[Film] Prometheus

Shaw's only defining character trait here is that she's Christian. She's so Christian, in fact, that she's the one who takes off her helmet in the ruins, based solely on faith. Her relationship with Holloway in the film fleshed her out a bit more, but in this version they're not even dating. Holloway's character isn't revealed through his arrogant streak, or the fact that despite being kind of a dick, he still genuinely loves Shaw, no; his defining character moment is that he rapes Shaw. The fuck? Oh, and she's a virgin, so Charlie's dick is covered in blood. Oh, and she was going through an existential crisis because the discovery of extraterrestrial life disproved her religious beliefs and he can't even remember that she's religious despite the fact that's the only vestige of a personality she has, that two minor characters were talking about it earlier and that he's obsessed enough to fucking rape her.

Not only does she have no reaction to the rape after crying naked in the shower, she gets raped again by the Space Jockey! They walk off to another derelict and Holloway gets splashed with green fluid that makes him age rapidly, guaranteeing that even if this script was used, we'd have to look at atrocious age-make-up. It's not even played off like he's being punished for the rape either, Shaw harbors no resentment towards him and in fact apologizes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves: First she's strapped down to a table with wire-like tongue snakes and though the penetrating organs in question are all bio-mechanical and non-human, the writer blatantly points out that it's basically a metal penis shooting into her, because he missed out on Subtext 101. One pointless rape is bad taste, twice in the span of fifteen minutes just makes it look like the writer is enjoying himself too much.

Parts of it are pretty cool. There's an alien with a fist-face, which I assume is an earlier version of the giant face-hugging squid seen at the end of the final film because it's like nine feet tall and described as being hairy and having long arachnid-like legs with human fingernails and a shamelessly overt vagina-dentata for a mouth. Also of note is that Vickers was an unabashedly evil android who went around and torched everyone with a flame thrower and she eventually gets pushed off a cliff by Shaw, who holds her alien rape baby in her arms and delivers a Bible quote about being fruitful and having dominion over the Earth. It's an utterly bizarre ending that's kind of cool in itself, but it's ruined by the camera zooming off to another planet and into the original derelict, where the screen is then attacked by one of the classic Xenomorphs. That's stupid. The Biblical elements are played up despite there being almost none of the hefty "We're looking for God" stuff like in the final film. I like the undercurrent of grim irony, but everything around it's really souring.

In fact, everything in the script is far more boring and pointless than anything that made it into the final film. For all its flaws, at least most of the time the interplay between the characters in the movie was interesting. Vickers and David both occupied moral grey areas in the final film, but here, they're basically Ash and Bishop 2.0. David even shamelessly quotes the "I prefer the term 'artificial person'" line. Charlie Holloway is a non-characterized rapist with no intrigue or pathos in regards to his relationship with anybody, and Shaw seems to do nothing other than get raped and quote the Good Book.

Oh, and there's no old Weyland either. Instead of the whole plot being about one man's hubris and his search for immortality, they just want to bring back the alien and use it as a bio weapon. Again.

Look, I don't care much about bad science these days. It bugged me a lot when I was younger, but I've since learned to unclench. So whatever. I don't care about continuity, either; if this invalidates the Alien films (or AvP) I really couldn't care less. I have nothing invested on that front, right? Right. But I do care about overuse of pathetically tired tropes, inconsistent plots, and vapid, boring characters about whom I could not be bothered to give a shit, and Prometheus is full of all of these.

-- Why do we need another progenitor scenario? It's boring. It's been done, and even when it's done well it's trite and stupid.

-- Why do we need to have our female lead deal with one of the three female fates assigned to women in film? Ripley managed to avoid them in Alien and Aliens (the less said about the others the better) and Scott knows better, so why?

-- Why is the fucking android the only character in the flick who's even a tiny bit interesting?

-- Why are we dealing with black goo again? Didn't we get enough of that in District 9? It was dumb there and it's even dumber here. And speaking of that, this is a really shitty WMD guys. Don't these engineers have bombs and shit? Fuck it, never mind, I don't care. I just wish the stupid black goo did something specific instead of being an all purpose plot device in goo form.

-- So Tweedledee and Tweedledum freak out when they hear about life signs in their vicinity, but when they actually encounter life forms they treat them like fucking hamsters. What the hell? Okay okay, they don't know they're in a horror flick, but simple prudence should have you going HEY GUYS MAYBE TOUCHING THE ALIEN LIFE FORM ISN'T SUCH A HOT IDEA M'KAY?

-- Science vs. atheism again? Didn't we do this in Contact already? I didn't like it there either but at least that flick made a decent stab at it. But seriously, lots of scientists are PERFECTLY OKAY with having religious beliefs, so I wish people would get over it already.

-- So the engineers created us, right? And then they gave us a map to their . . . super secret weapons facility? Uh, okay, cool story bro. But then they decide to build shitty biological weapons to wipe us out? The fuck? Make up your minds, guys! And seriously, your site security really sucks ass. Now we know you've botched the job on not one but two worlds, so maybe it's time you look into another profession or something. Just sayin'.

-- Don't filmmakers ever actually use computers? I mean, fuck, the whole holographic display bullshit for your starmap or whatever is just dumb as hell. It's dumb because it's not helpful or particularly interactive; it's just a big spectacle that nobody would ever use. I actually liked the holo display on the Prometheus command deck, since they gave a 3D rendering of the ship they were investigating. That was cool. But the starmap thingie? Fuck that.

-- If you're gonna stick Charlize Theron in your flick, make her relevant! The chick's A-list talent and she's got some acting chops so giving her a pointless role like this is just a waste.

Fuck it, I'm rambling by this point, but hopefully you get the idea. There's a fuck of a lot of derp in this movie, and that's even when you take it on its own terms. I shoulda blown it off and done my Book of Bantorra review instead.