love it!

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never raining SPIDERS! Yipes!

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Almost as bad as Monster Island…

Or, the Island of Dr. Moreau….

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Supposedly there is a new Godzilla film in the works. While the comic below is funny, I hope they are not taking cues from Doug Savage as to its plot 🙂

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not Quite as impressive as the Big G, but who is? Still pretty funny 🙂

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So to me, Prometheus was another of my highly-anticipated movies this summer.  It has seemingly everything going for it – Ridley Scott as director/creative genius; solid cast (Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba); plot concepts originally from the ‘Alien‘ movies (well the first two – good, not the later two – lame – nor the even lamer Alien vs. Predator series);  some interesting pre-movie hype (see previous post on Guy Pearce’ fake TED speech); – but the result ended up a bit mixed for me.  SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

First, the good stuff: 

The movie LOOKS AMAZING.  While I’m sure they reaped the rewards of capitalizing on some of Avatar‘s special effects innovations – I personally think this movie simply blows Avatar out of the water visually – despite having a much ‘grayer’ visual look and an obviously much darker theme.  Scott has taken the earlier ‘Alien’ SFX, including the H.R. Giger artwork, and gone to a whole new level.  The ships, action sequences on the planet, the set(s) used for the ship interiors – all of it is just amazing and very realistic-looking.  Another major influence on the visuals has to be Chris Foss – their ship looks like it flew right out of one of CF’s paintings, and the overall effect of ‘tiny man, huge alien spacecraft/planet bases’ is a regular Foss artistic theme.

I also liked the cast.  I think the actors chosen were well-suited and believeable in their roles, despite in many cases not having enough to do or say (see below).  Noomi Rapace looks like a ‘tough Audrey Tatou‘ to me, and Charlize Theron seemed like she was shaping up to be the ‘Ripley character’ – she has nearly the same voice and bad-ass-type bearing as Sigourney Weaver in the first two Alien movies – but her role ends up pretty different than Ripley.  Michael Fassbender is the humanoid robot, kind of a ‘twisted Commander Data’ if you will – because it’s completely obvious from the first scene he’s up to something, and Fassbender has given him a strong dose of soft-spoken malevolence to boot (HAL 9000, anyone?).

The not-so-good:

The Plot – while not near as thin as say, TRON:Legacy was – there are some gaping plot holes here that just don’t make sense or seem inexplicable given the considerable talent and effort that went into this movie.

Example one – what IS Charlize Theron’s real role here – is it as enabler, spoiler or indifferent observer of Guy Pearce’s (Weyland Corp.) dream to discover these aliens?  Is she only in it for a paycheck?  She seems at first to be the person who’s going to end up running the show but that doesn’t happen, and despite several scenes where she’s obviously ‘in charge’ – there are many other critical scenes where she’s nowhere to be found, nor in charge?

Example two – where was the rest of the crew – especially David, who put it in her, when Noomi Rapace is busy using the med-unit to forcibly remove the alien implanted in her body?  Was everyone else taking a nap, or?

Example three – when the ship’s xenobiologist reaches out to actually TOUCH the cobra-like alien swimming around in puddles in the ancient alien ship on the planet – it attacks him.  What did he THINK was going to happen?  This was simply ridiculous to me – of COURSE it was going to attack him and even if it didn’t, no biologist EVER does something SO STUPID without adequate preparations and care?  Especially not one on ANOTHER PLANET.

Example four – I find it hard to believe generally that a private corporation would be the ONLY entity making such an obviously momentous and historic journey to potentially discover Man’s possible ancestors?  No govt’ involvement at all?  This is where movies like Contact and 2001/2010 have simply done a better job on this point, I think.  It seems almost impossible for such discoveries to remain secret if under control by one govt., let alone a private corporation?  Heck, there were actual Marines on the second Alien ship – but here?  Hmmm……not even private mercenaries?

Example five – Guy Pearce’ sudden appearance ON THE SHIP in the latter 3rd of the movie – hel-lo?  And all those ‘extra crew’ that seemingly appeared out of nowhere with him?  Come ON, guys – did everyone cryo-sleep in a secret footlocker for the first half of the movie?

Another aspect was simply ‘not enough explanation’ – the whole opening sequence is a complete mystery without a bit more info?  There was some interesting speculation in the IMDB faq on the movie, but it’s unconfirmed.  Maybe on the DVD later this year….

I guess in summary, not unlike TRON:Legacy of a couple years ago, this movie fulfills in many ways, but in some key ways, is simply flawed, given its implied mission as a ‘big thoughts’ kind of movie – If I compare it to say, The Avengers – I have to say that in some ways, The Avengers is more entertaining, but it’s also a silly superhero movie, so you don’t take it seriously in the first place.  It is probably harder to reach for bigger meaning in a movie – but when you do, you have to deliver, or it’s going to be more obvious you haven’t.

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The summer of 2012 looks like it will be a bang-up collection of good-to-great movies, even if several are getting the jump on summer by starting a couple months early – to wit:

April: We started with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – starring Gary Oldman, who like his fellow Brit Alan Rickman, is one of those ‘chameleonic’ actors that seems to morph into something completely different in nearly every film (although Mr. Rickman keeps that unique, uber-distinctive voice no matter what he does – and we love him for it!).  This film, based on a John LeCarre novel of the same name (I have never read any of his books) is very interesting, although it took me a while to understand what was going on.  Unlike say, James Bond or Jason Bourne movies, even though a spy movie, this isn’t an action thriller really at all – no, this movie is far more subtle (but no less devious!).  Always good to see John Hurt (he was the spymaster ‘Control’) and Tom Hardy was also good.  And as Kerewin pointed out afterward, this isn’t a story of black & white/good & bad – everyone has flaws, everyone does things that aren’t necessarily on the up and up.  Definitely worth watching!

Next on the list was The Descendants, starring George Clooney and set in Hawaii.  Ah, I want to go back to Hawaii so bad!!!  This is a story of serious family dysfunction but with hope and some eventual redemption (it is a Hollywood movie, after all 🙂 – the acting is good and believable, and it’s easy to see why this movie was in the running for Best Picture among other awards this year.  It’s not a ‘happy’ movie by any means – but it’s definitely worth seeing – and thanking that your own family (immediate or otherwise) isn’t in the same boat.  I still wanna go back to Hawaii.

Next, we saw The Hunger Games.  Astute readers will remember the Battle Royale review here from last August – this movie is very similar, but based on a trilogy (sequels on the way I’m sure) and set in a future rich-guy-rules-poor-guy-gets-f’d America, rather than Japan.  Both movies have more than a few similarities to Lord of the Flies, the book that arguably inspired most such stories way back in the ’50s.  I’m not going to rehash the plot – but rather, muse a bit on what this movie made me think about.

1) if the book’s author and movie-makers are trying to send a message of the kind of country we could become if we don’t deal with income inequality in the USA (now!) – well done.  Certainly this dystopia is an extreme endgame with many sci-fi overtones to boot, but without reading too much into a pop culture movie – the risk is real, guys.

2) Another movie/story this reminded me of was The Handmaid’s Tale.  That movie, while nowhere near the budget and production values of this one (I couldn’t make it through the entire book, either) has equally scary scenes and VERY evil central characters too – Victoria Tennant most prominently, but Robert Duvall also takes a turn as a cynical military commando at the highest ranks of the religious government – unlike Hunger Games, Handmaid’s Tale is much more about a religious takeover, not far from the Heinlein classic “If This Goes On…”

3) What’s also interesting about these dystopian stories generally is the attention (or lack thereof) paid to the ‘downtime’ – that is, what is everyone doing when they aren’t doing ‘the main event’ the story is about?  Are the poor just making gruel and crappy bread all day in their districts while the rich live completely off the fat of the land and run around to endless parties and socializing?  I honestly can’t think of any human society, totalitarian or not, that has managed to survive for many decades without at least minimal change – even the last remaining “Communist” countries have embraced tentative steps into free enterprise in the past several years, for various reasons.  It’s one potential flaw to these dystopian scenarios – save for possibly those that include the world being ruined in some way (Terminator movies, Matrix, etc.) – but The Hunger Games doesn’t appear to be about the environment, it’s about power and exploitation, plain and simple.

The next major movie was The Avengers, seen last week.  This isn’t any ‘message’ movie by any stretch of the imagination (e.g. there are Norse gods in it, hello?) but just the first of the pure mindless entertainment summer movies to debut (that I care to see, anyway).  And despite some minor flaws (would SHIELD really fly a ‘stealth’ aircraft carrier, really?) it mostly delivers.  I was also surprised how much I liked the Thor and Hulk characters – I still haven’t seen either Hulk movie (nor do I plan to) and the Thor movie wasn’t really in the cards either, and then Conan O’Brien made SURE I didn’t want to see it :).  But here Mark Ruffalo is a great Bruce Banner/Hulk, and I liked Chris Evans as the ‘serious but somewhat ignorant’ Captain America – very different than his portrayal of The Human Torch in the FF4 movies of a few years ago.  Robert Downey is the same smarta** he was in the two previous Iron Man movies, and is still very good.  The Black Widow and Hawkeye characters are obviously ‘lesser’ as they have no super powers, but whatevs, they are still good too.  All in all, a very good movie – I still think the first Iron Man was easily the best of these so far, but time will tell….

Onward, movie summer!