Prometheus
While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of
the Alien franchise, I was still
thoroughly intrigued by Ridely Scott’s return. The first movie, the original Alien, is a little too high on the old
Spook-o-meter for me, but I still liked it and respect what Scott did in the
film. The second, James Cameron’s Aliens,
is much more to my taste, and I mostly really enjoy it. Mostly. I haven’t seen
movies three or four, and don’t plan to, but the first two contain plenty of
good material worth revisiting*. So how does Scott do in his long-awaited
return to sci-fi?
*However,
I actually have seen the Aliens vs.
Predators movie (the first one, anyway), which no one seems to dispute is
essentially a big-budget fan fiction.
A prequel in the way that X-Men: First Class is a prequel, Prometheus tells the story of two
scientists, Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green) who are
able to demonstrate a recurring star pattern among ancient cave paintings that
are otherwise unconnected. Funded by the gigantic Weyland Corporation, the two
proceed to a star system that matches the pattern on the titular starship,
looking for an alien civilization that may have influenced the creation (or at
least development) of mankind. Also on the ship are a frosty Weyland
representative named Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the amusingly laconic
captain (Idris Elba), and an android named David (Michael Fassbender), whose
motives remain murky. The ship finds the target planet without incident, but
(unsurprisingly) things start to go awry once they disembark and find a large
facility of some sort, stocked with containers of a mysterious black ooze.
It becomes obvious from the
introductory prologue that this is an ambitious movie. Scott is trying to raise
some pretty fundamental questions here, addressing the origin and purpose of
humanity. As a result, Prometheus
strikes a much more contemplative note than the first two Alien movies. There is action, though not nearly as much as Aliens, and there is horror, but not
nearly as much as in Alien—the movie
stayed within comfortable Spook-o-meter bounds. Thankfully, even what horror
there is falls much more within the bounds of “body horror” than the tension
and jump-scares frequent in the first movie*. Indeed, much of Prometheus felt much more akin to
something like Cronenberg’s The Fly
than either of its two antecedents.
*
Not that the first two Alien movies
lacked body horror—the facehugger/chestburster lifecycle of the xenomorphs,
with its blatant rape imagery and connotations, is one of the more famous
cinematic examples of this sort of filmmaking.
I really appreciated the
philosophical approach that Scott takes here, but unfortunately the set up is a
hell of a lot better than the payoff. The first half of Prometheus is great, intriguing and atmospheric and gorgeous to
look at—as is customary in Ridley Scott movies, the production values are
top-notch (with the exception of Peter Weyland’s old age makeup—why they cast
Guy Pearce in the role instead of an actor who was actually old is beyond me).
While the impressive production persists throughout*, once things really get
rolling on the planet the movie gets in over its head. Ultimately little of
consequence is answered and many more questions are raised—and that’s not to
mention the litany of plot holes, none of which are movie-destroying but they
do add up**. In terms of narrative the ending is a little abrupt but not done
poorly, but thematically the lack of resolution is annoying, made even worse by
the suggestion that the big questions will be answered in a sequel. Which kind
of sucks.
*And
not just the visuals—Ridley Scott movies are typically just, well, competent.
The sound design, editing, lighting, all of it is really well-done. It’s just a
well-made movie, technically.
**This video sums up many (but not all) of the problems the movie has.
Spoilers, obviously.
Scott also probably would have been
better served if he had just made the movie as an original story, rather than
connecting it to Alien. Other than a
brief scene at the very end of the movie, the xenomorphs are absent, and the
attempts made to tie the movie into the rest of the Alien mythos aren’t entirely successful—too many things don’t
really add up to what we learn in the first two movies. While I understand from
a commercial standpoint why this was made as a prequel—Scott would have had a
much more difficult time securing such a huge budget for an original
idea—creatively unchaining Prometheus
from Alien probably would have been a
good move.
This isn’t an actor’s movie, but the
cast is still good. Special mention to Michael Fassbender, whose deep
performance makes fascinating a character whose ambiguous motivations might
have been annoying had David been played by a lesser actor. Rapace is also good
as the lead, a character that goes through an ordeal at least as harrowing as
anything Ripley faces. As is sometimes the case with her, Theron is
distractingly pretty and her role is a little underwritten, but she’s good
enough.
Ultimately, Prometheus is not a completely successful movie. Too many things
don’t make sense, and the resolution is frustrating. Still, I give it a lot of
credit for ambition—when it fails, it fails because it’s actually trying to do
something interesting and new. Besides, much of the movie succeeds quite well,
and even at its worst is still well-made and entertaining. I’m glad I saw it.
6.5 B-
Cross of Iron
In Hollywood, any theater of World
War II that had any American participation has been done to death. There are
great movies (and miniseries like Band of
Brothers) covering D-Day, the Western Front, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Midway,
North Africa, Guadalcanal, and dozens of other Pacific Islands. Off the top of
my head, the only major American theater for which I can’t immediately think of
a fairly definitive cinematic treatment is the Italian Theater, and I’m sure
that there’s something out there. The same cannot be said of the Eastern Front,
however—while there have been a few recent Hollywood attempts at showing the
battles that really defeated the Nazis (I happen to quite like parts of Enemy at the Gates, for example), as a
whole it remains largely untouched in the West*. One of the few exceptions is
the well-regarded Peckinpah film Cross of
Iron.
*I’m
aware of a few German and Russian films that address the Eastern Front, but
films from these nations rarely have the kind of budgets you need to stage a
modern, immersive war movie. Still, a few are supposed to be quite good—I’ve
been meaning to check out 1993’s Stalingrad for a while now.
One of the better known Hollywood
treatment’s of the Eastern Front, Sam Peckinpah’s 1977 Cross of Iron, which tells the story of Rolf Steiner (James
Coburn), a well-respected and honorable German Sergeant serving in the Black
Sea region towards the tail end of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The
Nazis are beginning to contemplate retreat as the Red Army begins to bear down
on them, but this does not sit well with the aristocratic Captain Stransky
(Maximilian Schell—and actual German actor!), who has transferred from the
still-peaceful France in order to obtain the coveted military honor of the Iron
Cross (which both his father and grandfather won in previous wars). Steiner and
Stransky immediately begin butting heads, and when the inevitable Russian
attack forces the Nazis to begin their retreat, Stransky’s machinations leave
Steiner and a group of his men deep behind enemy lines.
As a war film, Cross of Iron owes more than a little to Stanley Kubrick’s 1957
film Paths of Glory. Both movies have
similar themes, detailing how good, low-ranking soldiers are screwed by the
vanity and stupidity of aristocratic officers. Steiner and Colonel Dax would
get along well. However, while Cross of
Iron certainly outdoes the earlier film in terms of spectacle—it’s a
great-looking film, and the use of authentic period equipment (notably tanks)
is appreciated—it loses some of the thematic focus that makes Kubrick’s vision
so special.
Peckinpah desperately wants to craft
an epic out of material that perhaps does not lend itself to such a broad
approach. Cross of Iron could have
used a harsher editor; there are a few scenes and subplots that could have been
shortened or eliminated altogether, and Peckinpah gets a little carried away
during the action scenes. Clearly endowed with a significant budget, Peckinpah
seems loathe to waste any dollar that could potentially be spent on a tank explosion.
The action is exciting*, but more than one scene runs on long enough that the
exact point starts to get a little confused.
*Although
it should be noted that, like many older war movies, Cross of Iron would have looked a lot better in the pre-Saving
Private Ryan era. Spielberg
revolutionized how war movies are shot, and Peckinpah’s work does indisputably
suffer some in comparison. Also, this is supposed to be quite a violent film,
but by modern war movie standards looks rather tame.
However, other than Peckinpah’s
intermittent loss of control over the film, there is little to dislike about Cross of Iron. As mentioned before, it
looks great, probably because it was filmed on location in Yugoslavia. The
acting is consistently good, particularly by the reliable Maximilian Schell.
For whatever reason, war movies tend to have endings that work for me (Patton has probably my favorite final
two minutes ever), and Cross of Iron has
a great one.
Overall Cross of Iron is a reasonably compelling and inarguably well-made
movie, and anyone with any fondness for war movies is going to enjoy it, and
its setting on the Eastern Front ensures it remains fairly different from other
World War II movies. Still, there’s nothing that it does exceptionally
well—thematically it resembles the better Paths
of Glory, and the overused action and battle scenes (while certainly not
bad) have become antiquated.
7 B
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