I'm going to go whole hog here and say that Ridley Scott's Prometheus has given us the most divisive and possibly brilliant (but then again maybe not . . .) science fiction film in recent memory. The only movie that comes close, off the top of my head, is the brilliant District 9, but that one probably won't get mentioned in anyone's film classes ten years from now. I think Prometheus will.
A quick scan of the existing reviews of the film produces a surprise for me. Nearly all of them are firmly planted in the meh zone: lots of disappointment with character choices, admiration for the heft of the subject matter (hint: it's not xenomorphs), and awe at the technical mastery of the photography. On that subject, hopefully, Sir Ridley's gorgeous and wildly understated 3D will become a standard bearer for the technology. 3D at the movies is a good thing when the goal of the 3D is to generate the presence of the material and it doesn't go out of its way to throw an axe at you or swing you from rooftop to rooftop. 3D is better than 2D for the same reason that analog audio is better than digital: it's how we see. There will always be a place for 2D photography because of the compositional possibilities and the sheer amount of style you can wring out a world that looks 3D, but it isn't. Wes Anderson has made a career out of it in just the last 15 years. The great lesson from Sir Ridley and (No One Will Ever Call Me Sir) James Cameron is that 3D works best when it is shot that way from the get go. Conversions are evil and awful. Too bad Prometheus lost to Madagascar 3D at the box office. I think the lesson of that will not be lost on the studios, to our great misfortune as moviegoers.
The admiration that critics express for the ideas that Prometheus grapples with reminds me of Chris Rock's bit about Colin Powell from way back when. "He speaks so well, he speaks so well." They used to say. "That's what you say about retarded people, who can talk." When a movie critic writs: "Well at least he is dealing with some heavy ideas" that critic means, "I don't think he dealth with those ideas very well, but he's so famous, successful, and important that my publisher won't let me write that." The overwhelming voice I am hearing about Prometheus is disappointment, mostly because of the characters. And make no mistake, it's understandable. The scene at the dig site in Scotland where Noomi Rapace and whatever that guy's name is discover the glyphs that lead them to Weyland lasts all of 5 minutes and most of that is staring at aerial shots of the pretty Scottish mountains, not listening to either them explain what the scratchings on the cave wall mean. The movie jumps immediately to space without any explanation or elaboration of how this cave painting leads a mega-corporation to drop a trillion dollars on a space mission to an unknown and possibly non-existent planet with no guarantee of success. Why didn't Ridley just drop us in space to start with? Good question. This kind of shorthand (the less generous might call it laziness) is ever present. Characters jump moods with little or no explanation or process. The choices and moods aren't random, it's just that we aren't treated to the entire chain of events between those choices. Normally, a film will walk us through all the points in between the geologist being calm and surveying and stuff to flipping out over a room full of dead aliens. This film does not. But wouldn't you just start flipping out? I kind of liked it because I think it is of a piece with really big idea that lies at the center of the movie: "What the hell is happening and why?"
When you are dealing with the possibility that life on Earth was the result of biological warfare (or not), maybe understanding the behavior of the geologist and his redshirt biologist pal, who are going to do what redshirts do, isn't that necessary. They don't understand what's happening or why life exists, when they bother to think about it, so why should we understand them? I think that bafflement with fundamental existential questions is what the movie is all about. The main gist of the mission of Rapace's Ellen Shaw is to discover how and why humanity exists and the movie is a process of discovering that she isn't even asking the right questions and that she is not equipped to deal with the answers she is given to questions she didn't ask (also, she gets implanted with an alien, sort of). I left the movie certain that the openness and the open endedness of the film would engender anger among the wider population. Ridley Scott just gave us a movie that sort of settled an open question from a thirty year old movie by asking a much bigger set of questions without bothering to answer any of them. What the hell?! I left the movie knowing much less than when I entered it. I haven't seen the anger that I expected, more of a collective "Meh, it's got pretty pictures though." Still, I can't help but think that Prometheus is a movie that creates an itch that can't be scratched, that leaves you wondering about what it meant long after you have left the theater and the pretty pictures behind. That's why I think it might just be as good as 2001. It's a perfect demonstration of how to ask big questions and to not settle for cheap easy answers because it's entirely possible that there might not be any answers at all.
I think maybe I need to see it again . . .
