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| You just missed out on THIS, baby! |
Prometheus 2 is now called "Alien: Paradise Lost". Which sure isn't stepping on Neil Blomkamp's Alien 5's toes or anything.
We've had a lot of fun with the movie Prometheus, which is what happens when you have a dumb premise (let's go find God in space by flying in that direction), you try to wrap it around smart sounding words (let's go find this beings that supposedly created mankind. What would happen?) you make the characters a bunch of scientists, and then make them the worst at their field.
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| Like, it doesn't even fucking look friendly, dude. It looks like a snake! |
I mean, dumb characters in horror movies are a staple of the genre, but usually these are dumb teenagers, or dumb blue collar characters. Characters that you don't assume have doctorates on the stuff that is currently killing them.
But while most of this lands straight at the feet of writer Damon Lindelof for most people as an example of a guy who just can't write worth a damn, the truth is Damon Lindelof might just be smarter than what you give him credit for.
The premise of the movie is that Old Man Peter Weyland send this group, which includes his daughter and a an android as his eyes and ears, as a scientific expedition funded by Weyland Yutani, the Alien-Verse's evil corporation.
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| The Mandarin. |
The twist, at the end, turns out to be that Weyland the company was secretly funding Weyland the person's trip to the planet, as he had stowed away on the ship so he could ask for The Engineers to give him a longer life. Why the secrecy? Well that's what makes this brilliant.
A voyage thousands or millions of lightyears into a distant planet doesn't cost 5 bucks. Yutani would not have funded it's dying old founder's last Hail Marry to live longer if it meant funding something like that. And he probably knew that. So he made up something else. A "Scientific trip", to a planet that MAY contain something that Yutani might be able to turn into money.
But you need some scientists. Not the best scientists, or the most appropriate. After all, who cares what they might or might not discover, or do? You're here to pull a King Hezekiah and get a bonus extention on your life. So Weyland got a team, a team of people who are scientists, but not the best people. After all, the best people probably would have given one look at the sloppy plan and figure out the plan sucks, but probably desperate scientists that nobody else wants to work with can't afford to say no.
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| "Without even a little bit of foreplay? Straight to the life giving, huh?" |
So if the crew gets to the planet and starts taking off their helmets and making friends with the local fauna and basically getting themselves in trouble, that's ok. The only ones Weyland needed are the ones who can operate the ship and his Smithers-Bot. Everyone else is just there to give the whole thing an air of legitimacy and they can go eat black goo like a gritty remake of Willy Wonka for all he cares.
Say, a sci fi remake of Willy Wonka? Hmm... Article over, guys. I've got to go away and ruminate on this for a while.
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