I Have Questions for "Prometheus"
Because I dislike sitting near people at the multibarn, I'm often a bit behind on the summer blockbusters. But I did finally catch up with Prometheus (2012), the new Ridley Scott film that is either a prequel or a remake of Alien (I guess it was both, actually). A lot of people had really been dumping on this one, but the lure of Imax and a fear of Adam Sandler proved too strong, so I finally checked it out.
I'm not sure what everyone is complaining about. If you can accept the basic premise of all horror that everything related to sex and reproduction is hilariously disgusting, then I don't know why anyone would be massively disappointed by Prometheus. Perhaps some were actually expecting a real answer to the question of human origin?
That said, however, I do have some Prometheus questions:
1. I'm not the first to notice this, but truly, why must every robot, even those in multi-zillion dollar movies with ambitions of "quality," insist on giving an exact accounting of time in years, months, days, minutes, and seconds? They should just turn to the camera and say, "Hey, guess what, I'm an android."
2. Until we know how cryonic stasis really works, must we always assume everyone wakes up dizzy and puking their guts out?
3. Why are so many robots English?
4. Is Peter O'Toole a robot?
5. Wouldn't it have been great if Android David had been watching Wall-E instead of Lawrence of Arabia?
6. ....or failing that, if he based his human persona on two years of watching Jerry Lewis in The Ladies Man?
7. If your mission is to find, not just extraterrestrial life, but the species that engineered all of humanity, do you just blow off an apparent "life form reading" as a glitch?
8. In the future, does geology for some reason become a particularly attractive field for surly assholes?
9. Is this movie pro-life or pro-choice?
10. Would Rick Santorum demand that all freakish human-squid babies be brought to term?
11. Are we supposed to think, for a moment at least, that Charlize Theron might be a dude because the surgery pod thing is programmed for males only?
12. And was that, in turn, a political statement about women's access to health care?
13. Does that pod do "tummy tucks?"
14. Just why are girls so icky and gross on the inside?
15. Does Ridley Scott really believe having Noomi Rapace staggering around bleeding from a C-section is an equivalent substitute for Sigorney Weaver in her panties petting her pussycat?
16. Did the biology guy actually have any qualifications, or was he more like a futuristic version of Tracy Morgan's "Brian Fellows" character?
17. If you've seen a crew member horribly dead in a horrible way, do you simply "open the door" when he suddenly shows up in the ship's back yard?
18. How much do you think I'd have to pay to get Charlize Theron to show up in a body-stocking and ignite objects of my choosing with a flamethrower?
19. After this movie, am I still supposed to believe in evolution, or am I to believe we are all the direct descendants of huge, white, waxy, bald dudes, in which case, am I supposed to believe in Adolph Hitler?
20. In the future, will all of humanity always be scrambling to shut various doors "just in time?"
21. Vangelis is still around, right? Why didn't they just get Vangelis?
22. Did the Captain ever find out if Charlize Theron was really a robot? Or maybe I just misheard a vibrator joke of some kind?
23. Why didn't Charlize Theron blast-off in her Four Seasons suite much, much earlier?
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25. Birds and bees check: So this installment confirms that the female "aliens" are the ones that walk up-right with the big eggplant heads, and the male aliens are the hideous squid beasts that bust their squid nuts in our stomachs, correct?
26. Just how does this species manage to reproduce when we're not around to offer up our sexy, sexy esophagi for impregnation?
27. Why exactly does that first huge, white, waxy, bald dude drink that DNA-scrambling motor oil? And in a related question, is that planet supposed to be Scotland?
28. If someone doesn't come along to open the door for them, do those red mapping orbs simply hover in place for all eternity?
29. Is the alien we see at the end the same one that traveled back in time, at the behest of David Wolper, to greet earthlings at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles?
