Pearls before swine

Moved to the forum you requested ;-)

Your estimation of "Prometheus" is predicated on a partial understanding of Ridley Scott's direction as a Sci-Fi Fantasy moviemaker. Ridley Scott is the middle ground between George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick. Like Kubrick, Scott favors simple, yet thematically dense, material upon which he can string his intricately nuanced imagery. Like Lucas, his material is more pulpy, more comic bookish, which deceives many viewers into thinking they will be spoonfed solid answers the way Lucas does. Scott's science fiction is equally meditative and mysterious; designed to thrill the socks off you while its dense themes worm their way into your subconscious. "Alien" was really a simple story of maiden Knight versus hellish dragon. But Scott layered the film with themes covering ideas of simulation, corporate hegemony, symbiosis, sexual reversal, replication, and bio warfare, more through intimation and sublimation than straightforward exposition. "Bladerunner" was a simple bounty hunter movie, but Scott elevated it with similar themes, and distinguished it as a meditation on life, death, and the purpose of consciousness. Ridley Scotts cinematic language is first and foremost visual. His wellknown background in design and familiarity with different art styles, genres, and his understanding of the emotional impact of geometric shapes and forms and the encoded meaning they have conveyed through the centuries is where his genius truly shines. I argue that the visuals in "Prometheus" -- production design, editing, composition, costume design, color scheme -- all code the film with layers upon layers of meaning. This meaning can be decoded even if you aren't familiar with a particular fabric, or specific texture, as long as you analyze that fabric or texture within the context of the action and themes of the movie. For instance, it's not coincidental that our first view of the giant depicts him in a priestly robe; whereas other giants are garbed in the more militaristic biomechanical uniforms with which we are familiar. This disparity is meaningful within the context of the film, one of whose themes is "Sometimes creation requires a certain amount of destruction" -- something, ironically, we witness in the opening scenes of "Prometheus." The answers to "Prometheus" lie primarily within its visuals; subversive and artist that he is, Scott turns those visuals on their head so that the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Remember, this is the director who could have made 'Alien' knight versus dragon... but he used a maiden disguised as a knight instead, which also adds a certain emotional texture and complexity to the sexualized imagery that might have been absent otherwise. Even the scene in which the Captain and his two crewmates sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity is a riff on medieval paintings of the crucifixion and the trinity, and rearticulates the European conception of an anglo-saxon Messiah as being "black." What makes "Prometheus" an ingenius film, one which will gain momentum through the generations, is the way in which Scott succeeds in making a movie that unfolds like a computer RPG, like "Myst," where the viewer, or player, is invited to make his own connections through the recurrent and precise use of recurrent shapes, compositions, and imagery. Scott succeeds in allowing the viewer to perform the role of intergalactic archaeologist, and to piece the clues together with his own imagination. I argue that there are deliberate answers within "Prometheus" besides those embedded within dialogue; but these answers can are located within the substrate of the visuals. That Scott placed these visuals in such precise moments along the graph of the story is a testament to the fact that he has a very specific and definitive take on the culture he has helped to create. To say that a film should not retro-feed information to aid in its understanding is a false expectation -- those who are not familiar with "Thus Spake Zarathustra" or what Nietzsche said about "Ape to man, and man to Superman" will have to refer to an outside text to understand what Kubrick was setting up at the very beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Otherwise, that meaning becomes nothing more than rousing music which was made by "some conductor." If Ridley Scott were a poet he'd be less Robert Frost, Less EE Cummings, and someone more along the lines of Ginsburg or Shakespeare -- symbolism garbed in the costume of popular drama. Don't expect answers in the traditional sense. Come equipped with questions.

@Alienpuzzle, not sure why you say pearls before swine a the end of your review. Are you saying the film was a masterpiece and wasted on general audiences? It makes it seem like you are talking about the actors at the end which would be improper use of that phrase. To cast pearls before swine, means to offer things of great quality to those who cannot appreciate them.

@Drakeequation I used that phrase because I felt like those who did not appreciate the possibilities of the story were the characters. That is why I said that I wished there had been a thinker or philosopher among them.

That is what this all boils down too...the people in the movie didint have that sense of awe, adventure, mustery etc...I mean finding intelligent life? Their technology? How about a few millions questions to go with that...

@Richie Exactly... imagine a Carl Sagan's perspective, or if you want someone funny Alex Filippenko's... instead, we get Milburn and Fifiled channeling Beavis and Butthead...