****THIS IS A REVIEW OF PROMETHEUS AND IT CONTAINS SPOILERS****

Dear Mr. Lindelof,

I can’t decided whether I like you or hate you. Note that I didn’t write, “love you or hate you,” for that what mean a greater possible result on the positive end of the spectrum. Rather, I am torn between finding your work simply good or irredeemably awful. Thus, since you are but lukewarm I will spit you out. This letter will hopefully clarify my meaning.

Ever since “Lost” I’ve noticed a trend in your writing. To your credit, you’re endlessly ambitious, which suggests that quality of your end product can only be the result of pie-eyed creative naivety. You throw things on the canvas that would make others shrink: the origins of man, good v.s. evil, the metaphysics of time, the meaning of life. That you never manage to pull off any satisfying conclusions to these lofty starting points tells me that you’re in touch with your Dionysian inspiration, but have completely neglected the Apollonian skill of craft – much like one of your idols, Steven King.

But what do I mean when I say you never pull off any satisfying conclusions? Well, being a crude man, please allow me a crude analogy. You lure like a beautiful woman I see at Starbucks reading David Foster Wallace. I wish you could find a way of talking to her, but she seems so elegant and out of my league. I then see her at a bar and we hit it off. We go back to my apartment and undress. We lay down and she starts stroking me and takes me in her mouth. She gives me amazing head until I’m ready to burst. She then hops on top of me, gives a few awkward thrusts and grunts, and we both cum unsatisfactorily. I mean, sure, I got where I wanted to go but I would’ve preferred 3/4 thrusting and 1/4 foreplay, not vise versa. The experience, though in the end better than nothing, fails to live up to all the teasing. You’re a tease, Damon Lindelof.

(don’t tell me what I can’t do!)

Which brings me to your latest project, Prometheus.

I have been a fan of the “Alien” franchise since I first saw Ridley Scott’s breakout film as a teenager. I would go so far as to say Alien is one of my favorite films. It is an unpretentious yet cerebral sci-fi horror, which is a feat often imitated but rarely duplicated. I can think only of Cronenberg’s corpus and the recent District 9 that have manage to achieve the balance that Scott did.

As a fan, I was cautiously optimistic when I heard Scott intended to make a prequel. I remember watching the 2003 commentary to Alien in which Scott mused on how he would like to explore the history of the “Space Jockey” and the origins of the ship carrying the eggs. He suggested the Jockey was a pilot on a military vessel and the eggs were some kind of biological weapon. Unfortunately for the Jockey, the eggs proved too dangerous and he paid the price. Now, many years later, the crew of the ill-fated Nostromo stumble upon the ship’s malevolent cargo and the rest is cinematic history.

Now what makes Alien so brilliant, besides Scott’s contributions – tone, atmosphere, cinematography, pacing, etc. – was its minimalist narrative style. It gives the audience just enough to excite the imagination, but also leaves some caesuras for the audience to contemplate, namely, where did the alien come from? etc. However, it does answer the questions that are most pressing and gives enough to let the viewer play. It establishes that there is a mysterious ship with these weird eggs, but where it came from isn’t entirely pertinent. What is important is what this weird creature does and how.

You seem to think that you achieve a similar feat but you’ve missed out on a crucial element. You end up frustrating because you signify that you’re going to answer certain questions but never end up doing so. When you establish certain points at the beginning of a narrative, you’re basically creating a debt to the audience, a debt that audience expects to be payed.

The biggest debt you make is that these Engineers created humans but now want to destroy us. Neither question is remotely addressed despite the fact that you obviously allude that they will be. Rather, we get hackneyed, clumsily shoehorned religious symbolism. After considerable digging around in message boards, it seems that the film ever so secretively hints that Jesus was an alien and that because we killed him the Engineers are ready to abort the whole human project. However, something went wrong and they couldn’t bring their black goo payload to earth. What precisely went wrong isn’t explained, either.

Which brings me to the second debt. What is this planet? The directions to LV-223 were made before Christ, which means they were created when we were still in the Engineers’ good graces. However, they direct to a weapons’ development facility. Is this some kind of cosmic mousetrap? Does that means they would’ve annihilated us regardless of whatever happened 2000 years ago? Why? Were they always planning on killing us if we got to far advanced? And how did Janek (Idris Elba) come up with this insight seemingly out of no where? And if they did design us in their image, then what about our evolutionary genetic heritage? Do these Engineers also contain the traces of dinosaurs, apes, fish, trees, etc? That the film opens with a sacrificial pageant, which suggests how life was made on an otherwise lifeless earth, alerts the reader that this is significant and will be explained in some capacity. No such luck.

You cross symbolism and plot, Mr. Lindelof, thinking one will supplement the other, but that’s not how it works. To quote T.S. Eliot, “The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.” The focus of a writer ought to be foremost on the narrative, not its implications. That’s why Alien worked so well.Dan O’Bannon and Scott told a taught story with clear, simple dialogue. The characters felt real because they were believably engaging with the universe and the problems it presented. In Prometheus, everyone is going on about the meaning of life, and it all feels so damn pretentious. The symbolism arises out of the work; the author needn’t beat the audience over the head with it:

Ray Bradbury: “No, I never consciously place symbolism in my writing. That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. Better to let the subconscious do the work for you, and get out of the way. The best symbolism is always unsuspected and natural.” Ralph Ellison: “Symbolism arises out of action…Once a writer is conscious of the implicit symbolism which arises in the course of a narrative, he may take advantage of them and manipulate them consciously as a further resource of his art. Symbols which are imposed upon fiction from the outside tend to leave the reader dissatisfied by making him aware that something extraneous is added.” Saul Bellow: “A ‘symbol’ grows in its own way, out of the facts.”

The third dept that you make to the audience is the role Prometheus is supposed to play in the “Alien” canon. You may have gone to great lengths trying to avoid making this a traditional prequel, but let’s face it, this is a prequel. Everything about Prometheus is a prequel to Alien. Not only does it take place in the same universe, but it has all the same structures: a crew aboard an intergalactic ship wakes up from being frozen; there is a morally ambiguous android representing a private, corporate agenda; the team stumbles up mysterious alien technology that turns on them; someone is infected; a confrontation with the alien; a ship is destroyed containing the alien. Yadda yadda, I could go on.

Perhaps the most glaring reference to Alien is the sculpture of the Xenomorph inside the facility. This suggests that the Engineers have already harnessed the Xenomorph, and the black goo seems to have something to do with. Accordingly, when one of mutated worms emerges from the goo and attacks a scientist, which is clearly referencing the face-hugger, the audience immediately connects this to Alien, thinking we’re going to see some kind of Xenomorph explode out of the scientist’s chest. Not so. In fact, he’s never referenced again, and the audience is left wanting. I’m not saying this is how the story should’ve played out, I’m just pointing out some unresolved tensions.

By aligning Prometheus with Alien so closely, the audience can’t help but assume this will somehow explain the eggs and everything else the Nostromo’s crew found in Alien. Afterall, Holloway observes that the Xenomorph sculpture is a door leading to another chamber. The audience assumes this will be addressed. It isn’t. Furthermore, how did the Engineers have access to the Xenomorph when it seems to have created by a complex cross-breading between the black goo, human sexual intercourse, the offspring of which then in turn impregnating an Engineer. Or perhaps the Xenomorph at the end wasn’t really a Xenomorph. Ugh, my butt hurts.

(I don’t own this image)

Another frustrating aspect of your writing is that you create drama by making your characters act like fucking idiots. I have to believe that there’s a deleted scene where David is shown cutting off the oxygen to the sleeping tanks, giving the crew brain damage, as that would be the only explanation as to why these people could be so goddamn stupid. Honestly, this has to be one of the worst scientific expeditions shown on film since Dante’s Peak. Why would a crew of scientists sign up on a 4 year, trillion dollar project before being briefed on it? Also, why would two scientists, one a biologist, freak out and runaway when they’ve discovered the corpse of a 10, 000 year old alien? Surely, you’d be somewhat curious, especially if, y’know, you’re a biologist and you’re part of the first scientific team to ever find extraterrestrial intelligent life? But then this same character is unwittingly drawn to a hostile looking snake. And how did these guys even get lost in the first place? They had a detailed map of the structure, were being tracked by the ship, and were in contact with the ship. Couldn’t they just ask for directions? I know this seems like I’m splitting hairs, and that people don’t actively criticize a movie like this, but all these questions start piling up and I can no longer suspend my disbelief.

Returning to David, I have to ask, what were his motives? Why did he poison Holloway? Curiosity? Did Weyland instruct him to do so? It seems like David has emotions, though he states he doesn’t. Bishop and Ash didn’t seem to have emotions, and they were theoretically more advanced than David. In spite of your writing and thanks to Michael Fassbender, David proves to be the most interesting character, and probably the most likeable because of it. Yet, he’s never satisfyingly addressed. There is a suggestion that the tension between the humans of Prometheus and David mirrors the tension between the Engineers and the humans, but this isn’t fully explored either. We could go on about Freudian drives, and the anxiety between the father and the son, but they’re never really taken up by the film itself.

(a summation of David’s contribution to Prometheus)

I realize that your goal is to get the audience thinking as opposed to be passive receptors, and I respect that. Prometheus, though frustrating and disappointing, is no doubt superior to Battleship or Transformers for the simple fact that it tries to reach beyond the gratuitous. In fact, there are a lot of things to like about Prometheus: Scott’s direction is wonderful, the pacing felt right until the third act, and the performances were great, too. All in all, I would Prometheus a 7/10 based on an initial viewing in IMAX, however I would imagine my grade would fall once upon a repeated viewing as the spectacle would be reduced and the narrative would take center stage.

The fault of Prometheus lies not in its stars (Fassbender, Scott), but in you, Mr. Lindelof. Ridley Scott is like a Berretta rifle; beautiful and accurate, but only as good as its rifleman. Scott understands the role of the director as well as anyone can, but he doesn’t understand writing, and that was supposed to be your job, Damon. You squandered a great opportunity to make a classic film. You either lazily or incompetently left far too much of the interpretive burden on the audience, giving them too little to work with and mistaking that for profundity.

Then again, perhaps like Blade Runner, there is an amazing version of Prometheus waiting to be brought to light. I’m not putting much stock in the hope, however.

Sincerely,

-B

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Posted in Film

Tags: alien, criticism, damon lindelof, film, prometheus, ridley scott, sci-fi