Prometheus: Proof that epic sci-fi doesn't belong in the Alien franchise.

Previously: Disturbing viral marketing for Prometheus: Happy birthday David, from Weyland Industries.

My feelings about Prometheus are very mixed. As a grown-up sci-fi blockbuster movie, it was excellent, albeit a little cumbersome at times, but as a prequel to Alien it really didn't seem to know what it was doing. The pre-movie marketing included a lot of extra information on the extended universe -- a timeline of Weyland Industries' technological developments; background on Michael Fassbender's android character David; an in-character TED lecture from the fictional billionaire Peter Weyland -- but the film itself included very little of that worldbuilding, and not in the sparsely-written, isolated sense of Alien. Compared to the fast-paced thriller tone of the film as a whole, the reoccuring themes of religious belief and creationism seemed clumsy and out-of-place.
I feel like Prometheus must be a very different film to people who have no previous experience of the Alien franchise. Aside from the handful of lines that were objectively clunky, my main problem with this film lies in the way it relates to the Alien franchise, particularly Alien itself. Each of the Alien movies is different: The first is a slow-build horror movie, the second is a military adventure story, the third (in addition to being a total mess) is an action thriller set in a prison, and Alien Resurrection is a sci-fi blockbuster. The one theme that all four of these movies share is that shadowy, distant corporations control the characters' lives without them knowing it, and are happy to kill the worker ants in the name of profit. They tried to include this theme in Prometheus, but in terms of internal consistency within the premise of the mission (to explore an alien moon for signs of life) it didn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

Given that Peter Weyland is one of the richest and most powerful people in existence and that the Prometheus' journey to LV-223 is a trillion-dollar investment, I assumed that this was a well-publicised exploratory mission, albeit one where the religious undertones of their research were being kept under wraps. Taking this into consideration, one would think that the crew of the Prometheus must be the best of the best: Shaw and Holloway as the leaders, and the other scientists coming along to help with on-planet survival and any research that isn't directly connected to the Engineers and/or "finding God". However, when the crew is first introduced, we learn that they don't even know why they're there. Why not? Why did they sign up to go on a deep-space exploratory mission if they didn't know what they were doing or even who they were going to be working with? One of them wonders if they're going to be working on terraforming (which makes sense if you know the Weyland slogan: "Building Better Worlds"), and the rest are just there to provide backup, loose cannons every one. Seeing as Weyland is rich enough to build his own spaceship to fly off on a vanity mission to find god, and Vickers (Charlize Theron) is obsessed with "minimizing risk", this seems like an extraordinarily impractical recruitment strategy.

In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are working stiffs and have very little personal stake in the work they do for Weyland-Yutani. Likewise in the sequels, most of the primary characters are low on the corporate food-chain and are unaware that they're being screwed over by their bosses. But while the Nostromo is a mining ship crewed by the famous "truckers in space", the Prometheus is more like the Starship Enterprise, crewed by academics, idealists, and explorers. It would have made far more sense for the crew to begin the film with a sense of well-organised confidence, and then have the first signs of conflict appear as they discover that their well-planned mission is not what it seems, that they've unknowingly been providing cover for a religious megalomaniac all along.

The basic problem is that Prometheus tries to occupy an impossible hinterland between the world of sci-fi epics and the world of the Alien franchise. Star Wars is a myth about rebellion and heroism, Star Trek is about a crew of peacekeepers and scientists exploring the wonders of the galaxy, and the Alien franchise is a series of horror stories set within a cynical universe where no one cares if our beloved protagonist lives or dies. Prometheus, on the other hand, is a story about a scientist's search for God, an aging trillionaire's search for immortality, and the dangers of hubris when it comes to creating life in "unnatural" ways. These are all common sci-fi themes, but they don't really gel with the Alien universe. Up until now, the Alien franchise has dealt with amoral corporate lackies, tired blue-collar workers, violent convicts, and incompetent soldiers. It's difficult for Prometheus to exist within the context of a series where most characters are far more interested a steady paycheck than in the meaning of life.

Maybe it would've been possible to successfully tell an epic story about God and creation within the Alien extended universe, but not without removing most of the references to Alien itself. It didn't help that every scene that took place outside the spaceship was purposefully designed to provoke a feeling of awe and wonder. It seems strange to be complaining about the design and visuals of a film being too good, but I found that it muddied the waters to have to concentrate on individual human fears and the sense of "Oh, wow, we're on an alien planet full of untold wonders," at the same time.
 

There were several aspects of the film that failed to live up to the marketing, but Peter Weyland's casting was, to me, the most confusing. Guy Pearce performed the TED Talk used in the film's viral marketing campaign, and his name was in the credits of the movie, so many viewers would be aware before the film even started that Guy Pearce would be appearing at some point. This meant that his old man prosthetics were extremely distracting, because all the way through I knew that Guy Pearce was lurking underneath, and why the hell would they hire a young actor to play an old man? I spent the entire time waiting for him to be magically de-aged by some alien technology. Did they cast Guy Pearce just so he could do the viral marketing campaign?? Wouldn't it have been more effective to hire an unknown actor to play the young Peter Weyland, and someone like Peter O'Toole to play the older version in the film itself? To make matters more confusing, another Weyland video was released after the film came out.

screencap from here.

While I do believe that Prometheus failed as a prequel to the Alien franchise (and, more simply, that God should stay out of sci-fi unless you go for the full-on cheesy Chariots Of The Gods schtick, as seen in Stargate), there were some Alien quadrilogy nods that I did enjoy. David playing basketball was a fun reference to Alien Resurrection, and the production design (which I'll tackle in a separate post) was full of little details that harked back to the aesthetic of the other Alien movies. And, criticism aside, it was nailbiting thriller. The action scenes were frightening and avoided the kind of obviously unrealistically cliches one often sees in movies of this size, and the moments of visceral horror were incredibly well-executed.

Next: Costume design and the crew of the Prometheus. 

Links
My previous posts on the Alien franchise. 
Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About. This review focuses on the religious aspects of the film, including Ridley Scott's original (horrible) idea to include a Jesus-like figure among the Engineers.
Featurette on the visual effects of Prometheus.
Five ways to improve Prometheus.
Reddit: The Secrets of Prometheus: Explained.

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Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

I'm taking a small break from our regularly scheduled Avengers overanalysis to bring you some LADIES IN ARMOUR.

Today Florence + The Machine released their theme song/music video for Snow White & The Huntsman. I'm not really a Florence fan, but this video is just TOO GOOD FOR ME TO COPE WITH because it combines clips from the (completely awesome-looking) Snow White trailer with war drums and dramatic Valkyrie wailing and somehow, somehow... I am totally sold. After listening to this song and rewatching the trailer, not only am I 100% prepared to declare Kristen Stewart my Khaleesi For Life, but I'm also convinced that I've somehow regressed to the age of 11 because OMG new feminist role-model. Which is slightly embarrassing because I just googled Kristen Stewart and it turns out she's several months younger than I am. But what can I do? I've already sworn fealty. I'm taking up my spear and following Snow White into battle. And so are you.

MY KHALEESI.

Can I just say how awesome it is that they've made a freaking war movie out of a fairytale that's popularly known as the story of a bitter old lady who poisons a girl for being prettier than she is? In these trailers we see Snow White being betrayed and abandoned and strong and sliding through the mud and LEADING AN ARMY. The thing that blows me away the most -- more than the Guillermo Del Toro-esque troll creatures; more than Charlize Theron's fabulous costumes -- is the fact that Snow White is a passionate warrior. The #1 flaw in action/adventure movies is that their protagonists run the risk of ending up as two-dimensional badasses. A lot of the time the emotional hook just isn't truthful enough to engage audiences outside of the basic demographic of "people who like to watch things blow up". Which, by the way, isn't a criticism of that demographic because I fully intend to watch any and all Die Hard sequels, even if they rate 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and consist of a 76-year-old Bruce Willis standing in front of a blue-screen and yelling nonsensical one-liners while people frantically Photoshop burning cars into the background.

Not gonna lie: I basically want both of their outfits to wear in real life.

But Kristen Stewart's Snow White isn't just a badass. During every action clip included in those trailers, you can see the desperation and determination on her face. You feel -- or at least I felt -- a genuine desire to find out why she's having to fight, rather than just treating the fight clips as a sort of placeholder code for "this film includes battle scenes". Is this what movies are like in a post-Game Of Thrones world? We can only hope. 

Unusually for me and my habit of nerding out over behind-the-scenes details, I don't actually know much about SW&TH. And in contrast with more specifically geek-oriented films like Prometheus or the Avengers franchise, I don't really feel that info-dumping is even necessary. Unlike Tarsem's visually wonderful but otherwise unappealing Mirror Mirror earlier this year, the marketing for SW&TH has managed the ideal maneuver for a fairytale adaptation: they've made a familiar story seem intriguing without changing it so much that it seems unrecognisable.

These days, movies based on well-known myths tend to go one of two ways: egregious levels of grittiness, or tongue-in-cheek parody. This follows the same mould as superhero movies, wherein the Batman myth evolves from Adam West cartoonishness to Christopher Nolan's apparent belief that as long as you include enough shots of grim Chicago skyscrapers in the rain, you can make a 100% "realistic" urban epic about people who dress up in pleather catsuits in order to fight crime. For me, gritty superhero adaptations can sometimes work, but gritty fairytales? Not so much. Just look at Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, which removed everything that was ever charming or appealing about Robin Hood and replaced it with endless footage of Russell Crowe glaring at mud. The greatest source of tension in that movie was me desperately waiting for Russell Crowe to take a bath because he clearly smelled so bad, but that never happened. Even when Cate Blanchett's servants poured him a bath he just splashed some of the water on his face and was like, "well, I guess that takes care of all the Saracen blood I've accrued over the past decade of war-mongering". HE NEVER DID TAKE THAT BATH, YOU GUYS.

This is literally the cleanest he ever is in this entire movie.

(Oh, and another thing that bugged me about that movie was that all the supposed realism was meant to add a "historical" edge to the mostly-fictional Robin Hood we know and love, except none of the history was remotely accurate. As in, the film ended with -- spoiler alert for a movie you definitely shouldn't see! -- Robin Hood revealing that his dad wrote the Magna Carta and Cate Blanchett leading an army of tree-dwelling orphan boys to fight off a French invasion on a beach in Dover. For realsies.)

"But Hello, Tailor!" you may (possibly) be asking. "Snow White & The Huntsman looks like it's all about muddy people in nonspecifically medieval armour as well! How can you say it's going to be any better than Russell Crowe's embarrassing attempts to modernise an English folk-hero?"

The answer is: because SW&TH gives every impression of having reached a happy middle ground. Disney already has the market cornered on happy, colourful fairytales, and we know from Robin Hood and Clive Owen's King Arthur that going all-out "historical" (sorry, I can't help but stick some sarcastic air-quotes in there, I'm an asshole) is unpopular. With this film, the trailer gives a darker, more adult hook for Snow White in the form of her new role as a Bourne-esque fugitive and fighter, but we still get to have the more fantastic elements of unicorns, trolls, magic mirrors and so on. Sometimes Kristen Stewart wears a bodice and floor-length skirt that distantly resemble a dirtier version of Snow White's outfit from the Disney cartoon, but when she rides into battle she's wearing armour. Real armour, as opposed to the leather bikini Keira Knightly had to wear when she was playing Pagan Guinevere in the oh-so-historical King Arthur movie. You know that Kristen Stewart's character is Snow White because she looks like Snow White, but you also know she's a warrior because she looks like a warrior as well.

Seems legit. This is basically how everyone dresses in the UK.

Postscript: As of just now, this is the first news headline that comes up when you google Snow White & The Huntsman: "Charlize Theron v Kristen Stewart at Snow White premiere: Hot or Not?" Wow, Internet. I think you just summarised in one sentence everything that's going to be wrong about all the coverage for this movie!

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