Why Prometheus was an Epic Fail-My thoughts on where Prometheus went wrong

Why Prometheus was an Epic Fail.

I recently watched the blu-ray of Prometheus and the 3 hours of bonus features and I remembered how excited I was when this movie was announced (Alien prequel, Ridley Scott, Space Jockeys) and how I left the cinema feeling totally disappointed. This was the movie I had been waiting to see since Aliens. It always bugged me that they never tried to explore the Space Jockey/Alien origins in any of the later movies. Alien 3 was just bad and Alien Resurrection was utterly terrible, let alone the Alien Vs Predator movies (the Dark Horse Comics series they were based on were quite good). So, Prometheus, what went wrong? I really wanted to like this movie but it is just bad on so many levels. I won't go into the illogical plot points and script inconsistencies as they've been dissected and autopsied many times, a great blog on these: The Prometheus Code by 11thCommandment on the Fan Fiction site does that brilliantly and is also very funny, check it out www.fanfiction.net/s/0202400/1/The-Prometheus-code I'm just going to touch on the points where I feel they dropped the ball. First up though, as my dear old Da used to say "If you can't say something good about someone, say nothing". There were some things they got right.

The Cast: Pearce, Theron, Fassbender, Elba, Spall, Harris, all great actors doing their best with substandard material.

Production Design: The Prometheus (had a Ron Cobb feel to it's design aesthetic), LV 223, The Rovers,

The Prometheus approaching the ringed moon (based on a Ron Cobb painting, though it always puzzled me a bit as the rings appear to be made up of cloud and I thought planetary rings were made up of ice and smashed up moons and such).

The Preview: Creepy noises from Alien, a sense of mounting dread and terror (that the actual movie failed to deliver). Shivers of anticipation down my spine, when at first I viewed it, how was I to know that Scott and Lindelof, would royally screw it. (sorry, bad poetry).
Now what I feel they got wrong.

Production Design: The Pyramid (this was based on an H.R. Giger design but it was one he did for Jodorowsky's aborted Dune, not the one he designed for Alien, which would have been much more suitable for this film). The Spacesuit design (looked ridiculous, and inconsistent with this universe)
The Space Jockeys: Big, buff albino dudes in suits, not some ancient, eldritch, alien species as they should have been. Too frickin' Star Trek.
Not Enough Giger.

Body Horror: What these movies were mainly about. Instead of the Chestburster scene we get..... A woman giving herself a C-section, not at all iconic or particularly horrific, you can see this sort of thing on T.V. these days. Instead of the Facehugger we get..... a guy performing fellatio on a snake, and he swallows!

Damon Lindelof: Forgive me if you're a fan, but the man is a hack. He can't write his way out of a wet paper bag, e.g. Lost, for the first 3 seasons this was must watch T.V. I was expecting an awesome, apocalyptic, science fiction resolution to this show, but I had to stop watching after a few episodes of season 4, as there were no answers to the mind bending mysteries set up in previous seasons, it just got more and more idiotic. He writes himself into corners he can't get out of, he even apologises for his bad writing a number of times on the Prometheus commentary. He also really, really, sucks at math: "LV 223, how far away from LV 426 is that? It's about 185 LV's away" W.T.F.??? Dude it's EXACTLY 203 LV's away, 185 only gets you as far as LV 408, methinks he should return to a place of learning and brush up on his mathematical knowledge. I had to listen to this one a couple of times as I couldn't believe he said it.

The Lack Of The Lovecraftian Feel Of Alien: Human beings are nothing but insignificant insects in the face of The Elder Gods from the Void.

The Make Up: Guy Pearce in totally unconvincing Old Man make up. The Fifield mutant looked like bad zombie make up from a z grade zombie flick. Shoulda got Greg Nicotero, he produces cinematic quality zombie make up for The Walking Dead on a T.V. budget, just sayin'.

Ridley Scott: The man is a brilliant visual stylist but he's no writer, leave the plot to those that can (just make sure you hire someone who can actually write). For the record I don't think Spaihts is a bad writer, he was just hamstrung by Mr. Scott. His original Alien: Engineers screenplay was far superior to Lindelof's rewrite. I don't think it quite captured the feel of the Alien universe (squishy, gummi bear Aliens sounded a bit ridiculous), but I don't put that down to Spaihts failing as a writer, he's just not that familiar with the Alien universe as he admits on the bonus features. If they had got a writer who was more familiar with Alien canon to work with him they could have had something pretty damn good.

The Heavy Handed Religous Allegory: The engineer sacrificing himself for humanity, the Prometheus arriving at LV 223 on Xmas day, 2000 years since the engineers visited Earth, Shaw's beliefs ( I can't see why any scientist whose life's work is based on finding logical, rational answers to questions religion was invented to answer, would believe in God).

My first big disappointment with Prometheus was: I was expecting to see Giger's design aesthetic from Alien taken to the next level (massive biomechanical cities, people being mutated into hideous Alien/Human hybrids, cool new variations on the classic creature designs. With todays special effects technology imagine a planetary scale Gigeresque biomechanoid society, what a wasted opportunity). They had some awesome concept artists working on this film who understood this (one even says about one of his creature designs, "I Gigered the hell out of it") yet anytime they produced something cool along those lines Ridley Scott would turn his nose up at it and send them off to re-do it. Every concept he went with was far weaker than those he rejected (the CGI Fifield Mutant, the Gigeresque Babyhead version of the newborn Deacon). He states that due to the later Alien films and the abysmal Alien Vs Predator films, he felt that they had ruined the Classic Xenomorph, "It was played out, too on the nose" or some bollocks, so instead of reclaiming it and making it cool again, he decided to move away from it and try and come up with new creatures. Yet all he managed to come up with were limp caricatures of the very creatures he was trying to move away from.

For the Facehugger we get some sort of lame cobra thing that looks like someone designed it in about 5 seconds. No Imagination there. The Octopussy (literally, freeze frame the movie, that thing is just a mass of vaginas).

For the Chestburster we get something like a giant sperm with tentacles, yet again no imagination there. (I think Ridley Scott really needs to get laid).

For the Classic Xenomorph we get the Deacon (which also doubles for the Chestburster) which is born fully formed, (this is one thing that pissed me of about Alien 3 too, the Dogburster was born as a miniature version of the adult Alien. The Chestburster from Alien was a snakelike version of the Alien that gave you no real clues as to what form the final creature would take, except for a mouth full of nasty looking teeth. It had to skulk off and metamorphose somewhere in private, this makes the first reveal of the adult creature more poweful. If you establish something in your franchise stick with a consistent vision).

Finally my biggest disappointment with Prometheus: The Space Jockeys being big, ripped, albino humanoids instead of an alien species as they should have been. From the bonus features you can tell that most of the creative team thought this was a BAD IDEA, but they didn't have the bollocks to stand up to Ridley Scott and say " You're going to alienate (hah) most of the fanbase if you go ahead with this" PITY.

Maybe Prometheus 2 can rectify some of these problems, maybe the engineers in Prometheus weren't the actual Space Jockeys but some sort of cloned slaves that serve the real creatures, and when Shaw gets there we see their true society in all it's hideous, biomechanical, Gigeresque glory. Or maybe the events in Prometheus were all just a dream Shaw had whilst in hypersleep (now that sounds vaguely familiar) but I aint gonna place any bets on it. This also doesn't bode well for Alien 5, unless Blonkamp can reclaim the space Jockeys and put this franchise back on the rails, (I'm a bit dubious about him being the right person for the job, As like Ridley Scott, he is an amazing visual stylist, but his movies don't cut it for me, District 9 was a schizophrenic mess, Elysium was a good concept poorly executed, and I hope to hell he doesn't cast Sharlto Copley in it, I'm sorry but that guy can't act for shit, e.g. his outrageous overacting in Elysium, why do people keep hiring him?). I also think they should excise Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Alien Vs Predator 1 & 2 and Prometheus from the canon (or shoot them with one) and start fresh from Aliens, and I really don't care wether Ripley and Hicks return (aren't they a bit old for a continuation of Aliens anyway?) these movies are called Alien not frickin' Ripley. For a taster of what

Prometheus should have been check out the Dark horse Comics series Aliens: Apocalypse, The Avenging Angels, they shoulda got those guys to write it. Anyway I do tend to ramble on when I get started, so I welcome feedback positive or negative, let me know what you think.

For me Prometheus = EPIC FAIL.

R.I.P. Hans Rudi Giger - A True Visionary.

(*Post broken up into paragraphs by Svanya)