Prometheus (2012 review)

4 outta 5

There’s a scene in Prometheus, Director Ridley Scott’s kinda-prequel to Alien, that involves a character and a surgical procedure that is riveting.  It recalls the shocking chest-burster scene in Alien and doesn’t quite reach that level but it gets close. That, in a nutshell, is what you would say Prometheus is.  It’s not a classic like Scott’s iconic Alien or James Cameron’s also iconic sequel Aliens but, honestly, not many movies are.  Still, Prometheus is a great movie on its own, one of the better entries into the Alien series (even though there really aren’t any of the series Aliens in it), with a couple of mild problems but it gets by on style and mood.

Scientists Shaw (Naomi Rapace) and Holloway (Logan Marshal-Green) have discovered a star map that will lead them to a point in outer space to an alien species of engineers that created humanity.  Funded by the very rich and very old Weyland (Guy Pearce), they are sent on the ship Prometheus, overseen by the corporate Vickers (Charlize Theron), the quirky android David (Michael Fassbender) and piloted by the surly captain Janek (Idris Elba).  Once they arrive at their destination, they find an ancient, abandoned complex built by the alien creatures but it turns out that there are various creepy monstrous things that may harm their (somewhat lamentably disposable) crew.   

The pacing of the film is wonky compared to how Alien and Aliens have an initiating incident in the middle and then go full-throttle.  Prometheus has a stop-start rhythm that’s missing the constant “something is randomly going to kill the hell outta anybody at any moment” tension that’s a key ingredient of its predecessors.  There was always the creature stalking in any given scene but here they sort of stumble into various smaller threats.  The movie peaks tension-wise before the climax with the aforementioned medical procedure scene coupled with an unexpected arrival at the ship’s door.  Afterwards the movie goes on with bigger set pieces and bigger monsters that provide cool moments, there’s a rather menacing scene of Shaw slowly advancing on a monster and another creature causing havoc simply because it seems to be easily irritable, but it doesn’t reach what went down minutes before. 

There’s also an odd bit where one guy is smoking space-pot and two key characters who could have helped the situation are missing to exercise of their libidos which leads to the movie’s first horror sequence.  Scott shoots it with enough abstract bizarre imagery to unsettle the viewer but the plot mechanics are weak.  Pot smoking and sexual exploits are a fairly standard part of the horror genre, see any Friday the 13^th flick ever, but you’d figure an Alien movie, directed by Ridley Scott no less, would be a bit smarter than that.  There’re a couple of dumb decisions by the genius scientist characters in Prometheus that make the space truckers in Alien and the military jarheads in Aliens seem much smarter.

Rapace is the main character and spends most of the movie reacting to the insanity that explodes around her. Shaw gets a chance to rather explicitly yell at the being she’s been tracking for years that’s also a thinly veiled bit of her yelling about her frustration with a higher power.  It’s a bit on the nose but does spell out the movie’s theme. 

Theron’s has an interesting arc since she starts out as a typical blank-faced company drone but garners sympathy as the movie slowly develops.   Only in the movie briefly, one wonders why they bothered to cast middle-aged Guy Pierce as the elderly Weyland and waste all that time on a semi-okay makeup job.  Elba makes the most out of a small character but most of the other members of the crew are fodder, especially the two idiots that get separated early on.  The best thespian work is Fassbender as the awkwardly inhuman android, disturbingly portraying simulated emotions.  Some of his actions are a bit wonky and illogical, what he does to another character is creepy but doesn’t make a lot of sense, but Fassbender is so good you don’t mind.  Check out the happy-puppy dog smile he gives a creature at an inopportune time, very freaky.

Visually, this is one of the best damn looking movies Scott has ever made which is high praise considering how good looking his flicks are.  Even though a lot of it is dark, which can be a problem for most 3D films, the images are always clear and quite stunning, and the 3D is deep and rich.  Scott takes a moment where a character slowly walks through a holographic visual screen and makes it seem menacing, or just cool visuals like the Engineer’s history playing out in front of the characters, or a fantastically unsettling moment where the scientists inspect the remains of one of the aliens with messy results.

Prometheus doesn’t fall into the prequel dramatic dead end problem because the events of this movie don’t exactly slide into Alien.  There are big ideas about creation in here and some solid scares making it one of the more ambitious blockbusters in awhile.  It’s not Alien but at least it tries to be different.