Prometheus: Big Ideas Made Dull

$130 million and all you can come up with is that we were created by muscular white dudes with waxed chests?

Let's keep this quick and painless and cut straight to the point: the $16 I spent to see Prometheus in 3D (and, sorry Andrew, I dragged you into a $16 expense along with me) was money almost totally wasted. Even the 3D, which could have made the movie at least a visual spectacle, sucked. The best 3D part of the film was the little ad with a dog fetching a ball to promote the 3D company that came before the movie started. After that - nothing.

To be charitable this felt like a three or four hour movie that was corseted into two hours and a bit (though, including the 20 minutes of advertisements trying to sell me every mobile product made by Samsung, the movie felt looong). But that's not my fault - that's the job of the director: to get a film that can be shot and make sense within the time slot of the theatre. Perhaps Ridley Scott had an eye towards the "director's cut" on an as-yet-to-be-released DVD.

Whatever the cause, the movie ended up being two hours of dragging incoherence. It takes us well into the second act to even know for certain who the protagonist is. There are so many actors that all of them feel truncated and flat, not helped by the fact that their lines are often painfully wooden and false. Charlize Theron seemed to have been given about three lines, which she dutifully repeated when ever she came onscreen. And when they weren't struggling through their lines, the actors were expected to change unexpectedly and without motivation from scene to scene. Dr. Charlie Holloway, who starts the film as a bit of a galomphing puppy, exuberant and enthusiastic about their discovery, is suddenly transformed into a sullen drinker, a bit mean-spirited towards David, the humanoid robot. Then he is back to being his puppy dog self again - and sober enough seduce his partner, Noomi Rapace, who plays Elizabeth Shaw.

And then there are the cheap thrills a la B-horror films. You know the ones where the character about to die goes down into the dark basement where there has just been the sounds of someone getting slaughtered? So, a biologist puts his hand literally in the mouth of an alien lifeform that is a cross between a king cobra, a lamprey eel and a penis. Such people, of course, deserve to die the horrible death that awaits them. I mean, not like "don't touch the mysterious, possibly deadly animal" isn't the first lesson they teach you in university biology. And how about when the giant alien croissant, I mean spaceship, is rolling across the ground towards you: run perpendicular to the damn thing, not in the same direction. It might make a better shot but we all know it's plain dumb. It's hard enough to believe that a spaceship would crash from the sky, land on its edge and then roll like a coin just fell out of God's pocket without adding in cartoonish behaviour. But hey, this is Ridley's movie and if he wants rolling spaceships, dammit, then he's gonna have them.

Speaking of "visual grandeur" - mentioned as a compelling element of the film in the Rotten Tomatoes summary of the reviews (it got 73%?!? One more reason to have no respect for reviewers)... It's time we stopped giving directors credit for "visual grandeur" when they have a $100 million plus budget. It's almost impossible to not have a striking visual backdrop. Half the games on my Xbox have "visual grandeur" of the same scope. Can we not stop being impressed by shiny things, even once they are absolutely everywhere?

OK, but what about the "big ideas" that everyone talks about. Ooh, but it's so deep. Uh, nope. This is the usual Batman phenomenon where the studio marketing department creates buzzwords to describe the movie, lazy journalists pick it up and spread it, and then the rest of us shmucks absorb it into our vocabulary and repeat it. "Batman is dark and brooding..." No, it isn't. It's a shlocky superhero movie about a rich guy who runs around in a rubber suit talking like a phone perv. He never hurts anyone who doesn't "deserve" it. He's charming, etc. The Watchman? Now that was dark, if flawed. They use their powers to hurt people, intentionally and unintentionally.

So, what are Prometheus' big ideas? "Why are we here?" Sure, that's a big question but don't look for any answers or even suggestions at answers. It's just a question, hanging in the air, like "hey, where can I buy a coffee around here?" You don't get to claim you're deep unless you try to answer the question, even if you fail. Say it with me: The. Emperor. Has. No. Clothes.

In the end I suppose it was a prescient question because it was precisely the one that Andrew and I asked as we sat in our seats watching $130 million worth of dull movie (and $32 of our hard-earned money) go up in flames. "Why are we here?" Indeed.

Hancock: Delivers Too Much & Too Little

After being repulsed by rich, white guy, Bruce Wayne running around in a rubber suit in The Dark Knight, I was ready for a down and out black superhero in the latest Wil Smith video release, Hancock. I loved the last Wil Smith film I saw, I Am Legend. And, what? Shit blows up and the superdude doesn’t like cops or ridiculous uniforms? Sign me up.
Well, not quite.
Sure, Hancock has some funny bits – the armor piercing ejaculation was worth a guffaw and his drunken flight, bouncing a vanload of baddies off nearby buildings. I love that stupid shit. The whale toss? Classic.
There were even a couple of good stories in there – the hated superhero who needs a publicist to improve his image and the superhuman who’s lost his memory and now wanders alone and embittered imagining that he is the only of his kind. But that’s where the problem started. When you’ve only got an hour and a half to two hours – unless you’re making Batman films – you’ve got to be efficient and that means one story only. The result here is that neither story gets its due and none of the relationships are properly developed.
Charlize Theron spends the first half of the film throwing looks and/or jibes towards Wil Smith, setting us up over and over for something significant to happen. But then we have to wait until we’re over halfway into the film to find out what the deal is. By then we’re getting bored.
Boredom is especially a problem because the director, Peter Berg, has chosen to truncate the first story – the recuperation of Hancock’s self-image and public popularity – largely through a montage sequence, in which events are more or less repeated with slight variation. This prevents any drama or identification from developing. Then Hancock is redeemed in the eyes of the public – after years of being a much-hated public nuisance – with one daring rescue that takes up perhaps five minutes of screen time. Suddenly his anger issues are resolved and we move onto the next story between he and Charlize (never mind the total disappearance of the Jason Bateman subplot that drove the first half of the film).
Beyond these story issues, I have to ask, does anyone else out there think that it’s stupid for a superhero who is immortal, can fly, stop bullets, etc. to spend his time stopping dudes from robbing banks and liquor stores? Is that really the best use of their time? I dunno, how about that war in Iraq, or the Congo, or Afghanistan. Why not, you know, stop Israel from bombing the shit out of Gaza. And why not break the siege that is starving the population? How about those death squads killing trade unionists in Colombia and other places?
Instead, we’re led to believe that the biggest problem facing us is petty crime by (usually) black and brown people. That might make sense if you’re trying to sell homes in gated communities but its pathetic in a superhero story. I wouldn't pay to see this film in a movie theatre, I admit. But a five dollar video rental isn't so painful. Besides, it isn't as long as that stupid movie about the guy in the bat suit.