Prometheus ****

Director: Ridley Scott
Year: 2012
Writers: Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof
Cinematographer: Dariusz Wolski

I have never seen any of the alien movies. This gives me the perfect excuse to get started on the series.

I must say I really enjoyed this movie, I was thoroughly entertained, though I'm not sure it's a great film, I think I should judge based on my enjoyment, which makes it very good.

I like science fiction that focuses on the human questions more than technical stuff, and especially stuff concerning space exploration... it captures my imagination easily. That said, I loved the first half hour or so of exposition in which we find out who the characters are, what they are trying to accomplish, and where they are going. I really enjoyed the film as I knew monsters were coming, the tension was building, but it didn't rush... it was a slow build up and then crazy, horrifying monsters did horrible things to the humans. I like that the stakes were big, I like that we find out where humanity originated (kind of) and that we then have to protect ourselves from being destroyed by doing a suicide mission.

I loved the visuals, and I really liked Fassbinder's performance.

I didn't like the jumps through scenes. I felt like at least another 30 minutes of the film were left on the edit room floor as the slow build up in the beginning turned into a rushed climax. Although maybe the pace was intended, I think I could have enjoyed a little more suspense at the climax for example, when the decision is made to do a suicide mission, then again maybe its realistic that in that moment, they had to make a split decision.

I wish we knew why Fassbinder's character poisoned another character and then later seemed so helpful. I don't really understand his motivations.

Some of the dialogue was too direct, spelling things out like when the captain says "this is some kind of military base... they knew not to build their weapons of mass destruction on their own doorstep" maybe they could have done more show and less tell. Perhaps that was a decision they made to skip over a scene and instead opted for the line of dialogue to spell it out for the audience though I think we could kind of gather what was going on when we saw the arsenal of vases.

Anyway, I had fun watching this in the theater (saw it in 2D) and really want to see a movie where Shaw goes to the origin planet of the alien humans to ask her questions and/or release the nasty aliens on the original humans as punishment for trying to wipe out planet earth. I guess that is the biggest compliment I can pay this movie, that I want to see where that character goes next.

I walked out of the theater, got in my car, drove to the movie rental store and rented Alien and Aliens on blu-ray. I'm about to watch them, hopefully they are as enjoyable as Prometheus.