prometheus

less than meets the eye

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

When I'm watching a movie, especially if it's for the first time or if it's a movie I really like, I'm mostly "inside" the movie, thinking in terms of what the characters are doing and what they want. I don't usually think about the acting or the pacing or the cinematography. If I am thinking about those things, it's usually a bad sign. This is especially true of music, which I almost never notice in a movie unless I find it annoying.

(There are times, though not often, when I do notice those things because they are especially well done. This was true in Inglourious Basterds, for example, where there are sequences where the pacing, or the camera movement, is so wonderful that I just enjoyed it for itself, paying less attention to where the characters were going or why. But I plan to talk about that next time.)

But in any case, there is the experience of seeing the movie, and then there's the experience of thinking back on it.

With Prometheus, the shift from experiencing it to thinking back on it happens almost immediately. When I was leaving the theater, the general buzz around me was "Hey, now, wait a minute. Why..."

There are certainly moments in the movie when any person of pretty much any life experience would wonder at how stupidly the characters (supposedly trained scientists and professional space pilots) are acting. There are whole blog posts devoted to the various bad decisions they make, but the short story is that at pretty much every point the characters do idiotic things and needlessly expose themselves and others to danger.

In general (for me and for a lot of other people, as far as I can tell), there are also many sequences where you're just sitting there, gripped by the immediate action. But then there's that moment when the credits start, when you inevitably begin to realize that many of the incredible things you've just seen make absolutely no sense, many major actions and decisions were apparently completely random, and many big questions were raised and then forgotten about.

So, much as I enjoy the experience of watching Prometheus, I'm not panting for a sequel. I have no interest in finding out what happens next, because nothing in the first movie meant very much. There are unanswered questions, but they're not that interesting (and I would bet that really satisfying answers won't be delivered, no matter how many sequels there are).

(Well, I might go see it, but that's mostly because I would see Noomi Rapace in pretty much anything. 🙂 )

So, I think the lesson here is to write stories which grab the reader at the time of reading (which is the most important thing), but also reward reflection afterwards. After all, you want your readers to come back for more, right?

I talked about this here (scroll down past the part about the Chicago Manual of Style).

crazy like a human

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

A couple of links that struck me (one was supposed to be in the last post, but it slipped my mind).

1. "English teacher: I was wrong about Hunger Games"

The headline is deceptive (intentionally, I'm sure), since Hunger Games is not re-evaluated, but another (much more "literary") novel called The Art of Fielding is. The piece is not, unfortunately, any re-evaluation of the whole paradigm of "literary" and "non-literary" genres, but at least it acknowledges that quality doesn't reside just on one side of the imaginary border. Plus there's a really hilarious "literary" description of a blow job.

2. I can't comment on the new Batman movie, because I haven't seen it and probably won't until it's on DVD, but this article was interesting: "Anne Hathaway Is the Best Catwoman Yet." I particularly noticed this part:

The movie is an illustration of both the virtue of making a tough female character something other than the casualty of the sorts of violence and misery particular to women, and of abandoning origin stories altogether in superhero movies.

This is such a cliche, and it's always annoyed me. Lisbeth Salander is a great character, but she's not great because we learn how she was abused and so on. She's a great character in the first book, before we learn any of that, and learning it later on doesn't make her any better.

This is why I've never specified any reason for the fact that starling is crazy and violent, and I've always made it as clear as I could that she was not abused in any way, and she has no particular grudge against men. She's crazy in some sort of human way, not in any way that's related to the fact that she's a woman.

And Stevie One may not have had a perfect upbringing, but it was pretty good, and she does what she does because of a genuine desire to be useful, to live up to her idea of herself as a person (to paraphrase Nero Wolfe), not because of anything bad that happened to her in the past.

3) There's a pretty good article about Prometheus in the current New York Review of Books. I can't link to it because it's not online, at least not yet. If they post it later, I'll come back and link to it. I did like the comment, "...the female archeologist (Noomi Rapace) wears a cross around her neck in order to bring the 'question' of religion into the picture without actually having to discuss it..." which is pretty much how the picture deals wiith all of the "big questions" it raises and then runs away from.

4) When I was checking if the Prometheus review was posted I did find this: "Does Money Make Us Write Better?" by Tim Parks, whose blog posts I've linked to before. I will comment on his post if I can manage to figure out how the commeting system works over there, particularly this:

Today, of course, aspiring writers go to creative writing schools and so already have feedback from professionals. Many of them will self-publish short stories on line and receive comments from unknown readers through the web. Yet I notice on the few occasions when I have taught creative writing courses that this encouragement, professional or otherwise, is never enough.

My experience, over these last 40+ years, has been very different.


Later: I finally figured out their commenting system, and here is the comment I left:

I don't think it makes much sense to generalize about 21st century writers based on one unnamed Renaissance artist.

Nor is it valid to generalize (as in the fifth paragraph) about all writers based on the people who take creative writing courses. Many writers write quite happily without a publishing contract (and sometimes without creative writing courses). I've been doing it for a few decades now.

This is a very interesting and complex question, and answering it would take a lot of research, not just anecdotal evidence. For example, a connection is drawn in the Christina Stead example, but it's not proved. There is correlation, but was there causation? That would be interesting to know, but we don't seem to know it now, other than what Randall Jarrell feels.

prometheus seen

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

Following up on my earlier post. I did finally manage to see Prometheus.

Well.

On the positive tip, there are some incredible scenes (no spoilers, but I'm referring to a scene of heroic self-sacrifice, and a scene with a surgical procedure). Fassbender, Theron, and Idris Elba are very good, and Noomi Rapace is great. I think the movie's many flaws would be more apparent with another actress in that role.

Many things look great, but that's mostly because they look like Alien. (Oh, and by the way, this is a prequel to Alien – you can see the pieces shifting into their proper alignment – and I think that Ridley Scott's comment that it wasn't a prequel but that it "shares some DNA" was intended as a joke, given how important DNA is to the film.)

The problem is that, common DNA aside, this movie loses the great virtues of Alien (a defined space, a discreet and clearly-defined group of characters, a hidden menace, and a clear connection between the plot and the underlying meaning) and replaces with with a lot of different elements that don't hold together.

Do you want to enjoy it as a scifi adventure film? It's constantly poking you with its "I have deeper meaning!" stick. Do you want to think about the deeper questions? Some of them the movie doesn't answer, and others it is clearly leaving for a possible sequel, where (I have the feeling) they won't be definitely answered either.

When I failed to see this movie the first time, I saw The Avengers instead, and they have an interesting difference, and an interesting similarity.

The difference is that The Avengers has basically two ambitions: to entertain you for two hours, and to get you to want to see all the various movies which will follow it (more Iron Man, more Thor, more Captain America, I guess possibly some Hulk, possibly some Black Widow, and more Avengers). In that, with the caveats I wrote about before, it succeeds. Prometheus has more ambitions, but it succeeds at some and fails at others.

The similarity, and this has application to anybody who does serial storytelling, is that neither movie stands alone. The Avengers has to follow the four movies which preceded it, and lead into the ones that follow, and that constricts the options at every turn. Prometheus has to leave things in their proper alignment for Alien, and it also has to leave the audience wanting Prometheus II. [Later: and as was pointed out by a commenter here, Prometheus is also apparently trying to be a remake of Alien itself (there are quite a few plot points which are clear echoes of the earlier film).]

This is possible to do well, however (and a good thing, too, for me 🙂 ), and thats illustrated by Serenity (which is a better movie than either of these). Serenity had to follow a failed TV show (Firefly), so it has to take up plot threads and characters from the show, but it also has to bring in the audience that never saw the show (presumably the majority). It doesn't do this perfectly, but it does do it very well (I saw it before I saw the show, and am now backtracking to watch the episodes). The ending leaves the door open for more stories, but it does end, and quite satisfyingly. And, like Prometheus, it raises big questions, but it is comfortable with them (as opposed to Prometheus, which always has one foot in and one foot out), and it's clear how the themes relate to the plot.

One final point, which is that Joss Whedon and Ridley Scott are very different types of filmmakers, and therefore comparisons are difficult. Many people, including me, have compared The Avengers to Rio Bravo, and Howard Hawks is a good comparison for Whedon. Characters, timing, dialogue, acting, those are where he's focused. There is only one really memorable visual moment in Serenity, and it's an image of a person.

Ridley Scott is a different type of artist. There are some incredible visual moments in this film, and some sequences of sustained action and suspense that are beyond anything in The Avengers (or Serenity).

Joss Whedon will never give you the first few minutes of Blade Runner, and he wouldn't try. But Blade Runner holds together a lot better than Prometheus, partly because back then you could make a science fiction movie that didn't have to lead into sequels. (And, it should be said, Alien produced sequels, but it doesn't set things up for them. There's nothing in Alien that says, "Hey, we're leaving this in place for the next movie!").

At some point I may write about Prometheus and Avatar, which is an interesting comparison, but I think I'll have to wait, since it wouldn't really be possible without spoilers.