Hullabaloo

Saturday, June 16, 2012

 
Saturday Night at the Movies

Scott goes Kubrick (-ish)

By Dennis Hartley

My God…it’s full of stars: Prometheus

I apologize, gentle reader, but I really need to get this out of the way first. “From the director of Blade Runner.” Really? Really, marketing mavens at 20th Century Fox? That’s your best tag line? I think we both know, in our heart of hearts that Mr. Scott is not likely to concoct another genre film as note perfect in the choice of source material, its writing, casting and directing, and rendered with its particularly seamless blend of hard sci-fi and existential noir. That counts as his “Sorry, only one per career” grant from the Movie Genie. Besides, virtually no one makes that kind of sci-fi anymore: just enough CGI to render a futuristic tone, yet on the whole, believably organic. You’re setting the bar way too high. So don’t tease. OK…I feel better now. On with the review.

As we teeter on the cusp of that special movie season I like to call Big, Dumb & Loud, hope may have arrived for sci-fi geeks. It is in the form of the latest film from director Ridley Scott, returning to the (rather profitable) universe of the “Alien quadrilogy” (his own franchise kickoff Alien, James Cameron’s Aliens , David Fincher’s Alien 3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection) with a prequel called Prometheus. Does it live up to the hype? Since I coughed up top dollar to see it (in 3-D IMAX), I feel justified in paraphrasing J.R.R. Tolkien: I liked half of it half as well as I should have liked, and less than half of it as well as it deserved. And if that is akin to saying that it isn’t as good as 2001: A Space Odyssey, yet not as bad as Plan 9 From Outer Space , well…then so be it.

Not unlike 2001, Scott opens his film with An Enigmatic Yet Profound Event from Millenniums Past. Through an impressively mounted bit of CGI wizardry, we observe a humanoid creature making like a 17-year cicada on the banks of a roiling, primeval river (I can say no more). Flash-forward to 2093 and our introduction to the primary players, the majority of whom are tucked away in stasis pods on the good ship Prometheus, currently nearing the end of its deep space journey to an obscure moon. Their caretaker is HAL 9000...oops I mean “David” (Michael Fassbender), an android employed by the corporation that owns the ship and is funding the mission. As the humans groggily emerge from their long hibernation, the makeup of our intrepid team comes into focus.

In addition to the requisite AI character, and in strict accordance with the Alien series template, there’s the Prickly Yet Pragmatic Ship Captain (Idris Elba) and the Corporate Weasel (a very strict Charlize Theron). The remainder of our pod people turns out to be field scientists of various stripes; including a biologist (Rafe Spall, son of Timothy) and a geologist (Sean Harris). The scientific arm of the crew is being led by two romantically involved archeologists (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green), who have sold their corporate sponsors on the idea for the expedition based on a series of shared “star maps” they discovered amongst the relics of several otherwise unrelated ancient Earth cultures. All roads, as it were, lead to the aforementioned moon. Also in accordance with the Alien universe, the team soon stumbles across Something That Is Probably Best Left Undisturbed. But you know scientists, they always have to touch (as Buckaroo Banzai once sagely advised: “Don’t tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to”).

While Prometheus is imbued with a similar sense of fear and dread that informed his 1979 film (thanks in large part to the visual tone set by DP Dariusz Wolski, whose previous credits include darkly atmospheric sci-fi/fantasy thrillers like The Crow and Dark City), Scott has largely eschewed the classic horror film tropes in this outing; opting for a more ambitious script (by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof) that tackles bigger themes. In other words, he isn’t providing an “origin story” that merely serves to explain the alternate Alien universe; he’s suggesting an alternate version of THE origin story (Where did mankind come from? What does it all mean?). However, as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that he’s taken on more than he can handle in 2 hours. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that Scott is ultimately beholden to his Alien universe, and that for the disappointing finale, he acquiesces to the season of Big Dumb and Loud.

There are positives about the film. Performances are solid; Rapace (sort of the ‘Ripley’ character here) displays an ability to flex her instrument beyond the indelible persona she created as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Fassbender brings subtle complexity to his android that transcends the level of the material he’s given to work with. From a technical standpoint, I have no complaints. Scott is a filmmaker with a very deep understanding of filmic language; he meticulously composes every frame for maximum effect (I consider his 1977 debut, The Duellists, to be second only to Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon Lyndon as cinema’s most visually stunning period piece). That being said, you still have to tell a cohesive story, and this one is all over that star map. There’s also too much dialog devoted to spelling everything out for the audience. Sometimes it’s good to leave a little mystery, especially in sci-fi (why do you think that 44 years after its release, people are still debating the meaning of 2001?). As Rod Serling said, sci-fi is “…a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.” In other words, what Serling (and Kubrick, and Tarkovsky) knew, and what Scott may have forgotten, is that while the best sci-fi has a lot of imagination behind it, the best sci-fi leaves a lot to the imagination.

…and one more thing

August 22, 1920-June 5, 2012

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

I just wanted to bid a belated adieu, and humbly dedicate tonight’s post to Ray Bradbury. He left a lot to my imagination.

The films: It Came from Outer Space, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Also recommended: The Ray Bradbury Theater: the Complete Series, The Martian Chronicles (TV mini-series).

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

Dennis Hartley 6/16/2012 05:30:00 PM