on track to make over $300 million WW. That's damn impressive for an R-rated sci-fi horror/philosophy movie. There is going to be a sequel. Fox is making a sequel to XFC and Universal is making a sequel to "Snow White" which had as big a drop as "Prometheus" and cost $45 million more before counting pricier marketing. Sorry guys, you'll be reviewing "Prometheus 2" (or supposedly "Paradise") in three years.
Thanks for taking the time with such a detailed response Raine.
1. That may very well be the case and it does prove that, despite what I said, there are people interested enough in the story to not mind these things being left unexplained. They'll debate the answers for themselves.
2. To be clear, my 'Alien 3' argument only refers to those two characters played by Charles Dance and Charles S. Dutton. But you also have actors like Ralph Brown and Brian Glover who make for broad but really watchable characters because of what they bring to it. I just felt that 'Alien 3' took the time to slow down and let those actors own a certain percentage of screen time and make an impression on the audience. 'Prometheus' moves so damn fast from one half baked scene to the next that those actors, talented as they may be, get no such chance. These rich characters you and Jamie referred to were just not visible to me.
3. Stranger things have happened but the point is that I firmly believe there is no audience desire to see another one. This is not the birth or rebirth of a franchise here. A sequel would open much softer than the first film and unless they're willing to bring the budget right down, that will be a problem.
I agree with Phil that I liked the final set-up and tie-in to Alien in the last scene. If Prometheus didn't have that connective tissue to Alien 1, there would still be an unexplained gap there in continuity between the films that would have left people unfulfilled. At least as it stands now, you understand how this film leads into the next one. But, my biggest problems with the movie were that it seemed to exist to explain the origin of the space jockey (which falls flat for me, because I personally didn't ever wonder about its significance in Alien 1; instead, I took it at face value for just being something unexplained because I was so caught up in the tension and later horror elements to begin with). But that leads into my second point and problem with the film, which ties in nicely with Phil's comment about some ambiguities will work in one film but won't necessarily work in another. I think that's because Alien 1, for example, had a definite spine to it -- a story structure that everyone can identify. It was a horror movie where the bad guy (i.e. the Alien) picks off the good guys one by one ala the classic tale of the Ten Little Indians or Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" -- it's a classic campfire story structure. Alien 1 had that spine which the audience could sink their teeth into, so any ambiguities laid on top of that solid spine (such as the space jockey) didn't detract from the movie. Thus, to that point, my second and biggest problem with Prometheus is that I don't really know what it is at its core; it has no spine for the audience to sink its teeth into. It's not a "bad guy picks off the good guys one by one" film like Alien 1 or a war movie like Aliens. Instead, it's more esoteric. Even Alien 3 had a firm grasp of its own intentions, imo. I personally don't think Prometheus is though-provoking enough to get away with not having a solid spine, a solid self-contained understanding of what it's trying to accomplish. As a result, small details that would have worked in Alien 1 just don't work in Prometheus. It's too esoteric for it's own good, because it's not even all that intelligent, imo, scientifically or philosophically.
Excellent analysis of Prometheus gang! Nicley done.
I agree with you Phil that the inevitable director's cut will make a difference with this movie. As it stands the theatrical version of Prometheus feels like a 3.5 hour movie cut down to 2.
Also agree with you that some will happily fill in the gaps but we should not have to. This movie falls apart because the actions of the characters... Make.... No.... Sense.
And that is because none of the character motivations are laid out for us to understand and more importantly, empathize with.
Fully expect much of the material cut has to do with character moments. Jamie will ding me for fanboying again but compare the motivations of the characters from the Avengers with this. Even taking into account the less loftier goals of the Avengers, did we ever have trouble understanding why the characters behaved the way they did in that movie?
Did we ever understand on any consistent basis what was driving the characters in Prometheus? Take the actions of the Captain and the remaining crew at the end. Those scenes carried no emotional weight at all. Instead of piloting the ship to their deaths it felt like they were heading to the nearest carwash.
David is a prime example. Given the history of the Alien franchise and the pivotal role the androids have played in the other films, establishing David's motivations should not be optional but mandatory. Contrast that with how Bishop was handled in Aliens. In a SF movie, and especially in an Alien universe movie, the parameters under which any AI is operating have to be established. Are they restricted by Asimov's 3 Rules of Robotics? Or not? If not, where are their motivations or programming derived from? In Aliens, Bishop's operating parameters were established clearly and economically.
With David we never know. It is one thing to be coy. It is another to generate confusion when one should be striving for clarity.
Visually the movie looks pretty spectacular. But Prometheus is an indicator that Ridley Scott is on a continuing downward slide. He no longer has the werewithwal to go to the wall for his films. Here it is obvious he let the story suffer so he could play with the tech. Mayhap the director's cut will alleviate many of the faults of theatrical release but Scott should never have let this version of the film be released in this condition.
Like Jamie, I found the movie went one scene too long. Up until then, Prometheus could have existed as a parallel story or extension of the Alien universe. Showing the birth of the Alien has collapsed this franchise upon itself in the artificial, limiting way that Star Wars did when we were shown that Vader built C3PO.
Even worse, the Aliens are now a combination of Space Jockey and Human DNA. YUCK!
Can't wait for your Spidey3 review! Early word is promising and I am really looking forward to this iteration of the franchise.
As always, enjoy listening to the Movie Moan podcasts.
See you in the balcony!
Spidey 3? We saw that a few years ago Lou. It sucked :)
To tease you though, the Spidey show is going to be big. We're going to have our own Sinister Six of guests for that one to take on the web slinger.
And Lou and Zodfather nailed it better than I could on the show. If there isn't a single character whose motivation we can understand, the audience isn't going with you. The film doesn't work because of that simple truth.
Thanks for the detailed comments guys. The effort always blows my mind.
Bazinga! You got me Phil! Meant the new Spidey.
Cheers!