Why do people hate it so much?
Curious about why?
sharei wrote the following back at the time it was released, and it's kinda funny to see how worked up i got about a silly film. that said, i think i stand by most of it, though i probably would try to write in a less snotty, condescending way now.
I made the mistake of going to see Prometheus instead of Moonrise Kingdom this week. I felt a little obligated to go because seeing Alien when I was 11 or so was one of my formative movie experiences. I walked out of Prometheus disappointed and a little irritated, and the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve come to hate it.
I had my biases coming into the film. I knew I hated the premise of ancient astronauts as creators of mankind. I don’t think that’s hard science fiction. I think that’s an infantile fantasy. Wouldn’t it have been so much more interesting to visit a world where Xenomorphs evolved and find out how they exist in their natural habitat, and what kind of ecosystem could co-exist with such a life-form? Personally I think there’s far more interesting a story in aliens as an evolved species than the presentation of the aliens as an unintended (or intended? Do they explain that?) consequence of biological weapon production. But that’s the movie Ridley Scott wanted to make, and I could have put my own preferences aside if the movie was a little compelling. Prometheus is all cookie-cutter plot points and some of the most wooden expository dialogue I’ve heard in a movie.
And I realize science is going to be presented softly in most movies, but why present the scientists as such clichéd characters who display no rational precision or apparent interest in being on an alien planet with actual alien life forms on it, acting without protocol or any kind of informed intelligence? Why finance a trillion dollar mission and staff it with a biologist and geologist who, when presented with an alien world and alien corpses, decide they want to run away like frightened little girls? Why would the lead scientist, upon finding out that he’s apparently infected with an alien organism, be too afraid to tell anyone, in particular the co-lead scientist he apparently loves and may have just infected? And, if the engineers planted the seed of life on Earth (when? 4 billion years ago? 500 million years ago? Who can tell?), why is their DNA apparently identical to ours? They used their DNA to plant their seed on an apparently lifeless world, yet we’ve evolved to be identical to them? No recombination, no genetic drift, no mutation and millions of years of natural selection?
In conclusion: screw you, Prometheus, you stupid, grey, dreary, elephant’s left testicle of a movie. 1/5 for the nice visuals and Michael Fassbender.
yeah, so that's what the 2012 version of me thought of prometheus.
funnily enough, i've watched it quite a few more times over the years. i still think it's a bad movie, and i hate its stupid chariots of the gods creationist plot, but...i can't deny that it's a weirdly rewatchable film. share