Prospect is a 2018 feature length adaptation of the a 2014 short film of the same title and concerns an adolescent Cee, her father Damon, prospecting for valuable biological gems on a toxic planet and the bandit they encounter, Ezra, played by Pedro pascal.

Having learned that this is a feature-length version of a much shorter work goes a very long way in explaining the film’s defects.

Deus ex Machina, which literally means the gods from the machines, is the writing sin of having spontaneous external events resolve the characters troubles, usually saving their lives, that arise from no action, pre-planning, or establishment. The gods intervene and force the happy ending. Prospect is actually an example of the opposite of that, perhaps you might call it Demons ex Machina. Throughout the run time of the film Cee encounters new and wildly unexpected troubles that have no rational set-up beforehand but exist solely to create conflict where there wouldn’t be otherwise. Just as resolutions must arise naturally from the characters, their natures, and their talents, so much the obstacles that hinder their progress and test them. In Role Playing Games there is the concept of ‘the wandering monster’ an encounter with a hostile force that is unconnected the characters’ central storyline. An attack by trolls in the middle of the night while camping. These encounters add excitement and deplete the players’ resources for later pre-plotted fights and make a good element to well-balanced games but they make a poor substituted for a well-crafted narrative and that is exactly what Prospect feels like, a series of random encounters and then a final boss fight, decent gaming but poor story telling.

Setting aside the random nature of the troubles Cee encounters the movie is decent. The actors are all good, the production values look great, with a very limited budget the filmmakers managed to craft a movie that doesn’t look limited. The dialog at times is very reminiscent of Firefly with a pseudo-western cadence but delightfully not all the characters speak in that manner creating a sense of people from very different backgrounds.

While flawed I did not regret the time spent watching Prospectand for others, I have no doubts it will work far better.

Prospect is currently streaming on Netflix.