Alex Acks: Sound and Nerdery

Yo, here be spoilers.


Dear Prometheus:

I wanted to love you, I really did. From the moment I first saw the trailer I thought this was going to be one of the movies I was born to love. Horseshoe ship! Space jockey! Michael Fassbender! Flamethrowers!

And it’s not like I generally have standards that high, right? I mean, you did see my review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, didn’t you?

Though I did go in with higher expectations than that, and maybe that was the problem. I liked Alien and I loved Aliens and we’re just not going to talk about those other movies okay? I was willing to forget the horrors of the past because this was Ridley Scott coming home to his baby.

Because this is the problem. Alien was a horror movie with a scifi background. Aliens was an action movie with a scifi background. But you, Prometheus, you were touted to be an honest-to-goodness real science fiction move, which means that as a lover of science fiction I had no choice but to expect more of you.

This was the thing about Alien and Aliens. While there was the occasional whoops moment in those  movies, the characters that populated them weren’t dumb. They were just generally up against an implacable, terrifying enemy that out-everythinged pitiful humans who never had all the facts about what they were facing until it was too late. That was what made those movies good. You were rooting for the humans to triumph because damnit, they were trying so hard.

Why couldn’t you be more like your mom and dad, Prometheus? But no, instead you were populated with a collection of scientists so dumb I feel like there must have been a writing process where, in draft after draft, the script was read and someone said, “Well yes, but they’re still too smart. Try adding some drool.” Where did you dig up the geologist and biologist? Mail order from Planet Ohmyfuckinggodwhateven? Did their graduate degrees include, as a door prize, a full lobotomy given by a janitor with extremely shaky hands? A geologist bitching that there are no rocks when he’s on a planet with no vegetative cover? And what’s this shit about him just being in it for the money? And the biologist, what was that even? Calling evolution Darwinism and playing coochie-coo with an alien cobra that has a terrifying vagina instead of a face?

I figured we were in real trouble when the scientists repeatedly couldn’t remember the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. Between that and the Darwinism thing, I’m throwing some serious side-eyeing at this script writer. Let’s just say I could keep ranting about the unnecessarily stupid science gaffes that could have been corrected and would only have served to strengthen the story. But at this point all I can hear in my head, repeating over and over is, “A super nova that was going to destroy the galaxy let’s fix it with red matter! Yeah!”

And Charlie. Don’t even get me started on Charlie. As far as I can tell his entire contribution to the movie was getting shit-faced and then sexing up Dr. Shaw so she could have an evil alien squid baby in one of the better (and more disturbing) scenes of the movie.

Oh yeah. And he got set on fire. That was pretty boss. Actually, I liked that scene quite a bit, and not just because it meant we no longer had to suffer through Charlie’s weird pouting about gee we only just made the single most important discovery EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND but it’s somehow not good enough because all the aliens are mysteriously dead. No, that scene was awesome because of Meredith Vickers wielding a flame thrower and setting Charlie on fire. And in that moment when he’s dropped on the ground and screaming there’s an amazing shot of her face where you realize even she can’t believe she just did that. (So good on you, Charlize Theron. But we already knew you were awesome.)

But I digress.

Also, there’s the matter of the aliens. I knew going in that we weren’t getting xenomorphs, and that was fine. Because we were going to get the space jockey and hell yeah. But instead we get giant white guys with bulging muscles. I get the punchline that apparently we were created in their image (somehow, only we got their DNA and evolution happened and… oh hell with this) but they just want to kill us all now for some nebulous reason. It was all very unsatisfying. Xenomorphs, I could buy. They want to fucking eat us, or lay eggs in us, and it makes sense. But frankly, the engineers felt like a giant navel-gazing cop-out where confusion was substituted willy-nilly for deep.

Though to be honest, I still prefer the giant white dudes to the squid baby and it’s horrifying vagina dentata. At the end the engineer + squid = xenomorph-ish was a math problem far too disgusting for me to even want to see the proof.

You were trying to ask big questions. I felt it. It was obvious you were trying to take something from the mashup of science and religion and the question of who created us – and hey if it was aliens, who created them. But then instead of going anywhere with that, having any real development it was just the same lines over and over again. Well why do you believe X? Because I choose to. Perhaps this is a problem of mine because I’m an atheist, but I feel like that’s a giant cop-out, particularly when it’s just sort of dropped on the floor and left there to pathetically roll around like a turtle attempting to right itself. Really all it tells me is that Dr. Shaw is really stubborn, since that’s basically her answer in both the beginning and end of the movie despite all events that occurred.

Really at this point all I can do is cross my arms, sadly shake my head, and say I expected so much more of you.

Oh no, please stop crying. It’s not all bad. I’m not demanding my money back. I’m not comparing you to, say, The Last Airbender, where I left the theater and then immediately fell to my knees to scream “WHY?” at the uncaring sky. There were things I liked.

Charlize Theron, for example. Idris Elba playing a concertina was something that will keep me warm and smiling on a sad, cold night or two. (Though him keeping Charlize Theron warm for no apparent reason was just another bit of in-theater facepalm for me.) Noomi Rapace as Dr. Shaw managed to operate like she had half a brain more often than any of the other sacrificial lambs (this is not saying much) and she does have a few excellent moments, so that’s something. And you are visually lovely.

But I’ve also got to be honest. The only character I really gave a shit about was David, because he was interesting. He had a plan, and even if it ended badly for him, you could see everything he did was in service of that plan and not just because the script needed him to do something utterly moronic. I was also quite captivated by the way he was played, because to me it seemed like every time people tried to reassure themselves that he had no emotions (being a robot and all) it was rather plain that he did have feelings. There seemed like a lot of sarcasm in his agreement with people whenever they pointed out something in his robot nature – and some genuine pain when Weyland calls him the closest thing he’ll have to a son followed immediately by pointing out that he doesn’t have a soul. (Weyland, you turd. Don’t mess with my boy.) David’s obviously got some very rich internal life going on, and I think that was why I was much more willing to buy the sillier bits of him being the macguffin and instantly knowing how to operate the alien machines and speak giant white dude-ese.

I was willing to forgive David because when he wasn’t being the plot’s bitch, there was something there to find interesting. You paying attention, other characters?

To be honest, Prometheus, I think I’d rather just rename you The Unfortunate Adventure of David and Some Jaw-Droppingly Stupid People.

Sorry, but even then I still wouldn’t buy the DVD.

There are many things I manifestly Do Not Get about the reactions people seem to be having to Brave. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it not being up to the standards of other Pixar movies. Or it’s just too much of a girl movie. Or something. What? Did we even see the same movie?

The only thing that keeps Brave from being my favorite Pixar movie ever is the existence of The Incredibles. (It’s a solid tie, in that case, with Wall-E and Up.) I liked it as much if not more than I liked any Toy Story, and I feel far more attached to Brave as a story than I do to Finding Nemo or Monsters, Inc. (Confession: Still haven’t seen Cars. Just can’t seem to care.)

I suppose you could call Brave a girl movie in as much as the main character is a girl, but that’s about it. You know what, boys? Girls constantly are forced to identify with male main characters in stories. You can give going on the journey with someone that isn’t your gender a whirl. It doesn’t hurt, I swear. And while the main conflict of Brave is something that happens between mother and daughter – and in a situation that could be considered more female eg: being forced into a betrothal – focusing on the gender of the people at conflict is frankly unnecessary. It’s about a teenager who wants to be control of hir own life struggling with the authoritarian parent, the two of them butting heads, and ultimately redefining their relationship in a way where they both better understand each other.

There is nothing uniquely female about that, other than the bit about enforcing gender roles, which I almost think is beside the point. Boys know just as much as girls what it’s like to struggle against what feels like the unfairness of parental edicts. And it’s revealed within the movie that while Merida is the most vocal about not liking the tradition – and the most combative against it – the young men that are supposed to be trying to win her like a prize aren’t necessarily in full agreement with the arrangement either.

Okay at this point, if you want to avoid spoilers you should probably just stop reading and go see the movie first. It’s a good movie. You should see it anyway.

Really, one of the things I liked most about this movie is that it avoided the typical Disney Princess Shit. Merida struggles to define her own destiny by not having to follow tradition and get married. In what I would think of as a typical Disney storyline, she would have ended up deciding one of the boys wasn’t so bad after all, or falling for a complete out of left field candidate, and still ended up in a saccharine happily ever after relationship. Brave doesn’t do this. At the end of the movie, the suitors sail away, and Merida hasn’t made any kind of choice. In fact, her sexuality hasn’t been defined at all – something my friend David pointed out that he really liked, and I do as well. Maybe Merida is lesbian and that’s why she didn’t want to get married. Maybe she’s heterosexual and just not ready. Maybe she’s asexual. We don’t ever find out and it doesn’t matter because it’s beside the point of the movie.

The movie isn’t about who Merida will choose. It’s about Merida fighting for the ability to decide for herself with none of the above as an available option. And I think that’s a very powerful thing, and something that should be a message people of any gender or sexuality could identify with. In this movie Merida wins the right to not be defined by a relationship and to be herself.

So no. I don’t think this is a “girl” movie. And I would also like to note that I find that implication insulting, as if somehow something being a “girl” thing makes it inherently inferior. As if “boy” movies have broad appeal and “girl” movies are only for a lesser audience. Fuck you, marketing people.

But I digress.

This movie is also manifestly not some sort of ‘parents know best’ trope. Ultimately, Elinor comes to see things from Merida’s viewpoint and even urges Merida to make a speech about bucking tradition in front of the men. What I see Merida learning is that her mother still loves her even when they disagree viciously – she learns that her mother is fallible, and human, and not simply an obstacle she needs to tear her way through.

One of the major plot points for the movie is when Merida and her mother have a really nasty argument about Merida bucking tradition. I think that’s another point that anyone should be able to identify with. Anyone who has ever been a teenager has probably had that fight with one of their parents, and remembers it with an internal cringe. You know, the fight where you both get so angry you say incredibly stupid, mean things to each other, where things both physical and emotional get broken and you aren’t certain if they’ll ever be fixed.

And it’s that argument that’s the catalyst for the rest of the movie, because it leads Merida to the witch, where she asks for a spell that will change her mother. Not, as the trailer would have you believe, a spell that will specifically change her fate – because she believes changing her mother will change her fate somehow, since her mother’s become the stand-in for all of the tradition she wants to buck.

I think the trailer for Brave did the movie a real disservice. Maybe they were afraid of revealing too much about the movie. But basically what you get from the trailer is that Merida is rebellious! Merida argues with mom! Merida wants to change her fate! Whatever that means.

What Merida actually does is change her mom into a bear. And she then has only two days to try to fix the situation, which involves mending their relationship and admitting that she’s the one responsible for this particular screw-up. (Along with a whole other plot line about the scary demon bear that ate her dad’s leg, but I feel like that’s more a vehicle for Merida’s mom to get to be incredibly awesome.) Honestly, I think people would have been a hell of a lot more eager to see Brave if Pixar had even just let it out in the American trailer that Elinor gets turned into a bear. I’m mystified why they didn’t; it’s in a lot of the international trailers, so I actually knew it was going to happen before I saw it.

Honestly, I also think putting that aspect of the movie into the trailer – Elinor is turned into a bear and Merida has to reverse the spell! Danger! – would make it a lot harder for people to dismiss Brave offhand as just some girl movie about mothers and daughters and the tricky relationships between the two.

But I’m not a marketing person, I guess, what do I know.

Actually, I think I’m done with spoilers now if you want to read this next bit.

So yes, the plot interesting, and a lot of ink (or pixels) can be spilled examining different aspects of it, I think.

But more to the point, it’s just a good movie. It’s fun, the plot has suspense, the characters are lovable. The same set of people who have been complaining about Brave being a girl movie have complained that the male characters are just caricatures, and I’m again forced to wonder if we saw the same movie. While a lot of the supporting characters are pretty two dimensional, both male and female, the main male character is Merida’s dad, Fergus, and I think he’s lovely. He’s a guy who loves his family, respects his wife, and just wants to have a good time and keep everyone safe from the evil bear.

The characters definitely get a thumbs-up from me. I’m particularly amused that one of the clan heads is named MacGuffin.

Pixar outdid itself on the visuals for the movie. The scenery is fantastic. Merida’s hair is indescribably amazing. The music was done by Patrick Doyle, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a soundtrack from him I didn’t like.

Honestly, thinking about it, there’s not really one bad thing I can think to say about the movie. I wish I could take my niece to see it, but it’d still be a little too scary for her. It’s good. It made me laugh out loud and sniffle and gave me surprisingly complicated things I could think about after. Just what I expect from Pixar.