Looking forward to it though Prometheus was a little disappointing.
Hux, I live for the "moderate" reply because those are usually the ones I don't have to consider before responding to (trolls, war, teargas being launched from "reply" to "reply"... in any case). "Prometheus was a little disappointing" is to replies what the smell of good,
really good, coffee in the morning is to those of us who dream about the sun like others dream about winning the lottery!
Oddly enough, I actually understand the reasons so many people found Prometheus so lacking. Even those who aren't driven solely to the theater in search of non-stop action and unlimited FX budgets still have things they look for and are frustrated by not finding. For me, one is character development. If I don't care about the characters... then kill them dead and get my butt outta that seat ASAP!!! Next, it's FX in service of story instead of the other way around (rather like bad porn IMHO). I get as reved-up as the next gal when the sex actually has a place in script and when it's well filmed.... But like I said, characters first, FX in service of story next and then so on and so forth.
I think on a surface level, Prometheus
felt unsatisfying because the action didn't always feel connected to the story and it didn't feel that way because we really weren't given enough info on the characters to fully understand their nature. Thereby making their actions questionable or difficult to find the motivation behind. In Aliens, we knew who those Marines were. We totally understood Ripley and were completely empathetic to Newt. We connected to their plight, we rooted for them and we were furious when their betrayal by both The Company and their commanding officer (not too mention the ridiculous little geek The Company sent along as their rep. with yet another secret mandate and his own hidden agenda) used incomplete knowledge so ineptly that "our guys" paid for that lack with their lives... and that in the end, those lives were still worth less than the "profit" they were after.
We didn't get any of that with Prometheus. It was pretty much "science geeks in space": archeologists, anthropologists, geologists, biologists, botanists, chemists and so forth. Also including the Capt. & crew along with "David the space-age boy" and his angry, over-bearing older
human sister. They weren't in space long enough (awake) to get to know and once on the planet too many things went wrong too fast for the audience to connect to either them or the action itself. So why bother getting invested and what would you even get out of it if you did?
It took my second or third viewing to realize that the characters were there, revealing oh so very little in order to demonstrate how much we think (as humans) we understand, without ever really knowing that we don't actually even
know what we think we do... as evidenced by "The Engineers". Then, still in the face of overwhelming destruction and, to a degree, the knowledge forced upon the sole survivor that we know almost nothing at all when it comes to our own heritage... still we search on as if we are not only entitled to that knowledge but that we are owed it as well. It is hubris of the highest order and mankind is the embodiment of it and has been since the first ape picked up a rock to throw at a piece of fruit in a tree.
Prometheus challenges us to set aside everything we believe in and start over. To surrender to the fact that when it comes to space, not only do we not know anything, we may
never know anything, not anything at all. Prometheus demands that we the audience use what was basically a framework to construct our own understanding and accept that it may never be complete... or for that matter, even be a true representation of where our place is and how we fit into it. Or, for that matter, if we actually do have a place that is "ours" and if so, how the hell are we supposed to keep it safe?
As I saw it, the enormous "Buddha/Alien" head served as a gigantic reminder that space is another "country" and it's very possible that it's a "country" we will never be able to survive in, much less truly understand.
But what do I really know anyway? Opinions are like arseholes.... and you can fill in the rest!
However.... I still stand by my feeling that the sequel must be made, that I have to be in one of the seats at the first show, on the very first morning it opens..... and 3D makes my brain ache!
[ insert popcorn & coke emoji here!]
