Johnny Case in Wonderland . . . hopelessly adrift in popular culture

I saw Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated and much hyped Prometheus in a full theatre Saturday night and what’s cool about that is it’s an “event” movie—a film folks have been getting increasingly excited about for a long time—and there’s nothing quite like seeing a film like this on opening weekend, whether it’s The Avengers, or a Twilight film, or one of the many installments of the Harry Potter franchise.  But this was supposed to be something different, above and beyond the norm: an epic sci-fi action film with a brain beneath its stunning sheen, à la Inception.  But while it’s a movie with aspirations to high-mindedness, in the end its messy narrative is a superfluous bauble—pseudo theological quasi scientific gobbledy gook that gets crushed under the weight of its own pretensions, which was perhaps to be expected given that its script was co-written (with Jon Spaihts) by Lost co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof.  Still, if you can put aside how ultimately silly it is (and I tend to suspend my disbelief in the parking lot), it’s a hell of a lot of fun.  It moves along crisply, a rarity in this day and age of blockbusters with near three hour run times, and it looks unbelievably spectacular and Michael Fassbender is fantastic.  More importantly, it’s huge in all the right cinematic ways, making it a movie that can only really be experienced in all its grandeur on the big screen, and so even though it won’t stay with me, I’m certainly glad I saw it.  That said, man, I can’t wait for Moonrise Kingdom to get here.  I need a break from the blockbuster onslaught and it’s not even mid June yet.