Over the weekend I had a chance to see both Prometheus and Men in Black III. Bottom line, both were entertaining, but I'd give the edge to Prometheus just because it was the fresher of the two.
Prometheus:
Previews and trailers hint about how the mission of Prometheus is based on ancient astronaut messages found by scientists. Not a bad premise. (MINOR SPOILER) It gave an entertaining twist on the creation vs. evolution story with a brief discussion about aliens who may have influenced our evolution. Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (always wearing a cross) has a great line about the aliens when asked about the religious implications - "Somebody had to create them."
Now, I'm a Christian, but I have some reservations about creationism vs. evolution. Maybe they're both right. Maybe God did it all in 6 days, but 6 days from God's POV could be very different and people during biblical times probably couldn't have understood the idea of anything taking millions of years. Anyway, back to the movies.
I liked Noomie Rapace as female lead Elizabeth Shaw. But in many ways, the one who stole the show was Michael Fassbender as David. He was creepy from minute one.
Charlize Theron gave a good performance as Meredith Vickers. Definite Alpha female material with a chip on her shoulder and not trying to hide that she had her own agenda (but keeps that to herself - she just wants to put everyone on notice).
MIB III (or MIIIB):
Entertaining, but I'm hoping this will be the last of this series. (Spoiler ALERT). No Zed or Frank at all. While Frank would probably have gotten annoying, I loved Rip Torn as Zed in the first two movies.
Josh Brolin did a phenomenal job as young K. Kudos for the casting there. There were times I wondered if they'd dubbed in Tommy Lee Jones's voice. That said, I think they could have picked a better villain than Boris the animal. Oh well, nobody's perfect. It was also fairly clever how they explained (or hinted) why J wasn't effected by the timeline change when Boris goes back and kills young K.
The character Griffin had some interesting abilities, but his babbling got a bit annoying. He could have easily become the Jar Jar Binks of the movie. Fortunately it didn't come to that.
Also, the tech downgrades to 1969 were funny (especially the neurolizers).
SPOILERS
Prometheus:
When Meredith Vickers invites our two heroic scientist to talk and there is the brief discussion of her quarters/lifeboat and how self-sufficient it is, they might as well have just said that would be a critical means of escape. It wasn't as subtle as Ripley's skills with the loader in Aliens (her coming out at the end using it to fight the queen was a great twist in that movie). Maybe if they'd made Vickers more of a germaphobe or something it wouldn't have been so obvious.
One "plot" problem I had was that if the world Prometheus went to was a launch site/bio weapons lab that was creating weapons to destroy Earth, then why leave the clues so it could be found? Was this a subtle example of the super villains monologuing their plan because they didn't think the humans could ever stop them?
I was also puzzled a little about David's first victim. I didn't get a full sense of why he did what he did. Maybe just scientific curiosity.
MIB:
When J and young K met up with and got assistance from the Colonel back in 1969, it took about 5 seconds for me to figure out who he was. Some of that was hinted by older K. Just how many African American colonels were there back in 1969? I may catch some flack for this, but the rank seemed a bit too high for an African American for that time. Perhaps a lower rank would have attracted less attention (NCO or a lower ranking officer, like a captain).
I started laughing when young K pulled out the 1969 portable neurolizer and tried to boot it up (dial tone/login sounds that anybody who's had dial-up Internet would recognize).
That's all for now. And please remember to always tip your servers. It could save lives.
