Looking a Space Jokey in the mouth

The gods smile on nerddom.
Now, if they could just get us laid.

I know that as nerds it's sort of our job to complain about sci-fi/fantasy movies, but the genre gods have been pretty decent to us lately. Avengers was cool, there's another Batman coming out and the nine or ten people who saw John Carter will agree that despite the shitty box-office, it was pretty damn good. And while it won't like, change your life or anything, Prometheus was a decent sci-fi movie at a time when the world is still mourning the end of Harry Potter: Teen Wizard and waiting breathlessly for the next installment of the Thunderdome Under 18 Division.

It wasn't perfect of course. As geeks, it's our job to walk away from every movie with five or ten things that could have been better and-what's that? You'd like my list? Why sure, just promise me you'll see the movie first. I wouldn't want to spoil anything for you. Anyway, I'll start with the good. And seriously, there totally be spoilers, so look out.

Finally, a $130 million explanation as to what the hell that
skeletal elephant thing in the first Alien movie was supposed to be.

They also borrowed from Robotech, as
the Engineers are soothed only by J-Pop.

Prometheus borrows heavily from the rest of the Alien-universe (to which it's connected*) so that was neat, but it also made use of elements from other science fiction as well. The ship itself looks like something off the cover of any one of the late 80's early 90's sci-fi paperbacks that are right now sitting in boxes and acting as a severe fire hazard in the attic of my parents house. Larry Niven fans will recognize both an auto-doc and a similarity between the film's gigantic Engineers and his Pak Protectors.

"You'll be hearing from my agent."

-Sir Ian McKellen, old person

So nice special effects and a premise steeped in sci-fi goodness are definite pluses. Now on to the not so awesome. Fist of all, what's up with old Mr. Weyland being played by Guy Pearce in the shittiest age make up this side of Benjamin Button? I guess they did this because they used Guy Pearce in some fake TED Talks videos as part of a viral marketing campaign, but still, I think I would have preferred an actual old person or failing that maybe Michael Fassbender in a dual-role. I mean Weyland built him to be his son, shouldn't he look like him or something? It's a minor quibble, I know, but still. It was a little weird and the bad make up stuck out amid the otherwise rad effects and costumes.

"It certainly looks friendly. I say we
poke it, you know, for science."

-Scientists

Also lame: the scientists in this movie are kind of idiots. First they travel light years to find extraterrestrial ruins only to plunk their ship smack in the middle of some alien Nazca lines. Then upon finding an Engineer's head they hook it up to electrodes and make its face muscles contract until the whole thing explodes because why the hell not. Meanwhile, a couple other crew members come across a couple of genital sludge serpents and immediately reach out and try to grab them leading to horror and death. Good work everyone.

As you blossom into alien-queenhood
you'll begin to notice changes in your
body. These are completely natural.

And speaking of the alien creatures, I was never sure just what their deal was. I mean the Xenomorphs in the Alien series had a sort-of straightforward progression: Queen lays eggs, eggs hatch face-huggers, face-huggers cram an embryo down your throat, said embryo bursts out of your abdomen and kills everyone. Simple right? Prometheus's creatures have a way more complicated life cycle for some reason.

I think Pandas have an easier time
reproducing than the creatures in this
movie and evolution hates them.

If I understood what was going on with them (and I'm not sure I did), they start out as black ooze in a jar and can either turn into a dick snake or bide their time until a crazy android puts them in someones coffee. Once ingested they appear in your eye as some kind of liquid metal parasite and assuming you decide to ignore the eye worm and go on with your day, it will bide it's time until you have sex. Once spread to your partner like some kind of Lovecraftian STD it will gestate into a giant white nightmare squid.


But wait, there's more. The giant squid then has to find a host (in the movie it grabs an engineer) to face-hug and lay its eggs which will then grow into a cross between the Xenomorph and a shark. Got all that?

"Hey, come back! I just want to deposit an unkillable, armor-plated murderbeast
in your upper digestive tract! Did I mention it has acid for blood?"

You see the question mark leaves it
open for a sequel. It's all about subtlety.

Anyway, like I said, Prometheus was ok, just don't think about it too much. As another entry in the shared Alien/Predator continuity it's pretty good, ranking somewhere beneath Alien and Aliens and above Alien 3. There will almost certainly be a sequel as I guess the film made a decent amount at the box office and the ending stopped just short of having Noomi Repace turn to the camera and say: "Oh, I don't think we've seen the last of the Engineers..."