While I’ll try to avoid much by the way of spoilers, it’s pretty much impossible to discuss Prometheus without going into some small about of detail. If you’d rather see the film totally fresh, come back later.
Ridley Scott produced two of the great sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s, Alien and Blade Runner, but he hasn’t revisted the genre since then. When it was announced that he would be revisiting the world he first created in Alien, it was greeted with a fair amount of scepticism. Would he be able to recapture what made those early films so special, and to build on them in a meaningful way? Let’s find out.
Prometheus has two preoccupations. The first is telling a grand, 2001-esque tale about the origins of mankind, artificial intelligence, and what happens when we play fast and loose with either. The other is tying all this to the Alien films (well, some of them – Prometheus handily tramples all over the continuity of the Alien Vs. Predator films) – something that happens sporadically.
The gang were not the most observant.
Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover a series of apparently unconnected cave paintings that show humans worshipping giant figures, all pointing towards the same star system. Assuming this is an invitation from these creatures, they convince the dying Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) to fund an expedition that will hopefully uncover the origins of life on Earth.
Overseen by icy company representative Vickers (Charlize Theron) and android David (Michael Fassbender), plus a crew of scientists, mercenaries and pilots, they quickly come across a pyramid that seems to hold the answers they seek. Naturally, not all goes well, and the crew quickly find themselves in scared, confused, and far from the answers they hoped to find.
From the first moment, Prometheus is a handsome production. It eschews the cramped corridors of Alien in favour of sweeping vistas, sprawling ruins, and the bright, sterile environment of the Prometheus itself. As well as being beautifully shot, the design is astonishing. The design of the technology looks brand new, and the alien structures and creatures have just enough of an echo of the original Giger-led designs to shadow Alien.
The cast are broadly strong, with varying amounts of screentime. Lead Noomi Rapace is decent but by no means outstanding as a wide-eyed scientist (mercifully, Shaw is no Ripley analogue), but Michael Fassbender gets the standout role as David, the ship’s android. David’s total lack of desire to be human, his borderline contempt for them, and his barely-concealed glee in attempting to hide this is probably the best thing about the film. A mass of gentle tics and wry (often missed) humour, he’s very different to androids from the Alien films, and all the better for it.
The Prometheus doesn't have the cramped corridors and flickering lights of the Nostromo. Tiny pants and screaming: still around.
Sadly, the beauty and cast are thrown at a frequently muddled, unsatisfying script. There’s nothing wrong with ambiguity – Scott’s own Blade Runner is categorically proof of that – but Prometheus is too muddled, too full of variations on the same themes vying for attention to provide a satisfying framework for any potential ambiguity to hang from. In the end, we understand too little to spark the debate a film like this needs.
Ultimately, the themes Scott is playing with here could likely have been better addressed in a film totally divorced from the Alien universe – the film walks a fine and ultimately unsatisfying line between trying for something new and nodding respectfully at its B-movie forebear. While it’s categorically not a bad film, neither strand feels fully satisfying.
Bottom Line
A semi-successful return to sci-fi for Ridley Scott, Prometheus is slickly-produced, well-cast, but ultimately muddled and incomplete-seeming. It won't diminish your appreciation of Alien, but it's unlikely to improve it either.
You’ve summed it up perfectly, Dave. Prometheus is a great sci-fi, admittedly I gave it 4/5 (but Alien and Aliens are astronomically good in my books) but it does leave you a little unsatisfied.
One has to ask if co-writer Damon Lindeloff has most of the blame or not….
June 5, 2012 at 21:05 OneMetal Team Member
Mostly agree with this, the script is the biggest problem, the sheer beauty of some of the designs is the biggest strength. I found Noomi Rapace to be pretty terrible, her ‘dealing with a wound’ acting suggested occasional trapped wind rather than recent surgery and most of the cast (Fassbender aside) seem to have been told to act as if they’ve just taken a mild sedative. Totally agree it would have been better as a stand alone sci-fi without the needless Alien references that add little to the plot. It is very pretty though.
June 6, 2012 at 15:10 OneMetal Team Member
On reflection (and I already left it 2 days before I wrote this), I think I was far too kind to this movie. While there were obviously some strong elements (Fassbender, Elba, Theron to an extent), what I mistook for an attempt to be mysterious would seem to actually be massive plot holes, and the more I consider them the more annoying they become.
Still, it made me think.
June 9, 2012 at 21:54
I think you were pretty much on the money, Dave.
The only thing I would contest would be your suggestion that Theron is decent. Her Star Wars reveal made me cringe unbearably, and I’m amazed that anyone watching the film would consider that a plot twist because surely we all guessed it from the first time she appeared on screen. A sin of the script more than the actor, perhaps. Play the ball and not the man, etc.
June 10, 2012 at 11:25
Yeah, that line was so exceptionally clumsy. It was perfectly clear from her interactions with David earlier that she viewed him as a rival for Weyland’s affection – that was the stuff that I thought was well-handled. It was pretty much the only underplayed ambiguity in the film that worked.
June 11, 2012 at 08:31