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Green Lantern (2011) a (mildly) belated review

I’ve mentioned before my love for what is arguably the first -and equally arguably the best– “modern” superhero film, 1978’s Superman.  This is a film that offered viewers an incredible array of material.  You had drama, you had tragedy.  You also had slapstick, romance, and (of course) high adventure.  Heck, there was even a quasi-musical/dance number thrown in, to boot!

What is most amazing is that with all those different elements, tones, and styles, the movie worked.  Through clever writing, directing, acting, and editing, all that stuff came together into a wonderful whole and the film never felt excessive or overwhelming (In the theatrical print…I’m not quite as enamored of the “extended” cut released to DVD).

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the 2011 film Green Lantern.  As I finally watched the film a couple of days ago, I couldn’t help but feel that the people behind the cameras were hoping to match Superman‘s mojo.  They offered a big story that featured a big cast and took you to quite literally the ends of the universe.  The movie also features a hero that would prove his worth before an awesome foe, all while re-connecting with the love of his life.

Unfortunately, all those ideas are thrown at the viewers without the skill of a Superman.  Instead of a fascinating whole, the film works only in spurts and seems content to throw out comic books characters after characters and hope that that alone makes the film interesting.

It doesn’t.

Now, I’m a fan of Green Lantern, particularly the silver age iteration as illustrated by the incomparable Gil Kane and, just a little later, Neal Adams.  I think the character’s back story and supporting cast are interesting and naturals for film.  However, did the film really need to have Dr. Amanda Waller in it?  Worse, given all the things thrown out (including Waller’s character herself!), did we also need to spend precious screen time showing her “origin”?  And while the character Tomas Kalmaku, unlike Dr. Waller, was a big part of the early Green Lantern comic books stories, he was mostly irrelevant in the film and did nothing more than take up screen time that could have gone to Blake Lively’s Carol Ferris.

The movie offers us two big villains, but given what ultimately happens with Hector Hammond, the Earth-bound villain, I can’t help but wondering if it might have been better not to have Hammond appear at all and instead focus the main conflict entirely on Parallax.

Or, even better yet, why present Green Lantern arch villain Sinestro in his “pre-evil” form at all?  He would have made a far better villain instead of being shown as a noble member of the Green Lantern Corps that (inexplicably) succumbs to evil after the credits roll.  That’s like giving us a new Batman film with the Joker featured prominently within it as a good guy and then teasing us only at the very end that he’ll be the bad guy next time around.

Sometimes, the next time doesn’t come around.

As for the acting, the two leads, Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern and Blake Lively as Carol Ferris, are…ok.  While they didn’t display the charisma Christopher Reeves and Margot Kidder had in Superman, I thought a better, clearer, and more focused story might have helped show them off much better.

In sum, count me among those that cannot recommend this film.

Movies

Wrecked (2010) a (mildly) belated review

I first heard of the movie Wrecked back when it was nearing release in 2010.  Then, nothing.

In fact, the film seemed to so effectively disappear that I couldn’t help but wonder if it was released at all.  I guess it was.  IMDB lists the film as having made a paltry $4821 in a two week run on a single screen.  Considering the film starred Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody, that alone is stunning if not unusual in this day of modest or direct to video releases.

Nonetheless, when I spotted the film airing on IFC, I set the DVR to record it, sat back, and gave it a whirl.

So, did the film deserve a better fate?  Was it unjustly dumped?

The answer, frustratingly, is yes and no.  Wrecked concerns a man (Brody) who awakens to find himself sitting in the front passenger seat of a very bad car crash.  The car is at the bottom of a forest ravine.  In the back seat is the corpse of one of the other passengers of the car.  Several feet before the remains of the vehicle lies the body of the presumed driver.

The lone survivor has no memory of how he came to be in this predicament nor who the corpses of those around him are.  He too is injured, and his leg is pinned down hard under the car’s dashboard.  For the first half of the film he drifts in and out of consciousness and tries to recall who he is and what he was doing before the crash while trying to simply get out of the wreckage.

Soon, ominous hints as to who he might be appear.  He finds a handgun under the driver’s seat and has flashes of memory of a possible robbery.

Is he a bad guy?  Did he kill someone?

The questions haunt him even as he tries to escape the wreckage of his vehicle.

I won’t go into too many more details, but suffice to say the film does  hold your attention for most of its run time despite the fact that what we have here is for the most part a one person/one setting story with very little actual dialogue and plenty of symbolism.  Some of the symbolism, I felt, worked well while others left me more confused than illuminated.  Unfortunately, the movie also runs out of steam after a while and, particularly in the later part of the second half, becomes something of a chore to sit through.

However, where the movie fails the most is when it finally does offer a resolution and explanation as to who our protagonist is and why he was in the car.  The explanation, unfortunately, is quite banal…almost too simple.  It makes you think that this film could have made a good one hour episode of a mystery TV show rather than a 91 minute full theatrical feature.

There is one other thing that I found very bothersome, but to get into that requires SPOILERS.  They follow the movie’s trailer…

SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

As the movie progresses, it is clear our protagonist is having hallucinations.  While the dog he encounters may or may not actually be with him (I believe it to be a hallucination, too), he also sees a woman in and around his immediate area…a woman he slowly begins to think might have been a victim of his (possible) crime.  Considering the film’s eventual resolution and the woman’s actual identity, the way our protagonist deals with this hallucination is very bizarre, to say the least.

Regardless, Wrecked is an intriguing film that, unfortunately, ends with a whimper rather than a bang.  Too bad.

Movies

Daybreakers (2009) a (mildly) belated review

An interesting attempt to create a vampire “culture” while adhering to vampire lore, Daybreakers is nonetheless a disappointment despite some pretty good ideas.

The movie cleverly examines a world where vampires are at the top of the food chain and humans a rung below.  Unfortunately, the vampire race is immediately presented as being in danger.  Their main source of food, human blood, is rapidly running out and vampire scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) tries to find an “artificial” blood which could be used to feed the vampire culture’s voracious appetite while keeping humans alive.  Dalton, as presented, is a conflicted character.  While being a vampire, it is clear he has sympathy towards humans and realizes the vampire culture is corrupt and in decline.  Later in the film, we also discover that he longs to return to his own humanity.

The vampire culture within the film is well thought through.  The vampires drive cars that offer protection from the daylight and they live in appropriately dark abodes.  Child vampires and vagrants run along the streets, their souls obviously much older than their outward appearances.  All long for blood, and the deprivation of their source of food turns these vampires into hideous creatures who cannot be controlled.

Into this milieu Dalton finds Lionel Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a man who was a vampire yet somehow was able to turn back to human.  It is this search for the cure to vampirism that forms the bulk of the second half of the film.

The movie’s main problem, however, is that it was clearly intended to be a much longer, much more detailed work than what we ultimately see on the screen.  Indeed, watching Daybreakers is like reading a CliffsNotes version of the same…so many characters and situations are thrown at you and dealt with so quickly that you can’t help but wonder how much of the original screenplay was left behind or on the cutting room floor.

I suspect that the original concept and story was much better fleshed out.  Had the film been, say, a half hour or so longer and allowed more time for story development, we might have felt more sympathy for some of the characters and their fates (whether good or bad).  Instead, we have a film that feels like it rushes through what it wants to present to us and never allows us the opportunity to fully immerse ourselves into what we’re seeing before reaching the inevitable end.

Movies

The Guard (2011) a (mildly) belated review

So I was in one of those “lulls” with my Netflix queue.  While waiting for a couple of movies to be released in the next few weeks, I had my pick of films I was curious about but not necessarily waiting with bated breath to see.

Among them I chose The Guard, a 2011 comedy featuring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.  I recalled the movie received positive reviews upon being released even if the film seemed to disappear rather quickly from theaters without garnering all that much attention from audiences.

So I gave it a whirl.  I didn’t expect all that much, which made what came next all that more delightful.

The Guard is, to put it bluntly, one of the most consistently funny films I’ve seen in a very long time.  From the beginning to the end I found myself laughing out loud at the situations presented and the very clever dialogue.

The story: Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a walking contradiction of a police officer.  He operates in a very small town in Ireland and is viewed as a “loose cannon” by those around him.  He is alternately vulgar, seemingly corrupt (to a point), and, some may think, dim witted.  However, there’s much more to Boyle than meets the eye.  Over the course of the film, he becomes involved with a group of shady, violent, and surprisingly eloquent (!) drug runners as well as a very “fish out of water” American FBI agent (Cheadle) who is hunting them down.

Those expecting big action sequences will likely be disappointed.  However, those same people should be won over by the movie’s clever and hilarious script.  If, like me, you’re a little too accustomed to American English, feel free to use the subtitle feature to capture every delicious bit of dialogue.

It is rare to see a comedy that manages to sustain its energy level throughout its run time.  Though The Guard wasn’t one of the films I was “dying” to get to on my queue list, I’m very happy to have given it a try.  Highly recommended.

Movies

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) a (mildly) belated review

One of my favorite “slow burn” films is the 1968 Steve McQueen classic Bullitt.  The movie features a dense plot and urges its viewers to pay attention to what’s going on.  Steve McQueen himself, as the title character, appears at times to be almost sleepwalking through the proceedings, ever watching and paying attention to what’s going on around him.  In the end, we realize he knows only too well what’s happening and has played his cards just right, dealing with his superiors and his superior’s superiors while faithfully solving a perplexing case.

I’ve long maintained that the movie’s one “superfluous” sequence is perhaps it’s best:  The justifiably famous car chase sequence through the hilly streets of San Francisco.  This sequence didn’t have to be in the film, yet it was there, a cheery on top of the cake, which for a moment made a “day in a policeman’s life” drama into an exciting action film.

To me, all this works to make an absolutely smashing film.

Fast forward forty four years and last night I popped the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (from now on I’ll refer to it as TTSS to save on typing) into my DVD player and gave it a whirl.  TTSS is an adaptation of the classic John Le Carre Cold War spy drama and, like the book, is set in the early 1970’s.  You wouldn’t think such a work would have all that much in common with Bullitt, a police vs. the mob film from 1968, but you’d be surprised by the elements they do share.

In the case of TTSS, like Bullitt you’re dealing with a thoughtful protagonist who’s called in to solve a sticky situation.  Bullitt’s sticky situation involves the mob and a witness who the higher ups want him to protect so that he will get to testify before a jury.  TTSS involves a semi-retired spy who is called in to find out who among his closest ex-allies is a Russian mole.  The protagonist in both films quietly observes all that goes around him, often realizing more than others realize.  Both films also present the material almost blandly, showing us the routine of each day in a mostly realistic fashion.

But while Bullitt held my attention throughout, TTSS ultimately never really catches fire.  Years before I recall seeing the original TTSS television mini-series with Alec Guiness in the title role, but I recall very few of the details.  What I do remember is that it, unlike this new film, held my attention.

While the acting within this new TTSS movie is uniformly good and the presentation of early 1970’s London is quite spectacular, the direction and pace of the film borders on the outright boring.  I suspect the people behind the film were trying their best to make an “anti”-Bourne type spy film, but one wonders why they decided to present virtually everything in such a sedate way.

And, no, I wasn’t hoping for an exciting -though perhaps superfluous- car chase in the middle of the film.

Might have helped, though!

In the end, I simply cannot recommend the theatrical version of TTSS.  A real shame, given the talents involved.

As an interesting comparison, here’s a sequence from the original TV version of TTSS:

Movies

The Raid: Redemption (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Heard plenty of good things about The Raid: Redemption, and being a fan of action films, I just had to give it a try.

Filmed in Jakarta, Indonesia, The Raid: Redemption starts out really, really well.  In fact, the opening of the film reminded me in a very pleasant way to what I consider one of director John Carpenter’s very best films, Assault on Precinct 13 (the original 1976 version, not the pretty lame 2005 remake).

The plot of The Raid is simple yet very effective:  A group of young SWAT officers is tasked to silently enter a fortified building within the Jakarta slums.  Their mission is seek out and apprehend the crime lord that runs that building and bring him to justice.  However, halfway up the building the hunters become the hunted when the many criminals residing within the building target the SWAT team.

There are a few other plot flourishes I won’t get into but suffice to say the film is a lean, mean action adventure that should satisfy most fans of this type of genre.

If there are any quibbles I have with the film, it is that there are several martial arts-type fights that, frankly, took me out of the nitty gritty nature of the film.  Allow me to elaborate.  In the movie’s early going, the sense of claustrophobia and the real fear of sudden death lurking behind any corner were very effective.  You had a sense that the SWAT members were trapped in a hell where they would have to claw their way to freedom.

However, by the time the remaining SWAT members were down to using their fists and knives against the many villains they faced, the protracted fight scenes unfortunately resembled more typical martial art films and removed me from the more noir elements present up until that point.

Please note, though, that this is a relatively small quibble.  There is word that producers in the United States are working on a remake of the film.  I’m not terribly surprised.  This is the type of feature that should be easily translated for American audiences.  There is very little that need be changed.

So if you’re in the mood for a solid action film, you could do far worse than spend some time watching The Raid.

 

Movies

Lockout (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I still have pretty vivid memories of first seeing the poster for a then upcoming film that was scheduled to be released in 1981 called Escape From New York.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Back then in the stone age of 1981, there was a great possibility movies you never heard of at all would suddenly “appear” before you either as posters (as was the case with that film) or via movie trailers.  Nowadays, of course, we hear about, and sometimes even see clips of films as they’re being made.  The element of surprise is, for the most part, gone.

When I finally saw Escape From New York, I had a curiously paradoxical reaction to it.  I absolutely LOVED parts of it, from the clever storyline to actor Kurt Russell’s bizarre Clint Eastwood-talking Snake Plissken.  But the film seemed to lose steam as it went along and I felt that as good as certain elements of it were, overall the film didn’t thrill me as much as I hoped it would.

Over the years, my opinion of it has changed, albeit slightly.  I’ve grown to appreciate more of the film and realized, in retrospect, that much of my disappointment might well have been due to the film’s very low budget.  The fact is that most of the special effects are presented at the start of the film while the rest of it features our characters running around dark streets that might well have been anywhere and, as it turned out, most of the city scenes were indeed not filmed in New York!

However, the good stuff stuck with me and when rumors came out that director John Carpenter envisioned making more Snake Plissken films, even one he wistfully (or perhaps jokingly?) called Escape From Earth, I was certainly all in favor of seeing that.

In the end Escape From New York proved something of a box office dud.  Given its budget, it certainly made its money back and then some, but it took many more years -fifteen in fact- before Escape From L.A. was released in 1996.  Sporting a far greater budget and the same lead and director, Escape From L.A. nonetheless proved a box office flop, earning less than its cost.

And that, it appeared, was that.

Until, that is, this year when producer/writer/director Luc Besson released Lockout.  Produced and co-written by Mr. Besson, Lockout is, essentially, Escape From Earth as envisioned by him.  Guy Pearce stars as Snow, a somewhat more gregarious version of Snake Plissken while Maggie Grace stars as Emile Warnock, the daughter of the President of the United States.  The plot is a mild variation of both John Carpenter Escape films:  The daughter of the President goes to an orbiting penal colony, the prisoners manage to escape and take over, and Snake…er…Snow goes in to find and free her.  Oh, and the clock is ticking.

When I first saw the trailer for Lockout I was intrigued.  My younger, more strident self (as opposed to the more mellow person I’ve since become) might have been furious that Mr. Besson (who is also listed in the credits as having the “original idea” of this film!!!!) would so cavalierly rip off another person’s concept.

Then again, the John Carpenter Escape property is, let’s face it, dead.  Kurt Russell isn’t as young as he was before and I suspect he can’t pull off the character of Snake Plissken anymore (there was talk, by the way, of a remake of Escape From New York with new actors in the central roles, so obviously the studios already feel that Mr. Russell may be too old for the part).  And John Carpenter, as big a cult movie director as he is, hasn’t made a “big” feature in a very, very long time…and I suspect studios aren’t exactly lining up to front him big money to do another Escape movie.

So when Mr. Besson and his “original” story idea for the film Lockout appeared, I couldn’t be too terribly upset.  In fact, I was hoping that Mr. Besson and company captured some of the Escape magic -the good stuff versus the bad- and made some mindless piece of entertainment that I could sit back to and enjoy.

However, early reviews of the film were not very positive.  In fact, most of the reviews I read were quite negative (the film scored an unimpressive 37% positive among critics and an almost equal 40% positive among audiences at Rottentomatoes.com).

Still, I wanted to see it.  Yesterday, I finally got the chance.

Long story short (if that’s possible at this point): Lockout is a mediocre film.  If you’re curious to see someone else’s take on the Escape films, you won’t come away impressed with what’s here, but neither do I think you’ll be begging for the pain to go away.

Guy Pearce is mostly good in the role of Snow, but I felt at times he wasn’t terribly invested in his role.  He appeared to be…and I could be guilty of mind reading here…uninterested in most of what was happening.  His delivery of lines was one-note and it appeared he was doing the bare minimum required.  It’s a tough thing to say of an actor’s work, especially one I happen to like quite a bit (he was absolutely terrific in both Memento and L.A. Confidential, among other films).  Maggie Grace, on the other hand, seems to realize the nature of this film and, for the most part, delivers in her role.  That’s not to say she saves the film, only that at the very least she stands toe to toe (and sometimes ahead!) of the movie’s actual protagonist.

Unfortunately, where the film mostly fails is in its all too busy plot.  Lockout starts with a strange bust gone bad.  The action sequences here aren’t quite as terrible as some have stated, yet not enough explanation and context is ever offered to what exactly our hero was doing here…or what it was he was hoping to get his hands on.  Even by the end of the film, we’re still not sure what exactly was so terribly important to his character in those early sequences.

When the movie moves to the prison colony satellite, the jail break sequence proves way, way too easy.  MILD SPOILERS:  Essentially one man gets his hands on one gun and manages to free the nearly 500 homicidal prisoners in minutes.  Did the people behind this penal colony not have any decent security designs?  And did they really have to put the “Get the prisoners out of stasis” button only a few feet away from an interview room he escapes from?

Very silly stuff.

Once those opening sections of the film are over, however, it does manage to move along decently.  It’s a silly affair, but I’m glad I was able to satisfy my curiosity without feeling the need to fling my remote control at the TV set.

Still, it could -it should– have been so much better.

Movies

Attack the Block (2011) a (mildly) belated review

When I first heard about Attack the Block, a quirky British alien invasion/Our Gang mash-up, the word was mighty positive, indeed.

Our Gang eventually inspired The Goonies, which this film is probably a bit closer in theme to Attack the Block than the far more innocent Our Gang shorts of the early 20th Century.

As mentioned, early word was very positive about this film, and it was on that basis alone that I became curious to see it.  I think the film is indeed a good one, but it has some issues, particularly in the first fifteen or so minutes of the film, that almost made me want to eject it from my DVD player before going much further.

The problem -at least for me- is that when our “heroes” are first introduced, they’re engaging in something that borders on Clockwork Orange territory (without the sexual assault).  I suppose its a bold move to present troubled youth in such an unflinching way early on in the film, but given I’m not sure if giving the audience such a negative first impression was a wise move.

What follows, the meat of the story, is what I mentioned before:  An alien invasion.  This invasion, too, is presented in a mostly unflinching way.  There is blood shed and lives are lost.  The alien invaders, while not quite on the scary level of the Alien or Predator creatures, are nonetheless a force not to be trifled with, and the eventual resolution of the storyline is quite clever.

Which is a long way toward saying I recommend this film but urge viewers to stick through the opening act which may make you think you’re about to see a very different film from what follows.  Once Attack the Block gets rolling (roughly at the point where our protagonist is arrested), things move briskly, leading to a good wrap up.

Movies

John Carter (2012) a (mildly) belated review/autopsy

Has there been a movie that received as much bad press as 2012’s John Carter?

Based on the 1912 novel A Princess of Mars by author Edgar Rice Burroughs (his most famous creation, of course, is Tarzan), the movie was released earlier this year and proved a massive flop.  It cost in the neighborhood of $250 million to make (not including marketing, which I’ll return to in a moment) and its worldwide take was a decent, but far from good considering the costs, $179 million.  The losses from this Disney production’s release resulted in the resignation of a chairman within the company.

The fact is that the film appeared doomed almost from the beginning.  Word leaked early on in the production that there were problems.  There was whispers of dissatisfaction from the studio regarding the work in progress.  There was also word of reshoots and rumors that Andrew Stanton, the director of the film who was best known for his computer animated Pixar work, was in over his head with actual human actors.

When the film neared actual release, I had the feeling potential audiences already were poisoned against the movie.  These opinions certainly weren’t helped by the film’s very bland title (the studios appeared worried mentioning “Mars” in the title would turn off the already turned off audiences) and a truly inept advertising campaign.  In fact, the later may well have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Yet as the film was released and proved a financial calamity for Disney, I couldn’t help but notice that despite the massive disinterest shown by audiences, the reviews of the film weren’t all that…awful.  True, the film polled at a mediocre 52% among critics at Rottentomatoes.com, but it held a higher 64% among the audiences that bothered to see the film.

So I wondered:  Was the film unfairly condemned?  Did it deserve a better fate?  Were potential audiences wrong in turning their backs?

I was curious to find out.  I missed the film in theaters but when it arrived on home video, I gave it a look.  So, what did I see?  In brief, a good, though not great adventure film.

To begin, John Carter is gorgeous to look at.  The visuals are quite impressive and I felt the filmmakers most certainly captured the “look” of the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels. The computer generated effects are, for the most part, seamless. The alien creatures look quite real, and Taylor Kitsch looks good as John Carter and Lynn Collins looks equally good as Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars.

Unfortunately, that the best thing I can say about them.  As handsome as the two actors are in the title roles, they really lack chemistry.  I always felt that one of the things that made the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs so successful, apart from the obvious pulp adventures presented, was the sexuality.  Both Tarzan and the Mars series featured brawny, swashbucking men’s men and incredibly beautiful women in peril.  As readers we longed for Tarzan to get Jane.  In the Mars series, we longed for John Carter to marry Dejah Thoris.

But in this film, the sexuality is toned waaaay down.  As I said before, part of the problem is that the actors lack chemistry.  The other part, I suspect, is that the producers/director really clamped down on the sexuality.  For most of the movie John Carter and Dejah Thoris show little interest in each other, it seemed, and certainly nowhere near the sexual tension present between Tarzan and Jane in films from the 1930’s.

There is also so much going on that I couldn’t help but wonder just how much was cut.  The character of Sola, for example, accompanies Carter and Thoris for the middle section of the film on but is relegated to being such a minor character with so few lines of worth that one wonders why they even bothered having her in the film at all.  The movie features three main “villains”, but once again very little is shown of them and when two meet their fate, one feels little satisfaction that the villain(s) got what was coming to them.

I suspect that John Carter was a victim of a combination of factors, from studio interference to director inexperience to an underdeveloped script.  The actors, I felt, did what they could and weren’t bad in their roles, though I suppose an argument could be made that the two leads failed to register enough chemistry between them.

And yet, having said all that, the film is not the disaster audiences suspected it would be.  It is a pleasant enough time killer with some good humor and some impressive set pieces but, and its a very BIG “but”, given the film’s costs, it could and should have been so much more.  On a four star scale, I’d give John Carter 2 1/2 stars.

Movies

Prometheus (2012) a (right on time!) review

Of the films scheduled for release this summer, there were only a couple I really, really wanted to see in theaters.  Of those, there was one I absolutely would not miss:  Director Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe, Prometheus.

In spite of my excitement to see the film, I tried to keep my expectations low, for I knew that sometimes those things lead to a huge let down.  In the end, I chose to see the film in as “good” a format as possible:  In IMAX and 3D.  I sat in the theater and, for the very last time, kept my hopes in check.  The film played out…

…and I found myself incredibly disappointed.

A few days have passed since then, and I’ve taken some time to process my thoughts.  I still feel this film is a major disappointment, and presents the viewer with too many inept moments and silly character actions, yet I nonetheless can’t help but admire what Mr. Scott and company tried to do, rather than succeeded in actually doing.

Prometheus, as the name should imply to anyone with even a casual knowledge of mythology, relates to the Titan Prometheus, who in the fables created man from clay and stole fire from the Gods.  The main theme of the film relates to this as well as the parent/child relationship.  On the surface and just below, this film is filled with references to how children and their parents interact…or don’t.

The protagonist of the movie, Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw, is presented as a person that is, ironically, both outside and tied in deep with parent/child concerns.  On the one hand, she’s an “orphan”, who as a young girl lost her father…yet has strong memories of him and hopes to emulate him.  On the other hand, it is revealed that she is incapable of having children of her own, thus of becoming a parent herself.

The two other main characters to follow, Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers and Michael Fassbender’s David, have their own parent/child issues, but to go into details about that would involve considerable spoilers.

The symbolism present in the film, I have to admit, has kept me from writing Prometheus off completely, this despite the fact that the film is remarkably -surprisingly- sloppily made, with way too many story holes, paper thin characters, and general stupidity.  Further, the film doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, trying for a “Chariot of the Gods” type story for much of its run time before lurching into horror only in its final act.

I could spend way too much time going over things that didn’t make sense or were muddled in their presentation, but I’ll focus on one specific thing that bothered me more than anything else in the film…and I’ll try to be as spoiler free as possible:

Why exactly did David spike the drink?

There is never a clear explanation of this, though there are hints, particularly David’s talk with Vickers just before.  But why was it done?  What was the purpose?

Despite some intriguing symbolism, in the end I remain roughly where I was upon walking out of the film.  I admire the attempt to create a “deep,” mythical story, but I simply cannot recommend Prometheus.  I’ve heard there is a longer “cut” of the film that features at least 20 additional minutes of material not seen in the theatrical release.  Perhaps when that version is released, those twenty minutes might explain the whole spiking the drink thing…though I doubt they’ll help make some of the movie’s other problems, including the cardboard side-characters and their fate, any more interesting.

A real shame.