My Thoughts on: Prospect (2018)

Ever since I’d seen the first trailer for Prospect, I’d been excited to see this movie, mostly because it was science fiction, but also because it looked like good science fiction. There was the added benefit of having Pedro Pascal (best known to me as Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones) as part of the cast. I’d hoped to see this movie months ago, but it never screened on any theaters near me, and obtaining a copy to review proved…difficult. But I was finally able to get my hands on a copy this past week and sat down to watch it yesterday.

What a disappointment. I barely made it halfway through the film before I had to turn it off. That in itself is saying something, since I almost never turn a movie off in the middle. Now it’s entirely possible that I might be able to watch this film all the way through in the future and be able to appreciate details that bugged me, but not right now.

Prospect isn’t all bad, don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed the look of the alien moon. It’s strange to see such a lush environment that is actually toxic if you breathe the air in (though now that I think about it, the same scenario exists in Avatar). The film has this little detail I really enjoyed where, as the characters are walking through the alien forest, you can see these little particles floating in the air. My brain interpreted this as a sign of the moon’s toxicity.

I also liked the look of the drop ship that brings the main characters to the planet. Just looking at it was enough to make me question what year/century this was all occurring in. Everyone looks human enough, but if you look closely, the instruments are labeled in a strange language that isn’t English (even the main character writes in a language that isn’t English). So it made me wonder, does Prospect take place in a future so distant that English has ceased to be used as a language? It’s an interesting detail that I liked.

Now to talk about what I didn’t like, and that’s the dialogue. The reason I had to turn the film off is the dialogue was driving me crazy. Considering this is a science fiction film, the dialogue, especially from Pascal’s character Ezra, just felt all wrong to me. It didn’t fit. I can enjoy almost every aspect of a film, but is the dialogue is wrong, it just ruins the film for me.

While I enjoyed a few parts of Prospect, I was bitterly disappointed overall by the portion of the film I was able to watch. I couldn’t really get into the story because of the dialogue, which threw everything else off for me. Let me know what you think about Prospect in the comments below and have a great day!