Let’s talk ideas. I’m completely with you on some of those movies you mention; 2001 is a seminal, essential piece of science-fiction, and I’m a huge fan of The Fountain (which, like you, I find to be masterful and extremely underrated). As for Tree of Life, I respected it a lot more than I liked it; I’ve seen almost every Terence Malick film (the only one I haven’t seen yet is The New World, which is on my DVR), and I always find them more admirable than actually enjoyable, if that makes sense. But I get what you’re saying, and I like the benchmarks you’ve set for the film. (Although I’d argue that Tree of Life isn’t really science-fiction, but that’s a side point.) Have you seen much Tarkovsky? Specifically Stalker and Solaris (or Soderbergh’s solid, underrated remake that’s equally rich in terms of ideas)? I ask because I think you’d find them interesting if you like movies like the ones you mentioned.
Now, onto Prometheus and its plot structure. One of the things I most enjoyed about the film is the way it used other genres as a way of getting into its themes and ideas. You mentioned the daily jaunts, and you’re right that framing the story as one long exploration would have been a great way to immerse the viewer in the mood and horror of the place, slowly revealing the answers within. Instead, though, what Prometheus does is set itself up as a standard scientific mission. That means you take your time to explore. More importantly, it means that our scientists get their answers (such as they are) in stages. And each stage certainly indicates that they should get out while the getting is good. To get into the title for a minute, Prometheus was punished for stealing the secret of fire from the gods. Our scientists, similarly, want to understand the secrets of the gods, despite being warned again and again that this isn’t a good idea, and that the answers they get will only bring horror and death. And yet, they keep going. That makes the return journeys all the more important – they are choosing to return to that site again and again, making a conscious effort to ignore the warnings they’ve been given – which, of course, leads to their destruction.
As you’ve pointed out, Prometheus is in a weird place. It is, however you choose to term it, intimately connected to the Alien universe, so there’s no real way to recapture that sense of dread and the unknown – not entirely. And yet, I think it’s instructive to compare the way both films use genre trappings to get at something more. Alien is a horror film, sci-fi setting or no, but the way it uses its blue-collar crew turns the film into something more interesting – regular people being used as pawns by a corporation that views them as expendable. Prometheus gives us a similar setting, although with scientists instead of blue-collar workers; once again, what seems like a simple mission is complicated and ultimately destroyed by the ulterior motives that hide behind it.
Now, onto Prometheus and its plot structure. One of the things I most enjoyed about the film is the way it used other genres as a way of getting into its themes and ideas. You mentioned the daily jaunts, and you’re right that framing the story as one long exploration would have been a great way to immerse the viewer in the mood and horror of the place, slowly revealing the answers within. Instead, though, what Prometheus does is set itself up as a standard scientific mission. That means you take your time to explore. More importantly, it means that our scientists get their answers (such as they are) in stages. And each stage certainly indicates that they should get out while the getting is good. To get into the title for a minute, Prometheus was punished for stealing the secret of fire from the gods. Our scientists, similarly, want to understand the secrets of the gods, despite being warned again and again that this isn’t a good idea, and that the answers they get will only bring horror and death. And yet, they keep going. That makes the return journeys all the more important – they are choosing to return to that site again and again, making a conscious effort to ignore the warnings they’ve been given – which, of course, leads to their destruction.
As you’ve pointed out, Prometheus is in a weird place. It is, however you choose to term it, intimately connected to the Alien universe, so there’s no real way to recapture that sense of dread and the unknown – not entirely. And yet, I think it’s instructive to compare the way both films use genre trappings to get at something more. Alien is a horror film, sci-fi setting or no, but the way it uses its blue-collar crew turns the film into something more interesting – regular people being used as pawns by a corporation that views them as expendable. Prometheus gives us a similar setting, although with scientists instead of blue-collar workers; once again, what seems like a simple mission is complicated and ultimately destroyed by the ulterior motives that hide behind it.
"Our scientists, similarly, want to understand the secrets of the gods, despite being warned again and again that this isn’t a good idea, and that the answers they get will only bring horror and death."
I like your point that it’s not so much any one scene that bothers you, but the collective whole. That’s something I can understand, even if I don’t agree. Take the C-section/abortion scene. Yes, in fact, my wife did have a C-section, and her first delivery was so rough that we ended up in an extended hospital stay before she could walk. So I know what labor/surgery can do to a woman. But in general, I’m willing to handwave that for a science-fiction story. I mean, in a story with interstellar travel, medical diagnostic pods, suspended animation, and malevolent androids, what’s a surgery that leaves you still functioning? I just never felt like that was something that needed extra explanation, especially when you factor in the adrenalin and everything else going on. But I realize that’s a subjective thing. I remember giving a friend of mine grief during the first X-Men. There’s a scene near the end where Wolverine leaps through a set of spinning rings, and my friend scoffed in disbelief, leading me to ask “So you’re okay with dudes with claws, and women controlling the weather, and a magnetic mutant spinning the rings, but a tough jump, that’s the breaking point?” But I know what you mean. Everyone has that point where it’s just too much to buy into. For me, if you’ve got a medical pod doing surgeries and people like Weyland being kept alive, walking off a surgery is within the boundaries of that world unless explicitly stated otherwise.
As for Vickers in love and death: the sex scene never really bothered me either. Apparently there was a scene originally planned in the first Alien that strongly implied Ripley was hooking up with Dallas; their argument (“they” being the writers/Scott) was that on a long journey like that, you would do what you could to scratch that itch. So that was fine with me – it was people hooking up because they could and it was a stress relief. It might have been a one time thing, it might be something Vickers does – but to me, it was entirely in keeping with her character. She really doesn’t care about these people, doesn’t care about anything but the mission, and uses Elba to get laid and then never mentions it again. And besides, would you really blame Idris Elba for wanting to sleep with Charlize Theron? What kind of monster are you to block a man like that?
And her much maligned death, to me, always comes to the “bravery of being out of range,” to quote Roger Waters. Yes, theoretically, you could have run to the side – although, given the size of the ship, would that really have worked? I don’t mean that as a sarcastic point, but a legitimate one. It seemed to me at that point that they were fucked, no matter what. The ship was coming down, and run whichever way you wanted, you didn’t have the time or the speed to get out of the way. So, yes, I guess she could have run to the side. But I also think there was a pure panic instinct kicking in, and her first thought was “GET AWAY!” Logical? No, not at all. But I think that fight or flight instinct was just telling her to run, and she wasn’t really considering what to do about it.
Here’s the thing, though – I don’t really know that any of this is convincing you at all. None of these things really bothered me all that much at the time, and as I think about the movie as a whole, I still feel like it holds up thematically and tonally. I can understand how a bunch of little things can add up to ruin a movie for you, but for me, these things never even nagged at me while I was watching it; the only real exception was the overly confident biologist and the alien, and even that one didn’t bother me too much in the big scheme of things. So I guess here’s my question: what’s the line between dismissable flaw and dealbreaking flaw for you? Why do you think this movie works for me and not for you? Am I looking too much at the big picture and not the details, or are you too focused on the plotting and not the ideas? Or are we both just coming at this the wrong way, do you think?
- Josh Mauthe
As for Vickers in love and death: the sex scene never really bothered me either. Apparently there was a scene originally planned in the first Alien that strongly implied Ripley was hooking up with Dallas; their argument (“they” being the writers/Scott) was that on a long journey like that, you would do what you could to scratch that itch. So that was fine with me – it was people hooking up because they could and it was a stress relief. It might have been a one time thing, it might be something Vickers does – but to me, it was entirely in keeping with her character. She really doesn’t care about these people, doesn’t care about anything but the mission, and uses Elba to get laid and then never mentions it again. And besides, would you really blame Idris Elba for wanting to sleep with Charlize Theron? What kind of monster are you to block a man like that?
And her much maligned death, to me, always comes to the “bravery of being out of range,” to quote Roger Waters. Yes, theoretically, you could have run to the side – although, given the size of the ship, would that really have worked? I don’t mean that as a sarcastic point, but a legitimate one. It seemed to me at that point that they were fucked, no matter what. The ship was coming down, and run whichever way you wanted, you didn’t have the time or the speed to get out of the way. So, yes, I guess she could have run to the side. But I also think there was a pure panic instinct kicking in, and her first thought was “GET AWAY!” Logical? No, not at all. But I think that fight or flight instinct was just telling her to run, and she wasn’t really considering what to do about it.
Here’s the thing, though – I don’t really know that any of this is convincing you at all. None of these things really bothered me all that much at the time, and as I think about the movie as a whole, I still feel like it holds up thematically and tonally. I can understand how a bunch of little things can add up to ruin a movie for you, but for me, these things never even nagged at me while I was watching it; the only real exception was the overly confident biologist and the alien, and even that one didn’t bother me too much in the big scheme of things. So I guess here’s my question: what’s the line between dismissable flaw and dealbreaking flaw for you? Why do you think this movie works for me and not for you? Am I looking too much at the big picture and not the details, or are you too focused on the plotting and not the ideas? Or are we both just coming at this the wrong way, do you think?
- Josh Mauthe