Future Shock.

I've just finished reading The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner - it's a dystopian novel in which government has devolved into an amoral end-justifies-the-means system based around totalitarian control over information.

The protagonist was recruited to a government think tank as a child, but escaped after discovering the hidden agenda behind the group.  A master programmer, he conceals his true identity under a variety of aliases - he's skilled enough that he can program a new persona into the net using just a phone screen.  His ID hacking is safeguarded by a worm that circulates through the Net eliminating any traces of his previous identities.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "Okay, well, that's somewhat plausible, but not excessively imaginative."

It's more imaginative than you think.  The Shockwave Rider was written in 1975 - for the children in the audience, the original IBM PC was released in 1981, one year before the introduction of the standardized TCP/IP system that allowed for the development of the Internet.  On that basis, Brunner's novel is insanely prescient.  Not only does he predict the global Net as an everyday part of life, he introduces the idea of viral worms that would circulate through the sea of interconnected data deleting information.  (Not to mention being able to interface with the Net using a phone.)

And then he throws it all away by having the hero set up a referendum-like program that offers everyone on the planet the option of voting in favour of eliminating poverty, disease and inequity, and also having him create the tools to make that change possible.

Now THAT'S an unlikely prediction - unfortunately.

- Sid

"I admire its purity."

I was in the middle of developing another project, and this script dropped on my desk.  I read it in forty minutes...and bang!  The script was simple and direct:  it was the reason I did the film."

Ridley Scott on the script for Alien, The Book of Alien

In the wake of my disappointing experience with Prometheus, I decided to revisit Alien:  the original ten-little-Indians-on-a-spaceship movie that started the franchise.

On paper, the two movies are very similar:  enigmatic alien spaceships, bad planetary weather conditions, hidden agendas, villainous androids, and, of course, slime-covered alien monsters.  However, that similarity is deceptive.  Alien is a much more elementary film - as Ridley Scott says, simple and direct.

The movie is a beautifully crafted piece of work.  The art direction had input from some of the top fantasy/science fiction illustrators of the day:  Ron Cobb, Chris Foss, Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) and of course Hans Rudi Giger, whose biomechanical illustrations provided the perfect starting place for the design of both the alien spacecraft and the Alien. 

The script, as Ridley Scott points out, is simple and direct, but it's also full of little moments of realism - of humanity, one might say.  Ripley's panic when the dead facehugger falls on her; the awkward sick room camaraderie when Kane has regained consciousness; the moments that Brett spends letting the condensation drip on his upturned face just moments before his death; Dallas momentarily knocking his headset loose in the air duct, and fumbling for a moment to get it right way round when he puts it back on.

I've always thought that the most brilliant of those moments is at the end, when Ripley is undressing in preparation for hibernation, only to discover that the Alien is in the lifeboat with her.  (It's easy to classify that scene as gratuitous, but I see it as a tactic designed to make Ripley as vulnerable as possible in her final confrontation with the creature. Ideally, she should have been naked, but you can't have everything.)  Ripley's responses are exactly what you would expect under the circumstances, making the ending much more effective than the sort of heroic dialogue-driven posturing that most action films are prone to.

I think that Prometheus wanted to have that feel of realism, of actual life, and that may well explain some of the odd little diversions in the plot.  Unfortunately, those diversions ended up feeling artificial, rather than part of the natural flow of events.

Of course, both movies share the basic lack of judgement that always predicates the action in this sort of science fiction horror thriller.  Doesn't anyone ever decide to disobey protocol in favour of common sense?  Think how much shorter these movies would be if the captain's log read as follows:

Stardate: 43205.6 

Discovered alien spaceship - no signs of life, crew died from unknown causes, cargo hold full of unidentified organic cocoons.  

Took one look and buggered off at warp nine.

- Sid

Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that I dodged the bullet was unable to see Piranha 3DD with Laurie on Friday, due to the fact that P3DD only lasted two weeks in commercial release.  (A DVD rental/iTunes download option is being cautiously negotiated.)  In its place, we saw Prometheus, a movie which I had been looking forward to with somewhat more anticipation than the boobs-n-blood piranha experience.

High concept science fiction films are somewhat rare. There are lots of science fiction horror films, more than enough science fiction action thrillers, plenty of comic book adaptations, but not many science fiction films that attempt to create a thought-provoking experience for the audience.  Examples would be Blade Runner, District 9, Solaris (either version), 2001, Soylent Green, Inception, - perhaps Moon, if you're feeling generous - and I expected to be able to add Prometheus to the list.

Sadly, that's not how it worked out.

On paper, Prometheus should qualify automatically.  In 2089, archeologists find evidence that humanity is the creation of an alien race - not only that, but they also discover the point of origin for these Engineers, as they call them.  The archeologists convince the elderly head of Weyland Enterprises to fund an expedition to that point of origin in hopes of finding either proof of the existence of the aliens, or the Engineers themselves.  The expedition is accompanied by an android, who acts as a metaphor for the experience of being a created entity.

This is good solid stuff: the opportunity to stand before the creators of our species and ask them why we were created, what our purpose is as a species, and perhaps to form a bond with these long-lost parents of humanity.

Or not.

In spite of the enormous potential of the concept, Prometheus fails under the weight of the numerous inconsistencies, dead ends, moments of illogic, and lost opportunities that dominate the script.  Characters die pointlessly, plot details are introduced that offer nothing to the story, there's no sense to the flow of events, and important story points seem to just pop into existence rather than developing logically.*

To be fair, the actors all do good work, and there are some very powerful individual scenes.  The art direction is excellent, and of course Ridley Scott knows how to point a camera and light a scene, but none of those things are enough to redeem the flaws in the script.

I really wanted to like this movie, but after seeing it, I have to consider Prometheus as an ambitious failure, a film which, like the prop conduits in the original Star Trek series, goes nowhere - and does nothing.  Near the start of Prometheus Charlize Theron's character introduces herself by saying, "Good morning. I am Meredith Vickers, and it is my job to make sure you do yours."  How unfortunate that no one performed that role for the makers of this movie.

- Sid

* I can post a long list of specific examples if no one cares about spoilers.