This entire post is because I lost a bet. Over the summer of 2014, my friend Ashlee and I did a Summer Box Office Challenge, which is to say that we each picked 10 movies opening from May to August and tallied up how much each made in its opening weekend. Ashlee won, and as my punishment for losing, I am being made to write a positive review of a movie I hate.

And boy, do I hate Prometheus. I saw it in theaters with my now-husband and Ashlee herself, and as we walked back to the El, they both more or less shrugged and thought it was fine, and I erupted in a violent fury of flailing arms and exasperation. I hate Prometheus. It’s egregiously terrible in a great many ways. But I’ll write a separate post to enumerate them (which is HERE), because per the terms of my loss, this post is supposed to be only the positive review. Sorry, Ashlee, this is as close as I got.

Okay, deep breath. Here is a comprehensive list of things that are good about the movie Prometheus. (note: spoilers. But that shouldn’t matter, because no one should ever see this movie, and therefore it cannot possibly make a difference whether you know what happens or not)

• It’s pretty? I remember the effects all being really good. I remember particularly liking the one scene when Michael Fassbender activates the old timey(?) spaceship or whatever it is and it lights up a whole star map(?) and it’s 3D and he wanders around in it and it’s full of awe and wonder and whatnot.

Um. So. This would be a good time to mention, I guess, that I have only seen this movie once, in theaters, when it came out in 2012, and that the terms of the bet were not that I had to watch it again before writing this post. I bought the damn thing, because for some unknown reason I agreed to that stipulation before losing the contest, but it was determined that actually sitting through it wasn’t necessary (and so I haven’t, because I have a sneaking suspicion it would only make it harder to come up with anything at all positive to say). So that means that this post is going to be both positive and vague, because I blessedly only half-remember the movie, and much less than half of what I remember is actually positive.

So. That said. It’s pretty.

• Michael Fassbender is awesome, because he’s always awesome, and he’s just fine as an android. I think he rides a bicycle and shoots a one-armed basketball shot, possibly while riding a bicycle. He also watches Lawrence of Arabia a million times (because I can’t remember the purpose of the giant glowing web thingy that he generates, but I can remember the damn movie he watches, even though I’ve never seen that movie).
• That means he made good use of his time while the humans were all in suspended animation on the way to the mysterious star cluster whatever thing it was they were going to. I approve of anyone making use of the time they have.
• I think there’s a creepy thing with some little parasite thing on someone’s eye? Michael Fassbender like scrapes some goo from the planet and then puts it in a guy’s drink, and then the guy has a little wormy thing sticking out of his eye? Maybe? If that’s true, although I will address other parts of this plot point in my other post, the idea of a little wormy parasite thing in someone’s eye is thrillingly gross and makes my stomach squirm, so I approve.
• Gnarly alien-baby-parasite c-section is super gross and dramatic, so that’s cool. Effective drama and grossness, which I approve of.

Okay, this is getting a lot harder. I just tried to think of literally anyone else in this movie, because surely there were other people, and the thought process went like this: “So there was the generic space guy with the eye-worm… and OH WAIT, there’s someone or other as the ice bitch, and shit right her dad is like there and old and that’s so dumb arrrghh” Which is not the point of this post.

Wait! Idris Elba is in this movie! That’s a positive! I have a vague memory of him being possibly smarter than everyone else, in a “No, what the fuck, I’m staying here and not going off and doing dumb things like the rest of y’all.” Which, again, may or may not be true, but is going to count anyway because it’s positive if it happened. Also, Stringer Bell.

And, whew, I did it. That’s 356 words’ worth of paragraphs that are actually positive, not even counting the neutral introductory/explanatory/generally rambling paragraphs. My debt is paid!

OH! AND A BONUS! I remembered as I was reading over this post that I have another positive thing to say! I remember liking the beginning (before I realized that everyone was dumb and everything they were doing was dumb and it wasn’t going to go anywhere or do anything but big, dumb things) when they had the cave paintings from around the world with the same three stars, and then being like THIS MEANS SOMETHING. I like any kind of thing where the key is “this thing was here all along! People thousands of years ago saw it and we only just now realized what it means! OH SHIT!” So anyway, that was cool.

Whew.