Prometheus as a film was one I had largely forgotten about.
In a summer that had some of the best blockbusters I can remember (Avengers
Assemble, Dark Knight Rises, Pirates! etc. – people may disagree on the various
merits of these films but they were all nothing less than extremely entertaining,
ultimately popular cinema’s raison d’être) Prometheus ranked as probably the
only truly disappointing film I saw.
So why go back? Two reasons, really. Firstly, I saw it again, in the original
theatrical cut*. The second was that during an online discussion about the
film, after expressing my qualified disappointment**, this was the response:
”I suppose some people just don’t like ambiguity in their science fiction any
more.”
Now, in one way, this was a last ditch response from someone
telling me ‘I just didn’t get it’. In another, you could argue that maybe there
was a point buried there. Many people I know were confused by Inception, for
instance. So are we being spoon-fed, so to speak?
To answer that I will do something that I criticised reviewers
for doing at the time – compare the film to Alien***. But this isn’t a review.
So I’m not a hypocrite. Or much of one. Whatever.
Central to this is my hypothesis is that there are two
different sorts of ambiguity – the kind that adds atmosphere (in Alien’s case,
a layer of dread) and the kind that obfuscates the plot and makes the motivations
of everyone involved muddy as hell.
Alien has its fair share of ambiguity. Watched in isolation, the presence of
the space ship, the ‘jockey’, the eggs and even the motivations of the company
remain utterly opaque. Sure, the characters pose various theories, particularly
with regards to the company, but you’re left to fill in some very large blanks.
But (and this is an important but) at no point are any of
the crews’ motives random or unexplained. All the reactions expressed are perfectly
logical and natural – curiosity, horror, disgust and a sincere desire to kill It,
whatever It is they are dealing with. In one early scene, the discovery of the
diversion to investigate the derelict ship results in an argument about pay bonuses.
This is the good sort of ambiguity – at no point does it detract from the plot,
muddle motivations of the human characters (se what I did there, Alien fans?).
Even the alien itself is pretty unambiguous, except in its origins. It is,
after all, a pretty large, extremely dangerous animal.
Prometheus, on the other hand, has characters that do weird things constantly.
There’s a dude who tries to tickle a completely new alien creature. There’s a
robot that poisons one character for reasons that it’s possible to guess, but
are left maddeningly unclear. Another character sacrifices himself with
absolutely zero build-up.
Most irritatingly, the ‘Engineer’ when they find it and wake
it up, attacks indiscriminately with what appears to be a sadistic glee. I
usually refrain from swearing on here, but what the absolute fuck? The same
race that seeds life on earth then turns out to be a race of assholes
(actually, that would explain a lot). I’ve heard the theory put forward that it
was ‘grumpy’ from having been woken up by some of its own creations, but why
would it then pursue Noomi Rapace’s character? (Insert appeals to Blue and
Orange Morality here.) If a character’s motivation needs explaining by debates
on the internet, that is not good plotting. Sorry, gotta draw the line
somewhere.
This is probably the best example in the film itself, but
the fact that there is more than one suggests that the ambiguity in this film
was caused by slapdash plotting. This is the ‘bad’ kind of ambiguity. It’s what
makes Prometheus a badly written film, let alone a sci-fi film. No amount of ‘You
don’t get it’ can salvage poor characterisation, ‘bad’ ambiguity, and a lack of
coherence.
Rant ends.
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* For all the claims that the DVD
and Blu-Ray releases ‘answer questions’ the fact remains that they released the
theatrical version as a Finished Product, so its problems are still up for
debate. That and the fact that I believe Prometheus’ problems are so entrenched
in the narrative that extra scenes won’t clean it up very much.
** Two things saved it from the scrapheap. Michael Fassbender’s performance was
excellent, even though he falls victim to the same odd plotting as everyone
else, and Noomi Rapace’s scene in the medical unit, which may be my scene of
the year.
*** There is an argument to be made that Alien is actually a horror film rather
than a sci-fi one, so comparisons between Prometheus and Alien are unfair. I
have a certain sympathy with this view (demarking genres is a contentious
issue, but compare Alien to Star Wars and Halloween and see which it most
resembles) but the marketing clearly highlighted the link to Alien and shot
itself in the foot by doing so.
