The Sexuality of Sci-Fi

We are the only sentient species we know about at present, in a universe where the possibilities are nearly infinite.

It is thus disappointing, if unsurprising, that we can only see things through our own tediously heterosexual and missionary position eyes. Our imaginations, when they should be alive to every possibility, are thinking only of England.

We are so boring. This young child playing with his Star Wars figures, could see all manner of fun and games involving Squid Head and a Gammorean Guard, while EV9D9 the Smash Martian torture-bot of Jabba's Palace looked on approvingly. But no, long long ago in a galaxy far far away, there was only rubbish old male to female, humanoid snogging going on. The brilliantly realised array of species that frequented the Mos Eisley cantina or Jabba's Sail Barge were about as sexual as a packet of crisps, save for the constantly ejaculating phallus that was Jabba himself, his scenes with Leia a blatant earth bound bukkake signifier.

As the Holiday Special showed us, Wookies like pornography featuring humans, rather than other Wookies, and how disturbing is it that Han Solo gets the white girl, but Chewbacca's father has a black woman served up to him as his fantasy?

Contemporaneously, H2G2's Zaphod Beeblebrox may have been sporting an extra head and three arms, but there was nothing to show that his dealings with Trillian were anything past Page 32 of the Joy of Sex.

We all know that Kirk may have been canoodling with all manner of green skinned – or more shockingly for 1968, black skinned – women in the traditional manner, but leap forward into the Next Generation, and the excitement of the final frontier was sharing screen time with Nescafe advert style sexual tension with Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard, and with Riker and Councillor Troi – another example of a mixed species relationship being portrayed in typically heterosexual penis to vagina coupling.

The First Contact movie presented us with the spectacle (cringing!) of Data getting it on with the Borg Queen, but for all his announcement that he was “Fully functional, programmed in multiple techniques” it was clear that this android to cyborg corpse coupling was going to be of a very standard format. Indeed, any alt-sex activities of the Star Trek Universe were always of the cloning, or assimilating variety.

It wasn't until Star Trek Voyager, that anything different to these standards were offered up to the viewer – Harry Kim had some form of bizarre intercourse with the ever stunning Musetta “Mansquito” Vander - “I'm not sure that was even legal” - and Kes and Neelix's long term interspecies relationship revealed some interesting little tit-bits about Ocampa sexual physiology that were very different from ours.

Still all het though. Even the radically inhuman creations of Species and Splice engaged in fairly conventional heterosexual intercourse.

The world of sci-fi literature, however, had been a bit more open to alternatives. Arthur C. Clarke's universe was hard-sci and asexual a lot of the time, aside to joky references to shipboard relationships with genetically engineered apes called Simps in “Rendezvous with Rama”. However, by the 80s, there were open references to homosexuality in the relationship between an American and Russian astronaut aboard the Leonov in 2010, the “Feys” of 2061, and butch surfing spacedudes recalibrating their sexuality in “The Songs of Distant Earth.”

Going back to the 1930s, Olav Stapledon, in “Last and First Men” actually envisaged fully realised, highly complex and rather incomprehensible successor species of man, with sub-sexes and full intercourse involving a large group of individuals, but these were a later species of man, albeit barely recognisable to us, rather than aliens.

I think it is David Bowie, who else, who actually through the vision of Nicholas Roeg, gives us an idea of what a realistic form of alien sex could be...messy, genital-less, and with no-need for penetration at all.

And indeed, for all the stress and violence it causes, higher forms of life in the universe will probably have abandoned sex. And who can blame them?

Copyright Bloody Mulberry

Bat Projection

I had a lot of time to think today, and in that time I thought of cinema.

I thought of pre-CGI special effects, and thought of back projection, the means by which car journeys in the movies were brought to life, Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy looking elegant or gritty at the wheel, while we see the road disappearing off into the distance in the rear window.

Inevitably, the actor would be swinging the wheel about like Captain Birdseye trying to pilot his ship in a storm, while the projection would make it clear that the car was travelling in an arrow straight line along an endlessly straight road in New Mexico. Later on, Kubrick used the technique in 2001, Cameron used it in Aliens, and it still gets used occasionally to give a shot a retro feel.

But in an atttempt to halt the decline of cinema visiting figures against the relentless progress of downloading and streaming, I thought of a new process that would really enliven cinema in a way never done before.

It is called “Bat Projection.”

In Bat Projection, cinema is given a stunningly naturalistic, immediate, and yet epic feel. Best suited to the countryside of say, Sumatra or Borneo near a large cave at sunset, Bat Projection involves projecting the movie into the sky onto giant swarms of flying bats – flying foxes are the best – that have been painted with reflective silver white paint.

Obviously bats move a lot, and so the projectors will have to be mounted on fast moving yet rugged jeeps. And so will the audience, who will follow the dramtically shifting on mini motos, BMXs and slave pulled rickshaws as best they can. The more daring may take to the air on hang-gliders or microlights, actually becoming part of the action as Chewie pulls the stormtrooper from the Scout Walker, the scene made all the more dramatic for being two miles wide and spiralling and shifting all the time with added ultrasonic sound effects.

“The Birds” of course would be a real spectacle; menacing black shapes attacking Tippi Hendren superimposed upon sinister white painted black ones, the screams and pecked eyes on a huge scale a thousand feet up in the sky, swirling, swooping, indigo skies filled with flying mammal cinematic action!

Rank, Cannon, Showcase, Reel! Get yourselves to India right away! And bring your best bat wranglers!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 23.01.14

T'was a Doubly Dark Afternoon

I am in passing, flying through my blog en route to my film script, but my DVD watching activities on Monday must be commented upon, etched digitally into memory for interested parties to see.

There is a very good, very low rent, collectors stall at the market on monday, and as well as plastic buckets stuffed with Star Wars figures with varyingly correct numbers of limbs, it has a lot of decent DVDs on sale for one English pound each.

It's a bit of a crap shoot, folk buy and sell DVDs there in batches of twenty or thirty at a time. But, if you have the patience to flick through the films in their slightly broken and jagged containers, there are gems to be had. And on Moday, I found two.

First up was "The Dark Crystal" - Jim Henson's wonderfully rich muppet fantasy full of vivid characters and design; the camply "Hmmmmmm-ing" Lord Chamberlain Skeksis is a character that has stuck in my memory since I first saw the film in 1983. And having enjoyed that, it was time for another Dark, and darker film - Dark City.

Dark City is a little seen dystopian fantasy from 1998, where a group of energy beings have reanimated corpses to act as a corporeal vessel from which to conduct experiments on un-knowing human abductees manipulated around a 50s film noir metroploitan environment full of Gilliam-esque mutating cityscapes. Shot in Australia by Alex Proyas, it boasts an odd sort of cast, with Hollywood stars Jennifer Connolly and William Hurt mixing it with a young Rufus Sewell, and Richard "Riff Raff" O'Brien appearing as well.

It is superb.

Watch it, and pay attention as the themes of Blade Runner get warped through space time into Dark City, and hence onto The Matrix.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25/09/13

Splice - A Cronenberg Movie Like Cronenberg Used to Make

Although I have it on DVD, I haven't seen Splice in a while, so it was a pleasure to watch science out of control versus people, interspersed with watching out of control people versus science.

The documentary about the woman who tried to block life saving radiotherapy for her son "Neon" because she wanted to use crazed alternative therapies instead, was on Channel 4 and was equally compelling viewing.

Splice itself, directed by Vicenzo Natali who had showed what could be done with a one room set and a ton of imagination in "Cube" is another spin on the Frankenstein story, with scientists starting off with good intentions corrupted by the scope of their breakthrough. Their creation in this case being a doe eyed, model faced, bunny legged creature called "Dren".

Which always makes me giggle, "dren" meaning "crap" in Farscape speak.

Dren's creators, an ambitious and ever watchable Sarah Polley, and a geeky Adrian Brody, are forced to take their creation to a remote farm after the launch of a previous gene splicing experiment goes bloodily wrong at a media event. And here their attempts to get to Dren to express her human, feminine side over the rest of her varied animal componentry go disastrously wrong after when she seduces Brody, and kills her pet cat to boot.

And after that, things get seriously weird when we throw some transgendering into the ring, and a rape scene that disturbs more than Straw Dogs ever did.

"Splice" is essentially a Cronenberg body horror type movie, taking elements from "The Fly" and mixing in some "Jurassic Park" as well as Dren's genetics fly out of the control of her maker's. Some of the music is even reminiscent of Howard Shore's Cronenberg scores. It ought to be a B movie, by a director who has never really made it to the A's, but the performances of Polley, Brody, and in particular that of Delphine Chaneac as the disturbingly attractive Dren, make it rather more than that.

And it's a story which in a world where our drive for genetically improved food, drugs, and indeed children becomes more urgent, really resonates.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 14/08/2013

Konga - British Sci Fi does Killer Gorillas

I have just been reading an excellent anthology of writing on British Sci Fi cinema from the days of "Things to Come" in the early 30s, as far as Hardware, the film in which Carl McCoy of flour covered wearing leather hat sporting goth botherers Fields of the Nephilim appeared.

In between it deals with Quatermass, invading space dominatrixes, the adaptations of John Wyndham novels and naughty (and under-rated) space vampire type movies Inseminoid and Lifeforce.

In amongst all that, was a chapter dealing with British monster movies of the 50s and 60s, in which Konga, a 1961 release from Anglo-Amalgamated featured prominently.

Obviously the film takes King Kong as its starting point, but the movie is evidently more influenced by the Toho studios Gaiju films i.e. a man in a monster suit rampages around a carboard city squashing cultural landmarks. Eventually the heroic British army reasserts control of the situation which was initially created by the usual sort of deranged scientist with an axe to grind before being exacerbated BY A MADWOMAN SCORNED. The film thus combines two of the fascinations of home grown sci fi - how science must be kept coralled and controlled lest it destroys Westminster Cathedral, and how women are an inherent bloody menace whether they are space or not. As ever, tea drinking normality is restored in the end.

I haven't seen it, but along with virtually every other film mentioned in this book, I have decided I must. It can't be much worse than Peter Jackson's version, which the carnivorous insect section apart, is overlong and overblown.

Doctor Parnassus and Lily Cole

I watched this movie again this afternoon, in a state of total enjoyment while never quite understanding what the film is about. Which is fair enough, because 1) I'm no superbright student of cinema and 2) I'm not sure Terry Gilliam knew either after Heath Ledger died.

The "Alt Ledger" sequences (Depp, Law, Farrell) do look, understandably, rather rushed. Especially Johnny Depp's sequence through the mirror

It doesn't stop the film from being a highly wonderful piece of cinema just for being there. It just is, and I'm a huge fan of movies like that. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, and is wonderfully cast.

"Wonderfully Cast"? Yes it is. Not for Heath Ledger, who actually with his floating point accent is probably the weakest thing in the movie (HERESY!!!!), but for Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer and Tom Waits. But especially, Lily Cole.

She can act, for sure, but most importantly she really does look like the sort of god-beautiful-given gift an immortal might spawn as the result of a pact with a particularly suave devil.

I love this film, but she makes me adore it, and if that makes me shallow, then by all means, take a paddle in me.

Alien 3 is better than Aliens

Alien 3 is better than Aliens. End of.

Better cast of decent british actual acting talent and the tall bloke from Casualty who has just had his ear bitten off. The setting is more atmospheric, the characterisation deeper, and despite Fincher's production problems, it has a sense of style way above the KY dripping big gun techno porn of Cameron's vision.

And it has Chales Dance in it. I've liked Charles Dance ever since the wonderfully daft White Mischief, where he was shot by Joss Ackland and then masturbated upon by a middle aged ukulele strumming posh woman from the Kenyan Happy Valley set.

As for the rest of the reasons, it is best if I just list them as a procession of "No" bullet points, that will definitively illustrate for you why Alien 3 is better than Aliens.

NO irritating child NO actually rubbish subtexts about motherhood et al NO silly picture of an aged Ripley daughter that looks like it was ultrasounded in the womb of a tree NO stupid trainers that go over the ankle with velcro fasteners NO suits with turned up lapels NO scary corporate Rosa Klebb lesbian NO lines of dialogue that are flagged as a radical new symbol of female empowerment that aren't NO NO NO Bill Paxton rapping NO director's cut featuring Captain Hollister from Red Dwarf in an LV426 set that looks crummy when lit NO director's cut with Sentry Guns NO "Don't be gone long Ellen" NO silly giggle names like "Spunkmeyer" NO shot of Lance Henriksen in a tube that gives me nightmares NO heterosexual bromance between a crop haired latino and a guy last seen in a recurring role in Murder She Wrote. And above all NO NO NO over-rating by male critics who want to look like they were in at the beginning of some kind of female emancipation movement in world cinema.

Have a nice, dark, set on a prison planet that was originally a monastery kind of day.

Danny Boyle's Sunshine

Sunshine has always been one of my favourite films, yet Danny Boyle was so put off by the response it got he announced he was never going to touch the sci fi genre again, and Prof (Then Doctor) Brian Cox who worked as a science advisor on the film before his current TV omniescence jokes about what a complete box office disaster it was.

I can't understand why, and yet I can understand why.

The film itself suffers from an attack of schizophrenia about 2/3 of the way through. Prior to that it had been a work of hard sci fi, with lots of lovingly constrcuted shots of technologically non far fetched spacecraft heading towards a vivid, beautiful and active sun; a sun that acts as a major character in the film, a sun that causes some of our intrepid group of scientists and astronauts to undergo a kind of solar psychosis.

Then the Icarus 2, the spacecraft on a vital mission to save humanity by launching a manhattan sized nucelar device into a faltering sun, docks with its predecessor, and the film lurches awakwardly into slasher mode - Mark Strong with a growly voice and a bad case of psoriasis rampages around with vibrating knives and an artistic sense of how to pose murdered botanists. You never see the maniac in any other than a hyperactive blurred fashion, which I always assume was done to hide dodgy make up work. It really doesn't work as horror or science fiction, and this combined with its hard sci fi credentials ensured its box office doom.

Yet there is so much to enjoy about the film, I'd happily watch it again and again - this piece is prompted by two viewings last night. The cast, including Boyle's favourite actor of the period Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans and Hiryoki Sanada, is great; the music by John Murphy and Underworlde is stunning; and finally the celstial spectacle mindblowing with a huge sun burning its way into the minds of the characters and the viewers and a simple, affecting scene of the crew watching a transit of Mercury that has become one of my favourite shots in cinema.

I'd recommend this film for late night viewing with a strong rum and coke - turn the lights out, and the sound up, and let its beauty wash all over you.

The Decadent Future - The Hunger Games, and The Fifth Element

It struck me, just before a lampost nearly did, as I cycled to work this morning, how much the capital city sequences of the "The Hunger Games" reminded me of the fabulous Besson and Gaulthier (oh yeah, and Moebius I think) created world of The Fifth Element...

I rewatched The Hunger Games over the weekend, and got stuck into the reasonably generous DVD extras, a rare thing on a plain old DVD these days. The powers that be want us to shell out for our extras on all The Blu Rays no-one seems to be buying. For all its origins as a piece of (horror word) "Young Adult" fiction , the film does end up being highly watchable yarn, thanks to a strong performance by Jennifer Lawrence.

And yes, I know it's a rip off of Battle Royale. Matters not.

So yes, at first that Effie Whatever person appears, and she's got fantastic shoes on, and a wig, and look, she keeps re-appearing in differently coloured wigs, and now Katniss and her drippy pal are in the big city, and everyone is dressed in these Regency inspired futuristic outfits or whatever, and it's all contrasted with the homey peasantness of the naieve kids, and also the gleaming holographic technology.

And yes, it reminds me of the Fifth Element, where the opression is more corporate than fascistic, yet the folks still live in super high rise squalor in apartments so cramped the shower occupies the same space as the fridge; yet folk dress in highly stylised parodies of fashions of many periods, and the entire aesthetically glorious world seems to be entirely populated by models.

There's a story to tell here I think, the comparison just begs to be made. Unfortunately, it isn't me to tell it. I love the idea of writing about film, but I just don't have the language. I want to write about the style and look of the film, but when trying to describe the wigs as I did above, I couldn't think of the right word. Restoration? Georgian? Ah, just go with Regency. That's probably close enough. I could use the word dystopia but it would probably just cause me dyspepsia as I tried to explain properly why it was a dystopia.

And then, actually trying to criticise one above the other, how can I do that without really knowing what the respective directors and designers were trying to state with their visions of the decadent future, and whether they achieved their goals or not. I haven't got any notes either, if I'd known I was going to be seized with the desire to write properly, I should have sat assiduously with notebook and biro making all the oh so logical and pertinent points I was going to make about both films.

I didn't. I was just taken heavily with the notion of writing about this idea as my hands cracked and dripped blood as I wandered upset amongst the endless racks and boxes, seeing the pen as the means of escape, but not knowing quite how to go about it...I love the Fifth Element more, and it looks far better, but why? *shrugs* I can't really explain it.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 28/01/2013

Alien Resurrection - is it really so bad?

I needed to tidy, I needed to cook soup. I needed distraction that enabled me to lie under my duvet on the sofa and not do anything.

Not fancying another dose of Hawk the Slayer, I put Alien Resurrection on, which was sitting neglected next to it on a particularly dusty part of the shelf. I thought I might try and watch it with fresh eyes, and see if it is truly as bad as I remembered.


Alien is a classic piece of atmospheric, and let us not forget, sexual, horror. Aliens is a crash bang action fest where the extended cut should be avoided. And Fincher's Alien 3 gets slated by many, but I rather like it thanks to its strong cast and oily, greasy vibe. Where does Alien 4 fit in?

Needless to say, even taking a charitable view, it is comfortably the worst of the 4. Again, it's a strong cast with it's cultish crew of Ron Perlman, Dominic Pinon, and Michael Wincott, and Winona Ryder is not so really out of place. But it's script writer, a certain Josh Whedon, is. "If those things get loose, it's gonna make the Lacerta Plague look like a fucking square dance!" is symptomatic of the "yoof interest" awful dialogue that finds its way into the script. Add to this the endlessly clanged desire to explore Ripley's historic desire for motherhood results in a clearly not giving a toss Sigourney Weaver creeping around like a genetically engineered incestuous abuser, muttering in am dram fashion when she isn't cosying up to xenomorphs for some borderline interspecies nookie.

"I'm the monster's mother..." "You mean....my baby?..." Weaver breathes, and the audience giggles, turning into outright cackles when Brad Dourif's signature oddball introduces "The Newborn", the human-alien iceberg that sinks the movie in many more pieces that the Titanic went down in. Looking like a heavily KY'd Scooby Doo villain, the brain eating space pug dog roars, whimpers and coos through 'emotional' scenes with Weaver that plunge the depths of emetic bathos.

And then we have Jeunet's direction. It seems to me that he feels pretty early on in the piece that his chances of making a visceral masterpiece have been fatally compromised, and so decides to lather the gore on and seemingly stick cameras down people's throats on several occasions, while trying to fit in a bit of humour such as spaceship General chap Dan Hedaya giving a cornball salute before picking his cerebellum out of an alienised hole in the back of his skull. But the nadir is the scene where clone number 8 Ripley meets the previous failure versions of herself, seemingly including Captain Caveman in a jar; and Joey Deacon clone strapped to a bed dribbling "kill me" before meeting a humane and painless death at the end of a..er...flamethrower.

"Kill Me?" "Kill Us" chanted the audience.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

I watched some of this too, and like every single other Batman film ever made, I found it entirely un-involving. This was event cinema! I was spending the time setting up a twitter account for my sister and trying to learn a few things about her hTC 8X phone.

I just don't care very much.

I have no investment in the character I think...not that I haven't read a few of the comic book stories and enjoyed them, I thought Arkham Asylum was a wonderfully done and atmospheric piece of work...but I'm not a fanboy and I'm still, perhaps wrongly, of the opinion that all this Young Adult and Comic Book originated film-making is a bit lazy and risk free.

Someone write something entirely new!!!! Find a new story!!! But no, we have to buy into this bloody huge mythos over and over again.

The endless angst about the internal struggle within Batman, this constipated angst, is very off putting, multiplied as it is by Christian Bale's shitting a wardrobe performance and silly growly voice.

He's as rich as Croesus, I don't buy it! He has toys, and pretty girls, and a great life. Tormented? Get to fuck.

Tom Hardy as Bane ought to be a fantastic opponent, but like Batman, his dialogue is often incomprehensible, and when you can hear it it seems like it could have been nicked from Magneto in any X Men movie with an added serving of fruit. Anne Hathaway is gorgeous, but what else?

And finally, as I endlessly tried to find a profile picture my sister wouldn't kill me for, my overall impression of most of the film was watching a man climb a chimney, and falling off, for an hour. This isn't a film, this is the occupation of a seven year old urchin!

Prometheus

Got round to watching this on Christmas Day.

I'd been led to believe it's very bad. It isn't. It's just a wee bit "meh" - with odd sorts of plot holes that either the film, or my own stupid brain, aren't explaining.

Like why is there a Geiger illustration of an alien seen in the Engineer habitat before anything resembling "The Alien"  - which seems to be created by genetic chance event instigated by David the android - exists, and David's motivation for carrying out a little unpleasant human experimentation isn't really explained.

As is also to be fair typical for movies of this nature, characters do daft things for no reason; "ooh look we're in a bit of this unknown habitat where strage creatures are afoot, let's stay here stomping about like idiots instead of leaving." That sort of thing. Other characters seem to have absoloutely nothing to do in the film whatsoever, hello to you most of the Prometheus crew!

The film is pretty. It has great scale. It's not unenjoyable. But the equation "Ridley Scott plus Alien Prequel" provides a lesser answer than what we hoped.

Is there Life on Mars

Hiding in obscure little canteens at work. The size of phone booths. Populated by me, and a few fork lift truck drivers, an entirely alien race in themselves. Quiet.

And often I had the TV to myself, the fact the remote didn't work is only a minor irritation.

So, a couple of times, I've been able to sit eating my sandwiches (processed hand and processed cheese atop processed bread) and take in a bit of George Pal's 1953 version of War of the Worlds. And you know what, it stands up pretty well!

The colours are lush...the effects astonishing for the time...the spaceships look like they belong on the Paris Metro...the aliens are interesting...Gene Barry is brick of chin but not too wooden...it does follow elements of the book...the heat rays and green ball lightning effects looks great...there are some wonderful stereotyped foreign scientists especially the dutch woman who later found herself in Tenko I must think...buildings being blown up for no clear strategic reason APART FROM SHEER MARTIAN EVIL...look at that water tower go up boys!...Spielberg blatantly ripped off the martians for ET and justice was served when his War of the Worlds turned out to be shit.

It packs a lot into to its 80 minutes. Still deserves to be regarded highly. Although not as highly as a good English set version of the Wells book  would be if it ever got made. And not by Pendragon Pictures.

OPINION - Richard B. Riddick

Every so often I check in on IMDB or Wiki or whatever, to find out what the latest progress on the next Riddick film is.

Now, as I read somewhere else, Vin Diesel now looks like Tony Hart's plasticine pal Morph, but Riddick was a fantastic creation that made him a star. Pitch Black was a superior and innovative B Picture. The Chronicles of Riddick like David Lynch's Dune was hampered by some daft scripting and terrible acting - not by Mr Diesel himself - but was fantastically designed and conceptualised. The section set on Crematoria and in the choking sulphorous prison was great.

My problem with it was that it was just not from the same universe as Pitch Black. That said, I thought the Necromogers were fascinating, and was looking forward to seeing how Riddick's apparent rise to Lord Martial would develop, and whether we would see the Underverse.

Well, we've apparently all died before our due time. The latest little bit  googling reveals that Riddick 3, or simply "Riddick" seems to be a stripped down affair, with some odd sounding casting for a major release - Katee Sackhoff, former WWE superstar Batista?  - with Riddick stranded on an alien world fighting monsters and mercenaries. We're back in a Pitch Black universe, by the looks of things.

Karl Urban's back, although I'm not surprised that Thandie Newton isn't.

It maybe that we will see Furya and Underverse in two mooted sequels, but I'm guessing the backers want to see if the Riddick character flies, financially speaking, before going larger scale.

I hope it does. I love these movies. There's something a shade different about Riddick's universe that deserves a bigger audience.

OPINION - Prometheus and the Too Futuristic Prequels

Well, with many other people I sat into the first advert break of Homeland, which I never watch, to see the Prometheus trailer.

I was excited, but stupid-feeling. I had become one of the hated fanboy trailer freaks who sit through a 4 hour domestic drama set on a farm in India in order to see a trailer for the latest Spielberg attraction, while scrawling notes in a jotter at banshee pace.

I've only done it before. Honest. And only because I was keen to see what aforementioned Spielberg's martian fighting machines looked like. But I wanted to part of something; I wanted to be a member of the community of the first, and do my #areyouseeingthis - hello Corporal Hicks was it? - tweets with the rest of the UK, or world, whatever.

And I was going to write about it - ooh that's a very nostromo looking silhouette there, hmm the Prometheus ship reminds me of Serenity crossed with the Betty from Alien Resurrection; or my god Wutani engineered the xenomorphs - HUMANITY BROUGHT IT UPON THEMSELVES!!!!

But no. Leave it to proper film writers, not hopeless wannabes like me.

The point that does occur, with all the flashing lights, colourful spacesuits, super resoloution pictures, flashy computer screens, and a space jockey hologram thing where he looks far too much like the elephant man not to have a slight giggle, the whole film looks too new.

It's a prequel world. Set god knows how many years before the low tech grimey "Space Truckers" of the first Alien movie, the world of Prometheus features rinky dink gesture control displays and neon heads up displays. Alien had  Apple 2 10 pixels per square yard monitors the size of a postage stamp. Is humantiy supposed to have devolved in the same amount of time it factually took us to get from the Wright Flyer at Kittyhawk to the Jumbo Jet?

It doesnt make sense!

Take David, the beautiful nazi wet dream android played by the enviable Michael Fassbender. He is supposed to have evolved into those far more attractive models, er Ian Holm and Lance Henrickson!

Logically, surely the android should thus have started looking like Kirk Douglas' scrotum???

It's a minor point I know. I'm a pointlessly cross silly geek. Of course film makers are going to want to use the nicest tricks, the fanciest shizzle, all their latest effects. But to me, it never rings true. The TV Enterprise prequel emphasised "Hey, No sliding automatic doors!!!" but still looked like it was filmed 400 years later, while the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot prequel looked like it was shot 4000 years later.

And as far Star Wars Episode 1, it was "A Long time ago, in a galaxy far far shinier and newer, than the first one."

My ever lasting prequel bugbear. And may god curse my soul.