That is some fucked up shit right there

Some spoilers. Use your judgment.

Prometheus is two movies smashed together. The movie about Ancient Aliens and humans “finding our maker(s)” and a creepy old man played by Guy Pearce in creepy old man makeup, I could live without. Entirely. Junk that whole plot, it kind of sucked. In fact, let’s blame that whole part of the script on Damon Lindelof (Lost), who co-wrote, whether it’s fair or not. Why? Because Lost had major gaping narrative pitfalls, too, a lot of which related to mystical sci-fi bullshit, and that was my issue with this part of Prometheus. Mystical sci-fi bullshit is a cop-out for “I wrote myself into a corner and I don’t know what to do”. (Lindelof has been hired to rewrite World War Z before they embark on a mind-numbing seven weeks of reshoots, and I’m not bitter/worried about that AT ALL.)

Here’s the problem with mystical sci-fi bullshit—and by extension, mystical fantasy bullshit—and it’s why I am not super fond of genre movies/television/books: Because you can do anything, writers usually just do anything. The logic, science and physical laws of nature in your sci-fi/fantasy world don’t have to resemble any that exist in our real world. They don’t even have to make sense. But you do have to have rules, and you have to follow the ones you establish. Consider JARVIS in the Iron Man/Avengers movies. Of course, AI doesn’t exist yet, nor does any robot/computer system function as comprehensively as JARVIS does for Tony Stark. But JARVIS is so consistent in when/how he is used and behaves, that we accept him as a “character”. JARVIS isn’t real, we know that, logically, but he feels real, so we accept him, practically.Continue reading “Prometheus is two movies, one of which is pretty awesome”