Film Review: Prometheus

As is typical of me, I'm a sucker for a Ridley Scott film.  And a return to the franchise that he began near 40 years ago with one of the best sci-fi/horror films ever done?  Yup, double the sucker...

Its unfortunate then that Prometheus is yet another Scott shortfall.

Prometheus LOOKS like a Scott film--beautifully shot, inky blacks, crisp frames, powerful female characters, etc.  In this case I find less fault with Scott the director than Scott the producer.  Using Damon Lindelof to rewrite a script by Jon Spaits, Scott seemingly failed to actually READ the story before turning it into a film.

PERHAPS someone who hadn't seen the original Alien films would find the material new but anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of the Alien canon would find Prometheus shockingly repetitive and derivative.  We return to the same world we've seen in the original Alien and Aliens and where again we watch a diverse crew of mismatched individuals explore with flashlights a dark and slimy interior with evil things moving around in the dark.  We have something bursting from a female character's belly.  We have something jumping on a characters facemask.  We have acidic blood.  We have flamethrowers.  We have an evil corporation behind the mission.  We have an android with questionable motivations.  Really this is an complete retread of the same elements that made up prior Alien films just thrown up in the air and filmed in their new arrangement as they fell to the floor.

There is nothing here worth viewing and trying to integrate into the existing Alien storyline.  In fact it even ruins part of prior Alien films as (spoiler alert!) it reveals that the giant Elephantine pilots from the first film (who were MUCH larger as presented there than they are here) are merely photo-humans wearing elephant-like space suits.

If you are a Scott fan or Alien fan I suppose you must view this film...and unfortunately, seeing as how they are actually making a Prometheus sequel (really??) I'll have to see further deconstruction of a series I once loved...but otherwise, it neither scares nor wows a viewer and isn't worth supporting.

TV Show Review: Helix

I wanted to like this show...I REALLY did.  I gave it three episodes but now I have to let it go.

The premise is right up my alley.  A kind of sci-fi show revolving around a secret biological facility in Greenland that has been working on various scary viruses and one gets "loose" within the facility's population, drawing in a team from the CDC to look into the matter.

You have the clean background of the arctic vs. the black goop that the virus turns the infected body into.  You have the mysterious corporation that is trying to control the virus for its own purposes. And you have all of this on the SyFy channel where you hope the program can be a bit edgy, dark and odd...

Unfortunately I should have known better from the network that has made its bones recently off of broadcasting WWE wrestling and movies like Sharknado.

Sure, there are a few qualities about the show I like-- Hiroyuki Sanada as Dr. Hiroshi Hatake is quite good as the lead corporate scientist in charge of the facility.  I first saw him in Danny Boyle's Sunshine and he is quite good in his role.  And there are some of the special effects--particularly the body ones where human bodies have been liquified or an infected individual spreads the virus to another by disgorging the black goop in mouth to mouth contact with its target.

Unfortunately SyFy meager budget, poor casting and weak directing kills the show for me.  Some of the props (Hello high school science lab face shields??  What are you doing here??) and special effects are EXTREMELY cheap, giving the show a decidedly D-movie feel to it at times.

The casting is also extremely weak...likely driven out of budgetary reasons.  Billy Campbell is barely acceptable as the head CDC scientist and primary character in the show but the supporting cast (outside of Sanada) is BRUTAL.  Beyond bad.  Like so bad I want to turn my eyes from the screen bad.  There is nothing believable or remotely realistic about the acting by most of the cast--made all the worse by terrible wardrobe choices as well.  The head of security for the base is a chubby male in his late twenties who looks about as ready to secure a facility as I do to join the Navy Seals.  And this is just one of the numerous poor casting and wardrobe choices for the characters.  The choices seem almost childlike in their stupidity--like someone was making a joke of a scifi program--virtually every single one is a disaster of one proportion or another.

Lastly the directing--its like someone threw a catalog of good scifi movies at the directors and said--here!  Make a TV show like this!  In the first three episodes we have direct ripoffs of the scene from Alien where Tom Skeritt searches for the titular monster through the metal airshafts as well as a scene from The Thing where Wilfred Brimley wields an ax against his comrades.  Each scene is so blatantly ripped off its like you are watching a Simpsons parody of the real thing.

This is all truly a shame as SyFy but a lot of marketing and focus on this series as a seeming attempt to get back to real programming.  It unfortunately fails on far too many levels for me to spend any more time with it.

Comic Review: Letter 44 #1

I read the first few pages and a synopsis of the comic on the iO9 website and had to pick up a copy (or seven).

No silly superheros in dumb costumes here--I really can't stand Superman, Batman, the X-Men and any other of the million "superhero" genre stories--just solid political and sci-fi drama.

Issue #1 is tightly written and bounces between an incoming president (#45) who is just being inaugurated and a team of scientists and soldiers on an outbound spaceship bound for the asteroid belt.  #45 is notified via the titular letter from #44 that unbeknownst to all but the former president and a literal handful of other officials, a suspected alien operation was discovered to be building "something" in the asteroid belt some seven years earlier.

All the wars and conflicts president #44 embroiled the country in were to serve the purpose of generating as many battle hardened soldiers as possible while funneling as much money into military R&D programs as could be done in whatever time they had before the aliens come visiting.

#45 is now caught between meeting the demands of his proposed "hope and change" agenda and confronting the looming alien encounter.  If this sounds a bit like our current presidential setup, its meant to--to an extent.  Its not that the comic is taking a political stance (as of yet) its that its setting up an interesting alternate reality to drive the thoughts of the reader.  This is an intelligent comic and not one for a reader looking for lots of explosions (so far), shootouts, etc. Or at least that's not ALL the comic is as there is none of this in the first issue. 

The art is plain and not distracting.  There are no "artistic" flourishes for their own sake and the space scenes appear particularly well done--the sense of weightlessness is conveyed in an excellent manner here.

You can read issue #1 in full here: First issue of Letter 44... and the publisher issued this with $1 cover price with two known variants that I am aware of.  The first printing of some 22,000 copies is sold out with a second printing on its way.  The most common edition of the comic is already going for about $7 and the more limited variants heading up to $30.  As the story has already been optioned (reportedly) to a TV network to work on a series there...so perhaps these prices will stand up.  Regardless, I've now got to go out and find a copy of issue #2 which has already come and I haven't found at a retail store yet.  If you like smart sci-fi and/or comics...this might be a good series to follow along with.  I'm subscribed at my local comic store, hopefully I'll be returning on a regular basis to pick issues up...god I hope the aliens in the asteroid belt don't turn out to be something remarkably dumb...

Elysium Trailer

I'm a big fan of Neill Blomkamp and his work in creating District 9 which I think is a really great film.  The mix of action, sci-fi and allegory/cultural criticism draws many a comparison with many of the greats in dystopian and sci-fi works, be they on paper or celluloid.

Blomkamp seems to have no interest at the current time from leaving the genre and returns later this year with Elysium, staring Matt Damon.  I am hoping for another quality film but I do have my qualms about what I've seen so far.  First off, the exoskeleton that Damon wears in the trailer and throughout much of the film seems too "Iron-Man"ish to me...we've seen men get turned into superheros before via mechanical apparatuses in recent films and this one is going to have to bring a lot of new things to the table to make it fresh.  This also follows closely the storyline from District 9 in that it places the protagonist in the position of unwillingly taking on body modifications that present both positives and negatives in terms of being able to accomplish his desires.  In District 9 it was the protagonists slow morphing of his body into an alien, gaining strength and the ability to use alien devices along the way making him more and more powerful.  Here it is a more mechanical body modification but the path and results that these modifications take the main character along seems a tad similar.

A second issue I can see arising is in the political bent of this film.  While District 9 has been often seen as an allegory for aparthied and race relations in South Africa, Elysium is already generating buzz around its potential to be seen as a comparison between the US and Mexico and the illegal alien problem surrouding that.  In this instance, Matt Damon and those humans left on the burnt out wreck of a planet that is Earth in the film are supposed to be representatives of Mexico and those living on the space station Elysium that is sterile, rich and can cure you of all diseases are supposed to represent the United States.  With Elysium keeping those on Earth out of their utopian space station by force if necessary the comparisons to the US/Mexico relationship are already being drawn.  While I welcome social commentary in film, if the film takes this left wing view it would be sad as the premise is flawed from the start as the US doesn't prevent anyone from legally coming or entering the country--but I can already see Rolling Stone, Time and the USA Today lining up behind calling this a brilliant comparison.  Its not...its an easy retread of a formula that worked for South Africa but is not comparable to the situation in the US.  I hope Blomkamp has resorted to this...