By Steve J. Hobson | Follow on Twitter
There was a time in my life when I would have gone completely nuts at the idea of an Alien prequel. Probably between Alien 3 (which is better than you probably remember) and Alien Resurrection (which is just as twatty as you remember) and long before Alien versus Predator (Whoever wins… you won’t give a fuck…) which was so bad I was certain halfway through I had been sent on a rite-of-passage style vision quest. You can imagine my anger at the end to discover I was no more of a man then I had been beforehand; although now that I think of it, I’m a lot more world-weary than I had been, but that may be thanks to AVP – Requiem, which was a supremely demoralizing experience.
.
What have they done to my legacy! *sob*
.
Those days are long gone now of course. I wouldn’t say sci-fi horror has moved on; but The Xenomorphs are no longer the only game in town. Movies like Event Horizon, Pitch Black, and Pandorum have come along and while they may not have been the shock to the system that Alien was upon its release, they’ve at least… That is to say they… Well shit. Two of those three aforementioned movies, the exception being Event Horizon; were kind of guff; and I can’t think of many more I could be arsed including.
.
Plus only Event Horizon has the “Sam Neill Seal of Approval”!
.
I guess Horror Sci-fi is in more trouble than I’d thought. Thank the cosmos then for Ridley Scott, who has come storming back at the nick of time with his game-changing prequel story (sic):
Prometheus!
.
.
Adult nappies were bought in bulk in preparation for the frenzy of shitting-themselves that was bound to follow the long awaited fruition to a million points of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” speculation. The Space Jockeys; those ten-foot enigmas (who were surpassed only by Boba Fett in the disproportionate screen time/fan kudos stakes) were about to get top billing and all our questions were going to be answered. Ridley Scott didn’t say any of this stuff exactly (at least not when he’d finally gotten around to starting work on the movie) but, y’know, we all knew what was going on, right?
No. No we did not. In our folly we didn’t listen as Scott told us that no, this was not the prequel we were after, and although it would have some thematic similarities, and be set in the same universe, and HAVE THE SPACE JOCKEYS IN IT, it was still not going to be what we thought. “OK” we said, thinking we were getting a phantom whiff of misdirection. “So what is it then?”
.
Perhaps a completely shocking twist in the tale.
.
As details began to emerge, I heard two words that chilled me to the bone; “Ancient Aliens.” Now at the risk of editorializing (by that I mean I am about to editorialize and you can just fucking live with it). This is the same lazy jumping off point that brought us AVP and Indiana Jones and the Bitter Disappointment, and presumably has a large chapter devoted to it in “The Ladybird Bumper Book of McGuffins for Dummies”.
This served to pretty much torpedo the movie for me from the outset. Before the outset even. It seemed to be a pretty dumb move to have your movies opening premise mirror that of another movie from the very same franchise you are actively trying to distance yourself from. So either Ridley Scott had something up his sleeve that was gonna blow minds to the point where we would look back at our earlier fears with incredulity at how stupid we were at not trusting his genius and vision, or he had lost the plot and was just taking a lazy approach to writing a story.
.
This book only has one page titled “Steal everything; Originality is for losers”
.
Statistically there is someone somewhere that believes the first of those things. I’m sure of this because I’m sure that there is also someone, somewhere (Probably a hipster) who has attempted to use an upturned, but still armed bear-trap as a helmet (I think it’s called “Accessorizing. Basically it’s hanging silly trinkets off yourself like a foppish human christmas tree), and both of these someones will reap the benefits of their wrongness.
In the former case, because one or two sequels down the line they will be heartbroken to realize that the story has not gained any substance (I know that is a very speculative thing to say, but I really hold out very little hope for this series) and in the latter because when that bear trap goes off all the other hipsters will chase the guy around, ironically trying to dip toasted soldiers into the yawning hole where the top of his skull used to be. And good for them I say.
So if you’re wondering whether or not I liked Prometheus, let me answer your question with another question. How much of a laugh would it be to compare it to another movie, to which its links could be described as “tenuous,” or even “not there” instead of giving it a proper review? And the answer is:
A huge laugh!
EVENT HORIZON:
.
.
The other movie I have chosen is the above mentioned “Event Horizon” which is similar in that there is a spaceship in it looking for things in the farther reaches of space. Spoilers to follow…
EH is the story of the titular ship which has disappeared, then reappears. Its creator and a team of space… er… folks make tracks to find out where it’s been and what it did there, and soon wish they hadn’t, because it’s been to hell and brought hell back with it. Creepy awesomeness ensues and Sam Neill says “Where we’re going, you won’t need eyes to see” and I feel a little frisky just thinking about the whole thing. Fairly simple really. Effective though.
Prometheus on the other hand goes something kinda like: Cave paintings of humanoid gaunt things pointing at orbs are judged to be aliens pointing at their home world (and not prehistoric diagrams about snooker). Noomi Rapace, some guy who looks like but isn’t Tom Hardy, and at least one Robot who, I might add, is the most relatable character in the movie; go into space with some other guys to find these Aliens and befriend them presumably.
They turn out to have been nearly all dead for millennia, but apparently their pets are fine, dandy and toothsome and before you can say “That phallus is smiling at me” The last remaining alien turns out to be very much alive, and a wanker; someone’s pregnant and the stowaway on the ship turns out to be a Xenomorph OLD GUY (Pearce) in a WHEELCHAIR! Then everyone dies needlessly.
.
Place your bets now. Which of us will you care about least by the end of the film? It’s a trick question, you won’t care about any of us.
.
That’s was my most glaring problem. Pretty much everyone died and I didn’t give a fuck. Comedian Steven Wright could have read the entire script out as one loooong sentence and I would have felt just as engaged with the characters. Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw is the most vivacious character in it who isn’t a robot (can’t believe I needed to type a sentence like that) and she is as exciting as hospital paint. Idris Elba’s ship Captain could have been a decent character had he been given more time; as a man with Christian principles faced with evidence of a creator not found in any bible he could have been the philosophical conflict at the heart of the movie; instead he just bickers with Vickers; (HA!) Charlize Theron’s Weyland Corporation Suit, and sparks between the two stubbornly refuse to fly.
Some geologists and boffins from various other scientific disciplines potter about awaiting underwhelming death, the scenery looks just familiar enough to keep the other movies that this is nothing to with (!) never far from the mind and Michael Fassbender steals every scene he’s in like he was the stabby criminal robot from Futurama. Still though; He’s a robot, and if I he’s the only one in the movie I find myself empathizing with, then somethings wrong with either me or the guy who wrote the character. For the record, there is nothing wrong with me, despite the testimony of several tribunals.
.
And I only wear this because I like getting hugs.
.
Looking back at the crew of the “Lewis and Clark” in Event Horizon, they …well they weren’t exactly deep or layered but at least they were likeable. You got a sense of a shared history with them even when they use the big pathos shovel (I just can’t wait to get home to see my daughter/marry my sweetheart/milk the family piglet) and even the most morose of them comes across as a decent spud. Even Sam Neill’s Journey from befuddled fish-out-of-water scientist to eyeless vivisected hell-critter is pretty satisfying, if maybe a bit rushed, but that brings me to another linking factor (that I admittedly hadn’t really considered to begin with) between these two movies.
.
Sir, did you know I’m lactose intolerant? I’m a well rounded character.
.
There has been a longstanding myth that at some point in the future Paul W.S. Anderson is going to release a Director’s Cut of EH with a bunch of juicy other-dimensional horror and viscera which had been previously absent and will make the whole movie into a more complete piece. He may never get round to it, which is a shame, because without meaning to sound too much like a gore-hound (Just cos I am one doesn’t mean I have to advertise) EH did kind of come up short in terms of the hell-dimension footage, apparently at the behest of the studio, which I personally thought was to its detriment.
That we may never get to see the rest of it is made all the more disappointing by the fact that Prometheus, as a Ridley Scott movie, is …well, how many versions of Blade runner have you seen? And while I know that in the case of Blade Runner, some changes were for the better (sarcastic voice-over? Fuckin’ do one…) but he had a much better movie as a jumping off point than he has with his latest. What do you do when you have an overlong, flailingly-plotted and ultimately fairly thin movie? If you said “add a bunch of extra footage that you left out the first time round” then Hello Mr Lucas. Have you met my learned friend Mr. Scott?
I’ll leave you two alone. I suspect you’ll have a lot to talk about.
.
OK Ridley, you’ve done a terrible prequel. Now you just need to touch up Alien and replace the xenomorph and all the actors with CGI characters. Follow these simple rules and you’ll be as beloved as I am!
.
