How To Fix Prometheus
Jun. 11th, 2012 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI feel like any review I do of Prometheus would boil down to this anyway, so I might as well be honest about it. The thing is, Prometheus is a good movie, leagues above SWATH or MIB3, and it has such potential, such a great pedigree, and it comes achingly close to greatness... but it isn't. There's a saying that fiction isn't released, it escapes--meaning that the temptation to improve or fiddle with your work, as an author, never goes away until you've actually published it. Even then not really, as proved by George Lucas. But I don't get that sense from Prometheus. I think at some point, the creative minds took their blank check to make a wild sci-fi movie and just said "eh, good enough."
And Damon Lindelof: no matter what you think of the Lost finale, Lindelof learned the absolute wrong lesson from it. He looked at all the criticism and all the dissatisfaction and instead of taking away some idea of how to do better, any idea of how to do better, he thought to himself "I did fine, it's those people who are the problem, I don't have to do better, so I'm just going to go with my first draft because they're never going to be satisfied anyway." Because the exact same problems in Lost are present in Prometheus, just writ large because in a TV show they can be spaced out and course-corrected. Here, it's set in stone.
So, here's a few ideas on how to do things better. Am I qualified to put myself on a level with Ridley Scott? No. But then again, I didn't direct that Russell Crowe Robin Hood, so there's that.
1. Make Vickers and Shaw co-leads. Alien has always had a reputation as a feminist series, and it was by the standards of the time, but I feel there's room for improvement. Alien had Ripley, sure, but it also had Lambert, who just kinda stood around and screamed while the Alien prepared to second-mouth her to death. Then Aliens had Ripley and Vasquez, but Vasquez died, setting in stone Michelle Rodriguez's career trajectory. And the less said about Alien 3, the better. (Not just in terms of feminism.)
So why not take Alien into the 21st century and make Prometheus a Bechdel buddy movie? The finished movie makes this very interesting decision to make David, the requisite android, one of the viewpoint characters--why not do the same with Vickers, the requisite corporate shill? For argument's sake, we could give her a contrary but reasonable counter-position to the other characters. Shaw is a believer, Holloway is agnostic, maybe Vickers is atheist? Or just a skeptical member of another religion--someone who can argue passionately and convincingly against others. More on that later.
2. More character development. This is super-missing from the final cut. We don't get to know any of these people very well. First off, let's take a little time to introduce our two leads, Holloway and Shaw. As is, we get a very brief, 'just the facts ma'am' scene of them at an archaeological dig. I'd expand that. Make them newlyweds, give them an exchange that this is their honeymoon, and already we've got a better idea of these two: they're in love, they genuinely enjoy their work, and so forth. Also, the plot point of Shaw's infertility could be much more easily dropped in a conversation with a fellow Prometheus crew member about some kids back home, rather than just out of the blue during an unrelated discussion. Given that Shaw's condition lends some weighty subtext to her actions (instead of asking "Why can't I have kids, God?" she wants to talk to the god-like Engineers--clear transference), it should be out in the open pretty quick.
On the same note, we have this potentially dynamite triangle between Weyland, Vickers, and David, but it literally takes forever to get to it. Weyland pointlessly doesn't show up until the third act, it takes ten minutes after that for Vickers to reveal that she's his daughter (in a line so cheesy it wouldn't be out of place in SWATH)--this should be the heart and soul of the movie! Weyland should be up and out from day one, albeit maybe claiming he just wants to meet the Engineers before he dies, with his selfish motivation coming as a shock: this way, we'll think Vickers is a bitch for being suspicious of the kindly old man who's helping out Shaw, only to be swerved that she was right all along.
A lot of the NPCs should be eliminated to focus on this core group, since most of them just get killed off anyway. Maybe three or four redshirts, but most of the love should go to Shaw, Holloway, David, Weyland, Vickers, and Janek (he can be the guy split between Team Shaw and Team Weyland).
3. No petting zoo bullshit. There's an interminably lame subplot about two scientists on the expedition who get lost (despite having holographically mapped the place), stumble across alien snakes, try to pet them, and get killed, then turn into zombies? It was seriously like "Troy & Abed in spa-ace!" As weird as it sounds, all of that creepy crawly stuff seriously drags down this Alien movie. Why do we need that if we're distancing ourselves from Alien? Just drop it altogether.
4. More Holloway. There's a kinda interesting, if confusing, subplot where David poisons Holloway with alien goo, causing all sorts of trouble. Then he just kinda... gets burnt to death? Now, if we must have the zombie sequence from the above subplot, here's where it would go. Holloway is clearly infected with something, he's freaking out, he begs to be killed (from intense pain?)--so either Vickers burns him or he takes off his helmet and is killed by the atmosphere. Then he gets back up, all Xenofied, and tries to kill everything. Given how skeletal the alien looks, it wouldn't be that hard to draw a parallel between his walking corpse's condition and the eventual alien's evolution.
5. Vickers comes into her own. At this point, Shaw has lost her husband and had to give herself a space-age abortion (it's cool, the baby had a face only hentai could love). She should be on a Heroic BSOD--call it a crisis of faith. Vickers takes over. It turns out she was right about everything, from Holloway to Weyland, and now she tags along with Weyland to the alien ship. This leads to the biggest change of all.
6. Reveal some of the mystery, but not all. It'd be easy to just say everything should be explained, which is playing Lindelof's game--he'd just say "what, do you want everything spelled out for you?" No, I just don't want him to use Lost's mystery model-putting off the answers long past the point where the audiences cares or they're relevant to current events (who are the Others again?). It's easy to forget, but there was a point where Heroes was a great show, an antidote to Lost, because it had a simple, satisfying formula. For every question it asked, it answered one. We were always making progress, not going in circles.
By the end of Prometheus, we have two big questions, one new one and one that we started with. Why did the Engineers create humanity and why do they want to destroy us? The characters actually meet an Engineer and ask, but he immediately turns into Jason Voorhees. What's the point of the movie not being about the Alien if the new aliens act just like a Xenomorph? I'd have him at least give the reason for creating humanity, leaving the question of humanity's destruction for a sequel.
7. Vickers lives. So, the Engineer kills everyone but Vickers, who gets away. She radios Prometheus to pick her up and get the hell out of dodge, but this prompts Shaw to come out of her funk and realize that the Engineer intends to destroy Earth (this would be a good replacement for the cringe-y scene in the movie where Janek just suddenly knows exactly what the planet is for). She convinces Janek to ram the ship and just manages to get to an escape pod before the hit (again, replacing the scene where this happens to Vickers, a character we've been given no reason to care about and who is killed moments later anyway). Vickers and Shaw meet on the surface, maybe arguing, maybe coming to blows, before the Engineer attacks. One of them saves the other's life by unleashing Shaw's death-fetus, and they get away to take David and go to the Engineers' homeworld (Shaw convincing Vickers to do so in a nice Oscar Clip moment for Noomi Rapace).
So we've got an awesome dynamic in place for part 2. Grieving widow Shaw, happy orphan Vickers, creepy brother-surrogate David, and the unanswered question. We have a nice "humanity is defined by searching for answers" moment, since Shaw has gotten answers but wants more (and the audience has as well, giving them closure but leaving them hungry for more). And for Prometheus 2, we can have two strong female characters of vastly different personalities and their robot head sidekick. Win/win/win.
And Damon Lindelof: no matter what you think of the Lost finale, Lindelof learned the absolute wrong lesson from it. He looked at all the criticism and all the dissatisfaction and instead of taking away some idea of how to do better, any idea of how to do better, he thought to himself "I did fine, it's those people who are the problem, I don't have to do better, so I'm just going to go with my first draft because they're never going to be satisfied anyway." Because the exact same problems in Lost are present in Prometheus, just writ large because in a TV show they can be spaced out and course-corrected. Here, it's set in stone.
So, here's a few ideas on how to do things better. Am I qualified to put myself on a level with Ridley Scott? No. But then again, I didn't direct that Russell Crowe Robin Hood, so there's that.
1. Make Vickers and Shaw co-leads. Alien has always had a reputation as a feminist series, and it was by the standards of the time, but I feel there's room for improvement. Alien had Ripley, sure, but it also had Lambert, who just kinda stood around and screamed while the Alien prepared to second-mouth her to death. Then Aliens had Ripley and Vasquez, but Vasquez died, setting in stone Michelle Rodriguez's career trajectory. And the less said about Alien 3, the better. (Not just in terms of feminism.)
So why not take Alien into the 21st century and make Prometheus a Bechdel buddy movie? The finished movie makes this very interesting decision to make David, the requisite android, one of the viewpoint characters--why not do the same with Vickers, the requisite corporate shill? For argument's sake, we could give her a contrary but reasonable counter-position to the other characters. Shaw is a believer, Holloway is agnostic, maybe Vickers is atheist? Or just a skeptical member of another religion--someone who can argue passionately and convincingly against others. More on that later.
2. More character development. This is super-missing from the final cut. We don't get to know any of these people very well. First off, let's take a little time to introduce our two leads, Holloway and Shaw. As is, we get a very brief, 'just the facts ma'am' scene of them at an archaeological dig. I'd expand that. Make them newlyweds, give them an exchange that this is their honeymoon, and already we've got a better idea of these two: they're in love, they genuinely enjoy their work, and so forth. Also, the plot point of Shaw's infertility could be much more easily dropped in a conversation with a fellow Prometheus crew member about some kids back home, rather than just out of the blue during an unrelated discussion. Given that Shaw's condition lends some weighty subtext to her actions (instead of asking "Why can't I have kids, God?" she wants to talk to the god-like Engineers--clear transference), it should be out in the open pretty quick.
On the same note, we have this potentially dynamite triangle between Weyland, Vickers, and David, but it literally takes forever to get to it. Weyland pointlessly doesn't show up until the third act, it takes ten minutes after that for Vickers to reveal that she's his daughter (in a line so cheesy it wouldn't be out of place in SWATH)--this should be the heart and soul of the movie! Weyland should be up and out from day one, albeit maybe claiming he just wants to meet the Engineers before he dies, with his selfish motivation coming as a shock: this way, we'll think Vickers is a bitch for being suspicious of the kindly old man who's helping out Shaw, only to be swerved that she was right all along.
A lot of the NPCs should be eliminated to focus on this core group, since most of them just get killed off anyway. Maybe three or four redshirts, but most of the love should go to Shaw, Holloway, David, Weyland, Vickers, and Janek (he can be the guy split between Team Shaw and Team Weyland).
3. No petting zoo bullshit. There's an interminably lame subplot about two scientists on the expedition who get lost (despite having holographically mapped the place), stumble across alien snakes, try to pet them, and get killed, then turn into zombies? It was seriously like "Troy & Abed in spa-ace!" As weird as it sounds, all of that creepy crawly stuff seriously drags down this Alien movie. Why do we need that if we're distancing ourselves from Alien? Just drop it altogether.
4. More Holloway. There's a kinda interesting, if confusing, subplot where David poisons Holloway with alien goo, causing all sorts of trouble. Then he just kinda... gets burnt to death? Now, if we must have the zombie sequence from the above subplot, here's where it would go. Holloway is clearly infected with something, he's freaking out, he begs to be killed (from intense pain?)--so either Vickers burns him or he takes off his helmet and is killed by the atmosphere. Then he gets back up, all Xenofied, and tries to kill everything. Given how skeletal the alien looks, it wouldn't be that hard to draw a parallel between his walking corpse's condition and the eventual alien's evolution.
5. Vickers comes into her own. At this point, Shaw has lost her husband and had to give herself a space-age abortion (it's cool, the baby had a face only hentai could love). She should be on a Heroic BSOD--call it a crisis of faith. Vickers takes over. It turns out she was right about everything, from Holloway to Weyland, and now she tags along with Weyland to the alien ship. This leads to the biggest change of all.
6. Reveal some of the mystery, but not all. It'd be easy to just say everything should be explained, which is playing Lindelof's game--he'd just say "what, do you want everything spelled out for you?" No, I just don't want him to use Lost's mystery model-putting off the answers long past the point where the audiences cares or they're relevant to current events (who are the Others again?). It's easy to forget, but there was a point where Heroes was a great show, an antidote to Lost, because it had a simple, satisfying formula. For every question it asked, it answered one. We were always making progress, not going in circles.
By the end of Prometheus, we have two big questions, one new one and one that we started with. Why did the Engineers create humanity and why do they want to destroy us? The characters actually meet an Engineer and ask, but he immediately turns into Jason Voorhees. What's the point of the movie not being about the Alien if the new aliens act just like a Xenomorph? I'd have him at least give the reason for creating humanity, leaving the question of humanity's destruction for a sequel.
7. Vickers lives. So, the Engineer kills everyone but Vickers, who gets away. She radios Prometheus to pick her up and get the hell out of dodge, but this prompts Shaw to come out of her funk and realize that the Engineer intends to destroy Earth (this would be a good replacement for the cringe-y scene in the movie where Janek just suddenly knows exactly what the planet is for). She convinces Janek to ram the ship and just manages to get to an escape pod before the hit (again, replacing the scene where this happens to Vickers, a character we've been given no reason to care about and who is killed moments later anyway). Vickers and Shaw meet on the surface, maybe arguing, maybe coming to blows, before the Engineer attacks. One of them saves the other's life by unleashing Shaw's death-fetus, and they get away to take David and go to the Engineers' homeworld (Shaw convincing Vickers to do so in a nice Oscar Clip moment for Noomi Rapace).
So we've got an awesome dynamic in place for part 2. Grieving widow Shaw, happy orphan Vickers, creepy brother-surrogate David, and the unanswered question. We have a nice "humanity is defined by searching for answers" moment, since Shaw has gotten answers but wants more (and the audience has as well, giving them closure but leaving them hungry for more). And for Prometheus 2, we can have two strong female characters of vastly different personalities and their robot head sidekick. Win/win/win.
