An Open Letter To Damon Lindelof

Dear Damon,

With Prometheus opening in North American theaters today I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you for returning to television. Because while I've never actually sat through even a single episode of your television output - and therefore have no opinion on Lost's finale or anything at all to do with Crossing Jordan or Nash Bridges - two films into your fledgling feature writing career it's become abundantly clear that you're just Not Very Good at this whole movie thing.

Can we be honest? Let's be honest. Cowboys & Aliens was a clunker, an unwieldy beast that somehow failed to take advantage of a fabulously fertile premise and a visually gifted director. And Prometheus? 'Bad' is too kind a word for your script on this enormous disappointment. Prometheus is an embarrassment and given your recent comments to The Hollywood Reporter that any proposed sequel "might benefit from a fresh voice or a fresh take or a fresh thought", I think you know it. Any hopes this film has of succeeding have everything to do with Ridley Scott's visual skills and audience nostalgia for Alien and nothing at all with your script.

I know that the Lost apologists will insist that any weaknesses will be due to studio or director interference but, come on ... at what point of his long career has Scott ever spared more than a passing glance for his stories? Everybody knows that about him and as the writer hired to bring things home it was on you to make sure this thing held together on a narrative level, which it most certainly does not.

Shall we recount the reasons why? The film's failings? The litany of bizarre decisions made purely to push the film to the next set piece regardless of whether they make any sense? The complete failure to develop any of the characters to any satisfying degree? The total lack of understanding that making a movie about supposedly Big Ideas involves actually having some Big Ideas rather than simply having your characters say "I'm chasing the Big Idea"? I'll refrain from spouting spoilers here out of respect for those who have not yet seen the film but the emperor is naked here, Damon, and that means you've been caught in public with your pants down.

So, thanks. Thanks for recognizing that you're no Dan O'Bannon and for taking your act away from the big screen. Here's hoping I can stomach Star Trek 2 a little better than this mess ...