09 | June | 2012 | The Visionary Film Fanatic

So far this year the box office has been booming, outgrossing a lot of movies from last year as well as having 2 movies already grossing more than 400 million dollars. I am surprised by both numbers, Prometheus is currently trailing Inception in opening day gross, which could end up leading to a 60 million dollar opener, and Madagascar, which is currently opening higher than any of its predecessors. It would be no surprise if Madagascar win since the family dollar is strongest on Saturdays but Prometheus is going to give it one hell of a fight. Expect big numbers for this weekend given that the two top movie will be big grosses.

‘Prometheus,’ ‘Madagascar’ dogfight sparks B.O. bonanza (variety.com)
Madagascar 3 Edging Prometheus in Early Projections for Tight Weekend Race (gossipcop.com)
‘Prometheus,’ ‘Madagascar’ popping past $60 mil (variety.com)
Box office preview: ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Madagascar 3’ duke it out (thevisionaryfilmfanatic.wordpress.com)
Box Office Psychic: Weekend on June 8th. (cwtampa.cbslocal.com)
Box office update: ‘Prometheus’ leads Friday with $21.4 million, but ‘Madagascar 3′ will win weekend (insidemovies.ew.com)
‘Prometheus’ Opens With Big $3.5M Midnights (m.deadline.com)
‘Madagascar 3’ tracking to douse ‘Prometheus’ (variety.com)
Sci-Fi Epic ‘Prometheus’ Opens – Daily Beast (thedailybeast.com)
“Madagascar 3″ and “Prometheus” – Funny to Frightening! (raymondleejewelersblog.com)

Prometheus

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green

A team of scientists journey through the universe on the spaceship “Prometheus” on a voyage to investigate Alien life forms. The team of scientists becomes stranded on an Alien world, and as they struggle to survive it becomes clear that the horrors they experience are not just a threat to themselves, but to all of mankind.

There is a lot more to the story than this but I would like to keep as little spoilers as I can, though there will be one of two here or there.

Right after The Dark Knight Rises this was the movie that I was looking forward to the most this year, not just because I am a huge fan of the original Alien movie and it’s sequel Aliens but the fact that the trailers and the marketing made the film look incredible tense and a nice addition to Ridley Scott’s already impressive resume. With expectation as high as mine, there was a good chance that the movie may end up disappointing but in the case of Prometheus that was not the case and it actually turned out better than I was hoping it would. I found that the movie was able to stand on it’s own even with the many connections to the Alien franchise and was able to capture everything that I loved about the original while also adding on a philosophical theme about the creation of mankind and Darwinism vs. Creationism, without leaning in either direction and making it seem that both idealisms are right in their own ways. With what David (Michael Fassbender) said in the movie “Big things have small beginnings”, it makes you really think how that applies to the creation of humanity and the differences between evolution and creationism. Rather than being a straight forward horror/science fiction film it ends up being a movie that makes you think, like Inception, and ask why The Engineers had such hatred and the instinct to eradicate all of human kind, which doesn’t get answered which is for the best, and I think that is why the movie stood out to me and why I enjoyed the movie as much because I like to think.

There is a lot to admire about this film from the beautiful landscape to some of the best visuals effects that I have ever seen, excluding Avatar of course. The opening sequence alone was a beautiful montage of the Icelandic, where the movie was filmed, mountains and waterfalls and the images are just as beautiful throughout the film. The tension of the movie is not as present as it is in Alien but it does have it’s number of scares and some pretty gruesome imagery, including as very intense C-section scene that was pretty disturbing but fit into the movie that I don’t see it not being an intricate part to the story. The acting as well was top notch from Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron both making their characters interesting and fresh, while most of the other cast is pretty much expendable, Idris Elba is another fantastic actor that really brought depth to his character and not some useless pilot. The best actor out of the bunch is Michael Fassbender who stole the show as David, who tries to learn what it means to be human since he is an android. He really made the character believable with the way he talked and moved made it seem like he was a robot.

From what I have said this movie is much better than expected but I feel that it may not be the movie that people thought it would be. It is not the typical horror movie but instead it is a movie that makes you think and will stay with you long after the movie is over, maybe requiring more than one viewing which is what I intend on doing.

10 out of 10