Movie Review - Prometheus

Prometheus (2012)

*viewed in 3D*

Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce

Directed by Ridley Scott

**There will be some spoilers ahead here...the film's been out a month now, so I feel no qualms about that.**

Prometheus - the "not-a-prequel, but really-is-a-prequel" to Alien - has its share of problems most courtesy of a script from Jon Spaihts and Lost alum Damon Lindelof, but despite what are warranted criticisms, I couldn't help but like what I saw onscreen.  I've always been a fan of Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens (see my Alien Week coverage here), and what Scott does here is further the backstory behind the sci-fi series while, at the same time, creating a stand-alone film that works quite well despite a few faults.

Those delving into Prometheus thinking that they're going to see something in the same vein of any of the previous four Alien incarnations are in for a surprise.  Instead, Prometheus is one archeologist's quest to discover the reason for human existence.  We meet Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in the late 2080s as she and her team are exploring the rocky cliffs of Ireland.  There, they discover cave paintings that closely resemble similar paintings found all across the earth all of which seem to be pointing to the notion that something from space came to earth tens of thousands of years ago.  With the help of the Weyland Corporation (a name familiar to those who've seen other Alien flicks), Shaw and her partner Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) are funded for an expedition to a far-off planet that seems to have the same capability as Earth for human existence with the hopes that this planet may hold some of the answers to these cave drawings.  When they land on the planet, Shaw, Charlie, and the crew of the ship Prometheus, including the captain (Idris Elba), Weyland overseer Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and android David (Michael Fassbender), set out to explore and uncover some interesting finds leading us both into familiar territory for this series and quite unfamiliar territory in the overarching religious and spiritual questions it attempts to pose.

Surprisingly, the biggest problem in the film tends to be with the alien side of things.  These people just seem to act plain stupid around them.  Here you've landed on a foreign planet with unknown creatures and you're just going to go right up to these "things" and try to pet them?  I mean, really?  The characters just end up losing all credibility in these scenes and it hurts the movie in the long run.  I think that's what makes the first two Alien films so successful -- even if the characters weren't fully realized (I'm looking at you, Aliens), they still acted "truthfully" and realistically based off of their personal characteristics.  You didn't really get a sense of that here with some of the characters presented.

However, there are two really solid performances from Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender.  Rapace is quite good, embodying a completely different female here than Sigourney Weaver's kick-ass Ripley.  Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw is mellow and slightly timid -- two characteristics that could never apply to Ripley.  Shaw's mission isn't to kill, but to try and understand all that she can about human existence and her place (and the place of spirituality and faith) in this world.  Fassbender also continues his excellent streak of work with the robotic David.  Even lacking the ability to show emotions, Fassbender still manages to draw your eye to him in every single scene thanks to this sense of underlying (and sometimes not so underlying) menace his character exudes in nearly scene.

I actually got a very "last episode of Lost" vibe from Prometheus thanks to the similarities in tone resulting from their exploratory dives into faith, and given that Damon Lindelof co-wrote the last episode of the series, that shouldn't be all that surprising.  However, also like Lost, Prometheus doesn't provide all the answers and while some would complain about that, I'm actually okay with the open-endedness.  To me, we can't have all the answers when we're discussing something as esoteric as faith and to expect them is almost ludicrous.  I'd be more than open for a sequel that delves a bit deeper.

The film looks beautiful visually and I give much credit to director Ridley Scott for taking things in a different direction with this flick.  Yes, there are still some excellent action sequences and some great set pieces (that "computerized surgery machine" came in quite handy, didn't it?) which show that Scott still has quite a knack at filming tense action.  But we also discover that he is quite adept at the quieter moments of which this film certainly has plenty.  If only he could've convinced the writers to give him more fully-realized secondary characters than I would've been a much happier camper.  But as it stands now, Prometheus is a solid addition to the Alien saga landing right in the middle in terms of quality for the series.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Alien: Resurrection

--Alien Week--

Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, and Ron Perlman

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Theatrical Version was watched as the director prefers the original cut.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  After a rousing start with Alien and a terrific follow-up with Aliens, the science fiction horror franchise starring Sigourney Weaver began to falter with Alien 3 and now lands with a horrible thud thanks to Alien: Resurrection, a film that is so tonally different from its predecessors that it's jarring to viewers and almost uncomfortable to sit through.

The blame has to be placed on two people -- screenwriter Joss Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  Whedon -- best known for mixing wry comedy with more dire situations in things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods -- is a good writer, but I'm not quite sure he was the right pick to pen an Alien picture.  Previous installments have been über-serious, but this fourth film in which Weaver's Ripley (who died in Alien 3) returns as a human clone developed by the military solely to give birth to alien life forms is too often played for laughs (and with the ludicrous aforementioned premise it's easy to see why they went for the yuks).  Unlike the third film, Whedon at least attempts to create some memorable characters with distinct personalities, but he isn't always successful at crafting anything more than the standard stereotypical machismo-type folks that typically inhabit action films like this.  We're given caricatures instead of "real" people.

Also needing to take a heap of the blame for the film's failure is director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the helmer behind the fantastical and visually inventive Amelie.  Jeunet doesn't ever really go for scares...and what's an Alien film without scares or at least the imminent threat of scares?  The aliens here are even sometimes played for a laugh and that's almost sacrilegious.  He also fails to get good performances from much of the supporting players, many of whom are asked to play up the humor rather than the sheer terror that should come from killer creatures running rampant in a spaceship.

During the film's second half, the humor gets tossed aside and Jeunet attempts to create an action film (though the scares still remain nonexistent), but he isn't successful in that respect either.  However, it's the combined missteps from both Jeunet and Whedon that make Alien: Resurrection the biggest disappointment thus far in the Alien franchise and an unfortunate coda to the series.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - Alien 3

--Alien Week--

Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Alien 3 (1992)

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, and Lance Henriksen

Directed by David Fincher

The Theatrical Edition was watched as Fincher has never signed off on the Extended Cut.

Blogger won't permit me to type it this way, but the proper title of David Fincher's first time venture into feature film directing should really read Alien to the Third Power.  While I guess it's clever, it almost implies an overabundance of aliens whereas the second outing in this movie series was definitely the one that upped the alien ante.  Alien 3 is rather subdued and oddly bland, lacking any of the excitement or tension that is so prevalent in the first two installments of this series.

As the opening credits sequence rolls, we see that although there were four survivors of the last flick, only Ripley is left alive when their "escape pod" ship lands on a barren penal colony planet.  Although it doesn't appear that an alien is responsible for the deaths of her former friends, we soon discover that there was a stowaway onboard Ripley's ship of the non-humanoid kind and that this alien will soon cause quite a ruckus amongst the men in the prison.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with Alien 3 is that you simply don't grow to care about any of the characters, and as they start getting picked off one by one, their deaths don't resonate with the audience a bit.  The prisoners are all interchangeable with not a single one having a real discernible personality (or at least an interesting discernible personality).  I may have criticized Aliens director-screenwriter James Cameron's lack of believable dialog and sometimes cookie-cutter characterizations, but they're Shakespeare compared to what we're given here. Even Sigourney Weaver's Ripley almost feels as if she's phoning it in if only because her character isn't given a whole lot to do.  I mean, sure, she's given the interesting prospect of being impregnated by the same aliens she's been fighting for years, but the film doesn't explore this interesting twist in a manner that is all that fulfilling.

While David Fincher did give the film a unique look in the Aliens filmography -- opting for more earth-like browns as opposed to the steely, futuristic grays of the other installments -- there's unfortunately nothing visually appealing to gaze upon either.  Apparently the final product was heavily tampered with by the studio and that appears most evident in the lack of visceral tension that Fincher is usually so great at creating -- see Se7en or Panic Room or even The Social Network -- which is necessary in order for a film like this to succeed.

Alien 3 certainly isn't an awful film and it's not even the worst of the series (a bit of foreshadowing there to my thoughts on Alien: Resurrection), but it's a disappointing downturn for this Sigourney Weaver-fronted franchise.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Aliens (Director's Cut)

--Alien Week--

Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Aliens (Director's Cut) (1986)

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton, and Paul Reiser

Directed by James Cameron

Note: The Director's Cut was watched because it is the preferred cut of James Cameron.

Nearly every review of James Cameron's Aliens starts out with (or eventually gets to) the fact that while the original Alien was a pure "horror" film, the 1986 sequel falls a bit more into the "action" genre.  They don't fault the production for this (in fact, this sequel is better reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes than its predecessor), but they try and make this a known fact.  While I'm not going to try a debunk their take on it, I can't help but mention the fact that Aliens is a movie in which a whole bunch of people are getting killed by a whole bunch of alien life forms in quite bloody ways.  Sure, these people may be holding futuristic machine guns and grenades, but they're still getting their insides gutted open.  So, in conclusion, don't let that "action" genre descriptor lull you in to a false sense of security.

It's fifty-seven years after the first film and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley -- our lone survivor from the spaceship Nostromo -- has been drifting around in space in a deep hypersleep for nearly six decades.  Picked up by a salvage ship that just so happens to be piloted by her former bosses at Weyland-Yutani (you know, those creeps who wanted her to capture rather than kill the alien in the last film), Ripley finds herself in a rather angsty depression now that she's become aware that everyone she's known (including her daughter) has died in the years she's been presumed dead. [Note:  This familial yearning is a concept that is made much more prevalent in the Director's Cut which gives much more needed gravitas to Ripley's emotional plight.]  Ripley soon discovers that a crew of dozens of families had been sent by Weyland-Yutani back to the planet in which Ripley's initial crew first discovered the aliens in order to form a colony and now this new crew is failing to respond to calls.  Ripley, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), and a dozen or so Marines venture back to the planet in order to find out what has happened to the colonizers...needless to say, those nasty aliens are going to rear their ugly heads.

James Cameron, despite his rather obnoxiously high opinion of himself, is a very solid director, well aware of what it takes to create and build tension which is key in the success of a film such as Aliens.  Much like its predecessor, Cameron allows for the nerve-wracking edginess to build only to fully release once Ripley and the Marines land on the alien-inhabited planet.

Cameron, however, isn't a perfect director despite what his ego may tell him.  Typical of Cameron films, Aliens has two faults that seemingly come with the territory for his films.  First, he's no whiz at crafting dialog.  In fact, it's probably his worst characteristic as a screenwriter.  Here, it's particularly evident in the way the Marines speak to one another.  There were just moments where I couldn't help but laugh and shake my head at the sheer banality of what Cameron was force-feeding the actors to spout.

This lack of believable (or interesting) dialog leads into the second problem which is somewhat typical of Cameron films -- the acting isn't always top notch.  While Weaver is great as is a slimy Paul Reiser in a rather understated "villain" role, nearly all the Marines are so stereotypical "ooh-rah!" over-the-top that I couldn't help but be taken out of the "realism" the movie tries to create.  Bill Paxton, in particular, is really awful, hamming it up in nearly every single scene.  Cameron also, unfortunately, fails to get a good performance from young Carrie Henn in her first (and only) cinematic role.  As Newt, a young girl found by Ripley in the colony after they land, Henn just never inhabited the character to me...but I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the young gal.

It's because of these issues that Aliens doesn't quite match the excellence of Alien even though Cameron's film is actually a bit better paced than its predecessor.  Still, these two films were wonderful franchise starters...it's just a shame that future films couldn't live up to their levels.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - Alien

--Alien Week--
Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Alien (1979)

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto

Directed by Ridley Scott

The Theatrical Edition rather than the Special Edition was watched as the theatrical cut is the preferred edit of Ridley Scott.

I've always had a certain fondness for the Alien franchise ever since I was scared out of my mind as a nine year-old seeing the creature "first hand" on The Great Movie Ride at the then-named Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida.  I remember clutching onto my parents as that ride headed through a replica of the spaceship Nostromo with an audio-animatronic figure of female badass Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) shaking as she holds a massive gun on the lookout for the nasty title creature who manages to surprisingly pop out from the ceiling and walls, thus frightening that little nine year-old me and scarring me for, at the very least, the next twenty minutes of my theme park-going experience.  I may not have known about Ridley Scott's Alien at that point in my life, but from that moment on, I became aware of this cinematic science fiction horror flick, and as I have grown older and had the opportunity to watch this classic, I find it nearly impossible not to appreciate the tense and horrifying two hours that slowly unfold onscreen.

Seven people stuck on a spaceship with nowhere to go and a nasty, vicious alien onboard who knows nothing else except to kill.  Sounds like a fun turn of events, but that's the story of Alien in a nutshell.  As our septet begins being picked off one by one by the frightening-looking creature, tension builds in the claustrophobic atmosphere and our crew members begin to slowly turn on one another in order to try and figure out the best way to take down the monster.

This horror film succeeds first and foremost because Ridley Scott takes things slow, gradually ratcheting up the tension and excitement.  As I watched Alien this go-around (for what is probably my fourth or fifth time), I was actually amazed at Scott's pacing throughout the film's first half -- he really takes time to build the atmosphere before he unloads the scares during the movie's last hour.  Some may even feel it's so slow it's boring, but I find it rather refreshing.  Even though he takes his time, Scott always allows a sense of foreboding and eeriness to be prevalent throughout.

Secondly, and what puts this film head over heels above most horror movies, the acting here is of quite a high caliber.  Sigourney Weaver is certainly best known across the world for her role as the headstrong Ripley and there's good reason for that -- she holds our attention and manages to do so even with a hard-edged, sometimes emotionless role.  She's a presence here -- a smart woman who despite her bosses' urges to bring the alien life form back to them has the courage and tenacity to go against their wishes and attempt to eradicate the beast.

And it's certainly not just Weaver who excels.  Her six costars each have crafted their own distinct personalities thanks to a great screenplay from Dan O'Bannon.  None of them disappoint...and neither does the alien itself thanks to the wonderful creature design by H.R. Giger.  It's a menacing beast, made even more frightening by the fact that Ridley Scott keeps him hidden and in the shadows for so long.  While the creature doesn't disappoint when finally seen, the anticipation is a key to the horrors that lie ahead.  When we see the little snake-like monster rip through the chest of an unfortunate Nostromo crew member about an hour in, we soon realize this must be one nasty full-grown alien if a "baby" one looks as horrific as this one does.

The RyMickey Rating:  A-

Alien Week

Starting Monday, leading up to the release of my most anticipated movie of the summer Ridley Scott's Prometheus on Friday, I'll be looking back on the four movies that make up the Alien Quadrilogy.  Will Alien still be my favorite or will Aliens (which tends to be the most highly regarded of the series) win me over?  Will Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection be just as bad as I remember them?  Find out starting on Monday.