Prometheus: Who’s Your Daddy?

It’s a Big Summer Blockbuster, people! It’s a prequel to Alien! And it asks the most fundamental philosophical questions known to man: who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?

As a result, one cannot discuss a film like Ridley Scott’s Prometheus alone — so once again I sit down with blogger extraordinaire JustMeMike of The Arts. Beginning last spring, we’ve discussed a number of films in-depth beginning with White Material, Miral, Larry Crowne, David Fincher’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Whistleblower, and The Hunger Games.

To recap the film’s plot setup: it follows archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) who discover a series of primitive cave paintings and ancient art portraying early humans flanked by giant figures who point to a specific star configuration in the heavens. Believing this to be a star map, and believing further that those giant figures represent aliens who may be the creators of humankind, Shaw and Holloway set off with a scientific team on the starship Prometheus, funded by the Weyland Corporations, for the outer reaches of space to locate the aliens (whom they term “The Engineers”). The plan: to get those fundamental questions answered.

The ship is staffed with what, to Alien fans, will be a familiar group: the creepy robot David (Michael Fassbender); Meredith Vickers, the forbidding head of the expedition who’s got secrets (Charlize Theron); Janek, the ship’s captain qua cowboy (Idris Elba); and a ragtag/ unpredictable group of other crew and scientists whose motives remain to be uncovered. When they land and find a planet seemingly empty of creatures, they begin to explore an enormous ancient building complex … only to discover that perhaps it’s not empty after all.

In classical myth, the god Prometheus created man out of clay, and later gave him the technology of fire after stealing it from the other gods. Will the latter-day crew of the Prometheus find a similarly benevolent race of creators? Or will they meet a nightmarish fate similar to that in the Greek myth: punished by being chained to a rock, destined to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day, only to have the liver grow back overnight?

More important: if this is a prequel to Alien, how exactly will it set the stage?

Here’s my prediction: wherever Ridley Scott decides to take us, it’ll probably be interesting.

We’ve decided to start with general conversation about the film and only about midway, when we’ll warn you when you need to stop if spoilers are not to your liking.

JustMeMike: Watching Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley race against time, as well as the implacable killing machine/ alien, was a searing, visceral experience. So I brought that thought with me to a packed theater and settled in to watch Prometheus. Before we break down the film, what were your thoughts as you settled into your seat?

Didion: I’ve been trying to keep myself ignorant of films before going in, so that I have fewer expectations — you know how high expectations can ruin your experience of a film. But it was hard to escape the enticing notion of an Alien prequel, not to mention that the script was co-written by Damon Lindelof, one of the co-creators of the TV series Lost.

So I have to say, I enjoyed this movie! On the whole I walked out thinking it was worth the $11 to see this super-duper spectacle on the big screen, especially for the creepy anticipation and the horror elements. How about you, Mike: if someone trapped you in a corner at a cocktail party and asked, “Should I see Prometheus?” what would you say?

Young Adult

She’s the girl you hated in high school – and she’s back. The local people get the word that she’s back, and so, when they talk about her, they call her the Ex-Prom Queen with the additional qualifier of ‘Bitch’. Yeah, she’s returned to her hometown and she wants her old flame back. Only he’s a HMWAK – which stands for Happily Married with a Kid. Sounds like trouble has arrived in Mercury, Minnesota.

The film is called Young Adult. It stars the Oscar-winning Charlize Theron, and was directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. These two were paired up as Director and Writer in the 2007 film – Juno.

Charlize has the role of Mavis Gary, a ghostwriter of romance fiction for teen girls or should I say YA’s, which if you connect this to the title of the film, you get Young Adults. While she’s kind of successful in that field, she hasn’t quite reached an income level that could mean she could shop on Rodeo Drive, or have an apartment on Central Park West in New York. Instead, Mavis lives in a modest Minneapolis apartment with ‘Modest’ being an overstatement. However to Mavis, this was a far better situation than if she was stuck back in the old hometown

The thing about Mavis is that she can’t see beyond her own image. Beauty worked for her in high school. She was the prom queen, she dated the school’s football hero, and in her mind – the sea was required to part if she showed up on its shore.

Mavis was the kind of woman who steamrolled through life – she either overwhelmed you because she was just sooo important, or she never saw you, like you weren’t important, or attractive enough to even be noticed, considered, or thought about. What a gal. She was always right – and you were always wrong. So moments in – we can conclude that this is a one-of-a-kind of a self-centered woman. They broke the mold after she was created.  Mavis thought she was a woman born to run, as in run through life always having everything her way. Only for the rest of us – she was a woman who was born to be hated.