OMG PROMETHEUS GO SEE PROMETHEUS. If you like Alien, go see Prometheus. If you find Alien to be too much of a horror movie, or not the right kind of science fiction for your palate, don't go see Prometheus.
ASLDKJAHSDLKJSD HOLY SHIT PROMETHEUS BLEW MY MIND. First off, we saw it in IMAX 3D. Which, generally, I am against 3d, and I was not very excited when I realized the IMAX showing was in 3d because I was already having eye strain from staring at a still life for three and a half hours. (Yay summer drawing class.)
But HOLY SHIT. I'm inclined to think it may be partly having a huge, disgustingly massive IMAX screen to work with, but the 3d was beautiful. Impeccable. It didn't detract from the experience, like things flying out of the screen at my face, but rather it was layered such like you felt like you were in the scene, experiencing the view. As if you were the camera.
Granted, if this had not been a cheapo night ($9 for IMAX 3d, $5 for regular showings?!), I would not have paid extra. And I don't know if I could recommend it unless you can see it in 3d, but oh my god. If you've ever watched an IMAX movie where they do massive flyovers of valleys and stuff, and you like that... go see it. It's so gorgeous.
At one point, they also show part of Lawrence of Arabia and PUT THAT IN 3D AS WELL. So fucking quality.
Uh, also? This movie is straight up eye porn. From the scenery, to all the tech, holy shit. Once the plot picks up, you lose it a bit, obviously, but holy shit is it gorgeous when it can be.
So, the plot. I wasn't sure what to expect. I've seen Alien 1 and 2, and I liked the first one, although I can see some of the weaknesses of the second one. And I've seen AVP, I know the franchise can get... ridiculous.
But holy shit. It felt like a solid-as-fuck sequel to Alien. Beautiful tech. Beautiful H. R. Giger creepiness. The plot, while I predicted probably 85% of the things that were going to happen, did not feel predictable, if that makes sense. It didn't feel like "another movie in a long line of rote, repetitive, obvious plots". Maybe because it's well-executed horror? But the predictability only made it better in that sense, I think. You knew what might happen, and it was horrible and beautiful and just unexpected enough to fuck with you.
And yes, this is definitely horror. Let's recount:
1) ALIEN WORMS IN YOUR EYE
NOPE
2) Black shit melts a guy's (glass? wtf) suit to his face, he suddenly turns up outside the ship, with, IF YOU NOTICE, HIS LEGS CONTORTED BACKWARDS OVER HIS SHOULDERS LIKE A FUCKING CRAB
NOOOOPE
3) Every Fucking Thing Else
Not to mention, the ultimate, Ridley-Scott-please-never-stop-writing-Sci-Fi final horror of oh my god they created us and now they want to kill us.
And the whole time, with the intro, and all the David 8 hype, I'm sitting there absorbing the "faith" aspects and the evolution/science aspects and trying to process the archaeology (which, thankfully, was as brief as possible, and can we talk about how they said "Hawaiian", at least that's what I heard? And I think because IMAX wasn't widescreen, I maybe couldn't see it, but it didn't look like they had any Hawaiian shit up there to me? But at the same time it's awesome that they mentioned it because one of the things that pissed me off about Crystal Skull was that fucking vonDaniken not only believed that the Egyptians built pyramids with aliens but also that that's how Hawaiians got in the middle of the fucking ocean and how do you have a movie based on vanDaniken's crazy bullshit and then not have SO MANY DIFFERENT WORLD INFLUENCES?!) and it hit me kind of halfway through the movie oh my god the guy at the start broke down his DNA and added it to the primordial soup and that's how we got proteins?! Or at least there's supposed to be that parallel, because I'm not sure how that works out with the 35,0000-year-old cave drawings and the multiple HUMAN cultures that had a sign ("Invitation"?! Really?!) to go to these other planets. Unless they came back to visit?
So I'm sitting there trying to process that evolution/creationism dichotomy, which is handled SO BEAUTIFULLY in all its fucked-up-ness here, and thought back to how I expected all of those... canopic jars?-- which intentionally harken back to the rows of eggs, stylistically, and I am sure intentionally-- to explode and be some kind of face-hugger thing, when it hits me--
This is no longer about xenomorphs. It's not facehuggers, and chestbursters. (Granted, the pregnancy bit was pretty easy to see coming, no pun intended. Oh, she is conveniently barren? And they have sex? And he's infected? And the entire visual elements of Alien were originally created out of a janked-up interpretation of childbirth? What's that, you say?)
IT'S.
THAT.
FUCKING.
BLACK.
FLUID.
Which I thought at first might be some alien (xenomorph) blood/amniotic fluid/etc. And thinking back to the fact that I was surprised there were no facehuggers-- and why did the other guy get eye worms?! And what was with the fact that the one guy's head exploded, but nothing crawled out? And the same thing happened to the others, according to the pile of bodies? And later, to the guy whose mask melted to his face? Which is when I realized--holy SHIT. Those weirdass cobra-pre-facehuggers were what happened when the WORMS in the fucking DIRT swam around in the fluid. So, the black fluid-- whatever kind of weapon it is-- also takes on aspects of its host, which is why it mutates each time. So then we have two lines, the worm line, and the human line, from David 8 feeding the-dude-who-I-kept-thinking-was-Tom-Hardy. (One drop. What a bastard.) And the worm line... gets shot? I don't recall what happens after it bursts out of the dead guy's mouth. The human line, however, is born into a quadropus, which we find out later mutates into some kind of massively horrific That-Is-Way-More-Than-Four-Arms-And-What-The-Fuck-Was-It-EATING-In-Isolation-How-Did-That-Happen-And-Oh-My-God-It-Has-Beaks-And-TEETH ...thing. AND THEN IT FACEHUGS THE NOT-AN-ELEPHANT-FACE-PREHUMAN AND APPARENTLY PICKS UP SOME OF ITS DNA AND THAT'S APPARENTLY ENOUGH TO MAKE AN EARLY-FORM XENOMORPH. Because something that has the same-but-older (that doesn't even make sense?!) dna causes it to change that much?!
But my point IS
It's not the monsters. It's not the white dudes, who I am inclined to call Titans out of their callbacks to Greek lit and I don't recall if Prometheus was a Titan or not but whatever, although looking it up it appears there is some conflation of Titans and Giants and I kind of mean both? SO TITANS IT IS.
IT IS THIS FUCKING BLACK STUFF. WHICH APPARENTLY THE CAPTAIN THOUGHT WAS SOME WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION, BUT IF YOU TOUCH IT IT OBVIOUSLY BREAKS YOU DOWN RATHER THAN CREATING HORRIFYING MONSTERS AND WHAT DO WE SEE AT THE BEGINNING?
A TITAN-DUDE DRINKING SOME, WILLINGLY, AND DESTROYING HIMSELF INTO THE WATER. WHICH I AM NOT GONNA LIE CREEPED ME OUT SO BAD BECAUSE IT'S LIKE RAPID-ONSET HORRIFYING SCURVY. AND THEN HIS SHIN CRACKED AND NOOOOOOOPE NOPENOPENOPE
SO IT'S ALSO CREATION
BECAUSE WE SHARE THEIR DNA
WE ARE THEIR DNA
So what, whatever killed the 2000-year-old settlement--xenomorphlike somethings, perhaps?--caused them to rethink all their uses of the black stuff, OF WHICH WE ARE ONE PRODUCT AND YET ARE NOT FACEHUGGER TERRORS?, and now they're afraid of us, because they have every evidence to think we are facehugger terrors? (Except for the part where we calmly opened up their cryo and computer, but, you know, whatevs, rational responses are overrated) I don't know. I just know I love this plot. Because it's so FUCKED UP and IMMENSE and COMING TOGETHER and also I thought H. R. Giger was dead? So I was impressed with a lot of the design work? But he's not so maybe he did some new stuff?
ALSO, FRENCH SUBWAY WITH THE HEAD SCULPTURE PROMOTION, NOW ONE THOUSAND TIMES CREEPIER
AND WHILE WE'RE ON THAT SUBJECT
THE "CARVED OUT" LOOK OF THE HALLWAYS, PLUS THE BLACK-DEATH-GUY SITTING THERE LIKE A HUMAN CRAB, THOSE WERE GIVING ME SOME SERIOUS AMIGARA/GYO CREEPS
LET US NEVER THINK OF THESE THINGS AGAIN.
Also my cat hopped up on my bed and I freaked out I was like AAAGGHHH BLACK TODDLER CHESTBURSTER XENOMORPH NOOOO GTFO