The director's cut vibes so hard

The late works of Sir Ridley Scott mock the mass going movie public. Ridicule their lack of sophistication. Their incapability of possessing discerning taste. The result is a joy to behold. Taking my cue off the 205 minute director’s cut as an excuse to write a new piece about Napoleon (2023, Ridley Scott) it might be something like the most perfect film I’ve ever seen. It’s everything wrong with Hollywood. And it works so well.

     First of all historical subjects who took over the world are way more accessible to root for than comic book characters. Napoleon especially. And when I speak of men who took over the world I’m talkin big 3. We already got Oliver Stone’s polyamorous boy rockstar with long blond hair Alexander (2004, Stone). I’m a fan of the film. Mostly because of its scale. And its military scenes. Battle scenes. Testosterone hubris feuds. Napoleon’s in the middle. And the romantic epic nobody asked for about the life of Hitler ain’t gonna happen.
     Napoleon in terms of Goldilocks selection has a darker side than Alexander and not quite as evil as Hitler. He’s a nasty little tyrant. Hell they even named the Napoleon complex after him. Is that in the DSM? I’m not actually curious enough to research it. Anyway as far as antiheroes go I love this guy as played by Phoenix. If you’ll allow me to spoiler skip to the ending my refined reading of Napoleon ultimately rests on some of the scenes from the very end of the film. When he’s talking to children. First when the little boys are granting him audience and he says those lines of dialogue that he’s the first to admit when he makes a mistake but he never does; it’s simple geometry where he puts the [camera] is Ridley Scott breaking through. And finally when Napoleon’s teaching those two little girls to fence and he asks the one who burned Moscow and she doesn’t know he points to himself to say he did but the other says “I believe the Russians burned it sir. To get rid of the French,” Bonaparte cooly inquires “Who told you that?” “It’s common knowledge sir.” Napoleon having little regard for the facts of history is Ridley Scott not caring either. Screw accuracy. This isn’t a documentary. I whole heartedly applaud and support Scott’s reasoning. His reckoning with the material. If you want a detached from the action and drama of Hollywood spectacle documentary with a neutral robot faux British cultured educational narrator over instructive images get lost. 
 
Everybody knows the cinema feeds off of our salacious voracious appetites for sex and death (alt. violence). And that’s what Napoleon gives us instead of history. The violence is Scott’s talent. Large scaled battle. And he lives for it as does Bonaparte. When Napoleon returns from exile and asks his Fifth Army to join him they do because they love to fight. And miss it. Side note why does Gen. Wellington tell that conscript who asks if he can shoot Napoleon no and if he does it will be punishable by death later take his shot anyway? It doesn’t really make sense. But we get to see him miss and blow that hole through Napoleon’s hat. That’s what I get excited about. Emotion over logic. In this case specifically in the context of a war movie escapist entertaining cartoon genre film okay. There’s a time and a place for everything. 
     But the love story is its own beast. Josephine is one of the worst characters written for women ever made. Yet despite this I love her so. The forbidden fruit of archetypes. As in we're not supposed to write this kind of character as in we're not supposed to like this kind of character as in it's wrong to. She’s a slut whore who only exists to serve Napoleon’s objectification of her. The letters we hear through her voiceover are product of Napoleon’s obsessive delusion. She haunts him like she haunts me which effectively depicts the pain of memory. The peril of looking back. The allure of regret. Amorphous infatuation.
     Josephine is introduced as a prostitute Barras is involved with whom he procures for Napoleon. Politics. Josephine’s life is bleak. You know. She’s lost her husband her kids she’s in prison awaiting the guillotine having sex with men just because pregnant women aren’t executed until they have their child. So she’s only into Napoleon out of convenience. Necessity. Desperation. Vanessa Kirby in the sex scenes plays them so bored it’s sad tragic hilarious matter of fact definitive. But she finds her satisfaction with other men. The anachronistic language of the tabloid papers make headlines of her doing so. Okay I can’t prove that the papers weren’t in fact as depicted in the film. Either way I think they’re great. 
     But yeah I’m a man who would rather be known as a cuckold than a fool too. Not Napoleon. The vindictive spite she induces in him fuels his ambition. He’s such an infant. He only lives to take over the world and have sex with Josephine. The man knows his passions. Can I blame him? Josephine’s line “If you look down you’ll see a surprise and once you see it you’ll always want it” made the trailers. This goes to my heart. It’s the meaning of life. But what makes it so particularly compelling in Napoleon and for me is of the utmost romantic sentiment. She never wants him to leave her. My mind knows the fatal codependent relationship is toxic but my heart yearns for its survival. In movies anyway. Its passion lies in its resilience. 
 
This film takes the unashamedly pop repurposing of period French culture pioneered by Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola) and gives it the Scott veneer of luxury goods. I prefer the baroque piano passages that sound like some inventions by Bach. I haven’t bothered to research which composers are attributed to which pieces and which are original yet but it’s one of the biggest factors contributing to my enjoyment of the large canvas of it all. 
    And like Coppola’s pop dessert Napoleon above all hones its anachronistic setting through its dialogue. Its attitude. Like right before the coup Lucien is talking mad shit and when Napoleon mentions those ladies in waiting lines about Sieyes and Ducos Lucien says something like “those fucking idiots can tend my balls. Tongue bath? Only for me to let them wipe my ass.” But I’ve probably got it wrong. Whatever he says it's funny baffles me. 
     The director’s cut indulges in Ridley Scott’s madcap riffing in the way House of Gucci (2021, Scott) allowed with Jared Leto. It’s shockingly questionable regarding taste. Like most of all Napoleon's bashful whimper mumble signal to Josephine another mounting invasion is imminent and her keen sense of deciphering it. What were they thinking? Finally. Ridley Scott has gone completely nuts and I think it’s the best thing to happen to his style. From House of Gucci through as of this writing Gladiator II (2024, Scott) gimme more. Rewatchability activated.

Violence is the universal language

I’m a fanatic obsessed with every movie Ridley Scott has done since The Counselor (2013), a period which includes his (to me) highly acclaimed RED camera quad. So if you choose to read what follows, disclaimer: I’m stubbornly unqualifiable when it comes to my bias in favor of being a Ridley Scott apologist. I know Gladiator (2024, Ridley Scott) sucks (in some ways). But I will rave about it as a masterpiece nonetheless. (And I’m intentionally dropping the II because the new Gladiator is a cash grab for a younger generation of ticket buyers that you know has no qualms replacing its predecessor in the arena in cold blood.) The best form of revenge is to be nothing like the one who inflicted you is talking about this movie.
     Like Michael Bay, a Ridley Scott movie is fodder to be torn apart yet maintains a unique visual/pacing that’s impossible to mistake for anyone else. David Scarpa’s script is late Scott—the equivalent of thrash metal, all muscle all the time. Paul Mescal is less of a star presence as we might have taken Russell Crowe for, and that’s all for the better. Gladiator starts off with a coastal invasion and then delivers a steady adrenaline drip of gladiatorial blood matches up until the house lights come on. So detracting critical reviews are all the more welcome; Gladiator enjoys taking a beating more than Scorsese’s LaMotta. 
     The characters in Gladiator are shallow, and cynically underdrawn because here, it’s more efficient and what the crowds really want. Women don’t belong here. Mescal’s wife is expendable in the opening scene—who could miss the feeling as soon as she appears she’s going to be slaughtered? Same with Connie Nielsen: she’s ruthlessly employed as a concession to the studio as a callback to the source who’s sacrificially executed in front of the large crowd (both diegetic and non). Pedro Pascal’s a pussy, which makes him the antagonist. The plural protagonist in Gladiator is actually Mescal and Denzel, who despite their ideologies, earn hero status by mowing down bodies for entertainment and prey on the subjugation to power of the masses. The gates of hell are open night and day.
 
Gladiator indicts the audience’s tastes and politics more harshly than Joker: Folie á Deux and just about as accurately as Idiocracy. Ridley Scott has posited the twins’ status of aristocracy as code for all the few hundred million dollar budgeted movies being made nowadays: young, spoiled, fickle, entertainment-addicted, amoral, falsely appointed polarizing tastemakers. One can easily imagine how many hits Barbarian Bites Dog Monkey would get on youtiktaktube. Their Rome rotting is why ours is, tentpoles and review aggregators. But what fun right? 
     Denzel should have been the victor. He had the political acumen Mescal didn’t. That would have been real life. But to gain their hearts and minds ($$), we all know the studio has to instead deliver a vengeful climax. And I still can’t stop laughing when I think of the final shot. When Mescal asks his father what to do and we get that music cue and the gag me with a stick schmaltzy hand through the wheat field it’s the biggest fuck you to the audience no effort to the point of hilarious that makes me so happy about how unabashedly cynical this thing is. I can’t wait to see this again. 
 
11/18/2024 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The Counselor plot analysis

Trying to figure out what happens to the shipment of drugs in The Counselor (2013, Ridley Scott) has become a bit of an obsession for me. The biggest questions are how early did MALKINA (Cameron Diaz) get involved in manipulating the outcome of the cargo and how exactly does it benefit her? 
     For a maguffin it seems easy enough to follow. A couple of beaners in Juárez drive the truck across the border. They park it at a septic plant, then remove a small electronic device that they give to a man in a green baseball cap who pays one of the men for it. At a roadside cafe, Green Ballcap hands the device to the GREEN HORNET (Richard Cabral), which is all observed from a distance by JAMIE (Sam Spruell) and a lipreader. In the first of several beheadings in The Counselor, Jamie lops off the Green Hornet’s head. Afterwards, Jamie has a phonecall with Malkina letting her know he got it (the device).
     Once Jamie and SECOND MAN (Richard Brake) retrieve the truck containing the drugs, they’re hijacked and murdered by cartel. So, the 625 kilos ends its journey in Chicago. And that’s pretty much it. So why ask oneself about it any further? When Malkina is on the phone with another voice (this time we never hear), she says she always knew where the truck was going. We also know that she has all of REINER’S (Javier Bardem) rooms and phones tapped and listens in on all of his conversations. 
 
So what do you think? If the cocaine has a street value of $20 million, then why would Malkina implicate the COUNSELOR (Michael Fassbender) and Reiner in a conspiracy that results in the cartel eliminating them before they can flip it? And if it’s a finder’s fee she’s collecting from the cartel, wouldn’t they be highly unlikely to trust her, especially considering the whole motif of “they don’t believe in coincidences?” I mean the easy answer points to the cartel had a homing device that led them to the truck. 
     Upon the film’s conclusion, Malkina has WESTRAY (Brad Pitt) assassinated (you guessed it, by beheading) and hacks into his bank accounts, but if this was her motive the entire time, then was the whole conspiracy/hijacking even necessary? It doesn’t seem like too big of a coincidence that Malkina had forethought stealing the drug shipment before finding out that the Counselor had RUTH (Rosie Perez) as a client, and afterwards hedged her bets then wisely walks away. (Yet Malkina's line “I’m still in” being read as her profiting from the delivery is very difficult to comprehend unless she's talking about going after Westray as an idea she came up with after the jackpot she got into.)

     And this all seems to fit in with Cormac McCarthy’s morality theme of the weak falling prey to the strong. It’s the arc of the movie: the Counselor travels to Juárez to discover for himself that death has no meaning, then live the remainder of his life without LAURA (Penélope Cruz); and the real tragedy that after her death, he has no meaning. Another thing I just noticed for the first time is as Laura's headless corpse is dumped into the landfill there's a black trash bag that tumbles after it that is roughly the size of a human head. Not only is The Counselor so fun because of its confusing plot, but also because of how foreshadowcore it is. Upon rewatch there is so much dialogue that not only predicts, but metaphysically ponders connected respective plot points. The one I get such a big kick out of is when Westray talks about “…what happens when the surety becomes the more attractive holding?” sums it all up. But when the Counselor gives his lady the engagement ring and he says he’ll love her till the day he dies, to which she replies “me first,” that’s one morbid perversely prescient joke.

Sorcerer of death's construction

Ridley Scott is at his best with Gladiator (2000) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). It’s like when some say how by the 60s the collapse of the studio system was due to the bloated, big budget historical spectacle period piece costume dramas that Scott found a way to revive them in something like the sexy ultraviolent almost like where Verhoeven seemed to be headed throughout the 80s-90s way, but Scott adds his own boyish sense of adventure and morality to them. Heaven is one of my favorite movies. It’s proof for me that a Hollywood historical war and romance epic can clock a nimble 3 hours and never drag. Unlike, say, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023, Martin Scorsese), which feels oppressively slow and neither the romance nor the violence are we meant to enjoy; it’s as if that movie is like a master forcing us to be held next to our own shit and suffer its stink because we made a mess on the rug. 
     Other than Heaven the only other Hollywood movie I can think of that’s so much fun is the Napoleonic wars set 3hr 28min War and Peace (1956, King Vidor). I can watch that movie, or even just jump in anywhere, and find that perfect blend of entertainment I'm always in the mood for. Vidor’s epic revels in its untethered freedom from adhering too closely to either Tolstoy or history. And like Gladiator and Heaven it’s fun, not to be taken too seriously, and has that boyish sense of heroism.

Napoleon (2023, Ridley Scott) has got a boyish sense of villainy. As a biopic, we get less of a sense of frivolity than either Gladiator or Heaven. But what we do get is an oil on canvas where light can be a thing of beauty. 
     And the battle scenes, especially the Battle of Austerlitz, command a formidable victory of epic spectacle. There’s something surgical about the staging of the battles, immaculate, precise, and horrifying. Napoleon reminds us that movies were supposed to have been made to be shown in a theater. Napoleon as a film is also less fodder for popcorn, plot and characters than it is one man’s bloody, unwieldy sense of ambition. We’re certainly in the era for those. This movie is cold, so cold—and I love it.

 

11/21/2023 AMC Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

DCP

You are an idiot. But you're my idiot

Ridley Scott’s Red Period is where his late masterpieces are to be found. Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott), The Counselor (2013, Scott), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014, Scott), and The Martian (2015, Scott) were all shot in consecutive years with the RED camera. It’s The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings that make a strong case against Scott being a purely commercial director. If anyone thought his follow up to Alien (1979, Scott) after 30 years was a cash grab, seeing The Counselor beckons us to expect more from him. With its series of scenes that each feel like 5 pages of dialogue or more between two characters, Cormac McCarthy’s crisis of cartel ethics is Scott at his most colourful and brazen. Think about the difference between Javier Bardem’s character in The Counselor compared to his performance in the other cartel film adaptation of McCarthy’s. 

House of Gucci (2021, Scott) finds Ridley Scott in top form. It ranks among some of his finest work—his middle classical period: Gladiator (2000, Scott), Kingdom of Heaven (2005, Scott), and American Gangster (2007, Scott).

     But House of Gucci, being a classical Hollywood movie of the highest order, is carried by the performance of its lead star: Lady Gaga. Anytime Gaga has starred in anything, I’m infatuated with her character. She’s adorable. She’s sexy. She’s a star. And in House of Gucci, from its cold-open introduction of her as PATRIZIA REGGIANI, seen on screen and heard through V.O. narration, I’m under her spell. I identify with Patrizia. No matter how despicable her actions, nor  how loathsome her degradation, I always feel like she deserves to be happy and have everything she wants.

     On one level, House of Gucci is a traditional love story between Patrizia and MAURIZIO GUCCI (Adam Driver). And the opulent grandeur of materialism seen through the lives of this couple makes us see their desires as they see them—as something to prize, to invest in, to live for. But on a tertiary level House of Gucci is high camp. In an exhilaratingly bizarre performance that sees Jared Leto playing something like a mentally challenged Jeffrey Tambor, his PAULO GUCCI rides a wave of oddly chosen descriptors and signature catch-word. Boff! And there’s more: Leto’s character shares most of his screen time with his father (Al Pacino). And this is full-Pacino, Heat-Pacino, we’re getting.

 

But commercial director isn’t exclusively pejorative. Ridley Scott’s lavish, high-gloss, high-end eye for hawking luxury is on full-display for the entire 2 and a half hours of the film’s runtime. Nothing can come close to the decadence and designer glamour of mansions and villas as done by Italians. Except New York City or the world of high fashion, which House of Gucci jets through while bumping Donna Summer, Wham!, Blondie, or New Order.

     Yet how fitting it is for the narrative to follow Maurizio into exile in snowstorm Switzerland. I didn’t have high expectations for House of Gucci, but beyond anything mentioned already, its second half and build up to its climax and ending never dwindled. It gets darker as Patrizia’s perm gets worse. And for me the saddest point is seeing her stripped of her Gucci, condemned to mom jeans and that knockoff leather jacket. 

     In closing, could this be Ridley Scott’s first movie centered on one family? House of Gucci feels like The Godfather for the Kardashian era. And for me, as domestic melodrama has always been my favorite film genre (tied with something like noir or crime), getting to indulge in this treat from Ridley Scott deserves some praise.

 

12/14/2021 Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

DCP

#me(dieval)too

The Last Duel (2021, Ridley Scott) centers on the plight of the character MARGUERITE DE CARROUGES, played by Jodie Comer. Because Marguerite is beautiful and well-versed in Latin literature, men both desire and take advantage of her. 

     The Last Duel is a woman’s picture adorned with a surface coat of medieval action. In it, the central character must choose between a marriage of security or an affair of romance. Except she doesn’t have any choice in either matter, as both men rape and objectify her anyway. There’s also a Rashomon narrative structure that doesn’t really make a convincing debate for either of the other perspectives besides that of Marguerite. And in one of the most overtly aggressive instances of symbolism, the scene where JEAN DE CARROUGES has a fit because a black stallion starts mating with a white mare, the awkward tone of this movie’s subject is hammered home.

     This is the least sexiest Ridley Scott movie I’ve ever seen. When there are sex scenes, they feel immoral because the characters are horrible. When there are sex scenes between characters we think may turn out to be decent, they feel immoral because there’s no intimacy, connection, or even consent. As Jean de Carrouges, Matt Damon delivers a great performance, being constantly dealt miserable blows to his ego that he whines or rages at, all with his scarred face and bad mullet.

     This movie feels so unscrupulously assembled that I think it may be destined for cult status. Something about its lavish production values, big-name  cast, and heavy handed agenda seem spoiled by what amounts to cheap melodrama. But I will say somehow seeing this in the theater wasn't a total waste because of Alex Lawthor as KING CHARLES VI. Oh my what, the king's expressions, snickering, and amusement during the proceedings is hysterically counterpoint to the tone of everything else in this movie; what a treat.

 

10/16/2021 AMC Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

DCP

     

Alien: Paradise Lost

This summer brings the 2nd entry in the Alien prequel trilogy. The prequel trilogy is great. I'm especially into this reboot because after Alien (1979, Ridley Scott) that whole franchise is a mess; and, because Ridley Scott is directing.

Alien: Covenant (2017, Ridley Scott) is a Gothic nihilistic sci-fi horror thriller exploitation vfx blockbuster. The plot begins with a ship on a colonizing mission that quickly descends into a faster than the speed of sound plummet into disaster.

Two things are going on with the plot: DAVID (Michael Fassbender) gets more evil while the crew get into more trouble. A drawback here is that after all the questions raised in Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott), Covenant answers almost all of them, quickly. It's realizing that this serialization took all those potential plot discoveries about who created us and instead replaces them with a narrative that says David single handedly killed SHAW, enacted genocide on the entire planet of ENGINEERS and through chemistry genetically engineered the alien, his "perfect organism."

But that's cool. I mean what kind of sucker actually watches a Ridley Scott Alien movie to find out where humans came from?

So maybe it's not so much a drawback. David is the protagonist of the prequel series. And Covenant depicts the shift where we see the inquisitive android turned into some unholy mix of Hitler and the Devil. After more than 10 years since the ending of Prometheus, David has raped and murdered Shaw, exterminated the race of an entire planet; and if we can think of the Engineers as divine creators, David has effectively chosen to leave an existence serving under them to rule a world as leader of his own demonic legions--although, David has an affectionate relationship between himself and the alien.

I empathize with this mad evil monster because we saw him start out so sensitive and brilliant, so full of potential. David is also a character who resonates profoundly with me because I remember once when I was in my teens and I couldn't figure out why someone invented computer viruses that crash other innocent victims' computers. It hadn't happened to me, but I just couldn't imagine what the creator of the virus gains. I'd never come close to an answer. And David for a moment evocatively portrays this type of evil as he becomes obsessed with creating over the point of any boundaries of moral decency. Yet these are the most archetypal parts of what makes David so sympathetic. This is a strong modern horror villain. He's like a shut in serial killer, but desperately reaching out to connect with WALTER or DANIELS.

Katherine Waterston as Daniels really does Hollywood magic with her doughy cute cheeks face with girl next door bedroom eyes and bad goth homejob Dorothy Hamill in fun space costumes along with requisite iconic no bra tanktop outfits.

Do you know what movie Ridley Scott directed just prior to Alien: Covenant? The Martian (2015). The Martian is a Hawksian comedy about the crew of a ship's courageous resourcefulness and teamwork on a rescue mission to save one of their own. How fun it is to contrast that with Alien: Covenant's horror about the crew of a ship's helpless bad luck in a string of excessively imaginative evil disasters.

Now that all that quality plot and character development has been covered, on to the good stuff: the set pieces. You know, I love the terraforming exploration, that's always fun, seeing the green mountainous landscapes. But the Gieger-fetishized black S&M rubber monsters impaling victims amid a general backdrop of flesh, limbs, and fluids are what I come to Ridley Scott-directed Alien movies for. Getting to see lots of the alien is fun (no sarcasm here). But the kills felt a little redundant. Maybe it's just the woman alone in the lush garden shower getting murdered by the alien, followed by the woman alone in the shower who starts to have sex with a guy but gets surprise attacked by the alien. (The final shower is artfully ridiculous in how much water is gushing out and from what angles, I mean it's just like imaginary decadence.)

I loved the scene where David horse whispers the Xenomorph. That was really cute.

And I mean I hate to say it but most all of the miniature Neomorph stuff is just cheesy and killed parts of this movie for me.

But in closing I have questions:

1. What planet was the Engineer on who drank the black liquid in Prometheus?
2. Does the black liquid always turn into an alien if drank by a host?
3. Does the black liquid affect humans and Engineers differently?
4. Does the Covenant crew just coincidentally happen to find the one planet with Engineers on it (aside from the moon LV-223 in Prometheus)?
5. If aliens were present in Prometheus what changes did David's experiments result in?
6. What exactly does David think he's "created"?

Oh man I'm turning into such a sci-fi nerd. Stay tuned to Ridley Scott's Prequel Series for more sexy evil sci-fi horror.

How the Gods Kill

One of the best things about Alien (1979, Ridley Scott) is how it went against the common wisdom of classical Hollywood filmmaking that always thought it best to not show the monster. In Alien, a classic horror model, a monster hunts a small group of people and picks them off one at a time; the ending is one of the modern prototypes that define the final girl subgenre of horror. But the audience is eventually confronted with what lurks in the dark. The H.R. Giger creature designs still stand as the most memorable of all movie aliens next to the Star Wars franchise's more family friendly characters and E.T.

To crib a style from some of Godard's critical language, we don't remember why the space truckers are on a mission; we don't remember who sent them; and we don't care what Ripley actually accomplishes other than saving her own life.

But, we remember the alien baby popping out of someone's stomach and the other one that looks like a crustacean and sucks face; we remember the wet, slick, reptile-headed monster with the mouth that comes out of a mouth; we remember the android bleeding milk as he dies; we remember that Ripley was the last one alive on the ship and in her bra and panties, she saves Jones.

Finally, Alien's also such a strong space horror because its own cache lies in its mystique. They show just enough of the monsters to let us stare in wonder, and they don't talk about any higher purpose for being there. They merely act as a Hawksian team and devise a way to survive.




On the other hand, Prometheus (2012, Scott) was made by Ridley Scott at 73 as opposed to 41. I'm ageist, okay? I don't think most directors have the same vitality or edge that they did in their youth or even middle aged periods. I'm thinking mostly of Americans who made their mark in the 80s: Brian DePalma, John Carpenter, Walter Hill, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, and Jim Jarmusch, for example.

So I'm not necessarily comparing Alien to Prometheus. Prometheus does however remind me of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and moreover, Micheal Bay's Platinum Dunes production practice of rebooting the first installment of 80s horror franchises with a sort of pilot that surveys all of the most memorable kills and motifs from the entire run of its predecessor.

And there is often a sense of most of Blade Runner finding its way into Prometheus--evident in the premise of the movie. The driving force is that Weyland wants to meet his maker. And on the note of themes, I was a little disappointed in the recurrent dialogue about believing "because I choose to believe," which just feels really Matrixy. The opening images of spacious green vistas also recall how Ridley Scott inserted outtakes of the opening helicopter shots from The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick) into the ending of Blade Runner. And the romantic scene in Shaw's bedroom where she spends the night with Holloway is reminiscent of similar scenes between Deckard and Rachael, mostly due to the design of her flat and the white balanced spot light outside that pierces into their solitude like Big Brother or something.

Fifield's line: "I'm not 'ere to be your friend, I'm 'ere to make money" reassured me though. Awesome. It's like Ridley Scott is letting me know this is tongue in cheek and he's in command. He's not here to draw us into a yarn, he's here to blow us the fuck away. And I suppose that matter of taste will likely be what divides the Prometheus audience.

Cutting edge special effects and post visuals shot on a Red look as good as I've scene, and the ships, gizmos like Fifiedld's pups, and spacescapes lay the foundation. Some pseudo-supernatural mythological origin of the species type exposition and mock historical evidence that's supposed to be the Lascaux cave paintings fill out the setup.

The Giger look is cast over this thing far and wide; and the dark, sensual, shiny, black, biomechanical, occultish, alien world and the Engineers are prominently featured at their spookiest. The space suits with the bubble glass helmets are something I seek out in sci fi, and they look cool here. The elements build as one and Scott even appears to have restrained his coverage.

But Prometheus's genre is blockbuster effects exploitation thriller.

To start with the sex, Charlize Theron as Vickers enters in a wide shot from slightly overhead as she does pushups, drenched in her own sweat (this guy made G.I. Jane, remember?), wearing the standard 2093 underwear that consists of an Ace bandage bikini (tubetops for the standard female issued sets). (There's even a hard cut from this scene to the floor of an examination room that Shaw is vomiting on, really emphasizing the image system of wet substances.) Pretty much anytime Theron's onscreen she's outfitted in some tight eye-cocaine infused bit of spacewear that clings to her body like the way the aliens cling to their hosts. Am I stupid for thinking Vickers is human? I do.

And the third act really takes us into the wham-o. It starts with what is definitely the strongest setpiece: Shaw's automatic operation machine C-section to destroy the alien spawn inside her womb. Shaw is of course wearing one of the sports bandage bikinis, soaked in her own obligatory sweat, and claustrophobically confined into the cramped chamber, which is glass so we can see into, as she moans while getting blood-spattered, with the camera even having the audacity to view her from a setup that looks in between her legs while all this proceeds.

Then there's the violence. The third act is again where the wham-o is most evident. While the first act is exposition and the second is composed primarily of space spelunking, the silica storm must be tied as the other strongest setpiece. I had not seen anything like this in the space sci fi stuff I've watched, and it was impressive to be caught up in. The snake-like alien that kills Millburn is something of a midpoint, and marks the beginning of the gore effects we'd all come for. And while Shaw's trying to do something about her demon seed, the zombified Fifield show up to the ship's entrance just to keep things thrilling. When Vickers torches Holloway I knew I was sure that Ridley Scott had pulled this off. Scott's returning to the world where he created a legendary space ballad to follow it up with a space opera.

To close with another ageist statement: I have a hunch that most of the people who really hate Prometheus will be around 18-25, but older fans, already familiar with the franchise, will appreciate it.

--Dregs