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Very few big budget movies seem to live up to their own hype these days. With a project as involved as Ridley Scott's Prometheus, it's probably impossible to live up to the bubble of expectation placed around it. Fans of the Alien series have seen up to 6 versions of the story, and there's hardly a gory moment or sci-fi concept that hasn't been played out before. So, that's probably why this movie attempts to make an intellectual interpretation of a completely different time and place. It gives a huge boost to the inherent possibilities of where the story can go, and allows the film to be free of the burden of having to live up to itself. The problem is, while there is a huge amount of effort and thought put into the movie - there is not enough focus paid to allowing the story to explain itself. It's almost as if they gave up on developing interconnected layers of interest, and assumed that by mashing a bunch of heady stuff together, that we'd all be very impressed. Ok, so the movie has flaws. It's probably not so much Ridley Scott's fault as it is the screenwriter's overly zealous approach. It is very hard to juggle all the tangential elements placed into this script. I suppose the final product does a good job at trying to balance all the elements, but it does so at the expense of rational continuity, which is what a sci-fi audience is sort of expecting. There are a couple of moments where I think the plot unnecessarily skips over a scene or two, in the interest of squeezing the whole story together. There's also the problem of characters seeming expendable. A good script would not make it so obvious that a character was purely alien bait or placed in for "shock value". I'm hoping that perhaps, there will be a director's cut with extra scenes in it that helps tie one or two things together. The more I think about it, this movie takes on too many elements in an attempt to force "complexity". The problem with this approach is that very few things are able to be concisely developed, whether that is a character's involvement or something more esoteric, such as insight into the alien species. There's a lot of mystery, and while I understand the approach, I think I would have liked to see less plot twists and more deepness. Imagine biting into a cheeseburger with the works (lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, ketchup, and mustard.) Now imagine the same cheeseburger with the addition of bacon, mayo, barbecue sauce, bleu cheese, and chipotle sauce. Now it's got so much complexity you can't really taste the ingredients anymore. My taste buds got confused as to what exactly it was I bit into. I also believe this movie is somewhat based in the realm of fantasy instead of science fiction, because science fiction tends to be more linear and focused, so that complexity has time to "blossom". There was a lot of body, but unfortunately, there was a lack of a satisfying aftertaste. While the story flounders a bit, the production and directing are top-notch. There isn't a single scene in the movie that isn't executed tastefully, even when it doesn't seem to be supported well by the acting or dialogue. In that alone, the pure ambition of this film is almost unmatched. There are countless layers of production detail in the film, and I will probably watch it again to absorb all the things that are easy to miss. It's hard to create a convincing sense of a new world, and I think this film does that effectively. So, on that account, this film is a success. There is an attempt at a delicate balance of spirituality, existentialism, cognitive dissonance, and pseudo-science going on here. It's so delicate, in fact, that it's easily fractured when you poke at it. I think that is a common problem that exists with recent movies in the sci-fi genre. If you are going to make people connect the dots themselves, you need to leave a lot less on the table than this movie does. To be smart, you need to provide some concepts that are truly insightful. Left so heavily to our own devices, the audience ends up re-imagining the potential, instead of discussing the implied meaning. Prometheus could have been an incredible movie. Perhaps it still can be in our own imaginations. 3.5/5
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Jun 14, 2012 16:15
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 01:19 |
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