Oh, Prometheus. You were supposed to be that great big movie behemoth that would charge up a flailing movie genre like no other.
We were literally supposed to talk about you for generations like your brethren Alien, and Aliens while reciting our favorite lines from the din of your sensational cacophony. Yes, it was supposed to be a world where “Game over, man” and “Mostly they come out at night, mostly” would pale in comparison to whatever sparkling drops of effervescent dialogue that landed squarely in our laps for consumption.
Now, though, everyone wants to tell us not to be excited, not to “believe the hype” and to yes, manage our expectations, as if this is as easy as laughing off Adam Sandler’s entire career.
But really and truthfully, there’s just no way. You’ve given us all the ammunition we could ever want to be totally and irreversibly excited about this film. You’ve paired the birth-child of one of the biggest sci-fi movie franchises with returning director, Ridley Scott, and launched a marketing campaign that would make a Kardashian rethink their contract. Serious business. There’s no way to go back to nonchalant obtuseness when it comes to this film. Seems nearly ridiculous to now act real cool like a high school quarterback zooming the girls and leaning stoically against the school lockers. That’s over. Done. A spark has been lit and there’s no way to quell our desire for the return of not just this franchise but for the hopeful re-emergence of sci-fi that doesn’t make us want to hurl our shoes at the movie screen. To think that finally what has been done by those incredible, movie pulverizing fart-sacks, Michael Bay, and his brother-in-suck, Brett Ratner, could maybe, just perhaps, be undone? We will hold on to that like it’s a single energized seedling in a future filled with the rubble of shit movies and other Hollywood boondoggle.
This is the real problem isn’t it? We’re like starved urchins living on an island surrounded by horrible movies and even worse television, where science fiction has been reduced to people throwing robot vomit at each other, or walking around in some odd, prehistoric, but not really, space-time continuum fallacy like Terra Nova? This is what’s got us soo geeked up by even the notion that smart science-fiction could exist again; that things like Battleship and a myriad other colossal Hollywood failures would begin to fade in the light of interesting, challenging, spectacularly nuanced drama and effects that have come to reclaim their rightful place. But no, perhaps this is not to be.
Yet, that doesn’t stop the soul from wanting it. It doesn’t stop the mind from craving the kind of interesting and enlightening movies that once existed. Just what is this bunk we’ve been watching?! Why do we care about Leo DiCaprio’s complicated dreamscape, or Disney’s ridiculous janitor from space, John Carter? We don’t, do we? For every possible bright spot like Chronicle and Super 8, we get some sort of aversion therapy nonsense like Battle Los Angeles, Cowboys and Aliens, In Time, and dear God, The Thing remake.
So, it’s no wonder when we hear that maybe, perhaps Hollywood is going back to the drawing board and is willing to launch something great, even if a bit re-treaded, we’re looking at you Total Recall, and you Dredd, before we can even sink our teeth in we’re told, almost instantly, to manage our expectations, because it won’t be all that we’ve hoped.
What a supreme let down. It’s no one’s fault, really. But for once we’d just love to experience that feeling we once had when we walked into Back to the Future or The Terminator, and it was fucking fantastic! Not just because they were excellent films, but because we hardly saw the trailer. There weren’t teaser trailers, then long form trailers, and then promos, and then blog discussions, and then pre-pre movie discussions, or preliminary reviews that made national headlines days before the movie’s release to be gobbled up by the social media right-now machine…all the hype came after. And we were able to view the movie and enjoy it in perfect context. Right now it’s currently Thursday and already the entire world is rushing to either condemn Prometheus as a disappointment, or hail it as “a fun disappointment” as if there’s no in-between.
For now though, this is the sentiment we like best.
So what’s the best or worst hyped movie you ever saw and did it live up to expectation?
