As a couple buddies and I emerged from the theatre after seeing Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, we started making fun of it – namely the relentlessness with which events seemed to pile up on top of one another after the slow and steady build-up of the film’s first half. One friend liked the movie but had problems with it, while the other didn’t much like it at all beyond the technical aspects. I, on the other hand, was fascinated by the whole thing from beginning to end, despite the fact that I happily joined in on all the jokes being made at the film’s expense. I mean, sure, I recognized that this wasn’t a very original story (take away the film’s central theme of the search for mankind’s creators and this is basically a modified version of Scott’s Alien from 1979), that many of the supporting characters were barely sketched in at all, that the plot gets sort of muddled towards the end, and that there isn’t much in the way of closure when it gets there. But I was just so intrigued by the questions the film asked and how it chose to answer (and not answer) said questions, and I was so blown away by the visuals and the sound design and the key performances, that I found it easy to simply ignore the things that others could point to as flaws. If the movie is a masterpiece on a technical level, and flawed as a piece of storytelling, I’ll compromise and say that Prometheus is a very good film, but one where I wouldn’t feel compelled to argue if you disagree. Continue Reading