Discuss Prometheus
Discuss → Movies → Prometheus → General
An analysis of what went wrong with Prometheus
posted by sati_84STAFFMOD on March 29, 2017 at 10:17 PM
There are many valid complaints about scientist idiocy, wtf-moments and crewmember stupidity. But these are only part of the problem. To see what I mean, I will make a quick comparison with Alien here. In Alien, every set-piece, character, piece of technology was created with care in regards of being believable.
Verisimilitude is the word.
Suspension of disbelief comes easy when a filmmaker so carefully crafts everything in the movie to perfection. The service corridors were believable, the characters Parker and Brett were believable, and therefore the actions of these characters made sense in context, and were consistent with the characterization up to that point in the plot. (Note: believability does not necessarily mean "realistic" in this context!)
Prometheus contained no characterization, no verisimilitude, no care was put into how the audience should believe everything right from the start.
Let's compare two scenes from Alien and Prometheus.
In Alien, Kane sticks his face into an egg. Is this stupid? You betcha! Are we (the audience) bothered by this? Hell no. Why? Because the scene is so exccellently crafted and put into context plotwise and character-wise, that we accept this character behavior immediately.
First of all, it comes right after the awe-inspiring derelict discovery sequences. Dallas, Lambert and Kane are wandering around in that strange biomechanical environment, where there are mindblowing discoveries lie around, scattered randomly. We have just seen a fossilized alien lifeform, weird devices, and a strange hole in the floor which leads to a sort of cargo bay with thin blue mist. Make no mistake: these facts are only partially help you to absorb what is happening in the scene. The other half is direction and atmosphere. This is where Alien excels. I can't describe it properly here, you need to watch it.
So Kane goes up to an egg, and sticks his face right into it. But this is OK, since the previous sequences hypnotized us into a mindset where we want to discover what that is. We would like to do exactly what Kane does. We want to know. Yes, in retrospect, that was an idiotic move, but there were no clear signs of danger there, and Kane thought his suit and helmet/visor will protect him - resulting in a consistent, believable and logical scene.
Now let's analyze the scene in Prometheus where Milburn tries to "tame" the cobra-like alien. Right from the start, there are serious problems with this. The movie did not really build a context, we don't really know these characters. About Milburn, we know exactly nothing, apart from the fact that he is terrified of alien corpses (which is an understandable character trait, even for a biologist. It's not unbelievable, and the problem is not with that). About Fifield, we at least know that he does not want to make friends, he is only in it for the money. Fair enough, but somehow Parker and Brett - who were also only in it for the money - seemed much more human than him.
What scenes preceded this encounter? We got a mildly interesting cave-exploration scene (nowhere near the quality of similar sequences in Alien), where we concluded that the most dangerous/creepy room is the alien stone face/vase storage room. So when these two get spooked, where are they going into hiding? Exactly there! Now this is not logical - Parker and Brett would have never chosen a hiding place like that. But if we accept that, there is another problem with the scene: the cobra-like thing showed obvious signs of pissed off behavior. There is no way a biologist could not pick these up!
Kane gets a pass, since the egg showed only a little movement, Kane is not a biologist or even a scientist, and there was no way for him to predict what is going to happen. It was brilliantly written as being part of the dangerous randomness of the Alien, so it characterized the monster. Here, we get a lifeform that can only kill, when its prey is dumb enough - I can't write this down without cringing - to try to pet it...? You could argue here that this is an alien lifeform, and Fifield doesn't know what it's capable of, and the obvious cobra-like menacing behavior of the alien might not mean menace at all... but this argument makes no sense, since even if it doesn't want to attack, he should have assumed (even without the obvious menacing behavior) that it wants to attack. Even if the snake-alien was not strong enough to harm him through his suit, being constantly under attack is... well, obviously not good. As a biologist he should have known better. The mere fact that this scene happens to a biologist from all the crew speaks volumes about how well thought-out this movie really is
The scene would have worked better if they would have realized the threat and tried to flee the room and the cobra thing would have followed them with incomprehensible speed. That would have been more believable and consistent, even with the general themes of the movie. But the scene as it is, is poorly constructed, and does not have a positive effect on the plot.
This was just one example of how the idiotic behavior hurts Prometheus in general. I could write up a similar analysis of the Captain and Charlize Theron scene, and a couple of other scenes. These moments of random idiotic character behavior could have worked in the movie - but they did not work because of poor directing. And we have got Ridley Scott to blame for that.
TL;DR: Prometheus has really poorly directed scenes that hurt the plot. Your thoughts?
Reply by Renovatio
on March 29, 2017 at 11:49 PM
I'm far more forgiving of idiocy on screen than most people... I mean, look around you, idiocy is everywhere... idiocy makes it more realistic! and is more immersive...
But I do agree with you that more care is needed by filmmakers to have an in-movie context so that audiences can embrace the movie and be immersed... audiences today are especially hypercritical due primarily to nerd/information culture being the norm... they need more help to get them to a state where they can appreciate the non-information parts of a movie, the aesthetic, emotional and sensual aspects...
It's the CinemaSins way of watching a movie... This is something that directors should try to avoid...
It seems most filmmakers are going the other way with overloading on incident and spectacle, or over-explaining with exposition, rather than building a mood and atmosphere as the movie goes along...
I think Prometheus does it better than most contemporary films, but clearly falls short when compared to the classic Alien...
Reply by sati_84
on March 30, 2017 at 3:53 PM
Yeah, but idiocy needs to be put into context (as you mentioned already in your post).
You know what's sad? That we are talking about the same person here... It was not some new director who botched prometheus, it was Scott himself. Which is just baffling for me. as it seems he doesn't even understand what made Alien great in the first place.
Reply by The_Foxcatcher
on March 30, 2017 at 6:15 PM
@ sati_84
Before I continue, just want to mention this: Early, in the film, Milburn just pretended to be scared of the dead alien body. He gave a reason to opt out and report back to the ship. Vickers tried to mandate the same thing to Holloway and Shaw by insisting them to report back to the ship once they find any being down there. Knowing that Vickers recruited most of the crews, she would have instructed the same thing to Milburn & Fifield and they both acted (Fifield btw, was genuinely scared as we see him nervous while entering the pyramid).
The hammerpede didn't have eyes & fangs, unlike Cobras.
-There were two hammerpedes. One simply slid away. Fifield had not reason to believe that the hammerpede was dangerous. It was you, as an audience who was knowing that you're watching a horror film and something bad will occur.
Both Fifield & Milburn were wearing a protective suit.
Milburn wouldn't have even imagined the creature to have acid blood because they hadn't heard or came across any such alien life form.
Infact, they encountered the first alien animal ever. And as a biologist, Milburn was curious to learn. Very much consistent to his character. Not a flaw.
Fifield was obviously scared and he stood back, away from Milburn. Very much consistent. Not a flaw.
Milburn was applying his knowledge of controlling snakes with hand movements just like how biologists do with Earth snakes.
Reply by sati_84
on March 30, 2017 at 7:17 PM
Maybe it all boils down to the fact that the filmmaking was not as competent as it was in Alien. The whole thing felt off. Part of this is subjective.
In other words: the actions of the characters were consistent in regards to their characterization, but the characters themselves are much-much weaker than in Alien.
Reply by The_Foxcatcher
on March 30, 2017 at 7:31 PM
I agree.
In Alien, the characters were nicely carved and equally focussed, creating a perfect team of seven space truckers. The atmosphere was claustrophobic, the pacing was slow and the film relied a lot on life-like interactions between the characters which we can relate to, creating a tense yet gripping drama.
In Prometheus, the characters were well disparate but the only rich or rather layered characters were Vickers, David, Shaw and to some extent Weyland. It was sort of phase shift. It was bright, colourful and relied a lot on broader concepts with larger canvas (engineer pyramids, spaceship, hologram recordings, dead bodies, Weyland's agenda, David's motivation, Vickers-David sibling rivalry, Shaw's faith, Holloway's disappointment, Vickers' agenda etc.) instead of characters trapped in dealing with a single threat.
For me
Reply by FlyingSaucersAreReal
on March 30, 2017 at 10:55 PM
Prometheus was deeply flawed, but it had its merits too. Enough that I was able to enjoy it despite the shortcomings, like the often absurd, inconsistent and bizarre behavior of the characters. Like an anthropologist making by far the greatest discovery in the history of his profession, yet being all whiny and pissed off about it because he didn't get to meet a real live alien race his first time out exploring this alien world.
Reply by FlyingSaucersAreReal
on March 30, 2017 at 11:02 PM
I actually thought mood and atmosphere is one of the things that Prometheus succeeded at. The alien world and the engineers research base were impressive.
It's true that people do stupid things in the real world too, but they should at least show some minimal competence at things they are trained at doing, and their attitudes shouldn't wildly swing from one extreme to another without explanation.
Reply by sati_84
on March 31, 2017 at 3:23 PM
Exactly!
Visually, the hammerpede and the final alien was a bit lazy, but passable. I did not hav eany problem with other visual elements , so the imagery was good. There was no character consistency and narrative focus - no amount of pretty visuals will help to fix that.
Reply by sati_84
on April 18, 2017 at 3:47 PM
Your analysis was a bit shorter than mine... but I concur :D