Snippitts of Illusions

Prometheus

Ridley Scott returns to his roots in the film Prometheus. Alien was Mr. Scott's second feature film and portrays the mining ship Nostromos' last days after answering a distress beacon and taking aboard an alien life form that terrorizes the crew until the last survivor Ripley is able to escape. Prometheus returns to that future, though not quite, set 30 years before Alien, Prometheus sets off to answer the question who made humanity and just what was the iconic space jockey.

Prometheus starts with a bizarre scene where a white/grayish human like individual drinks a black liquid from a fancy cup and then disintegrates  Falling down into a pool in a waterfall his massive DNA begins to recombine and reform creating a new life form. Fast forward to the year 2089 two archeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover a carving inside a cave on the Isle of Sky depicting a giant pointing to a cluster of scars. Fast forward to 2093 we see the android David, who's been active and monitoring the humans aboard the spaceship Prometheus for the last 2 1/2 years until their arrival to the planet designated LV-233. It's here they believe the giant in the carvings was pointing, and it's here they hope to find answers.

The venture is funded by the Weyland corporation and Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce). A representative from the company, Meredith Vickers, is aboard to make sure the scientist and free-booters don't ruin any potential profits that might come from this expedition.

The ship, piloted by Janek (Idris Elba) is put down on the planet near what looks to be an artificial structure. A team is assemble and is soon exploring the monolith. If all this seems familiar it's because it is. It's something that many films have done: the exploration of an ancient ruin/ship/facility and Prometheus isn't particularly note-worthy on it's handling of the genre cliche. The exploration team goes in, discovers tunnels that will replay moments in the last residents history (something the film never fully explains) as well as a large chamber filled with canisters and a massive stone head  and a strange mural on the cieling. In this chamber there's the remains of one of the giant alien creatures that built this facility decapitated. They bring the head back to the ship for testing. During all this exploration two of the company Fifield the geologist (Sean Harris) and Milburn the biologist (Rafe Spall) get lost and are unable to return to the ship when a storm rolls in that makes being outside lethal. (Not of that is particullarly surprising).

The film plays out as you would expect, David the android "turns" on the humans, using Charlie to experiment with the black liquid in the canister who then become sick and is killed by Vickers. He also goes off on his own while a rescue party is sent for Fifield and Milburn, who were killed by an alien life form in the ruin, and discovers the intact remains of a ship and one of the "Engineers" that apparently share an exact DNA match with humans. Weyland is revealed to be on the ship and only wants to meet the aliens so that they can make him immortal. When that meeting happens the alien kills everybody but Elizabeth who manages to escape, despite have had a massive medical procedure done just 12 hours earlier to remove what appears to have been an squid from her abdomen which was the result of having sex with the infected Holloway just a day earlier. The formula continues David reveals that the Engineer is likely headed towards earth. Elizabeth convinces Janek to sacrifice himself and the ship to take out the alien ship. Janek and his remaining crew ram the escaping alien ship destroying the Prometheus in the process. Elizabeth surviving all of this is attacked by the Engineer and her (now giant) alien baby aboard the "life boat" of the ship (which was left for Vickers who's crushed by the resulting crash of the alien ship and the Prometheus). Elizabeth survives, goes to gather up the remains of David and seek out other ships. The end of the film shows a ship leaving, presumably with David and Elizabeth on board.

If it seems like I'm tired of this film, that's not quite true. It's just this movie with this director had a lot to live up too. Alien is still, as I said above, an amazing movie, a true horror classic. Prometheus doesn't try and sell itself as a straight horror film, but it does try and tie itself into that mindset of Alien. Watching the T.V. promos and trailers indicate at least that much. On top of it the philosophical questions it persues and answers in the film are not particularly engaging. Of course the Engineers are going to be result of humanity. I knew that just from the trailers. I'm more interested in why the Engineers created humanity and why they seek to destroy it more over how they are involved with the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. Scott doesn't answer those questions. He leaves them open for a sequel and it appears that it's likely to happen.

If all that above echoes what many other reviewers have said about this film, sadly it's true. It is predictable, it's formulaic, it doesn't try to buck anything or create new ground. Ridley Scott is coming back to a genre he helped create and not bringing anything new to the table. I think that's what we the film-goers were expecting. Were craving. Alien is such a fantastic film. It's intense. There's a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia in that film that has been hard to duplicate since then and very few movies that fall into this style of sci-fi horror are able to pull it off as well as Alien did. Is it unfair to compare Prometheus to Alien? I don't think so. Not when it's the same director in the same vein as that film. That's why people are disappointed I think.

Now is the film terrible? Not at all. In fact despite some disappointment I actually really like the movie and I'm likely to pick it up for my collection. It's not a cinematic tour-de-force, but it's a gorgeous movie and worth watching, and quite frankly I hope they do make a sequel. It's a universe I'd love to visit again and again. So while the movie was a bit of a let down and somewhat formulaic, if you love science fiction, and more importantly if you love beautiful science fiction you owe it too yourself to at least give it a view.

Labels: Movie Reviews, Ridley Scott

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 8:08 PM