JJ PISSES AGAIN ON STAR TREK

The core of being a Vulcan is mental discipline and control of one's emotions. In yet another departure from canon, JJ Abrams version of Star Trek now has not only kissypoo Spock but a screaming Spock. Once again a clear indication that Abrams is utterly dismissive of the original concept for the show and its canon.

What made Amok Time such a compelling episode was Spock's intense efforts to control his emotions per his culture despite the burn of animal lust. For shame.

IT GETS WORSE: THE JJABRAMIZATION OF STAR TREK

Oooh, "darkness" - guess we better make the bad guy's super-Transformer ship actually dark - as in black (or dark grey), and the bridge will have a black floor instead of a red floor! What a "creative" meeting that must have been between JJ and the production designer and CGI team. (And note the cutout section of the saucer - WTF?)I guess it slipped their minds to give the villain a black cowboy hat.

JJ Abrams really just doesn't like Star Trek because he keeps overlaying non-Trek elements onto it. It is also lazy thinking and writing. First time round we had time-travel and alternate time-line (and red matter) to explain how he was just going to chuck whole elements out the window (our characters earning their positions and the planet Vulcan) and "reimagine" them and now we might be getting mirror universe hooey or, worse, some S.H.I.E.L.D.-like secret organization called Section 31 from the ancillary novels (nothing that has been in the films or any of the good television series). Gah, such hack writing. 

J'ACCUSE JJ ABRAMS: YOU DON'T GET NOR RESPECT STAR TREK

Let's get this out of the way: JJ Abrams is vastly overrated as a writer and director. As a composer, I like him. As a producer, he's come up with some interesting projects but they rarely are cohesive and usually don't have good endings (LOST, Fringe, Cloverfield).

His second whack at Star Trek is due to come out soon (Star Trek Into Darkness), and it looks pretty terrible. The recent publicity stills features chicks and guns. JJ Abrams clearly does not understand or else intentionally disrespects Star Trek.

Spaceships, aliens, big themes and a journey of discovery - that is Star Trek. [When I reference Star Trek, I refer to the original series (TOS) as it is the only one that matters]

I am so hopeful he'll bow out of the next installment of Star Trek or that Viacom/Paramount will release him after "...Into Darkness" falls below expectations so he can then instead concentrate on reviving that tired Star Wars franchise.

As I noted in my review of his original Star Trek (linked here), he made ridiculous choices in terms of story, characters, casting, special effects and especially in his "re-imagining" of his alternate timeline of the story. The most egregious faults were his brewery subbing as the Engineering section, 40 shuttles, bug-eyed aliens and dwarf rock-monster aliens, the stupid swivel phasers, cheap-looking sets, the nauseating Spock-Uhura romance,  and especially the Plot Scrambler that put the right characters into the right chairs. The new film looks pretty bad, frankly. If the villain turns out to be Khan, Tremaine, Mudd, or a fucking tribble, who cares? It is not Trek- he's making Star Impossible Trek Mission.

Many fans already are quite apprehensive or outright dogging Star Trek Into Darkness given the storyline, trailers and promo visuals. Clearly it is not a spaceship on a journey (remember the "five-year mission"?), there don't seem to be any space battles, our hero (Kirk) is once again tentative and cocky whereas the Kirk of TOS was a man of high achievement and confidence. We get Spock vs. the Volcano for a sub-story that just seems idiotic even in the trailer (they couldn't beam the bomb into the volcano?). And the focus is on the villain - played by Brit-of-the-moment Benedict Cumberbatch (who got cast based upon his work in BBC's Sherlock Holmes reboot). Obviously Abrams and his creative team are trying to recapture the magic of the best of the films, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - which boiled down to a test of wills between good guy Kirk and over-the-top villain Khan (in a brilliant hammy performance by Ricardo Montalban). 

Abrams has had such a full plate over the years what with all his television series and other projects, it is hard to know how many of the bad choices are his. My insider at Paramount tells me that Abrams is very hands-on and often wants changes and to go over something several times before giving approval, so the blame should fall to him. It is his production company and his impramatur. I also blame his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. They crafted the clunky dialogue and the terrible plot of the first film.  They did some fun campy stuff (Xena, Jack of All Trades) in their early career but their big movies have been pretty lame: Cowboys and Aliens, Transformers, The Island. [Gah! Update: I checked the credits and Damon Lindelof is also a writer on this one - now for sure it will suck]

I sure hope Sumner Redstone of Viacom and Brad Grey of Paramount decide to cut Abrams loose from the next Star Trek. Any number of directors and writers could take over the franchise and keep the basic JJ reboot aesthetic and work with the story developments (and problems) Abrams, et al brought to it. I still think Dean Parisot deserves a crack at a Star Trek film since he's already made the best one (GalaxyQuest). 

To fix it in the third film the new writer and director will need to work with the cheap gimmick of time-travel that Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman injected into the mix with 2009's Star Trek. It is fixable, but hamstrings the process. In my next post on this subject I'll show how it's done.

STUNNING - MAGNETIC FIRE LOOP ON THE SUN

ENTERPRISE DESTROYED YET AGAIN

Paramount released a few more frames in their "new" trailer during the Superbowl broadcast (I found it online) and, sure enough, they're destroying the Enterprise once again. How many times now? The original series had an Enterprise in jeopardy, which the intrepid crew rescued (and themselves) again and again. I'm so sick of these characters represented with self-doubt, with traitors among them, and the ship getting destroyed nearly every time out. What an utter lack of imagination. Please, JJ, break your contract and don't do a third Star Trek.

4 KAMCHATKA VOLCANOES ERUPT

Link to article with pics and vid

INTERLUDE - ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SONGS EVER

LOOPER ILLOGIC

I'll just list the dumb: 

 1. It is 2044, the future. Young and old versions of Looper character look nothing alike - despite some extensive make-up. Joseph Gordon Levitt has a wide, triangular face and Bruce Willis the perfect oval egg shape.

 2. Looper character is basically a douche-bag with no redeeming qualities, so don't know why an audience would like him 

 3. Young and old versions occupy the same space and time and even touch but don't zap each other into oblivion amid a shower of sparks for some reason.

4 . Production design and set-dressing are terrible - cheap-looking and unimaginative attempt at a dystopian future ... really terrible, especially the street scenes in the city.

 5. Obvious, cliched or gimmicky atmospherics: driving a Miata, wearing ties, eye-drop drugs, 90s nightclub, retro roadside diner, and the blunderbuss. 

 6. Farm Woman lives all alone with the Most Important Kid in the World (MIKW) and must shoo away trespassers regularly but leaves the house and barn open and lives her life like she's in a pharmaceutical commercial. 

 7. Older Looper is determined to make sure he can re-set time so his lady-love won't get whacked 30 years hence in his future-future-past 2074, yet doesn't see as his highest priority protecting his younger self when it has already been established that the mob bosses from the future want first-and-foremost to kill the younger version because that erases the older version. He could have just chained Young Looper to a wall somewhere and done his business and come back to free him later.

 8. Time-Machine looks like a leftover piece of junk (a pressure-chamber with hoses and wires) in an abandoned industrial warehouse - and why wouldn't the future mob bosses send their victims straight to the bottom of the sea or into the incinerator and skip the Looper middlemen (and paying them)? Yet another of Gen-X, Gen-Y, Millennial aesthetic choices in film to make a dull-looking future and special effects (K-PAX, Children of Men) with an insulting simple blur for the time-travel effect.  

 9. MIKW has telekinetic powers - woo. Turns out other people do to, but this is just a plot device to set up the kid's character who will somehow change everything in the future future future ... so the story veers from older Looper wanting to re-set his past to make sure he can live happily past his 30-year expiration date to needing to kill MIKW because he'll destroy everything in the future future future. Dumb. 

 10. You've seen it all before, in Outer Limits episodes, Twilight Zone episodes, and various sci-fi films. 

 Random Dumbness: Kid shows younger Looper secret tunnel to hide from hit-men at farmhouse but they expose it and exit from it once the immediate threat is gone;  Farm Woman is so worried about assassins and regular homeless/vagrant intrusion onto her property that she is always swinging an axe at a tree-stump and wielding her rifle and being alert, but has time to sit in her house with the doors unlocked and open and beckon young Looper for some sex in the middle of the night;  a Miata;  an assassin falls in love with a hardened hooker who seems to have zero feelings?;  everyone misses at close range when they fire guns even after one character talks about how accurate his aim is with his favorite weapon;  jet air-bike thing;  young Looper goes back to his apartment  right away once he finds out his mafia boss wants him dead;  Farm Woman takes forever getting truck loaded to escape and drives off with gas nozzle still hanging out of the truck (full snark on that one: a key example of terrible prod. design choices);  KIKW flips turck and nearly kills his mom and himself rather than just telekinetically making older murderous Looper's weapon go bye-bye. 

#11, and the pièce de résistance: Young Looper decides suddenly to be noble and break the loop by killing himself when nothing in his character nor backstory, especially the future-past life of his older self, would lead you to believe he had that in him or would ever do it. Further, the kid already TK'd a blast wave and why wouldn't he just wish older Looper into the cornfield as he kept coming anyway?

AMERICAN HORROR STORY GENIUS BIT

AHS got much much better the past few episodes and last night's had a moment of pure genius. Jessica Lange's character has returned to the community room after an intense electro-shock session and while choosing a song on the new jukebox has a vision A better quality imaged version of the vid can be found in this io9 article here

LEXX: CREATIVITY EXPLOSION

Been re-watching all of LEXX ... amazing how insanely creative that show was and what they were able to achieve with a limited budget. So wonderful how the throughline of the story has a such a resonant and poignant payoff in the final episode ... and along the way they spoof Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz, Brigadoon, Dracula, Survivor, survivalists, Apocalypse Now, internet porn, and so much more ... just genius.  

BRAVURA ACTING IN BATTLESTAR

Been watching the series again - the mini to midway through Season 2 and it really is a travesty that the superb work done by so many of the actors on the show was never formally acknowledged by the industry. Mary McDonnell should have won at least a couple of SAG/Emmy/Golden Globes and Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer should have won at least one or two as well. James Callis and Michael Hogan in the men's dept. should have at least been nominated. Honorable mention to Lucy Lawless. Such a treasure this show (at least through Season 3).

BLAND BLOND BOND

Skyfall was entertaining but a weak entry into the Bond franchise. The always watchable Javiar Bardem hams it up deliciously as the villain - doing a more animated, gay twist on his killer from No Country for Old Men. Adele's opening title song is evocative of the best Shirley Bassey versions. Those are two out of the 3 good things about the movie.

They went lo-tech for this entry - no Moonraker lasers or underwater cars and such ... in fact the whole film is a very intentional reboot to the classic roots of the first Connery films, but too obviously so. We can see, you don't need to tell us too.

I sure hope this is the last film with all the touchy-feely emotional bullshit that has ruined the Bond franchise. Fight, fuck, kill ... and see the world, that's the Bond we want. No remorse, no introspection - just a nice dash of wit and élan.

Now that mother is out of the picture (*spoiler* they kill off Judy Dench's M) they've given us a black Moneypenny (who is a bit annoying) and new male M - both meant to evoke the originals (same basic office layout -but now with window!).

The movie excels in the lush color-palette (except for the ugly color of that padded leather door to M's new office) and production design ... beautiful to look at but pretty pedestrian in terms of exposition. All the dialogue about getting old, being too old, made you think you were watching Star Treks II, III and IV - I was waiting for M to say, "Chasing around the galaxy is for the young."

We don't want a Bond that fails his proficiency tests, who has doubt, who gets shot, who has touching memories of his orphanage and cries when Mommy dies.

The new Q (a wasted use of the very capable Ben Wishaw) gives Bond a gun which he promptly loses to a overlarge CGI Komodo dragon and, when on the run, Bond it seems has an extra car stashed away (retro nod) but doesn't have extra weapons? Even Hit Girl in KickAss had a room full of weapons. The improvised weapons of the giant Scottish manse were dumb.

Cliche after cliche, you felt the movie dissapating as you got up from your chair - nothing truly creative, nothing memorable and only one scene that actually got your full attention - when Bardem makes his Frank'n'Furter elevator entrance and proceeds to weird-vibe Bond just by talking while Bond is bound to a chair.

EPS 3, 4 BLOOD & CHROME

Blood & Chrome Eps 3 and 4

BSG BLOOD & CHROME IS AWESOME SO FAR

Stupid stupid SyFy Channel. And NBC (since they own BSG). Blood & Chrome's pilot is absolutely terrific. The first two installments of the "web series" (the pilot chopped up) are better than anything that dumb channel has had its line-up in foreva. 
Ep 1

Ep 2

The kid playing Adama is way too good-looking but plays the part well. The production design is bangin' - with just enough difference to cheat the timeline and tie the shows (BSG, Caprica) together. The other actors are all good too. The story moves and there is a very visceral feel to the whole thing. Crisp and smart dialog so far. Kudos to those who made this. You should be working on a series if there was any justice in this world.

BLOOD AND CHROME VERY SOON

Blood & Chrome is coming soon it turns out ... in fact, in just a few days as an online series ... as reported here ... new trailer below. Basically it is the pilot they shot for a regular tv series chopped up into pieces.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY NOT AS GOOD THIS SEASON

Let's get right to it - Season II is not half as good as season I.

The Look: What made season I so gorgeous was the color-saturation, the diffusion, the high-style and some forced-perspective. It was warm and glowy. Season II, or AHS2 as I'll call it from here on out is pale, grey, washed-out, has a lot of angle-up shots, and is, frankly, cheap looking.

The Story: Season I had a lot going on but it related to the house and came to a white-hot finale with the birth of the demon child. Constance (Jessica Lange) was the anchor throughout. AHS2 has WAY too much going on and you just wish they'd cut out some of it. I don't care about the damn creatures outside. James Cromwell plays the sinister mad doctor with real menace when it comes to the sex scenes but when he's slicing-and-dicing patients it is campy. Lange's Head Nun character is too all-over-the-place and shows vulnerability never seen in Constance. She is a contradiction on many levels - cracking up about the hit-and-run she committed in her past; unaware an evil spirit has taken over her little innocent nun helper; doesn't know about the mad doctor's creatures; is easily manipulated into getting drunk despite being a reformed alcoholic ... and on it goes. The writing is much weaker in this version.

The Modern Story: I don't give a damn about the creepy murderer in the abandoned hospital and skanky hipsters that trespassed and the mayhem that has thus ensued nor do I see how they'll link it to the '64 story.

Characters: Zachary Quinto's psychiatrist character is so far a massive bore. The subplot with the lesbian reporter started out strong and now is lame - again weak writing. If they had made her girlfriend smarter, so she didn't fall for the Head Nun's scheming, she could now be playing Velma from Scooby-Doo and solving the mystery; the sex-addict girl is okay but the dialog is too contemporary in places; the razor-cut-hair girl - so far is a blank and I don't care about her. The earnest but ambitious priest is so far rather a bore too.

The Demon/Exorcism: too literal and too specific - didn't the writers see The Exorcist? Vulgar displays of power are not the Devil's way. And the possessed young nun killing the devout "Mexican" woman - too direct and vulgar a display of power. The Demon subplot is veering strongly into camp, and not in an intentional way.

The Alien: Why this was included in the story is beyond me. Unless the show's creator and the writers can cleverly marry the story of demons, ghosts and aliens in some way (and I don't see how without it being ridiculous), it will be a waste. The alien looks like the cheapest, fake bit of foam you've ever seen. Some smoke would work wonders on this show - hiding the cheapness of the sets, the poor lighting, and the obvious sound-stage look to theshow. 

I really don't know what the shows creators are after. Hopefully they won't fuck up so badly that AHS does not get renewed for Season III ... I really want them to return to the Constance storyline for Season III. What Constance needs is a female rival for access and interaction with the demon child as the fulcrum upon which that season's storyline could pivot. 

C'MON HBO, BUY UP BLOOD & CHROME

Finally saw the whole trailer - looks good. SyFy has let this project languish and basically die because it is too expensive for their new 99cent Store business model. Only HBO (or maybe Showtime or FX) could foot the bill and commit to doing this properly. If the show has the propulsive action and storytelling of the trailer it would be worth watching. 

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome Trailer from darky132 on Vimeo.
Personally I'd rather they pick up the BSG story from Revelations as if what came after could be wiped from memory and do it right - No Ellen as the Final Cylon, no pigeon, and do it my way Battlestar Variant 1

BRILLIANT SIMON & GARFUNKEL SONG SPOOF

DATA CRYSTALS ARE HERE

Science fiction often anticipates actual technological advance and now the data crystal is real. We've seen them used in Star Trek, Zardoz, Babylon 5 and countless other sci-fi productions.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS ... bleccchh

I hate when titles of stories are used in the story *ding ding* "I'm saying the title in this line of dialog, are you paying attention?" and I can't stand Star Trek using trek in a sentence - yuck. It was cringe-worthy, when in an otherwise excellent installment in the film series, First Contact, actor James Cromwell had to say that line "on this star trek" or some such. Now we get word that JJ Abrams has titled his new Star Trek movie Star Trek Into Darkness. Isn't the whole exploring darkness as a theme kinda played out? Is it literal darkness? That was done best in a Voyager episode with these creatures that lived in a dark zone (and when it comes to Dark Zones, Lexx has the last word on that). Khan? Charlie X? Tremaine? Harry Mudd? It's looking more and more that Benedict Cumberbatch's villain is going to be Lazarus (from The Alternative Factor) or Gary from Where No Man Has Gone Before ... unfortunately I don't have high hopes for this one.

TROMA MOVIES NOW ON YOUTUBE

Some cheeseball gore and camp now available full-length on YouTube - Troma released 150 of films - link here

BRAIN REBUILDING VIDEO

One protein at a time  - from io9

SLOW SUMMER SILLINESS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LATEST BATMAN FILM

I'm not a fan of Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan's version of Batman - especially Bale's gruff mumble-speak ... this hilarious poster spoof for the latest Batman film coming out would make me actually go see it if indeed it did have Adam West ...I don't plan to see the film, so for a review here's Eileen Jones at ExiledOnline

A LONG VARIED CAREER, INDEED

HIGGS BOSON - SO WHAT?

Particle-accelerators smash atoms together at very high speeds and then have monumentally sophisticated detectors read the data - quadrillions of data points could be possible and trillions of images could be taken, but millons are and then computers filter it down to a veritable handful for scientist to actually pore over and what they are looking at is trails of debris - from which they infer the composition of the debris that made it, i.e., the type of particle. In fact, all they are doing is liberating hidden mass (a term I coined in my self-published work The Fundamental Quanta c 1987). Cars smashing into one another at a stock car rally leave trails and bits of debris, and trails of debris pieces gone skipping off. This is what scientists are looking at. No doubt at even higher energies we'll find more "particles" - but so what? It still does not explain mass. I did in FQ - motion is the fundamental quanta - it has an indivisible unit size, a generally spheroid shape, and gives rise to all other forces and objects (motion is not merely an attendant property of those - it is the stuff from which they are made) ... motion held in bound states give rise to these "particles."  Higgs Boson, bah! Here's another skeptic

AVENGERS - YAWN

This spoof of Iron Man at left kinda sums up my feeling about the Avengers movie. It was serviceable. It was functional. It did the job. And Iron Man was the brightest, shiniest thing in it. But I can't say I had an emotional reaction to any of it. Quite a lot of script jujitsu was employed to connect all the things we've seen in other Marvel movies featuring these characters and it did end up all making sense - the way a complex series of strings connecting points on a map plotting out crimes makes sense, but it lent nothing to the drama at hand. Joss Whedon seemed intent on crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's, but it was a big so what - only the comics geeks will care. It was like watching a gymnastics routine or maybe an ice skating routine at the Olympics and the athlete nails it technically perfectly but without grace and elan or any sense of verve or spontaneity. It felt inorganic and leaden. The actors were all good, and the dialog was pretty crisp and finally a Hulk that looked and acted as it should. The best moment in the whole thing is when the Hulk smashes Loki like a rag-doll. Gwyneth Paltrow is aging well - never looked better (has a small role). Please please let David Lynch or Paul Verhoeven or Peter Greenaway do an Inhumans movie and give us fans something interesting.

PROMETHEUS REVIEW

RIDLEY SCOTT JUST DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE
Rated:

Review:
I had high hopes I’d be pleasantly surprised by the new Alien film Prometheus since Ridley Scott was taking another stab at the story. Instead I feel like I had my intelligence assaulted throughout every single moment of the film - almost a torture. It might well be one of the most terrible films I’ve ever seen. Imagining it as a stand-alone film it would be an okay B-movie because there are no expectations. But this story has a pedigree – a checkered one to be sure (Alien III and Alien Resurrection being the ugly step-children), but there stands a singular classic at the beginning of this family line with Alien and a powerful first-born which followed and charted its own course in James Cameron's actioner, Aliens.

Ridley Scott has clearly just given up as an artist. He doesn’t care anymore. Gladiator wasn’t half the movie that Troy was, yet a dumbed-down public loved it and Academy members voted it best picture that year. Robin Hood couldn't even lure me in for more than 20 minutes of my time. Scott has not done a first-rate film on par with his best since Hannibal. He has so many producing projects that he obviously just isn’t devoting the time to his directing duties. In an appropriate irony he brought on board Damon Lindelof (of LOST fame) to punch up the script for Prometheus and it was a terrible mistake – after all Lindelof gave us the cop-out it was all a death fever-dream ending to LOST. 


I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around for one of the worst scripts I’ve ever seen put on screen. The dialog is so sophomoric, hackneyed and clichéd that you just felt like you were being beaten with a stupid stick as horrid line after horrid line of dialog penetrated your ears. Not to mention the sweepingly ridiculous plot structure. Soon after the open, our intrepid crew enters the atmosphere of the destination moon and are almost instantly over the area of the temples with nary a mention of having to, er, search them out, nor a mention of the Nazca Plains-like markings so clearly visible on the ground ... or that there are obviously several temples in a row and which one should we investigate first? Nope, they just land and go to the first one (we've got a sequel to get to). 

The original film Alien was not just a classic horror film but genius on film – the perfect combination of visual style, tight direction, wonderful performances, great conceptual art and production design, and a perfect build-up of suspense and then release at the finale. The tight-knit ensemble cast caught the ethos of the era with the clever but spare script by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett – the world is fucked, everything is corrupt, just look out for yourself and those you love sense of anomie that pervaded the culture in the late 70s was caught perfectly in the words and the actors’ conveyance of those words. The audience was with these people, rooted emotionally in their survival and desire to understand why the big, bad corporation would put them in this situation and how they would survive.

Contrast the perfect origin film with the mess that is Prometheus. First, I guess Scott wanted to work with Charlize Theron or something because her character Vickers is entirely useless to the story and could have been written out easily … as could the part of Peter Weyland played by Guy Pearce in some crappy old-man make-up. The big bad evil corporation could have been referenced in other ways.

The only thing I did like were some visual references to the first Alien film. David’s interface helmet has yellow light, as do many of the other CGI interface panels and small blinking lights in hallways and such – referencing the look of the master computer Mother in the original film. And many corridors and hallways and rooms were made to look as if they could be earlier versions of what the Nostromo might end up looking like. [Note to sequel writers: If Nostromo is so much more low-tech looking in Alien and it is 90 years after Prometheus then maybe the equipment needs to be simpler because the mining crews are in hypersleep so much longer - that's a way to explain the lack of flashy touch-screens and pop-up CGI animations in the first film.]

I’m getting ahead of myself. Prometheus is that film which has artificial drama at almost every turn. Lights flash, buzzers sound, people shout with a sense of urgency when there is none. People could have talked in a normal tone of voice, walked rather than run, and so on. Contrast with the original Alien when each light, sound, reaction shot to camera by an actor, and spoken word felt absolutely necessary and organic to the genuine drama unfolding. Fake Prometheus drama: a sudden storm compels the action forward at one point and again lends to a contrived sense of urgency. Oh no, someone is trapped outside and must be rescued – ho-hum. People get lost when they have locators. [Oh, and every single important moment from the film was indeed given away in the trailers and my earlier post below did state the obvious in its predictions.]

The onslaught of stupid begins early in the film as they get right to the ship en-route to LV-223 (or whatever the number, which they'll change to LV 426 for the sequel) after the cave-painting “it’s an invitation” stuff (and once again we're on a space ship with cocktail bars, couches, a pool table (!) and other high-end hotel amenities … contrast that with the realistic spare digs of the Nostromo from Alien)  … once they wake the crew from their sleep chambers we get lots of Aliens-type dialog – not just an homage to James Cameron’s version but a lazy straight-lift of the scene and it is lame … it is getting so painful to watch these let’s introduce the characters to the audience as sketch outlines and spew character-specific one-liners that I just physically cringed – also, way too many characters for one thing  (that we never get to know nor care about as they die). In fact it is Aliens which is referenced in Prometheus more than Alien, which is interesting since you would think Scott would want to put his own stamp back on the story. The ground vehicle they drive to the temple look familiar? (and why exactly were there two extra little buggy vehicles at all? – they lent no value to the story and had no logic behind them and were used at times for artificial drama).

David the Android: Fassbender is a terrific actor and did as good a job as was possible with such a terrible script. The fascination with Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and dying the hair was just too cute and distracting. I guess that's the writers’ way of showing these early android models were “twitchy?” as referenced in a later film.  I guess because audiences since the Gen-X era have gotten successively dumber we get hit over the head with the David is weird looks and creepy lines again and again. One look and one line would have sufficed to intrigue and engage an alert audience. All that was left was for him to wear a trench coat and flash us. Oh, and the whimsy. A whimsical android? An early model that was this way? To show how truly truly bereft of ideas the writers responsible for this pile of rubbish were we got David as the disembodied head as yet another straight-lift (Ash in the original film).

Many of the crew (were there 12, 20 or 40 of them?) get killed and you don’t care – again with the artificial drama … if we didn’t know them and they weren’t doing anything important, whey have them at all and why kill them?

There are two mega-stupid parts in the film. In the first, an infected crewman wants back on the ship (one of the bad actors, more on that later) and Theron’s character comes down to say no way and then she opens the ship bay door! If she didn’t want him on, why would she open that door? So she burns him alive later, but still. Then there is lead actress Noomi Rapace doing the Ripley surrogate character and she is a bore, for one, but the writers have her get into a surgical machine to remove the alien she’s had surreptitiously implanted in her by David (via a surrogate – sex with her infected boyfriend). The machine cuts her, removes the creature and staples her up and then for the next 20 minutes she is climbing, jumping, running non-stop and it is beyond-the-pale idiotic. Er, those staples wouldn’t work themselves loose? Her guts wouldn’t come spilling out? She didn’t need to rest and courses of antibiotics after major invasive abdominal surgery? She's healed up enough to take an android head and go find the Space Jockey homeworld?

The helmets: we get told that there is atmosphere being created in the temple and they can go helmet-less inside and in scene after scene in there, no helmets (not even carried on their backs). Did they just leave them in that room that was doing the “terraforming” (another cheap nod to another film in the franchise) … what if they needed their helmets in some part they had not seen yet? Dumb, scientifically dumb (and there are 100 other instances of bad science in the film).

The most cringe-worthy of the dumb bits has to be when the captain crudely seduces Theron’s character Vickers. This just would not happen. We had never seen established that they even knew each other (of course they did, she hired him but that was not shown). The actor playing the captain was a pretty bad actor, and his dialog was terrible too - he was less than a sketch of a character. The captain was so detached and unprofessional toward the mission and exuded zero authority that it defied logic that such a person would be in charge of this “trillion dollar” mission. At the end when the captain and two surviving crewmembers volunteer to smash the Prometheus into the Space-Jockey ship and make a rousing suicide war cry while they do it it is embarrassing to watch it is so hackneyed. Other bad actors were the boyfriend scientist with the worm in his eye (he’s a scientist and doesn’t tell anyone?), the tattooed guy and the nerd guy with glasses. All were bland or hokey or just bad. The medical assistant lady was clearly a nod to Veronica Cartwright from Alien with a similar look but otherwise lent nothing to the story.

What we get is a lot of bells and whistles and bright shiny things, but a lousy story with gargantuan plot-holes, an infection of inanity and way too many cute references to the other films. They have their conference in a bay that reminds you of the end of Aliens. The table they dine at is meant to remind you of the scene with John Hurt and the chest-burster. The David-head.

The greatest crime of the film is what I predicted in my earlier post, that they would make the horror mundane by making it literal and that is exactly what they did. The magnificent and mysterious chamber of the derelict ship with the creature sitting in the giant chair in Alien is now a pasty-skinned buff 7-footer with a helmet that has the elephant snout. We saw all kinds of CGI glowy lights in that metal room. We were compelled to believe that the organic look to the metal came from the Space Jockeys’ pathogen covering the metal of their ship, whereas the original art by H.R. Giger for the first Alien film was always about integration of the organic and machine as is Giger's vision, not organic veneer covering machine so Lindelof can connect-the-dots for his sequels.

I could I go on. The worms in the soil at the temple. Did some PA just grab a handful outside the soundstage one day for Scott to shoot? Were they indigenous to the moon? If so, why were they never before integrated and co-opted by the malignant organics of the vase jars (which by Nostromo’s time 90 years later when John Hurt’s character Kane finds them have an organic outer layer that appears all organic)? Were these tiny worms brought by the humans? Was that room sealed all that time from them if they were a local lifeform? Because in short order the gooey black organic oil oozing from the vase jars transmogrifies them to dangerous eel throat-stuffers. Later the alien the Ripley knock-off cuts out of herself (the mean little bugger held in place despite violent struggle by a simple pair of forceps) looks like a squid-thingy. And at the end the squid-thingy has in less than an hour grown room-size huge and quickly throat-stuffs and births its offspring out of the last Space Jockey into a full-grown proto-alien complete with extending inner jaw (snap-snap) and (this must be a joke) a complete set of what look like porcelin veneers on human chompers in its main outer mandible. I wanted to throw something at the screen. 


Oh, the score, I've read several people say they like the score. Listen to Wrath of Khan (pretty darn close) and other elements are very similar to other soundtracks too - I found it unremarkable or evocative of other films if not dangerously similar in legal terms.


Want to read a hilariously funny version of the above? This guy just killed it with his script spoof - here

DAENERYS IS BURNING

Good finale for the Season 2 closer of Game of  Thrones. After several episodes stuffing plot points into themselves like one of those dishes that stuffs a quail inside a chicken inside a duck inside a goose - the finale unfolded cleanly and we got some quality time with good characters. 


The Big Girl killed some scumbags and showed Jaime Lannister that he might be in for quite a fight if she ever goes after him one-on-one. Eery face-changer guy finally showed his true 2nd face. The blue-eyed undead are on the march, Winterfell is burnt to the ground and in a hilarious bit the buffoon Theon Greyjoy is clobbered by an Iron-born after giving a rousing speech. Poor Tyrion gets no hero's parade, no thanks even for saving Kings Landing - instead he wakes up with his large face-gash to find he's been abandoned and shunted aside. Only Lord Varys remains true (as a self-serving power-player can), as well as his lover, but Varys says he must distance himself for the time-being. 


The main takeaway for a fan who has not read the books is that the people of these novels are completely unsentimental and rather ruthless in their approach to life.  Everyone seems to be scheming about their next move and what they have to give up to survive or get power. The broad sweep of the story is still a bit overwhelming with so many characters and conflicts to follow, but it is entertaining to be sure. Our Dragon Lady Daenerys finally got some answers in the Warlock Tower (visions of possible futures and alternate realities - including a touching scene with her dead king Kahl Drogo stuck in some kind of purgatory) and she burned at least one copy of the Warlock by coaxing her little reptile children to belch fire. Over 9 months until Season 3 - yikes ... how will it be possible not to read a bit about what is to come?

C'MON HBO - MORE EPS PER SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones has been terrific through 1 1/2 seasons - it is a great show. But the 6th, 7th and 8th eps of Season II felt pretty rushed to me - they are trying to cram so much story in there that you don't get to sit and rest a spell with these characters we love and bask in the brilliance of the words, performances and production - HBO is skipping along too fast to dot the "i"s and cross that "t"s in the plot development and it is lessening the enjoyment of the series and overall story. HBO needs to extend the seasons to 12, 14, or even up to 20 episodes per season, starting with season III. The show is a gigantic hit, you can afford it, HBO. At least extend 2 or 3 of the episodes to 2 hours. HBO could easily make feature films to accompany the series and they would be a hit. There are so many characters, so many stories to tell and we the audience are getting short shrift these


days with the television eps. I hate to nitpick, but there have been a few flaws in the last few eps. The scene where Brienne of Tarth puts prisoner Jaime Lannister in the boat we see them walk side-by-side and in two shots the illusion is killed that she is a giant - showing her at nearly the same height as him whereas previously all the movie tricks to frame her in other eps had given the illusion of being a giant. The big battle scene outside Kings Landing in tonight's episode IX fell flat. It looked like 80 people fighting 120 and was strangely lackluster. Lena Headey made up for it with her delicious wickedness as Cersei as she chewed up the scenery again and again with the wonderfully cynical dialogue. HBO is serving us a magnificent 20-course meal and rushing the courses before we even get more than a look at this dish, a taste of that one, a sip of that fine wine before clearing and bringing out the next course.

PARSING OUT PROMETHEUS

Let's see if we can parse out the whole story of the new Prometheus film given all the goodies they've given away:

ACT I
STONE AGE ART IS FOUND to contain the same star map, "an invitation" to some, and funding is secured to launch an exploratory mission to those coordinates. ENTER ECCENTRIC BILLIONAIRE - based on a combination of Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. This money man is our MALEVOLENT CORPORATE INFLUENCE - infusing the story with greed and avarice and naked lust for power. He runs the ANDROID COMPANY and insures one of his synthetic humans is along to KEEP TABS ON THE HUMANS and report back and to FOLLOW THE ORDERS OF THE BILLIONAIRE first and foremost. Sleep chambers, flashy CGI graphics and skin-tight suits to sex up the story with cooler imagery and younger bodies than in the first Alien.


ACT II
A TEMPLE IS FOUND with a HUMAN HEAD STATUE. Turns out HUMANS WERE SEEDED so human life on Earth did not evolve there independently. ANDROID LAUNCHES PROBES into temple and finds "seed" chamber and realizes that there is also a chamber with a ship - a SPACE JOCKEY SHIP from the first Alien film. An INFECTION - either organic to the moon (we are on LV-426) or brought there by an asteroid, the newly-arrived humans or the Space Jockeys themselves infects all life on the moon. The INFECTION AFFECTS SEED PODS and some of them open and WE SEE THE FLANGED EELWORM early Face Hugger and it attacks crew. At least a couple of the CREW GET INFECTED with an EelWorm egg while others battle the infection. MOST OF THE HUMANS DIE, but the corporate witch is one of the last to go and makes sure the android can do his mission (collect data and/or samples) before she is offed. 


ACT III
SOMETHING WAKES THE SPACE JOCKEYS (android jiggling their controls?) and they attack the humans, communicate with some of them. The android MAKES SURE THE DATA GETS BACK TO THE EVIL ANDROID-BUILDING CORPORATE ASSHOLE ON EARTH (so he, in turn, can make sure the Nostromo in Alien lands on LV-426 and that his android Ash will be assigned to that ship some 99 years later). ANDROID ATTEMPTS TO FLEE WITH SAMPLES and the humans know he must be stopped, hence the RAMMING OF SPACE JOCKEY VEHICLE. Two possible endings: ANDROID SURVIVES and ABDUCTS AND FORCIBLY CRYO-SLEEPS ONE CREWMAN (the heroine) who is infected, for return to Earth ... Or, THEY ALL DIE, the last couple willingly, to keep the organism and disease from getting to Earth - not knowing the ANDROID ALREADY TRANSFERRED THE DATA. [Space Jockeys were in their own form of cryo-sleep or a 2nd ship landed once they were signaled that their ship on site was activated]


Analysis: Prometheus will be a good action film and a good, but not great, prequel to the Alien film series. What will be lacking is the camaraderie among the crew and the working-class disgust with the elite corporatists running things that so infused the first film - they were all in it together unwillingly doing the bidding of the man and sacrificed on the alter of greed and power - with a heroine who overcame the odds to survive.
[Update 6.12.12: to quote the Ripley surrogate "We were so wrong" ... the movie is terrible and even worse, the android-head and Ripley surrogate are going to chase down the Space Jockeys in the sequel]

MET BILL PAXTON

I get to meet a lot of famous people at my job, including many actors. The other day I met Bill Paxton (really nice, unpretentious guy). So so soooooo tempting to say the words: 
"Why don't you put her in charge!?"