GUESS WHICH FILM STILL SUCKS A LEFT NUT AND A RIGHT NUT

Well. That certainly turned into a lengthy hiatus, didn’t it?

The last little while has been a whirlwind of finishing old jobs, starting new jobs, writing, producing, performing, and all the other general madness that constitutes my life/career. Throughout this time, I got tons of little messages from people asking me my thoughts about the Prometheus sequel, now titled Alien: Paradise Lost or Alien: Still Capitalizing On The Success Of An Infinitely Superior Film or Alien: Somehow We Do Not Feel Shame In Using The Title Of One Of The Most Important Works Of Writing Ever To Refer To A Fart In Film Form or some such. These comments inspired me (i.e., they stoked the endless furnace of rage within me), but still there was no time to sit down. (I also started a new job, and there’s that whole thing where people tend to look askance at new coworkers who rage outwardly about a film that they have seen more times than any human being should). But that self same new job necessitated that I both read the script for and watch Aliens, and I knew what I must do.

It is clear to me, dear readers, that I have a calling, and that calling is to talk about how the film Prometheus is a pile of sad old ham until my fingers can type no longer. At this point I will get my grandchildren to tie me to the roof of the car and drive me up and down the neighbourhood as I shout invective into a megaphone. Truly my future is a bright one.

Anyway, it’s great to be back, even if no one else is. Let’s dive back in with today’s topic, which is:

#7. EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IS SO BAD

Prometheus is many things – a wildly inaccurate look at biology, an experiment in how to create a horror film without any tension whatsoever – but above all it is a propaganda film about how all scientists are bad idiots that deserve to perish in humiliating ways. The scientists of this film are exactly a half step away from shouting “DUR DUR DUR DUR DUR” as they run in circles, shitting themselves all the while. We’ve talked a bit about this before, but let’s break it down:

• SCIENTIST WHO PIONEERED THIS MISSION: is not actually sure if it will work
• OTHER SCIENTIST WHO PIONEERED THIS MISSION: is furious when it DOES work
• BIOLOGIST: Cuddles up to a penis snake and is promptly deep-throated to death
• GEOLOGIST: Is the only one who knows how to navigate the planet; is subsequently the only one to get lost

It’s like they’re designed to make you go “JESUS GOD I WISH THIS CHARACTER WAS DEAD ALREADY” so you don’t care when, two scenes later, they’re killed in a stupid way that, save a few exceptions, is entirely brought about by their own actions.

I watched The Martian over the holidays, which offered me (amongst other things) a pleasing moment of respite from shrieking about when and how Ridley Scott’s career went so wrong. And although it’s almost unfair to hold The Martian up next to Prometheus – it’s not even so much comparing “apples” and “oranges” as it is “apples” and “a solitary pile of cat vomit orbited by a single lazy fly” – one of the things The Martian does so right (that Prometheus does so, so wrong) is character. The characters are a delight to watch: they’re smart, resourceful, principled. Even those that are underserved (i.e., Sebastian Stan) are established through their context as extremely intelligent, which earns some goodwill. And the purported “bad guy” of the film, Jeff Daniels, has complex reasoning behind his decision-making. If The Martian proves anything, it’s genuinely fun to watch smart people solving complicated problems, and satisfying to see people interacting with, occasionally being bowed by, but ultimately overcoming their circumstances.

This is one of the aspects of the movie that I genuinely can’t wrap my head around. If you don’t love your characters – or at the very least find them interesting – why are you even bothering to write about them? Don’t waste our time with people you don’t care about. Write about the things you love -because then we’ll love them too.

ALSO PLEASE DO NOT EVER SHOW ME A MAN HAVING A SNAKE GIVE HIM A THROAT JOB. DISGUSTING

What can we learn from this?

Create compelling characters or GTFO.

NO SNAKES EVER

 

 

DON’T WORRY, I’M STILL MAD ABOUT PROMETHEUS

Don’t worry, all zero of my loyal readers! It’s been a very busy time full of a lot of work and shows,  so I haven’t been able to focus attention on the blog. But rest assured that my churning, frothing hate for Prometheus is no less churny or frothy. I’ll be back soon with more posts where I discuss:

• How The Scientists In This Movie Are An Affront To The Very Idea Of Science
• How To End Your Movie With A “Wait What The Fuck Just Happened”, or, When You Decide Your Real Antagonist Is A Giant Squidly
• How Is It That You Can Cast Idris Elba In Your Movie And Have His Only Discernible Characteristics Be That He Likes Sex And Christmas

And more! If there are things you’d like to see me cover, please feel free to leave them in the comments. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the process of writing this blog, it’s that Prometheus is a collective wound on all of our psyches, one we can only heal through a lot of capital letters and shouting about WHY IS ANYTHING THE WAY IT IS

See you soon!

LYLAGOPWAHPACAPI, INAITTVIOF,S,T,R,ANHFSIYM

(Love You Like A Group Of People Who Also Hate Prometheus And Actively Consider It A Personal Insult, If Not An Insult To The Very Ideas Of Filmmaking, Sense, Taste, Reason, And Not having Fucking Squidlys In Your Movie)

I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU PROMETHEUS

I watched Prometheus again last night to get material for future blog posts, so forgive me if today’s entry is written with extra rage, but I can’t help it because you see THIS MOVIE IS A BOTTOMLESS SACK OF CRAP. OH GOD I HATE IT. I HATE EVERY SECOND OF IT. TRULY IT IS THE STUPIDEST THING I HAVE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO BEHOLD.

Anyway, on with the blog!

#6. MICHAEL RAPAPORT IS THE WORST VILLAIN EVER

If you’re just joining the blog, it must be noted for clarity that the antagonist of this superdud is not star of Prison Break and Friends Michael Rapaport. However, I noted in my first post that they look pretty similar, and now they are completely indistinguishable in my mind – so much so that when I went to Google the images below I wrote “Prometheus + Michael Rapaport”. Anyway, look at this!

Right? Right, though? As you can clearly see, I am correct about this, which is why the Engineers shall be referred to as Michael Rapaport, the Michael Rapaports, or – when I inevitably misspell it or neglect to revise an auto-correct – Michael Rapport or Parapaport. (Also because “The Engineers” is a truly stupid name for a villain. It’s so vague! You might as well just call them “THE GUYS”. UGH THIS MOVIE. It is an insult to everything I am and stand for).

Anyway, The Michael Rapaports are truly dreadful villains. In a film that never ceases to amaze – that, in fairness, EXCLUSIVELY amazes – in its capacity to plunge to the deepest levels of failure, the Michael Rapaports represent a stunning new low because they fail in SO MANY WAYS:

• In a series that has introduced us to some of the creepiest and most evocative creatures in sci-fi history, we are given bodybuilders with bug eyes. (Side salad: Can we please get over the trope of “huge black eyes with no sclera = bad evil”? It is good and well played out. It is about as effective at this point as giving your bad guy a big twirly moustache.)
• In keeping with my complaints from my last post about the film’s “is it or isn’t it a prequel” dilemma, they’re also a huge miss in terms of continuity. Fans of Alien will recall that the Space Jockey was enormous (the characters from Alien looked like children next to him, and in fact were literally played by children for scale) and looked like a giant space elephant. In comparison, the Michael Rapaports are the general size and scale of Michael Rapaport, and look like Michael Rapaport. WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST MICHAEL RAPAPORT, MOVIE? HIS WORK IN BOSTON PUBLIC WAS SOUND, I ASSUME

But the principal reason the Michael Rapaports suck (sidebar: spelling Michael Rapaport correctly has been a huge challenge thus far) is because they have no motivation that we know of, making them utterly useless in a villainous capacity. From literally the moment the movie starts to the second it ends, it’s completely unclear who they are, what they want, or what their ultimate goal is, and as a result it’s impossible to invest in them as characters. It’s not like you have to fully spell out everything about a character up front, but you need to give people something clear to latch onto: something that makes them understand the dynamic at play between your protagonist and antagonist, that indicates the source of tension created by their opposing wants. I mean, Darth Vader’s motivations are not exactly complex – they literally amount to “FUCK REBELS” – but at least you KNOW.

This is consistent with a storytelling mode that I find particularly irksome: the J.J. Abrams “mystery box” approach. A few years ago, J.J. Abrams did a TED Talk where he summarized his approach to story around a “mystery magic box” that he has never opened, saying:

“I bought this decades ago, but if you look at this, you’ll see it’s never been opened. Ever. Why have I not opened this, and why have I kept it?… It represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. What I love about this box — and what I realized I sort of do, in whatever it is that I do — is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination… What are stories besides mystery boxes?”

(http://theweek.com/articles/460936/hey-jj-abrams-time-open-mystery-box)

This sounds terrific. It is also total bullshit. Because it presumes that the absence of information is more interesting than any information – and that, by extension of that, the moment of first learning is the most interesting moment that could possibly occur. A blank page similarly has infinite possibility, endless potential, to be anything – because a blank page, you see, is nothing at all.

J.J Abrams, of course, worked with writer Damon Lindelof on Lost, a famous entry in the genre of “What Are We Doing? Tee Hee! I Wonder What Our HUUUUGE Secret Could Be! Ooh Hoo Hoo! It Is Such A Glorious Secret, And I Can Never Hey Where Are You Going COME BACK IT WAS PURGATORY”. So it’s not surprising that the same technique is employed here, though it is surely not ANY LESS FRUSTRATING. Let’s compare and contrast this approach to Attack The Block, a genius little movie that blew my mind by being the first movie I’ve seen in ages to not be fucking smug and cagey about its antagonist. It introduces the alien immediately, and what it loses by not holding off for some grand reveal, it gains in allowing us to get to know and fear the aliens by seeing them in action. In contradistinction, The Michael Rapaports just remain a mystery because, clearly, mysteries are compelling! But since you never know what it is they’re trying to do, it’s really, REALLY hard to care.

The other thing that I TOTALLY hate about this mode of storytelling is that it shifts the importance from “telling a story” to “delaying a reveal” for the storytellers and from “listening to a story” to “trying to figure out the reveal” for the audience. The mind rushes to fill a vacuum, and when you identify something as a mystery, it’s all anyone wants to think about. This might just be me, though, because the idea of not having a critical piece of information makes me INSANE. You have exactly two seconds to dangle a carrot in front of me before I’m shouting “THAT CARROT IS ALL I’VE EVER WANTED GIVE IT TO ME THIS INSTANT OR I SHALL MURDER MYSELF.” With this frame of mind, the reveal inevitably is a letdown: either because I’ve focused on it to the exclusion of everything else and it has assumed such mythic proportions in my mind that nothing could live up to it, or because I’ve already figured it out. Remember Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness, and how the entire promo campaign was “Who could Benedict Cummerbund be playing? WINK”, and then when you first meet Bendlepap Clementep in the movie, he’s all like “My name is John Smith, WINK” he’s like “My name is John Smith, WINK”, and then all through the movie it’s just nothing but Baplabap Canterboy being like “Who could I possibly be, I don’t know (I DO KNOW WINK!!!)”, and then when the camera FINALLY pushed in and Bumpletum Rampleblbapbl introduced himself as Khan, half of the audience was like “FUCKING OF COURSE YOU ARE” and the other half went “What’s a Khan” and I pulled out all of my hair in one swift movement and threw it into the air while shrieking? CAN WE ALL AGREE THAT THIS MODE OF STORYTELLING IS INEFFECTIVE AT BEST*

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

I believe it was Carl Sagan who wrote, “It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to KNOW IT IS A FUCKING SUNSET.” Just tell us who your villain is. That doesn’t mean that they can’t still grow, or have more to show us, or have information to surprise us with – that’s just good development for any character! The value of a surprise is not the surprise itself, but everything that comes before and after – so give us a reason to care or GTFO with your dumb bug-eyes and your stupid bodies, you Michael Rapaports.

Also you Bendyface Clamplebaps.

WHY IS EVERYONE’S NAME SO COMPLICATED

*Runner up example: Super 8, a movie that works overtime to hide the fact that the Super 8** is just a spider with ET’s head

** YES I refer to the monster as a Super 8. YOU WATCH MOVIES YOUR WAY AND I’LL WATCH THEM MINE

MY DARLING I CAN’T STOP (hating this goddamn movie)

I was contemplating starting out this post with a fake-out about how a few days’ reflection had caused me to realize that I had been far too hard on Prometheus. This proved to be impossible, because instead of writing I just started imagining how much better this film would have been if I produced a vuvuzela from my purse and played it without ceasing until the final credits rolled.

In all honesty I am marginally concerned that spending a large amount of time (“large amount” being, in this case, any amount of time) thinking about what is truly a hate crime on cinema is having an adverse effect on my health. Yet I soldier on, determined to spread my gospel that Prometheus is a pile of pubes turned into a film by a truly bad wizard’s spell.

#5. IT’S NOT A PREQUEL TO ALIEN, UNLESS IT BENEFITS US SOMEHOW, IN WHICH CASE IT TOTALLY IS AND ALWAYS WAS SHUT UP

In its development phase, Prometheus was described in no uncertain terms as being a prequel to Alien. The original script by Jon Spaihts (entitled Alien: Engineers) was designed to set up the events of the original movie, and even took place on LV-426 – the same planet that the characters explore in the OG Alien. (Also of note: the protagonist of that draft was named Jocelyn! Since my name is Jocelyn, and I have been told by exactly one person who was squinting at the time that I “sort of look like Sigourney Weaver from the side”, this is unmistakably a shout out to me!) At some point along the way (or so Wikipedia tells us), Ridley Scott decided to go in a different direction in order to avoid repeating similar moments from the other Alien films. Now, I had my own idea of how an Alien prequel was going to look*, and I was pretty excited about it (Imagine! A time when I was excited about Prometheus! This is another reason I honestly wish I could send this toilet film to hell), but this is not a bad idea. Prequels are incredibly difficult to execute well. It’s hard to set up the action of a film (especially one made years ago using an entirely different aesthetic) in a way that feels organic and satisfying, or to try to “introduce” antagonists we are already familiar with without reiterating character beats that inevitably lose their impact for familiarity. So when I heard they were going in a different direction – one that was rumored to explore the famous “Space Jockey” character you see in the very beginning of Alien – I thought it was a solid idea and a great way to expand the universe of the franchise.

WOULD YOU IMAGINE THAT THEY FOUND A WAY TO DISAPPOINT ME

Instead of writing an entirely new script that reflected this new direction, they just changed bits of the old script (mostly, it seems, any parts of the script that made the characters not the stupidest and worst people in the world). So it’s a script designed to provide an explanation of how one set of circumstances leads to another set of circumstances, with ALL THE PARTS THAT EXPLAIN HOW THEY’RE LINKED REMOVED. This truly insane decision leads to a series of questions:

• Okay so what who are all these Michael Rapaports? WHO KNOWS
• Did they create humanity? UNCLEAR
• Are they good or evil?  YES BUT ALSO POSSIBLY NO
• Okay but that wasn’t a Yes/No question. TRUE
• So wait what is this movie actually about STICKS HAND INTO BAG OF COCAINE AND LICKS IT LIKE A TERRIBLE LOLLIPOP

WHY WOULDN’T YOU JUST WRITE AN ENTIRELY NEW SCRIPT? If you’ve decided that doing a prequel is a zero-sum game, then DON’T DO A PREQUEL. This is like making a grilled cheese sandwich, deciding when it’s in the pan that you don’t want a grilled cheese sandwich, and changing direction by cutting a hole in the middle of the grilled cheese and FILLING IT WITH GARBAGE

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM THIS?

If you’re going to do a prequel, then do a prequel. If you’re not, then don’t. You can’t create compelling mythology if you can’t account for why anything is happening, and you can’t do a good film if you’re making STUPID DECISIONS FOR NO REASON

*Okay so I totally thought that Prometheus was going to be about mankind being responsible for creating/releasing the aliens by exposing themselves to the black goo and mutating into them. I am not saying that this would have definitely worked better, but also I am totally saying that. Call me, Hollywood, you bunch of goons! Give all of your dollars to ME!

Yes I’m Still Writing About PROMETHEUS

Welcome to the fourth post in this truly ridiculous venture. Some people have been very kind to read this ludicrous blog, and it makes my heart soar! Of course this also means that I have been thinking about Prometheus way more than usual, which means that my heart is also gripped by the ICY CLAWS OF FURY. It’s confusing.

Let’s get straight to the biscuits!

#4. CHARLIZE THERON IS MURDERED BY A SPACE CROISSANT

Objectively, Prometheus contains many of the stupidest deaths in film history. Examples!

• A biologist whose entire job it is to study living organisms and who presumably went to school for some amount of time to learn How Not To Be A Fucking Moron sees a skeleton and freaks the FUCK out. Minutes later, he coos ecstatically at a snake/sentient penis/sentient penis with a vagina face/all of the above and – despite the fact that he has been goading an organism that he has no familiarity with and therefore cannot accurately predict its behaviour, and despite the fact that it is LITERALLY A PENIS – is surprised when it deep throats him to death

• Having been dosed with the Black Goo That Can Do Anything Depending On What Scene You’re In by Blonde-Ass Michael Fassbender, Trey from The OC begins to succumb to its effects. At this point, having zero knowledge of what’s happening to him, or whether or not it’s curable, and all while he’s within spitting distance of a medical bay where information on points A and B could presumably be gleaned – he’s like “Welp, the only solution is fire!” and walks directly into a jet of flame IN FRONT OF HIS GIRLFRIEND so she may always treasure the memory of the time when she became traumatized 4 life

• The scientist who has been transformed into a monster man by Thing Number Zillion Pillion The Black Goo Is Capable of Doing runs into the ship to display his signature monster power of Jumping Up High And Then Falling On People, and then is almost instantaneously dispatched by being run over by a car

• Idris Elba, accompanied by Anyone On The Prometheus Who Belongs To A Visible Minority, shouts “HANDS UP” as he crashes the ship into Michael Rapaport’s ship, in a moment that I assume was supposed to look cool but immediately conjured memories of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHlrgPKX5U

And yet, in this panoply of sincerely embarrassing moments in cinema, truly nothing is as stupid as the moment where Charlize Theron gets smushed to death by a spaceship like she’s in the world’s most expensive game of Grape Escape. For the record, here are the acceptable circumstances in which a character may be smushed to death:

1. The character is Wile E. Coyote
2. There are no other acceptable circumstances

The characters in this film are not exactly what you would call richly drawn. The breakdowns are essentially “7 IDIOTS AND A ROBOT”. But we at least know three things about Charlize Theron:

• Wakes up out of cryo-sleep and does push-ups = Is Physically Strong
• Was sent to supervise a mission she doesn’t appear to believe in = Tenacious Or Something
• Refuses to let Trey from The OC back on the ship when he’s all goopified and whiny = At Least Capable of Some Good Ideas

So why in the hot fuck would this character, faced with a situation that she could escape from if she were to move exactly two steps to her left or right, be like, “Clearly the way out of THIS jam is to run straight! Ever straight! Always remaining in the impossibly thin shadow of the spaceship looming overhead! Surely this will not” (MAXIMUM DEAD)?

This is a franchise that brought us John Hurt seizing and gibbering hysterically in terror and anguish in a sequence so protracted and agonizing it hurts to this DAY to watch it. I can imagine that living up to that legacy is very difficult, and I don’t think that everything you do has to match or top that moment. But how this was not flagged as being the dumbest, cartooniest, tension-killingest way to kill off a major character defies all logic and reason. I am a person who has seen the episode of ER where a helicopter cuts off a surgeon’s hand, and then the later episode where another helicopter falls on him as tacit confirmation that he is the victim of some sort of helicopter vendetta, and I still consider this one of the ludicrous things I’ve ever seen. For all the emotional heft this scene has, they might as well have inserted a still reading “INSERT CHARACTER DEATH LATER” and called it a day.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Your audience is as invested in your characters as you are. You should care about them so much that when you put them into situations where they hurt, so do you – because so will we.

ALSO IT’S THE ALIEN FRANCHISE PUT YOUR GODDAMN BACKBONE INTO IT NO ONE SHOULD BE DEAD BY HAVING A SPACESHIP FALL ON THEM WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON

AND YOU CAN’T AND YOU WON’T AND YOU DON’T STOP (Hating PROMETHEUS)

Today’s exploration of this dirt pile of a movie owes a spiritual debt to one of the best classes I have ever taken in my life: Biology in Film – Fact or Fiction. I was required to take one science class to obtain my undergrad degree, and knocked it out of the way in first year with this sweet little gem of a course where we watched movies, then talked about the science behind them. I’ve actually written an essay on whether or not you could survive having your heart ripped out before you are lowered into a lava pit, Temple of Doom-style. (Spoiler alert: you can’t!)

So today we’re investigating a sequence that sucks in part because it makes no sense. Yes, it’s a science fiction movie and suspension of disbelief and all that, but there’s always, ALWAYS room for logic. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s another reason why I hated Prometheus:

#3. THE SURGERY SCENE IN WHICH THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO GIVES BIRTH TO A SQUID FOR SOME REASON

Credit where credit is due: this is one of the better sequences in the film, mostly because it’s the first time that a character does anything even REMOTELY resembling what a human being would do in that scenario. This has been an untapped area of exploration for the Alien franchise thus far: when characters find out they’re impregnated they typically let things run their super gross and death-inducing course. Personally, I can guarantee you that if I found out I had an alien inside me I’d be in the bathroom in a hot five minutes with a bottle of scotch and a hastily procured scalpel shouting “NO ONE BURSTS OUT OF MY BODY WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT CONSENT YOU ALIEN” so it’s nice to actually see a character be like “Um, CHEQUE PLEASE.” (Presuming “cheque please” is what you say when you realize you’re pregnant with a murder machine.) Also, this sequence is kinda cool because it makes you wonder why no one has thought of this before. (Remember how annoying it was to watch Leland Orser sulk about the fact that he had a chestburster in him? Seize the day, you wet potato of a man!) Plus the idea of having to perform surgery on yourself while lucid is delightfully gross – the perfect sort of squirm-inducing sequence for a horror film that’s too unbelievable to be terrifying but too barfy not to watch through your fingers. It’s a fun idea and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo performs the hell out of the whole sequence.

So obviously, because things are going well, the movie has to revert to its nature – which is to identify the seed of a good idea and SMASH IT WITH A SALT-ENCRUSTED HAMMER UNTIL NOTHING MAY GROW AGAIN – and add this terrifically dumb beat wherein the machine smugly informs Not-Rooney-Mara that it’s only calibrated to operate on males.

1. Why did Charlize Theron, a human woman, bring it then? Was it for her father, An Actual Cocoon from the Film Cocoon? What possible operation could he require other than a waterectomy to remove more moisture from his miserable raisin face?

2. Why are we trying to inject more tension? Were the stakes not high enough already? THE WOMAN IS PREGNANT WITH CTHULU. This extra tidbit of information just proves to be distracting, because the thing is (and here’s where the science comes in):

3. There’s no way that a machine that’s set up only to operate on males could perform a “caesarean” without murdering the EVERLOVING FUCK out of the person inside. The body is not an open cavity where all your organs just happily float about. You have muscles! And blood vessels! And things attaching things to other things! If the amusement park claw that comprises this surgery machine assumes it’s removing an “abdominal mass”, then it’s basically punching a hole through her abs, yanking out a squid ball (if not her entire uterus – which it probably would, because this machine only operates on boys for some reason), and then stapling it shut. Basically this is the equivalent of setting a room on fire, then shutting the door and painting it a lovely shade of white!

4. Also what claw game has EVER successfully removed an object on the first try? THIS IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR, PROMETHEUS

Despite basically being turbo-punched in the torso by a robot arm and then having the enormous wound sealed with scotch tape, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo runs, rolls, jumps and fights both Michael Rapaport AND an enormous squid monster (which really deserves its own post because it makes me INSANE) with no indication that a murder has been done to her body. Firstly, if I stub my toe I’m basically out of commission for a day. Secondly, if you’re going to the effort to inject extra tension by saying that she’s having surgery in a man machine, why not make use of the tension you have created by SHOWING HOW SHE HAS BEEN IMPACTED BY THE SURGICAL PROCEDURE SHE ENDURED WITH LOCAL ANESTHETIC LITERALLY MOMENTS AGO? The ending of Die Hard creates huge amounts of tension out of John McClane stepping on a glass shard; this movie features a game of Bobbing for Fetuses and NO ONE BREATHES A WORD.

Also, I know I said I’d write about this later, but—she gives birth to a squid. An actual squid. You just know that the props team were like “Ah, good, we’ve finished all our work for the movie” and Ridley Scott was like “We’re filming the surgery scene in fifteen minutes, we need the monster baby” and the props team collectively did a twelve minute spit take and then used the remaining three minutes to run to a nearby fish shop. Like – I personally find squid and octopi terrifying, and I think a lot of iconic monsters use visual signifiers that resemble squid and octopi (because of the whole thing where they’re TERRIFYING), but… put some muscle into it, guys. I’m pretty certain HR Giger, genius though he was, saw a lobster once and was like “hey guys I know what the alien will look like”, but at least he had the decency to BUILD on his original idea.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Don’t add things just for the sake of raising the stakes. If the situation you’ve created is good enough (and it totally was!) then the tension will come naturally!

ALSO YOU CAN’T JUST STAPLE UP AN ENORMOUS FLESH WOUND CHRIST ON A CRACKER.

Doubling Down; or, I Have More To Say About PROMETHEUS

I’m sufficiently bolstered by the (entirely too generous) response to my first post (in that anyone read it at all) that I’m continuing this venture. Please join me on another cathartic exploration of why Prometheus is a sad old bucket of hot fish water.

#2. GUY PEARCE IS A CALIFORNIA RAISIN

Prometheus is visibly a movie with no shortage of money at its disposal. Therefore it is all the more jarring when Guy Pearce shows up in the worst old age makeup of all time. This makeup must be seen to be believed, so please enjoy documentation of the least special “special effects” the world has ever known:

This picture is insane. If you were to tell me this was a promotional still from the upcoming film The Marvelous Adventures of the Turnip Who Went to Space, I would believe you. Not since Hans Moleman have we seen a human being so improbably puckered.

If, like me, you are a sucker for a viral marketing campaign (and if, like me, you somehow believe that viral marketing campaigns translate to good world building, which it almost never does, but that’s a subject for another blog entitled “YOU HAVE RUINED MY LIFE: I Will Never Stop Being Mad At The Movie Cloverfield”), you know that Guy Pearce appeared as a younger version of his character in a TED Talk to promote the film: https://vimeo.com/50383392

Don’t watch it, who cares.

Now, Guy Pearce is not so well known that he couldn’t feasibly hide behind old age makeup (if said old age makeup were good and did not look like a man had somehow found a way to feed sour candy to his pores). But by showing you what his normal face looks like before you see the movie, you’re guaranteed to go into Prometheus with that face in your mind – which means that all you’ll be able to think when you look at the weird old apple core that somehow comprises his mug is “What did they do to Guy Pearce, an actor I had no emotional connection to before, and now feel genuine pity towards?” If you didn’t see the TED Talk, you’ll go into the film wondering “Why is the monkey from Project Nim hanging out with these astronauts? OH SHIT THAT’S GUY PEARCE WHAT WHY” Essentially, either way you are guaranteed to spend a sizable chunk of the movie’s running time wondering who Guy Pearce offended so badly that his makeup plot was revised to placing plastic wrap on his face and blowing it with an industrial-strength hairdryer until he looked like a shrunken head from a dollar store.

The clear question is: Why didn’t they just actually hire an older actor? Because Guy Pearce was supposed to be in another scene in the movie, and the scene is INSANE. Take it away, article I just read!

The scene in question was a dream sequence involving Pearce’s Weyland and David, the “Lawrence of Arabia”-loving android played by Michael Fassbender.

“[T]here’s a scene in the movie where we see David and he’s got his headset on and he’s talking to someone, and we don’t know who it is, and he gets confronted by Vickers [Charlize Theron],” screenwriter Damon Lindelof said to Slash Gear about the lost Pearce moment. “There’s a scene in the script that we decided not to shoot, where we see the inside of that dream, and basically David takes a jetski out with a beautiful woman in a bikini, to a yacht, and on the yacht is Weyland. Played by Guy, without old-age make-up: This is his dream.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/guy-pearce-prometheus-deleted-scene_n_1846214.html)

TO CLARIFY

THERE WAS A SCENE IN THIS HORROR MOVIE WHERE A ROBOT RIDES A JETSKI SO HE CAN JOIN A GUY IN A SEXY BOAT PARTY

Much like the classic scene in The Exorcist where Max Von Sydow deals with his stress by going surfing, this is a clear demonstration of how to effectively build tension in your film.

Apparently they never even shot it because, in one of what I presume were very few moments of lucidity in this film where Ridley Scott went “HOLY FUCK WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE”, he decided it would be distracting. So the net effect is this:

• Guy Pearce is cast to play a younger man
• Logically it makes sense then to have him play the older man
• But then the scene with the younger man is cut because it’s insane
• So Guy Pearce ONLY plays an older man

Put this into the context of another job:

• You are asked to give a two-part speech
• The first part of the speech sets up the second part of the speech
• Then you are told only to do the second part of the speech
• Congratulations, you look super dumb

It is the WEIRDEST thing to do to an actor, especially when you remember – and I truly cannot overstate this – that he looks SO stupid. He looks like he’s auditioning to play Gollum in a middle school production of Lord of the Rings, and everyone did his prosthetics with their feet just to challenge themselves. It’s saying a lot that, in a sea of baffling decisions, this one stands out.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Cast age-appropriate actors. You truly will never go wrong. Also, if you have a beef with someone, work it out face-to-face instead of consigning them to immortality in film with a face that is unmistakably a testicle.

Welcome To My Ridiculous New Blog

Welcome to Reasons I Hated PROMETHEUS, the blog in which I address the many and varied reasons why I hate this film with all my heart. I hate this film so profoundly that the mere mention of the film is enough to make me want to put my body into a fireplace. I could write forever about the things in this film that are stupid and terrible and never fully itemize why it is such a toilet to my eyes.

As I write this, I’m watching a YouTube video which boldly makes the claim that Prometheus is misunderstood. This is false. Prometheus is a dog’s breakfast, which is an adorable term for when something is a gigantic embarrassing mess. It is the worst kind of bad movie – a movie that looked like it was going to be good, had all the components to be good, and then improbably is bad – not enjoyably terrible or deliciously stupid, just plainly, simply BAD – in ways that you never could have anticipated. It is the film equivalent of going to your mom’s house and seeing all the ingredients lined up for tacos, and smelling the tacos, and thinking about how delicious it will be when you get to eat tacos, and then when you’re called for dinner you discover that your mother has not prepared tacos but instead has somehow made you A BARREL OF GARBAGE FILLED WITH BAD SNAKES. (V good metaphor, there are a lot of bad gross snakes in this film)

I should clarify that I like everyone involved in this film, and for the most part, do not hold this giant sadness pile against them. As a writer and a performer, I recognize that sometimes despite everyone’s best efforts a project just goes completely belly up and there’s nothing you can do to fix it. But I do think it’s worth thinking about and talking about this condensed heap of failure three years after the fact not only because a sequel is being released (WHY WHO WILL WATCH IT), but because I think it’s a perfect example of storytelling/filmmaking gone wrong. If there is anything that Prometheus can offer us (beyond the actual lather of rage I develop every time I think about that dumb squid monster), it is that it can serve as a learning tool/cautionary tale to filmmakers of all stripes who want to avoid the unimaginably stupid missteps that comprise this entire film.

It is difficult to know where to begin listing the problems with this terrible parade of mistakes – so much so that I have been drafting this inaugural post for a full night and a morning, and every time I’ve started I’ve been distracted by fresh thoughts of another part in the movie that was so nonsensical I wished I could hit it with a stick. However, after considerable deliberation, I’ve decided to begin with one of my biggest sticking points with the film:

#1: THE BLACK STUFF

WHAT IS IT

WHAT THE FUCK IS IT

IF ANYONE CAN EXPLAIN WHAT THIS STUFF IS TO MY SATISFACTION I WILL BUY THEM A HELICOPTER (I do not intend to honor this request)

Let’s backtrack momentarily. One of the reasons Alien works so well – why it’s great on its own and why it’s viable as a franchise – is that the titular alien is as straightforward a villain as you could ever hope to have. Consider how difficult it is to create a character you’ve never seen before (i.e., think of movies that have done it unsuccessfully like Lady in the Water), and then have that character be so clear in its motivations and fully defined in its life cycle that people who haven’t even seen Alien could realistically explain in a sentence how it develops. It’s an ingenious feat of writing. And because the script is so successful (and expedient) in setting out what this character is and can do, it can spend the rest of the film mining that idea for its potential. SO IT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE WHEN YOU *KNOW* HOW WELL THIS WORKS TO HAVE A BLACK GOO THAT IS CAPABLE OF DOING LITERALLY EVERYTHING AND NOTHING ALL AT ONCE

The first time we see the black goo some Michael Rapaport-looking motherfucker is drinking it, at which point he explodes into DNA clouds (congratulations, for sure this is how DNA works). So the black goo has destructive properties? No, because the next time we see it Michael Fassbender is dipping his blonde-ass finger in it to no effect. Then it makes a worm into a penis snake. THEN it makes a worm come out of the eye of Trey from The OC (NVR 4GET). And in addition to murdering Michael Rapaport into a cloud and having no effect on an android, it can also make a man into a monster boy and make a lady pregnant with an actual squid.

WHAT IS HAPPENING

THIS MAKES MY WHOLE BODY TINGLE WITH HATE

My limited research indicates that the black stuff is supposed to be a “catalyst for evolution.” As a non-scientist, take this with all the grains of salt you need, but I am fairly certain that evolution does not go as follows:

• Michael Rapaport (who we learn shares human DNA) ingests black stuff; explodes
• Trey from The OC (also has human DNA because is human) ingests black stuff; explodes
• Trey also has sex with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; makes a squid baby
• Squid baby + Michael Rapaport = the alien from Alien?

BOO. If you can’t fill in the blanks of what your stupid made up substance does then it is useless as a narrative tool. And if the black goo can just do whatever you need it to do, it is robbed of any dramatic potential. This is not mysterious. This is not captivating. THIS IS F MINUS WRITING AND IT BELONGS IN A GARBAGE CAN

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Make your writing have stakes. Make things MEAN things. Put forward an idea and then mine it for all its worth. This is the basic thinking behind everything you like – a simple concept explored in depth. It’s not interesting to raise a million questions that you can’t answer and it is CERTAINLY not interesting to just watch a million things happen THAT YOU CANNOT ADEQUATELY EXPLAIN.

Personally, I also learned that it is difficult to spell Michael Rapaport. So far I’ve done Raport, Rapapaport, and Parappaport. GET A BETTER NAME, WEIRDO.

That’s about as much thinking about this garbo movie as I can do for the moment before my nose starts bleeding. Join me for future installments of this blog, maybe? Or not! LIKELY NOT?!