Adam Quigley’s Prometheus Review is Fucked
From the review which, as previously stated, is fucked:
Prometheus may seem like more sophisticated fare, with a promise of greater significance deeply entrenched in the oft-mentioned subject matter (i.e., uncovering the origin of human life), but the movie utterly fails at tying its ideas and its monstrous happenings together. Despite feigning interest in probing life’s most pertinent mysteries, the film has nothing to say. It asks — literally asks, aloud — weighty questions without any interest in exploring the answers. The film expects you to do the heavy lifting, as though it should be rewarded for even daring to ask the questions to begin with. What is the meaning of life? Where do we come from? Why do we believe what we believe? What makes us human? What drives us to find the answers to these questions?
Well?
Yes, I’m asking you.
I don’t know who you are Adam Quigley but I do know this: I wish you happiness and health all the days of your life. Also, this review is fucked.
Mr. Quigley spends a good deal of time imagining the intentions of the filmmakers then deriding them for failing so miserably. I forget if this is a Straw Man argument or not but I think his strategy does resemble some lapse in proper argument building. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying his review is fucked because I disagree with him. I’m saying it’s fucked because he is looking for God in movies when he should be looking for God in nature…then movies, but before movies probably people…then books.
Noomi Rapace holds her own in a lead role that does her no favors, repeatedly emphasizing the nature of her faith in God without ever letting her believably convey it.
“Why do you believe, Ms. Shaw?”
“Because I choose to.”
Cute, but does that strike anyone as something a true believer would say?
Yes, it does. When the nature of faith is a wholly individual pursuit, one that cannot be conveyed to the consciousness of another completely, saying, “Because I choose to,” is about as good as you’re going to get. Besides, it’s a movie. You can’t waste time in movies.
Mr. Quigley goes on to blame the involvement of Damon Lindelof for some of the “Lost-style” ambiguity. He seems to have a problem with ambiguity. The reason is that, while we do not know the origins of the Universe, we do know Ridley Scott as the originator of the world…well I guess Dan O’Bannon is the original originator but whatever. That mother fucker wrote Dark Star. You are not getting any answers from the writer of Dark Star unless you asked, “What was it like writing Dark Star?” He also seems like a cool guy buy I digress…Dark Star.
Oh, what, you have a problem with the lack of meaningful plot resolution? You’ve completely missed the point! It’s about the desire to find answers, not the answers themselves! Why try to satisfy you with answers when life doesn’t have any satisfying answers to give? Check mate, motherfuckers!
Is this seriously the point of Prometheus? We’ve waited this long to have our questions about the Alien mythology answered, only to be told that expecting satisfying answers to those questions is actually reflective of the folly of mankind? That’s it?
I don’t know about you but I didn’t have any questions about the Alien mythology and I doubt Mr. Quigley actually did either. I forget the name of this lapse in proper logic and argument building…presupposition I think but there’s a more clever name for it. Maybe the question was, “Who were the Space Jockey’s?” Have you been waiting 30 years to find out? Did you think you would? Now that you “know” do you feel disappointed? Well clearly he does and that’s why he’s fucked.
Prometheus is written by people who understand why that aspect of Alien was so appealing, but they lack the ability to contribute anything of worth to the mythology, or to even figure out what they want the film to be. Is it horror? Action? Adventure? Thriller? Drama? It’s all of those things, really, except when it’s not — which is most of the time.
Whoa, whoa, whoa Internet. Calm yourself down. You just went down a bunch of roads you can’t back up. Let me see if I can engage in the same kind of logic-fallacy-making as well. Prometheus is written by people who understand why that aspect of Alien was so appealing, but they lack the ability to contribute anything of worth to the mythology. No it wasn’t. It was written by people who are Communists and are trying to destroy faith in Jesus Christ by spreading lies about the origin of the species. See, you can say anything you want nowadays and call it film criticism. Sorry Pauline Kael.
Mythology…MYTHOLOGY! When are you people going to be satisfied? Fuck your bullshit modern mythology. I’m soooooo over it. I’m going back to Greek Mythology. Yeah fucker! The Titans and shit. Calling Hercules Heracles, you know what’s up!
I don’t know the intentions of the filmmakers much like I don’t know the reasons God created us or why there were circumstances in which we were created in some great cosmic accident or why some ancient alien race created us to be harbingers of destruction after they impregnate us with the alien from Alien…spoiler alert?
The more I thought about Prometheus, the fact that I’m thinking about it makes me think I liked it, the more I liked it. Confusing sentence, no? Sorry for making you read twice. If you understood it the first time you get a No Prize!
But the main reason Mr. Quigley is fucked is that he is fucked. He demands answers from his entertainment and then is mad that his entertainment made him do the heavy lifting of considering what the movie puts forth. Duh, Prometheus! It’s 2012. We want you to spell everything out. Furthermore we want you to live up to our expectations fully, completely and without question. What’s that Prometheus? No, my expectations. Not that guy’s expectations. My expectations! Mine! Mine! Mine!
The petulant children of the Internet are fucked. They want to be spoon fed wonder. They often forget that the wonder they experienced when watching most of the movies we are gutting to make new movies now were watched when they were children. You know what a 35 year old dude thought about Alien in 1979? Well I’ll tell you, “Man, that movie was fucking cool. Or rad. Or whatever we say in 1979.” You know what a 12 year old would have said, “I have seen the face of God and it is a Xenomorph.”
I wanted to end this article with the end of Mr. Quigley’s article…so I will:
To call Prometheus inconsequential would be a severe understatement. This movie is a trifling blip of narrative disarray, so lacking in anything resembling an intelligible throughline or purpose that I can’t help but wonder why there was any incentive to tell this story at all. Prometheus isn’t just bad; it actively detracts from the very mythology it’s trying to enhance, reducing the Alien legacy to little more than an accidental byproduct of a mind-numbingly stupid expedition.
He makes these claims despite spending a good number of paragraphs attacking the “throughline” he decides at the end is unintelligible. This is a fallacy…yeah, I think that’s right. Then he chooses to unleash his the final arrow, that it detracts from the original. Did you know that you have to choose to be annoyed by what another person says about you? It’s not a default mode of humanity, it’s a learned behavior. So you can choose to believe what you choose to believe. You can watch Alien and say, “I know who the Space Jockey is,” or “I don’t know who the Space Jockey is.”
Just because they say it in a movie doesn’t make it true, even when they’re talking about other movies. If I could suggest a way to enjoy Prometheus, based on how I enjoyed Prometheus, it would be to take it as visual poetry. I’ve complained alot about how modern movies feel small and this film did not feel small, and that’s something to be grateful for. I would suggest Mr. Quigley be more grateful that he lives in a time when you can make money spewing bile on the Internet. If it were 1979 he’d be getting shoved into a toilet by bullies for not shutting up about that goddamn Alien movie.
Mr. Quigley’s Fucked Review: http://www.slashfilm.com/prometheus-review-big-small-beginnings-small-beginnings/#more-129226
P.S. I have nothing against Mr. Quigley and feel like the above reflects that if taken in the right humor. If taken in the wrong humor it’s just more bile and while I would, in decades prior, leave it to you to take this as satire it seems I no longer can thanks to smart phones and stupid people. So the above is satire. There, do you feel better now that you know the secret origins of this blog post?
