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I saw an interview with Guillermo del Toro a short while ago in which he gave away the plot of Prometheus. Given that the plot of the film was one of the most closely-guarded aspects of production, I thought this was really rather unfair of him and suspect that Ridley Scott, the director, wasn’t best pleased with him about it either.
Presented as an alien prequel-of-sorts, Prometheus is the story of an earlier expedition into the same universe of xenomorphic fear frequented by the Nostromo in the 1979 original, as a group of scientists and space roughnecks (a mixed bunch of drunks and eccentrics – just the sort of people you’d entrust a trillion dollars worth of starship to. No boring old pre-mission screening here, no sirree!) set out to follow clues left behind by ancient alien visitors to earth who may or may not have been the progenitors of humanity.
The marketing of the film has played upon the tension and mystery of the film. The group of brave pioneers travelling to a distant wasteland in the hope of finding the creators of mankind and instead finding only insanity and horror. And if that sounds entirely like the plot of HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness to you then you aren’t wrong as the plot is a direct lift. It’s this that del Toro was talking about in his interview; how his film adaptation of Lovecraft’s story had been cancelled in the wake of Prometheus as there were so many similarities the studio had lost interest in his project. I can’t help but feel there was a certain amount of sour grapes involved in his decision to publically spoiler one of the biggest films of the year and I think less of him for it.
So if you’ve read your Lovecraft you’ll know where this is going. The scientists and roughnecks find the progenitors of humanity who have (largely) been overcome and destroyed by their own creations and in so doing bring upon themselves their own destruction. For as long as the film sticks to tension, mystery and occasional horrors and shocks it does an admirable job and I couldn’t understand the criticisms which have been leveled at it. Unfortunately about two-thirds/three-quarters of the way through (after a bit of body horror involving auto-surgery which according to your tastes you'll either find deeply unpleasant or downright absurd) it all – in the words of one of the characters – goes rather to pot.
The problem with At the Mountains of Madness, as a plot for a movie, is that it ends with the intrepid explorers simply discovering what they can and legging it sharpish before they get eaten. As an ending this isn’t very cinematic (you might struggle to convince your audience with the giant penguins as well), and so at about the one-hour-thirty mark the Prometheus script veers off into action/sci-fi/horror which is often just incoherent. To be blunt; from the auto-surgery point onwards, the story feels rushed and at times just makes no sense whatsoever as characters do what is necessary to advance to plot rather than anything any normal person would do under the circumstances*. Up until this point the film largely avoids the trope of characters doing dumb things to move things on (there’s only one scene where that happens), but afterwards it’s like the scriptwriter just needed an excuse to move characters into the set-pieces and that excuse was either that they’d all taken leave of their senses or that any characters who might object were conveniently off camera and – in the case of at least two of them – who just entirely vanish from the narrative with no sign of where they’ve gone. Let’s face it. Any sci-fi action spectacular where you’re watching the exciting denouement and all you can think about is “Hold on a sec, where the bloody hell has the doctor gone?”, for example, can be said to have lost its audience. Especially during the scene when the semicircular spaceship is crashing and rolling along the surface of the planet, and the characters run away from it in a straight line rather than perpendicular to the direction of travel. These people are supposed to be geniuses, but they can’t figure out that a 90o angle might be a good idea? Come on.
I’m not saying there isn’t a lot to like here. Scott can put a movie together and for much of the running time you can’t help be caught up in things; the tension slowly rises as the group explores an ancient, crumbling alien structure filled with corpses and sudden, half seen flashes of movement, and does battle with each other as it becomes clear there are several different, contradictory and possibly malevolent agendas in their midst. There isn’t a miscast character in the whole film (Michael Fassbender as the robot, David, has had plaudits heaped upon him and understandably so), the design and look of the thing is spot on and, oh, if it weren’t for the last twenty minutes or so it’d be really good.
All in all, it’s not a bad film. In fact it’s probably a rather good one, assuming you’ve neither read any HP Lovecraft nor seen Alien. If you’ve read or seen either of those two don’t be put off seeing Prometheus, but prepare yourself for the feeling of mild irritation of and disappointment that comes with it – especially, and I can’t not say this – the ending in which a direct link is set up between Prometheus and Alien and then quite deliberately not followed up on. At that moment it felt almost as if the Director was giving his audience the bird and that’s not just irritating, it actually felt rude.**
*Not to mention that Noomi Rapace’s character takes an astounding amount of physical damage but is still capable of outrunning collapsing buildings, angry aliens and crashing spaceships. Yeah, she occasionally says ‘ow’ and stumbles a bit, but she’s had invasive surgery, darnit and – trust me on this one - if you’ve got a whopping great slice in your abdomen you aren’t running anywhere. All you want is a sit down and lots of protein in your diet whilst your body recovers from the trauma over the next few months. If someone had come to me an hour or so after I got sliced upon and said “Hey, David, fancy going two falls out of three with a couple of angry martians?” I’m afraid I’d’ve had to regretfully decline.
**Yes, I know Prometheus doesn't take place on the same planet as Alien. That planet was LV-426 and this one is LV-226. it says so, once, in small print at the bottom of the screen. This is another directoral error. if you're going to make a film with the same design aesthetic as Alien in the same universe as Alien and on a planet which looks just like the one in Alien, it's only fair to make it plain that it isn't the same place. Your casual viewer is unlikely to know the name of the planet in a film thirty years old and they're likely to miss the name in this one as well; I only know because I'm a complete geek and most people aren't.
Presented as an alien prequel-of-sorts, Prometheus is the story of an earlier expedition into the same universe of xenomorphic fear frequented by the Nostromo in the 1979 original, as a group of scientists and space roughnecks (a mixed bunch of drunks and eccentrics – just the sort of people you’d entrust a trillion dollars worth of starship to. No boring old pre-mission screening here, no sirree!) set out to follow clues left behind by ancient alien visitors to earth who may or may not have been the progenitors of humanity.
The marketing of the film has played upon the tension and mystery of the film. The group of brave pioneers travelling to a distant wasteland in the hope of finding the creators of mankind and instead finding only insanity and horror. And if that sounds entirely like the plot of HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness to you then you aren’t wrong as the plot is a direct lift. It’s this that del Toro was talking about in his interview; how his film adaptation of Lovecraft’s story had been cancelled in the wake of Prometheus as there were so many similarities the studio had lost interest in his project. I can’t help but feel there was a certain amount of sour grapes involved in his decision to publically spoiler one of the biggest films of the year and I think less of him for it.
So if you’ve read your Lovecraft you’ll know where this is going. The scientists and roughnecks find the progenitors of humanity who have (largely) been overcome and destroyed by their own creations and in so doing bring upon themselves their own destruction. For as long as the film sticks to tension, mystery and occasional horrors and shocks it does an admirable job and I couldn’t understand the criticisms which have been leveled at it. Unfortunately about two-thirds/three-quarters of the way through (after a bit of body horror involving auto-surgery which according to your tastes you'll either find deeply unpleasant or downright absurd) it all – in the words of one of the characters – goes rather to pot.
The problem with At the Mountains of Madness, as a plot for a movie, is that it ends with the intrepid explorers simply discovering what they can and legging it sharpish before they get eaten. As an ending this isn’t very cinematic (you might struggle to convince your audience with the giant penguins as well), and so at about the one-hour-thirty mark the Prometheus script veers off into action/sci-fi/horror which is often just incoherent. To be blunt; from the auto-surgery point onwards, the story feels rushed and at times just makes no sense whatsoever as characters do what is necessary to advance to plot rather than anything any normal person would do under the circumstances*. Up until this point the film largely avoids the trope of characters doing dumb things to move things on (there’s only one scene where that happens), but afterwards it’s like the scriptwriter just needed an excuse to move characters into the set-pieces and that excuse was either that they’d all taken leave of their senses or that any characters who might object were conveniently off camera and – in the case of at least two of them – who just entirely vanish from the narrative with no sign of where they’ve gone. Let’s face it. Any sci-fi action spectacular where you’re watching the exciting denouement and all you can think about is “Hold on a sec, where the bloody hell has the doctor gone?”, for example, can be said to have lost its audience. Especially during the scene when the semicircular spaceship is crashing and rolling along the surface of the planet, and the characters run away from it in a straight line rather than perpendicular to the direction of travel. These people are supposed to be geniuses, but they can’t figure out that a 90o angle might be a good idea? Come on.
I’m not saying there isn’t a lot to like here. Scott can put a movie together and for much of the running time you can’t help be caught up in things; the tension slowly rises as the group explores an ancient, crumbling alien structure filled with corpses and sudden, half seen flashes of movement, and does battle with each other as it becomes clear there are several different, contradictory and possibly malevolent agendas in their midst. There isn’t a miscast character in the whole film (Michael Fassbender as the robot, David, has had plaudits heaped upon him and understandably so), the design and look of the thing is spot on and, oh, if it weren’t for the last twenty minutes or so it’d be really good.
All in all, it’s not a bad film. In fact it’s probably a rather good one, assuming you’ve neither read any HP Lovecraft nor seen Alien. If you’ve read or seen either of those two don’t be put off seeing Prometheus, but prepare yourself for the feeling of mild irritation of and disappointment that comes with it – especially, and I can’t not say this – the ending in which a direct link is set up between Prometheus and Alien and then quite deliberately not followed up on. At that moment it felt almost as if the Director was giving his audience the bird and that’s not just irritating, it actually felt rude.**
*Not to mention that Noomi Rapace’s character takes an astounding amount of physical damage but is still capable of outrunning collapsing buildings, angry aliens and crashing spaceships. Yeah, she occasionally says ‘ow’ and stumbles a bit, but she’s had invasive surgery, darnit and – trust me on this one - if you’ve got a whopping great slice in your abdomen you aren’t running anywhere. All you want is a sit down and lots of protein in your diet whilst your body recovers from the trauma over the next few months. If someone had come to me an hour or so after I got sliced upon and said “Hey, David, fancy going two falls out of three with a couple of angry martians?” I’m afraid I’d’ve had to regretfully decline.
**Yes, I know Prometheus doesn't take place on the same planet as Alien. That planet was LV-426 and this one is LV-226. it says so, once, in small print at the bottom of the screen. This is another directoral error. if you're going to make a film with the same design aesthetic as Alien in the same universe as Alien and on a planet which looks just like the one in Alien, it's only fair to make it plain that it isn't the same place. Your casual viewer is unlikely to know the name of the planet in a film thirty years old and they're likely to miss the name in this one as well; I only know because I'm a complete geek and most people aren't.
