The other night we watched the 2018 science fiction movie Prospect, made by the highly tasteful and perceptive people at DUST Studio. It was excellent. More importantly, it was excellent science fiction.
The story concerns a young woman named Cee and her father, a pair of struggling prospectors hunting for weird biological gems on an alien moon with a toxic atmosphere. They're looking for a big score which will let them escape their hardscrabble existence.
The pair run across an even more hardscrabble duo, Ezra and his nameless flunky. After a series of betrayals and counter-betrayals, Cee's father and Ezra's sidekick are dead, Ezra's got a bullet in his arm, and Cee's got him at gunpoint.
Cee and Ezra make their way through the deadly forest to the site of the mother lode of gems, controlled by a squad of mercenaries. The mercs need someone who knows how to extract the gems without ruining them, while Cee and Ezra need a lift off the moon. And then . . .
The two main characters carry the movie. Sophie Thatcher, who plays Cee, is absolutely phenomenal — simultaneously naive and tough, and utterly believable throughout the movie. Pedro Pascal, as Ezra, is a great "Long John Silver" figure, trying to manipulate Cee even as the two of them come to respect and rely on each other.
And as I said, it's good science fiction. Though the film was made in the Pacific Northwest, the environment is obviously hostile to humans. They must wear protective suits and breathe through filters. This gives the story urgency: Cee (and Ezra) must get off the moon. They can't carve out a little Robinson Crusoe homestead in the forest. The main MacGuffin, the gems, is not something one can simply dig up with a shovel — which is why the mercenaries need Cee and Ezra to extract them. The movie couldn't work as a tale of gold miners in the Old West. There's also an impressive amount of casual background worldbuilding, which I loved. Lots of showing without explaining; the level of detail that made the original Star Wars and Blade Runner feel so rich. Fans of Firefly (or the Traveller roleplaying game) will like the gritty, blue-collar feel of the characters' lives.
Highly recommended.
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