The Untold Story Better Left Untold

If you’d been following my twitter for the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that I’d been greatly awaiting the release of the movie Prometheus – the pseudo-prequel to the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien, and director Ridley Scott’s first sci-fi movie since 1982’s Blade Runner. It’s a project that’s been brought up for many, many years, and one that I honestly thought would never see the light of day. Not unlike the Star Wars prequels of yore, this one seemed like a fanboy fantasy and nothing more. Well, for better or worse, those happened and so did this one.

It’s a little hard for me to be clear on my opinion of this movie because, while I enjoyed watching it I can’t say that I actually liked it.

There was a significant amount of hype for this movie as a result of a dubious pedigree combined with a series of finely crafted trailers. Part of the pedigree comes from the original Alien films. Alien and Aliens are both spectacular movies. I’m not going to bore you to tears with my hyperbolic glorification of the first two entries in this series (I prefer to bore you with my scattered assessment of Prometheus instead), I will simply tell you that if you haven’t seen them – see them; and if you don’t see them, you’re stupid. Anyway, the dubious part of this pedigree is that of the SIX movies that feature the alien creatures (a.k.a. xenomorphs), only TWO are great – with an arguably good third movie (aside from an unforgivable sin committed in the first 5 minutes, the movie is alright). Everything else is utter shit (Alien: Resurrection, Alien vs. Predator, and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem).

The other part of the pedigree is the aforementioned Ridley Scott. My opinion here is simply that – my opinion. Furthermore, it is an opinion laced with ignorance on my part – yet, here we go. I’m not a fan of Ridley Scott (the ignorance part come in here because I haven’t seen that many of his movies . . . because they are boring). I don’t quite understand why the idea of him returning 30 years later to this series was seen in such a positive light. Yes, his entries in the sci-fi genre are fantastic, but you have to look at the kinds of movies he makes now. He’s not the same person that made Alien and Blade Runner anymore – that guy grew up to make Robin Hood with Russell Crowe.

As a side note – both Robin Hood and Prometheus once existed as movies that sounded, if not great, at least interesting. Robin Hood was originally conceived as a story from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s point of view with Robin Hood as the antagonist. Prometheus was originally scripted as a full blown Alien prequel, with face huggers and chest bursters galore, as opposed to the pseudo-prequel that we got. Both could have easily still sucked.

Speaking of pseudo-prequel (is it weird to use a “side note” as jumping off point?), that is one of this movie’s biggest hurdles – and one that it fails to overcome. Many elements from the original movie are touched upon, but rather than fully exploring them we are introduced to many new ideas – that also are not fully explored. The movie needed to either embrace prequel aspect of the story, or abandon it altogether. By trying to serve two masters, the movie fails to meet the needs of either – and in lieu of a complete story, what we get is a series of loosely connected events. Had the characters in this series of events been properly fleshed out, we could have at least understood the motivation behind some of what happens on screen. Instead, aside from the obvious self-preservation aspects, we never really know why anyone does anything. It was as though there were originally twice as many scenes but all we see are people reacting to information that we never see them receive.

While I did not intend for this to become a Prometheus bitch-fest (Bitch-Fest is coincidentally my favorite competition reality tv show), it’s clear that I have some problems with the movie. I really wanted it to be great, but c’est la vie (I want “vie” to be great too). Of course, looking on the bright side, it’s still only the fourth worst Alien movie.

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