Prometheus review

[MrCreeper187]

Way back in 1979, Ridley Scott turned the science-fiction genre on its head, relocating the haunted house movie to a spaceship and in the process creating one of the most terrifying creature features ever committed to celluloid.

The original Alien was a pretty straightforward horror film in which man does battle with nature’s most lethal predator, but it also left several questions hanging in the air, none more tantalising than the identity of the so-called ‘space jockey’ – a giant with an elephantine face and an enigmatic hole in his chest.

More than 30 years on, Scott has decided to solve that mystery in Prometheus, revisiting the genre which made him famous to tell a grandiose tale that asks even bigger questions regarding who we are and where we came from.

Following a stunning prologue that hints at the philosophical ambition to come, proceedings commence properly on the Isle of Skye in 2089, when scientist-couple Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover a 35,000-year-old painting on a cave wall.

Depicting men worshiping giant beings who in turn are pointing to the stars, the same image has apparently been found in countless cultures throughout the centuries, and the deeply religious Shaw immediately interprets it as an invitation to meet her makers.

Cut to two years later, and the mysterious Weyland corporation has bankrolled a journey to said stars on the good ship Prometheus, the 17-strong crew winging their way to LV-223 in an effort to make first contact with these alien creatures, whom Shaw has by now christened ‘engineers’.

She and Holloway both make the journey, but they are in the employ of Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the cold, calm and collected Weyland representative whose frosty exterior causes her to be mistaken for a robot by one of her crew.

But that position is taken up by synthetic human David (Michael Fassbender), the ship’s bleach-blonde man-servant charged with the task of looking after the humans while they slumber in hyper-sleep, but whose agenda becomes more ambiguous when they wake up.

The rest of the team is peopled by a rag-tag team of genre stereotypes that includes a grumpy geologist who only wants to interact with plants and a trigger-happy security expert with a very big gun. But whereas the characters in the original Alien felt like they actually lived on the Nostromo, the Prometheus crew is given little time to convince the audience that they are anything other than broad caricatures; the kind of one-dimensional cannon fodder that would more likely be found wearing red shirts in a Star Trek movie than winning our sympathies in more serious fare.

Unaware of what awaits them however, the crew excitedly embark on an expedition to the planet’s surface, ostensibly to investigate several huge structures that appear to have been made by something other than nature.

But predictably there’s more to their mission than meets the eye, with Prometheus soon following the pattern of its predecessor; the crew encountering alien artefacts, making a form of extra-terrestrial contact, returning to their ship with a mysterious cargo, and all hell slowly but surely breaking loose.

Yet this isn’t the out-and-out horror of the 1979 original, but rather something more cerebral. Granted there are alien creatures, though none that can compete with H.R. Giger’s remarkable monster designs from the original. The film also features a pair of truly terrifying sequences, one revolving around a couple of the expendables on the surface, another a repulsive piece of body horror that harks back to the franchise’s most famous scene.

But Scott and screenwriters Damon Lindelhof and John Spaihts are more concerned with contemplating who these engineers are and what their existence means to mankind than actually showing them in action. Yet while the questions they ask early on in proceedings are intriguing, the great majority of them either fall by the wayside or aren’t satisfactorily answered.

Worse still, the film is clumsy and heavy-handed when dealing with the twin-themes of faith and religion, the screenplay threatening to collapse under the weights it its own lofty theological ambitions in the final act.

Scott is on steadier ground when it comes to the visuals however, with Prometheus a sumptuous feast for the eyes, no more so than when the science team is exploring the stunning alien vistas of LV-223.

It’s the actors who bring this world to life however, and while the aforementioned supporting characters struggle to be noticed (aside from Idris Elbas’s hilariously sardonic ship’s captain) the three main players serve the material well.

Charlize Theron is note-perfect as the tricky Vickers, keeping her crew and as a by-product the audience on their toes as her intentions become clearer and that icy exterior begins to crack.

 

 

Noomi Rapace gives her a run for her money as Shaw however, the religious ying to Vicker’s more pragmatic yang, and as the carnage escalates, she effortlessly makes the transition from sensitive scientist to resolute (and somewhat Ripley-esque) warrior.

But as ever these days, it’s Michael Fassbender who steals the show, delivering a marvellously understated and nuanced performance as David. The robot’s attempts at humour provide many of the film’s funniest moments, while his lack of empathy and emotion contribute some of the darkest, with Prometheus truly taking flight whenever he is onscreen.

Fassbender’s performance elevates what is an already entertaining sci-fi, but unfortunately proceedings never quite hit the dizzy heights of Alien, or its equally brilliant sequel Aliens, lacking the claustrophobic tension of the former, and the all-out assault-on-the-senses of the latter.

It certainly has more narrative ambition, and a hugely increased budget means that the scope is bigger and the effects better. But this prequel – and make no mistake, the events of Prometheus are a precursor to Alien – lacks the atmosphere and vitality of the 1979 film, with proceedings feeling strangely flat and lifeless for long periods.

The climax is open-ended – including a coda that feels like it was tacked on simply to appease the fans – but one wonders if it would be wise for Scott to continue to mine this franchise for material. He’s already made a great Alien film, and now crafted a very good one in that same universe – the law of diminishing returns suggest that he should call time on this series and quit while he’s very much ahead.

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and considers Alien to be the third greatest horror film of all-time. You can follow him on both Twitter and MyIgn.

 

SRy for small words cuz no space -.-