So as you might remember, I walked out of Prometheus this weekend generally apathetic. I didn't hate the film, but I didn't particularly like it either. Until I found that bizarre crucifixion theory, I had little interest in giving any further thought to what happened on screen there.
This was kind of funny to me. I'm the guy who can write angry rants about what I hate about both CW shows I can't stop watching and ABC Family shows that I only give half my attention while my wife watches. I can spend three days talking about everything that Sucker Punch did wrong. Conversely, I'm fully capable of giving the same attention to stuff I like, whether it's sticking up for an underrated CW series, or writing a three part series on everything the ER pilot did right.
But when it came to Prometheus, I just didn't give a damn.
So let me ask you, as an artist, would you rather inspire a bad reaction in your audience, or NO reaction? Which is ultimately more insulting? If someone walks out of your film fired up and angry, at least that suggests they had some level of connection or engagement. If they walk out saying "Meh," it points to a lack of the same.
Showing posts with label Prometheus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prometheus. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
So who had a reaction to Prometheus? This might help
For at least a solid week, I've been hearing about how Prometheus was going to either be the Second Coming of filmmaking, or the biggest disappointment since Greedo fired first. With that kind of build-up, I figured that I'd absolutely walk out of the film with at least some kind of fodder for today's blog post.
And I've got nothing, folks.
The movie was pretty to look at, but other than that, it left me completely apathetic. I've seen worse movies that inspired enough passionate hate for two or three posts. I've seen better movies that have had me talking for days.
And with Prometheus, my only reaction is that it's stupid to waste so much hate on Damon Lindelof, because it's clear Ridley Scott made the movie he wanted to make. Love it or hate it, this is Scott's vision.
The movie seems to want to inspire big questions, profound questions, but despite that deliberate ambiguity, I walked out completely indifferent to the answers.
But in surfing the web, I heard an... interesting theory that's only vaguely hinted at by the movie itself. I don't know if it really counts as a spoiler because it comes from something Ridley Scott said at a press conference. (Which is a whole separate issue - if one has to go to outside sources to get this major a clue about what the film means, there's something wrong.)
In the film, we learn that a race of aliens that seemingly seeded the Earth and other worlds thousands of years ago. When the expedition follows clues that lead them to one of those alien installations, they find that most of the beings there were killed about 2000 years ago by.... something. Later clues indicate that "something" is the result of some bioweapons engineering.
Later still, we learn that these "bio-weapons" were going to be sent to Earth. And when the Engineer Aliens come face to face with the human team, they do NOT react well to their presence. It is one of the movie's unanswered mysteries as to why the Engineers would make humanity and then try to destroy it.
Did I mention the film is explicitly set at Christmas? Because that's a clue to what is being called "The Crucifixion Theory." The basic idea is that 2000 years ago, humans angered the aliens by killing Christ, so the Engineer aliens created a biological weapon that would eventually evolve into the Aliens we know from the rest of the series.
Really.
Some ideas are just way too goofy to work in a movie. That's one of them. Honestly, if they'd made THAT more explicit, I might have walked out of the film with more of a reaction. (A BAD one, but still, a reaction.)
Still, I can't ignore that many people had much more of a reaction than I did. Drew McWeeny over at Hit-Fix has put together an interesting article addressing a lot of points that people have left the movie wondering about. Check it out here.
And I've got nothing, folks.
The movie was pretty to look at, but other than that, it left me completely apathetic. I've seen worse movies that inspired enough passionate hate for two or three posts. I've seen better movies that have had me talking for days.
And with Prometheus, my only reaction is that it's stupid to waste so much hate on Damon Lindelof, because it's clear Ridley Scott made the movie he wanted to make. Love it or hate it, this is Scott's vision.
The movie seems to want to inspire big questions, profound questions, but despite that deliberate ambiguity, I walked out completely indifferent to the answers.
But in surfing the web, I heard an... interesting theory that's only vaguely hinted at by the movie itself. I don't know if it really counts as a spoiler because it comes from something Ridley Scott said at a press conference. (Which is a whole separate issue - if one has to go to outside sources to get this major a clue about what the film means, there's something wrong.)
In the film, we learn that a race of aliens that seemingly seeded the Earth and other worlds thousands of years ago. When the expedition follows clues that lead them to one of those alien installations, they find that most of the beings there were killed about 2000 years ago by.... something. Later clues indicate that "something" is the result of some bioweapons engineering.
Later still, we learn that these "bio-weapons" were going to be sent to Earth. And when the Engineer Aliens come face to face with the human team, they do NOT react well to their presence. It is one of the movie's unanswered mysteries as to why the Engineers would make humanity and then try to destroy it.
Did I mention the film is explicitly set at Christmas? Because that's a clue to what is being called "The Crucifixion Theory." The basic idea is that 2000 years ago, humans angered the aliens by killing Christ, so the Engineer aliens created a biological weapon that would eventually evolve into the Aliens we know from the rest of the series.
Really.
Some ideas are just way too goofy to work in a movie. That's one of them. Honestly, if they'd made THAT more explicit, I might have walked out of the film with more of a reaction. (A BAD one, but still, a reaction.)
Still, I can't ignore that many people had much more of a reaction than I did. Drew McWeeny over at Hit-Fix has put together an interesting article addressing a lot of points that people have left the movie wondering about. Check it out here.
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