Return with a Review!

So, now it's time for the triumphant return of Up The Arts, and I've decided to do it with a movie review.

The movie in question is Prometheus...IN 3D!

Of course, it won't be a professional review; I'm a political science major, not a homosexual (If you get the reference, pat yourself on the back. If you don't, have a whank). I'll just pick a few categories and slag off/praise the movie accordingly.

Let's get this show on the road, then! Oh, and by the way, of course there will be spoilers, so if you haven't seen the damn thing, don't come whining to me if I ruin it for you.  

The 3D: This was actually my very first time going to see a 3D movie at the cinema. No, it had nothing to do with me thinking that it's a stupid bullshit gimmick that studios use as another excuse for replacing good storytelling with fancy graphics. My motivation was much more noble; I'm sure as hell not going to pay an extra three or four pounds worth just to get a couple of silly glasses to go with the popcorn.

And FYI, the popcorn weren't even THAT good.

But anyway, back to the 3D!

It actually really impressed me. Unfortunately I'd heard previously that the 3D at that particular cinema is rather sub-par, and I have nothing to compare it to, but it impressed me anyway.

Of course, the pre-movie trailer-athon was just trying to squeeze a bunch of paper cutouts of the main character into every shot, and that looked like shit, but in the movie itself the 3D effect did a lot for the immersion by vastly improving the depth of vision.

Of course again, I wasn't given the impression that things were actually flying at me rather than just being on the screen, which would, on reflection, have been fucking annoying in the long run, but the effect made many scenes look more vivid and realistic, and it allowed the movie to drag me in properly. The movie also gave me the impression that they weren't actually trying their hardest to sell the 3D gimmick as the only reason to watch the movie, and they were not really just making a bunch of shots to showcase it all the time in what can only be described as graphical masturbation.

All in all, the 3D thingamafuck was very good, and contributed something tangible to the cinema experience.  

The graphics:

Graphically, the movie was, in a word, modern. It had a lot of fancy special effects and naturally had to somehow shoehorn in a dust cloud like every movie and their dog's aunt's kitchen sink.

However, unlike shitty movies like Star Wars Episode III, it wasn't drenched in CGI up the bum, which was gratifying. It had a lot of elaborate and fancy sets, and I feel the aesthetics of the movie set the tone fairly well. And by that I mean that Noomi Rapace was smoking hot.

Therefore I have to say that the graphical side of the movie was very good as well. It used the latest in graphical engineering, but it was a means to an end, not an end of its own.  

The characters:

This is the first point where the movie really suffers. Normally, any high profile release such as this will have two main elements that dominate the acting; well known actors or unknown good actors. Those two elements are then mixed to varying degrees. This mix wasn't very good. Most actors were complete and utter unknowns. Now, this needn't be a bad thing, but in this movie it's coupled with the fact that their characters are usually entirely uninteresting or entirely unlikeable.

What we got stuck with was about three high profile actors and as many characters we could connect with. In a cast of 17, those aren't good statistics, especially since Charlize Theron doesn't land in either category.

Most characters are either bland and lacking any personality, or are morons who you don't really mind dying. Heck, even the big heroic sacrifice at the end loses its sting when you realize that you don't give a flying shit about either of the three people dying.  

The story:

Okay, this is where the movie really lands in the shit. Let's get the most obvious point over with; yes, it's a fucking prequel-ish to Alien. The "-ish" comes from the fact that the makers of the movie supposedly wanted to make a movie that comes before Alien in the same universe, but wanted it to stand on its own. So why the flying fuck is the megacorporation called "Wayland", why is there a dead alien in the storage room of the engineer ship, and why on earth does an alien pop out of the engineer in the last scene, why does the movie have a fucking android with a hidden agenda? Did the makers just run out of ideas around the 29th gin and tonic of the evening?

Come on, you can't have it both ways. If you want this movie to stand on its own, drop the fucking Alien imagery, alright? Yes, we get it, this is where aliens come from. We figured that out around the time the name Ridley Scott flashed on the screen in the fucking pre-intro credits! Having a few indications that it might be the same universe would be cool, but this movie constantly screams "HEY, THIS THING HAPPENED IN ALIEN TOO, REMEMBER? SEE THIS THING, IT'S LIKE ONE OF THE FACEHUGGERS FROM ALIEN! AND THIS CHICK GETS IMPREGNATED BY A WEIRD LIFEFORM, KINDA LIKE FUCKING ALIEN! DID WE MENTION THIS MOVIE IS CONNECTED TO THAT ONE? YOU KNOW, ALIEN!

Aside from that, what the hell happens in this movie? Yes, I know what happens, but what the hell happens? The movie is all over the place. The movie is constantly conjuring up more and more contrived reasons for people to go back and forth between the ship and the cave, and things happen without any sort of consistency or logic behind them whatsoever. Here's the thing people need to learn about movies before they make one: they need to make sense internally. If a sticky black goo has one effect on someone at one time, it should have the same fucking effect on someone another time, but in this movie the goo just seems to be liquid Plotconvenientum, used as nothing more than a vehicle to drive the plot forward.

And how about the movie actually answering a single one of the questions that pop up, huh? Why the hell did the aliens create humans? Why the hell did they decide to wipe us out? Why the hell did the aliens decide to give humans directions to a supposedly secret bioweapon laboratory? What was really the instructions given to the android by Mr Wayland? Why the buggery biggles did he look less like a very old man and more like a 25 year old who'd spent a few too many nights in the bathtub? Why did the resident corporate hottie shag the captain?

You know what, the story made the movie a disappointment all by itself. It fucked everything up. The action scenes were pretty good, the main character was believable, the setting was intriguing, but they just fucked it up with an stupid and incomprehensible plot.

Of course, we all know why that happened; because they wanted to set up a solid, in the same way that a hard shit is solid, sequel hook so they'd be paid for another movie after this one. They couldn't answer any questions, because they knew that if they did then someone might realize for a split second that a sequel would be absolutely pointless, which it still is.

This movie wasn't terrible, on account of the good things in it, but it's not particularly good because it's dragged down by the shitty plot. Don't expect too much if you decide to watch it.