TPG Ticket Check: Prometheus

Ticket Check - Where I examine previous hype train articles to see if the tickets that I purchased and primed you guys to purchase where worth the ride.

Prometheus is a well acted, gorgeously shot, tremendously exciting breath of science fiction movie-making that happens to not make any sense. I feel good that I hyped it up, because seeing bold movies like this with huge ideas and massive production design is a good way to show the decision makers that audiences want something besides "Battleship." Now I should say, I feel that many of you, like me, will see the film and be disappointed. As my buddy and frequent reader of Thislalife Dewbert pointed out about the movie - "It kind of sucks...but shit does get crazy."

My biggest beef with the film is the apparent lack of simple logic on behalf of almost all the characters in the film. Everyone seems to pretend like a movie character who serves a purpose instead of, you know a normal person. For example, at one point two characters are stranded in the alien crypt, rather than rest as close to safety as they can get, they chose to rest in a place that they actively know to be extremely dangerous. Why would you do this? Another part of the film finds a main character attacking crew members, but when the characters meet again, this is not discussed at all.  For a film so caught up on the big heady ideas it's very ironic it can't handle the small details that matter.

Ahhh, those big heady ideals. The film celebrates them even if it doesn't really know how to throw a party for them. We're constantly reminded about our quest to understand our maker and therefore ourselves. Every other topic in the film whether it's, religion, aging, artificial intelligence, evolution, and history comes from that DNA. Like a stoned philosophy under-grad the film is very good at presenting these questions in a stunning manner...but just awful at answering them. Don't get me wrong, I like when a film presents some thought provoking questions...but some of them need to be answered and the film doesn't do that.

Ultimately though "Prometheus" is a film that unintentionally or not is extremely challenging to understand. These may have been Sir Ridley's intentions; to make us think about something besides whether Tony Stark has enough weapons or if Bane will kill Batman. Already people are dropping "Lostian" theories* about the film and with it's impressive (and continuing) viral marketing and production design, I'm sure exactly what they wanted. I'm sure by the time 2014 rolls around and the first trailer for "Prometheus 2: Paradise" is getting released I'll hopping on the hype train once again.

SPOILERY MIND BONE BELOW

SPOILERY MIND BONE BELOW

SPOILERY MIND BONE BELOW

SPOILERY MIND BONE BELOW

Towards the end we learn that the "Engineers" were basically creating dangerous weapons of mass destruction, some of which they were unable to control. I'm calling it now, one of these evil weapon creatures that they created was the Predator species and no doubt the predators will be appearing soon in this new franchise.