**If it’s possible to spoil something already rotten then I suppose I should warn you that this review contains spoilers.**
Why?
That one word is the theme of Ridley Scott’s summer lackluster, Prometheus. It’s a great question too—one I have been asking myself all afternoon. Why didn’t I follow suit when the kid from Powder—who apparently got all jacked up on steroids—offed himself before the title sequence ended?
This question must have also played a crucial role as the committee of scriptwriters—cloistered in the choicest booth and chugging the choicest coffee Denny’s has to offer at 2AM on a Tuesday night—Frankensteined Prometheus’ plot and dialogue together in a manner reminiscent of children gluing Jelly Bellies and little green army guys into their diorama on cloud formations because Jelly Bellies and little green army guys are cool.
A decade ago, M. Knight Shyamalan’s movie Signs taught us that “everything happens for a reason.” Little girls don’t just leave dozens of half-full glasses of water around the house for no reason—they do it because they are going to need a glass of water handy to exploit the alien invaders’ Achilles heel—water—and save the world. Duh. Like Signs, all the happenings in Prometheus have reasons—lots and lots of unimaginably stupid reasons.
Why did the android sneak a can of alien goo onboard the ship unbeknownst to anyone? Because he needed some alien goo to poison a member of the crew.
Why did he poison a member of the crew? Because the main character’s boyfriend needed to be infected so he could impregnate the main character with an infected baby.
Why did the main character need to carry an infected baby? We needed to make use of the Surgery-O-Matic machine. And because she’s infertile. Isn’t it ironic?
Why did the Surgery-O-Matic machine need to be used? Because it’s cool. And because we need to have a fast-growing alien baby trapped in the Surgery-O-Matic section of the self-sustaining emergency escape townhouse.
Why? Because the main character needs to inadvertently lead the creator alien t o where he can be impregnated by the fast-growing alien baby.
Why? Because the whole damn point of the film is to show the miniature version of the alien from The Good Movies being born. It’s a frigging prequel you know.
Why did everyone in the film act like complete state-the-obvious idiots the entire time? Let’s not talk about that—wasn’t it cool when the Alien burst out of that guy’s belly at the end?
Why did I pay $13 to see Prometheus? Because it’s Ridley Scott. It’s Charlize Theron. It’s Aliens. It’s a summer blockbuster, baby, what could go wrong?
I would love to believe that Ridley and the Prometheus project started out with good intentions but, like many creations, the good ideas wound up going awry and turning into something unexpectedly awful. The buff Powder guy at the end of the film was just as spot-on as the one at the start. He saw that his human experiment had turned out bad and tried to do what any self-respecting creator would do under those circumstances—abort, abort. I want to believe that Ridley Scott saw the abomination he had birthed and tried to abort it as well. Perhaps the reason Prometheus wasn’t aborted was because an obnoxious, homely, plan-thwarting archaeologist was standing around with nothing to do.
The movie wasn’t all bad, though. Android-guy was well-played. There were eight seconds I truthfully enjoyed too. Five of those seconds were when Mowhawk Geologist-guy got acid sprayed on his helmet and it looked like someone had slapped a giant, half-baked Shrinky-Dink in his face. The other three seconds involved Charlize Theron’s clingy white robe and what happens to the human nipple when it gets a bit chilly. It’s a shame Charlize had to get squashed trying to run away from the skyscraper-sized rolling horseshoe. I wonder why she didn’t just hop a few feet off to the side like the homely, plan-thwarting archaeologist did.
Bah, who cares. I mean, did you see how that baby Alien came out of the giant albino’s chest at the end? Did you? I thought so. I wonder if Ridley has started the prequel’s sequel yet…
