Prometheus, 2012.
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris and Rafe Spall.
SYNOPSIS:
During their search for clues to the origins of mankind, a team of explorers discover a threat that could lead to humanity’s extinction.
2012 appears to the year of ‘hyped’ movies. What began with The Avengers last month will go on to The Amazing Spider-Man and end with the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. But before those two, we have Ridley Scott’s return to the genre he perfected in his ‘prequel-but-not-a-prequel-but-sort-of-is’ to Alien, Prometheus. Avengers met the hype it created and I imagine Dark Knight Rises will too, but how does Prometheus fare?
Before we talk about the film itself, let’s address the prequel talk first. The film began life as a prequel to Alien before Scott came out and told us that it is set within the same universe but will not directly link to his 1979 classic. Having now watched the film, I can say that his claim is mostly the case – however there are certain nods to Alien and even the beginnings of the Alien back story (if you’ve seen the movie you will know “that scene” I am talking about).
The film looks stunning and a lot of work has been put into the design and feel. Prometheus is a very dark movie which really added to the atmosphere and tension. However I would worry about how the film would handle the 20% light loss caused by 3D. Having only seen it in good ol’ fashioned 2D, I can say that it looks very impressive and aside from some dodgy CGI work towards the end of the movie, it deserves a lot of credit.
As predicted by just about everyone, Michael Fassbender is stunning in his role of David the robot – an incorrect term which was pointed out by our own Oli Davis in his review (quick lesson – Mechagodzilla is a robot, RoboCop is a cyborg, David is an android). His performance really carries the film along and despite his character not being allowed to show a broad range of emotions, he manages to convey every single one of his thoughts and feelings. From the moment he enters the movie he carries a wonderful sense of impending doom and he also plays a pivotal role in the over-arching themes of playing God and ‘meeting your maker’. He really is the best thing about the whole movie.
However, the film does carry a lot of faults. A lot.
The first hour of the movie is very good and it really carries itself well. It’s well paced and timed and the discovery and tension when they get to the destination is drawn out just enough to prove what a master of filmmaking Ridley Scott can be. But by the time the second hour rolls around, the whole thing falls apart. Suddenly all of that tension and pacing is lost amongst scenes of varying degrees of pointlessness before the whole movie ends up looking like the nonsensical ramblings of a bad science-fiction writer who feels he has to put every one of his ideas into his first book.
The pacing and timing of the second hour are horrendous and the film almost becomes a chore to get through. Ideas start in one scene then end in the following sequence without as much as a real conclusion. It will come as no surprise that writer Damon Lindelof came from the Lost writers pool and it seems as though he has brought all of the bad habits that made that show a convoluted mess with him into this production. Questions are asked and then never really answered and you often find yourself wondering what the hell is going on and why should I care?
As mentioned previously, Fassbender is awesome and Charlize Theron is quite good as the evil Meredith Vickers, but everyone else pulls out pretty lame performances. Noomi Rapace tries her best but her character is given such awful dialogue that she really struggles to juggle the emotion she should be carrying while pulling off the English accent. Logan Marshall-Green looks like he wishes he was Tom Hardy and Guy Pearce (who has been the shining star of the viral campaigns) is criminally underused. Every other member of the 17 strong crew are just there for cannon fodder and may as well be decked out in red shirts for all of their usefulness.
Prometheus is a mess of a movie that feels like it wants to be its own franchise but can’t get away from its Alien overheads. The creature designs look amateurish but feel like they want to be part of Giger’s genius creations and the less said about the ‘Kraken Vagina’ or “that” final scene the better. It almost feels like Ridley Scott wanted to make a brand new science fiction universe but he had the 20th Century Fox execs breathing down his neck with, “can you put more Alien stuff in please?” And having seen the difficulties David Fincher had on Alien3, this could well be the case.
Prometheus is full of problems. The script is bad, the story is fragmented and badly put together, the acting (for the most part) is lame, the pacing is beyond awful and while the film looks good, it’s hardly original. It tries to raise good theological questions about life and creators but these themes were handled so much better in Scott’s Blade Runner 30 years ago. Bottom line, Prometheus has not lived up to the hype it has given itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
Originally published June 3, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
