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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

PROMETHEUS

Ridley Scott’s Promethes is a movie that explores the deepest existential, theological and philosophical questions of mankind’s existence.  Ironically, the only way to really enjoy the film is if one doesn’t think about it too much.  The plot revolves around an expedition sent to find evidence of a group of aliens that came to earth and gave birth to humans.  What the expedition finds is not quite what they expected, though it has to be admitted, what they found is probably more interesting that it would have been if it did meet expectations.   Unfortunately, I have to state for the record that I never could get emotionally involved here.  The dialog and characters (screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof) were bland and dull and the plot a tad boring as well.  About halfway through I just gave up trying to figure out the back story as to what happened to the aliens and what it meant for mankind.    There’s a ton of talent in the cast, many recognizable faces and award winners.  Charlize Theron basically plays the same character she does in Snow White and the Huntsman, the woman who does the man’s job and therefore has to be a bitch (poor Charlize, her second movie of the year where the audience is going to leave basically humming the tech design).  Noomi Rapace, without the dragon tattoo, plays the nurturing mother role (she has a scene where she has a C-section that I guess was supposed to be gut wrenching—pun intended—but I thought was a hoot and a half—not the reaction Scott was going for, I suspect).  She has a strange accent, mainly in that it seems to have little connection to her father’s, played by Patrick Wilson.   Guy Pierce, that popular Australian star of such films as Memento and L.A. Law, was given the plum role of playing Mr. Burns.  But when all is said and done cast wise, all I could think of is the remarkable line up in the movies Alien and Aliens, two films where, for all their adrenaline soaked plot lines, one comes away remembering the actors just as much or more than the special affects; it’s unlikely that will happen here.  It ends with what seems to me to be a ridiculous and even immoral choice on the part of Rapace; at the same time, it does set up a question as well as a sequel that does kind of intrigue me.   In the end, Prometheus is a CGIer’s wet dream.  But it did very little for me.

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