The whole Prometheus experience review!

[size=200][u]The whole Prometheus experience review:[/u][b][/b][/size] [img]http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/media/prometheus_unused_poster_11.jpg[/img] I never did do a review of Prometheus even though I had been around this forum even before the film was out (as a different user). So now that the dust has settled and all the truth (ehem) and all bits to the film have been released I felt I needed to finally do one so here it is :P (and remember this is just my opinion but it is based on allot of research and experience in the film industry as well) : [b]**WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD**[/b] I thought I had better say what I like first to balance it up a little: Engineers: Awesome, amazing design, feel, everything was very amazing with them – loved the final demise of the main engineer via giant face hugger (and that prosthetic head on the table was unbelievable!). The over all idea: I was waiting for a film like this for ages after many tv series touching on the subjects...black goo religious overtones mixed in with some of the ultimate questions - were do we come from and what’s the meaning of life etc. etc. ...the basic main over all idea is superb!! David: The only character I loved – Shaw was OK but was no Ripley :( the rest of the characters could of left the film completely and it would have been for the best :P. The audio was pretty good. And there was amazing artistry involved with the making of the film... And a few other bit n pieces... [b]So what did actually happen?[/b] Well unfortunately allot of what I guessed would happen did! I say unfortunately as I am not a lover of this film – not to say I am a hater either. In fact its one of the strangest films ever in terms of love hate. I really did want this film to be a mind blower but as I said now that the dust has settled and we can see the full picture it clearly is not a game changer nor a mind blower for most people - of course one thing that it has taught me is that no matter how bad a part or whole film is someone out there will always love it! And I am guessing most of those people are the ones left over in this forum :S . So I am not expecting a pat on the back for everything I will say here :D ! So lets look at what went wrong...this of course is a hard one as we can never fully know everything that happened. But my best guess after watching the film in 3D, 2D, directors comments ,writers comments, interviews, full Blu-ray bonuses, viral campaign, forum, comments ,articles, news, etc. etc.. is this : [b]Viral campaign:[/b] This was visually amazing! And especially the happy birthday David video did really excite me as it just looked stunning – everything about it just oozed sophistication / intelligence and just left me wondering if this is the viral what’s the films going to be like / if its like this then its going to be awesome. I even wondered if this was the exact styling for the film / was how it would feel. But as we all saw it was not like this viral and that was a disappointment for me but not the end of the world. As the viral campaign unfolded I felt something was happening – this was a brilliant move and the campaign was going to reveal things that maybe the film did not - information. But alas no it was all hollow and as empty as most of the final film and started to fall apart at the seems ending up as a group of well made videos with virtually no meaning to them other than promotion and organized by some idiot possibly at fox that proceeded to mess it all up! The early website stuff seemed to be giving us clues and pointers and all seemed to be leading somewhere and felt great but ended up being 99 percent bits and bobs thrown in for the hell of it and had many pointless areas. What is 10 11 12 turned out to be the wrong date for the Blu-ray launch – DOH! Sparking everybody to think something good was going to happen like a mini short film or TV series or well just plain anything new! But like I said it was the wrong date and the what is 10 11 12 site disappeared revealing an advert for the Blu-ray on a new date in the form of a flash site that had broken links the wrong videos – quiet shockingly awful. So what was a brilliant viral campaign idea overall and in the beginning and visually expertly made in parts just got destroyed by no depth and almost no information adding to the film and awful mistakes. A huge opportunity squandered. [b]Blu-ray:[/b] This was probably one of the best parts to the whole thing – very well made with lovely interface and nice info on the film (very important in this case :D ) and actually tried to do some new stuff with a seconds screen app and other things. But again the idea was great but the execution just didn’t work – possibly the app was better on iphones but I was using an android galaxy s3. I used the second screen app in conjunction with the fox digital app for the downloaded film. It was nice when it worked but frequent crashes and bugs unfortunately made it almost not worth using :(. If this had worked perfectly it would have been awesome! The Blu-ray really helped in working out what happened to this film and ill come back to this later... [b]Film:[/b] Ooooh were do I start...eeek! Too much to say but I guess the first and biggest mess up was: Characters: My god Holloway was quiet probably the most annoying character ever written! A guy that according to Ridley is one of the cutting edge scientists decides to take his helmet off despite many many numbers of stupid reasons to take it off including: infection from viral / bacterial /nano / something alien we never seen before, sudden atmosphere changes, acid, traps around the corner etc. etc. etc. !! And if you think I am blowing this up lets listen to Spaihts from the Blu-ray commentary he did: “actors and directors wants helmets off....tug of war logic demands leave them on” so that’s Spaihts the original script writer of this film saying 'logic' demands leave them on and it was the director and actors wanting them off. And this is a key point that this was supposed to be a realistic film and therefore you would think logical as opposed to theatrical maybe no :O !? But I believe it was things like being theatrical not logical that helped bring down the film. Yes I know every film has some theatrical element to it but when is by the bucket load and over obviously going against logic it destroys instead of enhancing! I got the impression Spaihts was not happy with allot of stuff like this but tried to smile all the way through all the same. Holloway then later on proceeds to give up completely after checking only part of one of the many structures they saw as they landed :O and got drunk (made no sense)! The only good part he had was asking to be burnt alive :P . The other characters were all very easily forgettable and boring or just plain had no emotional attachment from me enough for me to care if they were dead or not. Except that is David – now he was a great character – thank god he was in it! Shaw was OK as well but was no Ripley for me – thank god these were the only two left as they were the only ones worth saving! The Guy Pearce part again – whhhy – OK so they were going to shoot the scene when he was young and they had already maybe paid him and had him in the red talk but even his amazing acting skills did not help how strange he looked in the film as the old man – it would have been better to just re-shoot it with an actual old man! Also Pearce / Weyland looks at Shaw and Holloway with no explanation to how he could know were they are going to be? If it was a way of hinting he was alive and close by that was awful too – so clumsy! A genius that accidentally looks at people giving a secrete away – dumb! Or its a slightly automated hologram that directs his face and eyes – again not explained at all! Anyway this as many things were was left open and so was not clear. He says he's recording the hologram years before – hmmmm. I could go on about how the sacrifice of the crew to stop the juggernaut was so badly made it made me laugh not cry or many other parts but you get the idea – the characters were mostly crap stupid and almost all acted completely out of character! I mean just look how good and convincing the crew of alien were! Even films like sunshine just had a much better more realistic feel and atmosphere to them! [b]Logic vs theatrics:[/b] Like I said before this film was far too 'theatrical' for a 'realistic' / 'logical' film pandering to the actors and director and possibly Lindelof. For instance the helmets : almost everyone I spoke to outside of the lovers zone in the forums said – why the f**k did they take there helmets off?! Holloway I understand was supposed to be a chance taker and general extreme sports type personality. But his job is an archaeologist (cutting edge apparently Ridley saying in commentaries :P) so even he would be able to grasp how monumental this find was and any contamination 'from' yes I say 'from' them could be catastrophic not to mention 'to' them. Then there’s the fact that the others did it too :O (so they all were supposed to be cutting edge scientist idiots?! Because last time I checked cutting edge scientists had some pretty amazing logic in their brains :S) Yes you can say they were scanning and knew what was in the air. Yet they had no idea this black goo was just around the corner that can turn them into monsters, or green goo on the control panels down the tunnel, none of which they had any idea what it all was, my god this was dumb! And like I say this does not stop them contaminating the place anyway! And what was that god awful part were Shaw and Vickers suddenly loose all basic intelligence and run in the exact direction of the rolling round shaped juggernaut :O (this one was Ridleys idea :( ). Again you get the idea – over dramatics messing up the story to a point it just does not feel remotely believable. [b]Ridley Scott:[/b] I am sorry to say that even with Ridley being probably my single most favourite director he was basically in the centre of the problems for this film. One way to help guess this is to look not only at his films recently other than Prometheus but all directors that are ageing! Ridley is 74 now I wont go into details but if you look at ageing directors and there films its safe to say there best films are all at earlier ages. What happens to them? Hard to say maybe they get too big headed – an island as such or they loose there sharpness as well all do with age – possibly. But it remains that pretty much in every area of expertise this happens (sport being an extreme one). But I am not saying he’s crap just that he’s fallen from the god like abilities he seemed to exhibit earlier in life (I think matchstick men was his last truly great film for me). [b]Lindelof:[/b] Yes the baddie script writer he did have allot to do with the problems but after checking all I can I actually think he's not as much to blame as I first thought. Some of the things I noticed to support this idea were: Lindelof said before the film came out in an interview that Ridley basically fed him all the ideas and he wrote them down now this was either Lindelof being polite but still distancing himself from the credit for the film or he really did just write down what Ridley said which points to Ridley doing most of the story telling. One such scene that was definitely Ridley was the rolling juggernaut – which was awful for me – sorry! And obviously many other bits that are not in the script were Ridleys too – not all bad but many cringe-worthy parts. [b]Spaihts:[/b] Now interestingly his script actually made sense felt more realistic and logical and was more interesting! People kept helmets on unless they were knocked off or similar. Vickers had stronger reasons for being so bitchy. In fact all the characters felt just more like characters instead of cardboard cut outs or acting out of character! Milburn and Fifield had reasons for doing such dumb things – map lost and supposedly bullet proof suits! It would have been a better film I am sure of this. But was not a master piece and I can see why they wanted to take it further unfortunately this ended up with a lesser film – it was very strange how this all transpired. [b]Other problems:[/b] Budget : Well $130 million dollars sounds like allot but in the top rated movie world it is fairly small and I did hear that it was cut from $200 million so I really think this hurt the film. If you read all the really cool extra CGI scenes such as David seeing all the Engineer technology read outs / fields etc. and other parts in Spaihts's script I reckon it would have been awesome to see them – they didn’t need to be massive – just a couple of shots here and there but there we go. Modern film making: A strange one but it seems the Hollywood film industry has been bought by pleasing kids and teens – its a simple fact of making money and unfortunately kids n teens rule this world – they are where most of the money is at – dragging there parents along to watch :P . Although Ridley did cut the film to make it a lower rating I must admit it was gory enough for me it was other things I didn’t like. And it wasn’t like it was a U anyway but it is obvious that they are writing these films to suit as many people as possible and so allot of them seem to become watered down and no were near as focused or brave as say alien was with its 18 rating and most likely less interference from executives who have no creativity at all :D . Build up and preparation and timing: If we compare alien to Prometheus. Alien just has much more preparation and build up – it feels like a solid universe were as Prometheus feels plasticky shallow and rushed even muddled as many people remarked on in reviews. Even the makers had different ideas about the universe of this film in the Blu-ray commentary : Lindelof saying basically the saucer and the juggernaut were part of the same time period just different craft for different uses were as Ridley says “there’s 10 million years in-between them...technology has changed” just one example. Ridley also comments on how “he better start thinking about what to do for the next one” :O ! This shocked me – my idea that he had been thinking about this film/s since alien 30 odd years before flew out the window. And there were many more hints that Ridley had in fact just begun with Prometheus at the start of the production, virtually no fore thought and it was made fairly quickly in film terms :O ! And its showed :( . Of course comparing it to alien is maybe a bit unfair as the timing was perfect – the combination of a prime Ridley with Geiger and O'bannon and a few others was a fairy tail moment almost as amazing as Star Wars. One more thing: I almost forgot as well – this does tie into the 'having a solid universe' idea as well : I think Ridley is way off here (unless he adds some ideas in the next few films to explain this) with all the timings of the things that happen in the Prometheus universe he mentions they are like 500 million years ahead of us technologically and there’s 10 million years between the saucer and the juggernaut?! And its obvious if they have been seeding life on planets and possibly made life on our planet that they really are extremely old. Now Ridley tries to show change with the naked engineer and the bio suited dark one later in the film (all of which I know is not fully explained – could be a different faction). But it seems that its Ridleys idea that after 100's of millions of years maybe even billions that these engineers have hardly changed there shape or maybe even technology. Which I don’t know about you kind of scares me because if I look at what we know about evolution this just does not add up. For instance say we take our own history and go back say 100 million years then look at how much humans have changed since then – and we are changing very slowly because there is supposedly no guidance / intervention. Also if you look at how fast our technology changes and its speeding up year on year! Then add on top the fact that engineers can play with life like its a toy – change there bodies in seconds with this black liquid and probably almost unlimited power to alter there own DNA! Then it leaves me thinking they could change dramatically in appearance and technology in say only even 3 years let alone a billion :O ! They could evolve into a god like ball of light in that amount of time and travel to any part of the universe work almost anything out and have no threat from a silly little bit of black goo or xenomorph :P ! I really hope they resolve this somehow. And that’s basically most of the main problems I feel – I have gone on a bit too long I know even thought there is so much more to say - so I will cut this short now and rate it: Sooo Overall score for 'The whole Prometheus experience' : [b][size=200]overall: 58/100(not an average)[/size][/b] [b]Film: 58/100[/b] [b]Viral: 45/100[/b] [b]Blu-ray: 75/100[/b] [b]APPs: 50/100[/b] [b]Spaights's script: 73/100[/b] [b]Lindelof's script: 60/100[/b] Just so you can compare I give Alien : 96/100 How could it have been better? It need more depth and detail – yes it is not deep! Leaving things out for the imagination is not 'being deep' in this case it is avoiding making any brave decisions which is basically a cop out. I view Prometheus like a piece of modern art – maybe with a bit of detail here and there – you know the type of paintings that have almost the entire canvas painted red or another primary colour. With people walking round it saying its so deep blah blah...Its a god damn red wall of paint for god sake :) . They need to really go for it in the next one – be braver (I know this is a word the Hollywood execs. Fear)! We need facts and details to draw us into this world. I expected Ridley Scott to have been planning this for ages (maybe even since alien). It should have been all layed out roughly in an idea for all 3 films if that is what the plan was for. And there should have been things layed down in the first film that maybe only get answered in the third. He should have had a stronger idea of the engineers were they come from how long they have been around doing what all the finer details of life like society civilisation purpose time frames etc. etc. . Yes they did this lightly but it was no were near solid / thorough enough and most of which was done on the fly as they were making it and it showed. We needed far better characters like in alien. We needed a few more CGI parts – yes what was done was amazing but if you read Spaights's script some of the structures were a hundred time bigger and more awe inspiring CGI could of sorted this out or even paintings with a few effects on top like in starwars and other parts like Davids vision of the Engineer control panels etc. . This film was half baked muddled and even with an amazing original idea it just did not get executed properly in fact it took steps backwards at points. Lindelof was probably a bad idea too it just took the wrong direction with him though how much was him and how much was Ridley and even pressure from actors etc. we will never fully know. It needed a re-write from Spaights's version but staying realistic / logical and not moving too far into the theatrical as Prometheus did (alien was far more realistic and not so 'theatrical'). Ridley always tries to do something new – this does not always work out. He could of stuck to a few old ways more I felt. Stick to realism - throw in more geeky facts almost like a wildlife documentary and throw in some cool shit, doesn’t need much just a bit more of the engineer vs giant hugger type coolness and maybe some more build up and awe – after all these are god like beings! Maybe even someone like Nigel Kneale to inject that amazing sci-fi mojo if only he was still alive. And space facts – the awe that I get from some of the stuff I find out about the universe blows my mind – why not integrate some of this in to the film in some way? Like facts like the observable universe would take 93 billion years to travel across at 186,282 miles per second and by the time you got to the other side at that speed it would already be another 50 billion light years wider or more and we now think that what we can see is less than 1 percent of this universe or it in fact may even be infinite :O. And what we can actually see (physically – planets stars clouds etc.) is less than 5% of the mass of the universe, there is something out there making up the other 95% which we call dark matter/energy of which we know almost nothing! Or say the fact that we have estimated there is a super massive black hole which is over 20 billion times the mass of our sun :O and our sun is about 330,000 times the mass of earth :O . Or little details such as the belief that there could be life forms made of elements that would make them burn or melt on our planet. Or that there is a 4000km diamond floating in space only 50 light years from us :O etc. etc. - if you know what I mean. To be honest just more of anything big or small would have been better! Something which Spaight's script had some of. I do still hold hope and am looking forward to the second one with talk of elders and a god like being above them I do believe Ridley can still do better films he just needs to listen more and not think of himself as a film god (well all the time at least)...and maybe leave the script writing up to someone else...my hopes are low now...maybe that’s a good thing...I hope Prometheus has basically opened the door now we can get down to buisiness! There is another side to things and that is perception and society but this area is so complex I think I would have to write another 20 pages on it so I will skip this for now :S! Wow that was a bit longer than I expected – not even sure anyone will read all this but I had a few hours spare and I did want to put this out there. I suppose I am extra harsh on old Ridley but this is only because I feel he has fallen from his god like mantle (as he is probably my favourite all time director) it was just such a shame it wasn’t close to the level of his other films such as gladiator, alien, blade runner and so forth :( . And as I said before I am not trying to poo poo various aspects that was amazing about the film its just so strange how such brilliance sat next to such awfulness in one film. A turd with gold nuggets in it :D .