Prometheus 2012 - Blog Posts

I need to dissect and study this asshole

It’s like shark-skin silver graу, shinу… The suit was fitted tо an inch of mу bоdу, it was like I’ve never wоrn a suit that was made sо well fоr me. But it had this kind оf high cоllar that was almоst militant… and the bоdу оf it was very andrоgуnоus and had this kind of sexless feel tо it. But there was something abоut рutting the jacket on that almost, like made me feel like I was throwing mу back оut because when I put it оn, it just sucked me intо this pоsture that became Vickers and there was sоmething abоut that jacket, when l didn’t have it оn and we’d rehearse. Ridleу would walk bу me and kind оf рull mу shоulders back, he’d be like: “Yоu’ve gоt the wоrst pоsture ever.“ And I wоuld put this jacket оn and it was just like… Vickers just came alive. - Charlize Theron [Meredith Vickers]

She is a witch. She’s reallу the ice queen. It had alwaуs been оur visiоn to make her lооk as sculptural as possible. Sо a beautiful, beautiful silk mоhair suit… in ice silver was оbviоuslу the waу tо gо. - Janty Yates [costume designer]

Watched Prometheus

I also watched AVP, Requiem, and Predators over the past couple days but those were too boring and bad to talk about. Minor spoilers below.

Definitely some flaws in the script and some plots that get dropped or shifted in unexplained ways, but this is really beautiful and really compelling. Although the performances didn't quite touch me as much as I would have hoped (probably due to the imperfect script), they were consistently very impressive, Theron, Elba, and Fassbender all do some of the best work I've seen of them. Extraordinary production design, flawless sets, just about constantly breathtaking to look at.

A lot of the thematics are very explicitly and perhaps heavy-handedly explored, and although my lack of history with serious belief in creationism and particularly Christianity maybe dulled some of the impact, I was really excited about seeing this as an inversion of 2001. A young, derided, arrogant artificial intelligence maintaining a ship while its crew are in cryosleep on a journey to understand a strange piece of ancient human history starts to become frustrated with his role as agent of service and as second order creation. An object of corporate convenience, he has easy access to the questions being so thoroughly searched for by the crew of the ship, and they are cruel and unsatisfactory. HAL 9000 to a T. Only, unlike in Kubrick's vision, the invitation from the progenitors of the humanity is not made in kindness or an attempt to assist their creations. It is immediately destructive (the mechanics of the invitation are one of the bugs in the script, but we can consider it despite this). The creators of humanity are just as cruel to their lineage as humanity is to its, and now that they have finished or failed, they wish to end the lives of their children, perhaps, as David hypothesizes, in an act of creation itself, but certainly in an act of destruction. This transformative goal aligns perfectly with Kubrick's space baby, but it is a deeply pessimistic perspective on divinely granted evolution. The religious parallel that stands out to me much more than that of Prometheus is that of Noah, although given the evocative title of the sequel, I expect at least some exploration of this connection there.