This image contains about as much meaningful content as the rest of the film. Which is to say, none at all.
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A.K.A. HOW HARD IS IT TO ACTUALLY WRITE A DECENT STORY?
So last week I saw the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus. A sorta prequel to the Alien franchise that Scott started so long ago. It had really good special effects, some great performances and excellent directing. It also has terrible hackneyed writing that raises maybe one or two good points that are later drowned out by how convoluted, nonsensical and poorly written absolutely everything else is.
The writing is so bad that I’ve done nothing but write this post for the last week complaining about it. Which is a really silly thing for me to do considering the rest of the movie wasn’t that bad and I didn’t actually even care all that much. But I love to bitch about things on the internet, and Prometheus seems ripe with shit for my to piss and moan about it.
I’m shocked to see anyone think this was an intelligent movie that raised important questions. Especially when it’s co-written by Damon Lindelof, who pulled the same “interesting concept without a conclusion or forethought so let’s just make random weird shit happen in hopes that people won’t notice that we don’t know what we’re doing” trick back when he did Lost.
The thing that annoys me most about Prometheus is the claim it’s one of those things where you’re “not suppose to know the answers”. Like having a million unanswered questions automatically makes you deep and beyond criticism, and isn’t often applied in a manner that hides how poorly written your fucking story is.
I don’t mind open ended stories that leave a lot open to interpretation. I’ve written two incredibly long analyses on two games that did exactly that and expressed how much I enjoyed trying to decipher them. But Prometheus isn’t one of those stories where my imagination is set ablaze with possibilities. It’s one of those stories where I’m constantly baffled how seemingly everything, from the existential to the mundane, makes absolutely no fucking sense and I feel my intelligence is constantly being insulted every time I’m asked to buy into this shit. Prometheus certainly raised a lot of questions for me, but not the ones I wanted raised.
Fair warning, this will be an insanely long post. Ironic as I don’t hate this movie or actually care all that much about the Alien franchise. However, Prometheus has that rare blend of genuine potential and baffling awful decisions that makes for some truly epic bitching. I’ll be bitching myself senseless so if you don’t like long winded rants, you’d best just stop reading right now.
I dedicate the following essay of me whining about a movie I didn’t like to Red Letter Media, whose review of the Star Wars prequels inspired me to complain endlessly on the internet. (And if getting upset at Prometheus means I should “stop watching movies”, then so be it.)
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