with Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Michael Fassbender (Shame, Haywire, A Dangerous Method), Guy Pearce (Mildred Pierce, The King's Speech, The Hurt Locker), Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron (The Italian Job, Young Adult), Sean Harris, Rafe Spall (Life of Pi), Emun Elliott (Lip Service)
When scientific explorers unearth an artifact that points to the origins of humankind, they're pulled into the unexpected adventure of a lifetime. But if they falter, the very future of their species is at stake.
From the director of Alien, Robin Hood, Body of Lies, American Gangster, G.I. Jane, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise...
Hum... Difficult to say anything... Perhaps I should let it marinate a little bit longer... I was mesmerized by the beauty of our "Engineers", the landscape, the technology, the departing ideas (a mix of search for existential answers and immortality), the art of the other planet, the planetarium, even the ship itself. I believe if Ridley Scott hadn't been the filmmaker of Blade Runner and Alien, he would have taken much more liberties in developing a philosophical background to his story, he would not have tried to connect this latest Blockbuster to the successful sci-fi predecessors.
Now here is my other thinking: I believe producers are afraid to loose their audience in a movie that has to serve a mainstream purpose, and by building a no-brainer, they just happened to have lost their credibility of the reviewers, those same ones who could be a substantial reason for the movie to be crushed. Fortunately, I believe people don't read reviews anymore, so it won't matter so much to the producers.
But honestly, this movie smells so strong of a commercial attempt to create a Prometheus 2, where of course the answers we are all looking for will not be developed either.
Now, why the movie who had the smartest campain ever in history of cinema can fail so vividly in being smart itself. A friend of mine said as a joke that when the producers saw the movie for the first time, they freaked out and created a campain that would defy the imagination to create a big enough buz that the movie would be successful in the box-office no matter what.
Now one wonder, how come the movie was launch at different dates all over the world. They would have launched it at the same time, people wouldn't have been able to read the negative reviews coming from... France in my case (I acknowledge it didn't stop me from going to see it on the opening day in New York...) So the viral campaign they did was brilliant, launching two videos that were completing the movie, without being part of it. First a Ted Talk with no real tip on whether this is serious or advertizing, the bright idea being having an arrangement with Ted Talk (Ideas worth spreading), so it would really look real.
The next idea in the same line was to create an add, which would launch the first humanoid, David, explained by David himself. The logos at the end would suggest that it would be produced by a company named Weyland Corp. and distributed by Verizon.
The characters are very much tools for the action to continue, it is definitely not character driven, contradicting the viral campaign in a way. They are not attaching, they almost come and go in a random way, again, to keep the action going. They are trying to develop better the character of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomie Rapace) but somehow, it is more about what she is going through than how she feels. The same for the other characters, their relationships are not building up, they don't know each other at the beginning, they still don't know each other at the end.
About the "Engineers", from the first shot, they create a mystery, about their existential journey, when you see a ship leaving the planet while one who is staying is taking a poison that destroys him. When we finally have an interaction between one of them and the humans, there is nothing to bring to the story except then again destruction, action, and of course a limited dialogue that is made in an incomprehensible language so we are left aside.
My guess: a little bit of the mysteries launched in this movie are going to be explained in the next one, but a good movie part a good series has to be a stand-alone story, which you want to watch for itself, and in this case, it doesn't work, it is just a very long teaser (not even a trailer).
Now I am not going to mention the end of the movie and how ridiculous it is, I don't think there is a need to spoil the surprise...
Watch the trailer (the official one this time):
Watch my animation-interpretation of the opening scene:
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