PROMETHEUS

PROMETHEUS (2012)
US
Directed by Ridley Scott

CAST:
Noomi Rapace - Elizabeth Shaw
Michael Fassbender - David
Charlize Theron - Meredith Vickers

PLOT:
     A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

REVIEW:
     I usually start my reviews with random thoughts and such, yet with this one I decided to put down a quote from H.P. Lovecraft instead as it says everything quite perfectly about the Alien franchise including this one,

    

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the dæmons of unplumbed space."
― H. P. Lovecraft, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'

      While everyone is saying how much the film is stolen by Michael Fassbender as David, I'll get to him in a second, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw to me is the best actor in the film. Rapace's character will no doubt be compared to Ripley as both are strong female leads in a hopeless situation. The reason why I'm saying this is plain and simple the film is about her and the faith she has then loses. Rapace adds a softness to the character that all the other characters are lacking. This doesn't mean that she is the weakest character, in fact this adds a humanity to her that saves her life at one point in the movie.  Michael Fassbender's David is the quirkiest character in the film as we the viewers can tell that he is always thinking, or processing if you want, of the other characters and what makes them different and what motivates their actions. There is a childlike quality to David that Fassbender adds to the role that almost makes you feel betrayed after watching some of David's actions he takes against the crew. These actions aren't out of cruelty or revenge, but out of more curiosity and wonderment at what would happen and his questioning of his own role among humanity. Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers was the one true question mark out of all the characters as she is mostly always seen standing away from everyone and tries to keep the entire crew at arms length. The reason for this is explained later on in the film and up until a certain point the viewers may think that Vickers is actually a second android next to David, though you find out that she is in fact human and a very weak one at that as she seems to lose composure whenever her authority is threatened or a order is disobeyed. Despite Vickers' icy exterior inside she is severely insecure and is trying to overcompensate for that fact.

     I will admit that before I saw Prometheus that I read a couple of reviews. One thing I've noticed about them is that they either loved the movie or hated it. So much so in fact that the two sides have broken down to name calling on some boards. And do not doubt that you will either love the movie or hate it as there really is no in-between when it comes to this. This has to do with that the fact that the movie asks you to think, which is almost a unheard of these days. It asks us to get the notion of God out of our heads and in it's place to put in a notion that takes hold throughout the film. What if we were made by another alien race. Would you be willing to have all that you hold true, that wall that we built, knocked down to truly know the truth. These are lofty questions that most everyone can understand and it is these questions that are the foundations of the story to Prometheus. On the flip side is the mythology aspect of Prometheus. The one where the Gods become pissed at the titan Prometheus and punish him for giving fire to the humans. For giving them knowledge. What is not widely known is that by giving humans knowledge, it is this knowledge that helped mankind stop their own destruction from the Gods.  The knowledge being sought in this is why did, as Elizabeth Shaw puts them, the Engineers create humans. For what purpose. Yet by the end of the film this question has changed to why are they, the Engineers, trying to destroy us. Did we overstep our bounds by learning and asking to much? While not all the answers are giving in the film some are answered. Another interesting story point that is brought up in the film is that the planet the crew find the Engineers on turns out to be a staging point, or to put it more simply, a military installation. The one bad aspect of this is that how they came to this conclusion or found out is not giving. This is more than likely from a cut scene that explains how they found out. This is the only real slight I found with the film. Ridley Scott set the film up this way for a reason and I can't thank him enough for making a film that is smart and doesn't take the idiot route that most do.

      Director Ridley Scott has done something that I thought really wasn't possible after so many years of bad movies that had the xenomorphs in them and that is to make the alien films mean something again, while creating something completely new with something that could be just as deadly and potentially more dangerous with the Engineers, or as they are more well known as the race that is the Space Jockeys. The film is beautifully shot with a even hand that doesn't pull away from a shot. When what action there is happens the camera doesn't pull away from it, try to hide or make the camera shake to make it seems like there is more going on than there really is. What we are seeing is what is happening, nothing more or less. Prometheus is more about the tension and the unknown. Most of what is happening cannot be explained, and that makes the film more powerful. As we are there as an observer only, not everything is explained and I think that is what makes most people hate the film. There are stand out scenes that are amazing to watch and see and I'm not going to go into those scenes as to go into it will ruin it. What I will say is that if you can watch it in 3D, do so. While a lot of the films that are using the format to make things pop out on the screen or for a quick jolt to the audience, Scott does something different. Scott uses the format to help the film and not for thrill, but to enhance what is shown and help add depth to what is being seen. The reason for this is that this is not a small movie, in fact Prometheus is a far reaching film that has ideas that pushes the audience and what is being seen has to match it as well. And the visuals do. What also helps with this is the use of as much in-camera effects as possible. Prometheus is a film that will with time become more accepted such as a lot of Ridley Scott's other works have become. But to me this film is a classic already as it pushes boundaries and ideas and isn't afraid to leave it up to the viewer to think for theirself.

BEST DEATH:
      Fifield's melting doom.

BEST LINE:
     You know what this place is? Hell.

FUN FACTS:
     Designer and artist H.R. Giger, who worked on the original design of the Xenomorph Alien, was brought in to assist in reverse-engineering the design of the Aliens in the film.

     Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski convinced Ridley Scott that it would be possible to shoot the film in 3D with the same ease and efficiency of typical filming. 3D company 3ality Technica provided some of the rigs and equipment to facilitate 3D filming, and trained the film's crew in their proper operation. Since 3D films need high lighting levels on set, the traditional dark shadowy atmosphere of the Alien films was added in post-production through grading processes, while the 3D equipment will be based on post Avatar technology. Supposedly the first quarter of the film was finished filming when the decision to film it in full 3D was agreed upon causing the shot scenes to be re-shot in 3D.

     During production Ridley Scott kept the use of computer-generated imagery as low as possible, using CGI mainly in space scenes; Scott recalled advice VFXpert Douglas Trumbull gave him on the set of Blade Runner: "If you can do it live, do it live", and also claimed that practical VFX was more cost-effective than digital VFX. And in my opinion look better as well.

     Ridley Scott and James Cameron both were working on a sequel to Alien franchise in 2002 together that would explore the engineered origin of the aliens in the film series, when both dropped out due to Fox's greenlighting of Alien Vs. Predator. Cameron was very vocal about the potential of the cross-over ruining both franchises and wanted nothing to do with Fox's influence on any Alien sequel do to it.

     According to Ridley Scott, the film's plot was inspired by Erich von Daniken's writings about ancient astronauts: "Both NASA and the Vatican agree that it is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today, without there being a little help along the way. That's what we're looking at: we are talking about gods and engineers, engineers of space. Were the Aliens designed as a form of biological warfare, or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?"

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (2012)
US
Directed by Rupert Sanders

CAST:
Kristen Stewart - Snow White
Chris Hemsworth - The Huntsman
Charlize Theron - Ravenna

PLOT:
     In a twist to the fairy tale, the Huntsman ordered to take Snow White into the woods to be killed winds up becoming her protector and mentor in a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen.

REVIEW:
     I've always had a fondness for fairly tales when I was growing up. Yet I also knew that some how there was something missing from them. A sense of too happy of an ending that always nagged at me. It wasn't until I got to read a book called Grimm's Grimmest that I understood why something seemed missing from those tales and Disney animated movies. It was the violence and the mean spiritedness that was scrubbed from the stories to make them more kid friendly and have a wider audience once they were collected. The original Grimm versions, which were collected from various villages around Germany, are much more adult oriented and when told were meant to frighten children into behaving or else such and such monster would come for them as the story told. This version of Snow White while it isn't a version for younger children, it isn't a a direct translation onto the screen of the Grimm story either.

     There are three main performances in the film and two of them both fail at different times. I'm going to go ahead and say that I have never been the biggest Kristen Stewart fan. I think it might be because it seems as if she never shows full emotion. This might be bad to say, but I always seen her as Mandy from  The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, and I always wondered if she actually smiled if the world would end like it did in that show. Well, as you can tell we are all still here even after Stewart was smiling in the movie. And I will cut her slack now based on this movie as she is decent in it. The drawback to her performance is after she awakens from her poisoned sleep Stewart has to give a speech to rally the troops. I know that she was supposed to inspire, but to me the whole scene made me want to cringe. Charlize Theron, whom this is the first of two reviews I'll be doing this month with her in it, could have made her role something truly evil instead she went overboard. Yes, it is okay to yell and scream, but when every other three words becomes her screaming it gets old very quick. Theron could have made her something truly menacing but we get what seems like a evil queen that can't hear herself talking. If Theron could have just talked normally to a soft whisper and saved the yelling to one or two times in the whole movie, her Queen would have seemed  to me a lot more evil.  The best performance in Snow White was from Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman. Hemsworth you could tell has fun in his role for most of it, probably due to the fact that he gets to play drunk for half of it. The other aspect of his character is that he's a roguish type character that has flaws but doesn't try to hide them which adds to his charm.

     The movie is well shot in most scenes that don't have action , I cannot lie about that. Yet the film becomes beautiful once the characters enter Sanctuary. If there is one reason to see this movie it would be for these 15 minutes as the world we are viewing becomes bigger and the true fairy tale aspect comes front and center in a way I wasn't expecting. These scenes are just a thing of beauty as while we see animals we all know they are changed in a way that makes perfect sense. From the original look of the fairies, even though they almost all look alike except for different hair styles and slight facial differences, to the white stag which is an amalgam of different animals. This stag though has a majestic presence that radiates from the screen and is completely believable as a part of the world we're visiting. Another stand out area in the world is the Black Forest. Even though there isn't any real creatures in this area, thanks to a hallucinogenic spore, the poor souls that inhale it are treated to a very vivid waking nightmare filled with beasts. While the effect is going on we are giving to the world that person is viewing and it is a world of fear and desperation. The trees seem to come alive and their branches and twigs are seen to reach out. The more a person fears here the stronger the reaction the Black Forest has. Other than these two places the rest of the world is one we as viewers have seen multiple times. Run down villages and dark castles.

     For a first time director Rupert Sanders knows the shots he wants and most of the time pulls it off wonderfully as he has a eye for what can work. But once it comes to heavy action scenes he falls into the Michael Bay routine of cutting shots to quick which in return makes viewing these scenes a chore instead of a pleasure. The story in places can also be a chore to sit through as well. Two scenes in the movie illustrate this all too well. The first is the Huntsman's speech about his part life. Hemsworth does his best with this but it just seems as if it was tacked on as to give him back story, yet it turns that this almost ruins the character instead. The other scene I mentioned a little bit earlier in the review. It's when Stewart has to give a speech to a group of down and out soldiers to get them ready to fight. This scene made me cringe. Mostly due to that it seems like in these movies there has to be some big scene that has to reach the viewers heart and I get tired of listening to half-hearted speeches that are supposed to inspire. The other reason why this scene fails is Stewart's delivery  of said speech. One of the biggest misses in the film though is with the dwarves. At first when we see them they all have bad attitudes and terrible dispositions, but after one minute with Snow it seems as if the whole group is nutured by some invisible magic scissors and turns them into the comic relief. With the talent they had within that group of eight, it is a shame to see it all go to waste. While the film is amazing to watch it leaves you feeling empty as it doesn't pull off what it sets out to do.And with a film with this much potential that is the real fault with this movie.

BEST DEATH:
     Sorry, nothing really stuck out to me so here's a possible deleted scene instead.

BEST LINE:
     That looks like one of mine!

FUN FACTS:
     Charlize Theron dropped out of the film J. Edgar to star in the film.

     Lilly Collins auditioned for the role of Snow White and lost out to Stewart. She then went and got the roll of Snow White in Mirror, Mirror.

     Both Viggo Mortensen and Hugh Jackman passed on the chance to play The Huntsman.

 

NEWS ROUNDUP Ver 6

NEWS ROUNDUP Ver 6

EXORCIST
     In just the completely wrong category, the remake of The Exorcist has been green lit. But, it won't be in theaters. Instead it is going to be a mini-series on TV and concentrate more on the "emotional" impact of what is happening. Enough said of this one......

ROBOCOP

     In some good news in response to the previous story, Gary Oldman has joined the cast of the Robocop remake. His role will be the creator of Robocop who has a moral dilemma between helping the machine find it's lost humanity and the needs of the corporation backing the project.

THOR 2

     In some casting news for the now in production Thor 2, and movie that adds Mads Mikkelsen to it's cast automatically gets better right away. His supposed role would be for the Executioner, the constant companion to the Enchantress. For the Loki fans, he is scheduled to be in the film as well.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

     On another Marvel comic movie front, there is rumor going around for a Guardians Of The Galaxy film now. The basis for the group is they came together after two back to back wars in the reaches in space left a void that is easily filled by conquerors to keep that from happening.  I don't care what the team will be, but if they don't have Rocket Raccoon, the foul tempered, anthropomorphic, gun loving raccoon I'm not watching it!

MAD MAX

     Charlize Theron let slip in a interview recently that filming for Mad Max: Fury Road will start next month. I just have to say after this film has been in pre-production for the past five years, it's about damn time!

TOONAMI
     What looked like a nice thank you from Cartoon Network on April Fool's Day could have possibly been a test run for the return of Toonami starting tonight. Two new animes are joining the line-up as well. These are:
 DEADMAN WONDERLAND:

   A young boy in the future is convicted of slaughtering his class and is sentenced to life imprisonment in a massive theme park like prison.

 CASSHERN SINS:

   A cyborg with no memory of the past is on a quest to find out what happened to the world that has become full of poison and how the human race is almost extinct and how he might have caused it.