Prometheus

I find myself at a constant struggle with myself when I think back on Prometheus. On one hand, this is a beautiful looking and technically well done film. On the other, I wonder if it's not a little bit too pretty for a thriller. The movie lacks a certain claustrophobic sense of dread that would have really helped raise the tension. I was admiring the visuals, but never found myself feeling anything while I was looking at them. On that same note, the movie is well-acted, and has a great cast. However, does that even matter when there's not a single interesting character in Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts' clunky script?

This private war continued throughout pretty much all of the film's running time. I would find something to admire, but at the same time, find something else that would lessen that admiration. In Ridley Scott's long-planned prequel to his 1979 film, Alien, we get a lot of intriguing ideas that don't quite pan out, or aren't as smart as the movie seems to think it is. We also get a lot of undeveloped characters, a total lack of suspense, and the general sense that everyone who enters the movie is not a person, but merely a pawn controlled by the screenwriters in order to move the script forward. And yet, I must admit, I was never bored while watching the film. I was kind of intrigued by the first part of the movie, but as it went along, and the pieces of the plot started to fall into place, I started to realize that there was less to this film than initially promised.

Set in the far-off future, archeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, tackling her first Hollywood lead role with energy) and her scientist boyfriend Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered what they believe to be a series of star maps left behind by alien gods, believed to have originated human life. All of the maps seem to point to the same location far off in the galaxy, leading them to believe that the location could lead to the answers of where humanity originally came from. They head for that far-off location on the spaceship Prometheus, led by Captain Janek (Idris Elba), and a corporate rep funding the mission, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron, who after Snow White and the Huntsman and now this, is easily earning the title of official "Ice Queen of Summer".) There's also an android on board named David (Michael Fassbender), who has questionable motives, a common theme in a lot of the Alien movies. The rest of the crew is made up of underdeveloped cannon fodder who pretty much exist to scream when the gory special effects kick in during the second half.

The crew is placed in a deep slumber during the two years it takes to reach the distant planet the star maps point to, and when they finally awaken, they find they have arrived. They set foot on the planet, and quickly discover what seems to be an old temple of some sort filled with strange creatures, and a mysterious black ooze-like substance that they take back to the ship to study. Eventually, ominous signs begin to rear their ugly heads, which the crew largely ignores until it is far too late. Eventually, Elizabeth begins to realize that maybe tampering with ancient alien forces they don't understand wasn't probably the hottest of ideas, especially when the people around her start dying. We get a lot of questions about where humanity's origins developed, most with disappointing answers, or no answers at all until the inevitable sequel. Oh, and Guy Pierce shows up for some reason in a cameo as a wealthy old man who initially funded the expedition. Thanks to the terrible make up job (his face looks far too blobby and puffy to be natural), we don't feel like we're watching an actual person, and are constantly telling ourselves we're looking at an actor under way too much make up.

Prometheus starts as an intriguing meditation of life's origins, and devolves into a sub-par creature feature by the time it's over. The first half is fairly quiet, and almost seems to be trying to distance itself from the earlier movies in the Alien franchise. Instead of slick black monsters with acid dripping from their jowls, or creatures that burst out of your chest, we get a search for a specific alien race known as an "engineer", that is believed to have visited Earth centuries ago, and left behind the recently uncovered star maps. The movie toys with the idea that humanity was begun due to these visitors, rather than a heavenly power. This being a summer blockbuster, it obviously can't go too deep into philosophical arguments about creation, but what's there is quite fascinating, and sure to create some debate amongst the audience.

Slowly but surely, the story begins to dip into darker territory. There's the ship's android, David, who seems to have malicious intent for his human crew. Oddly enough, nobody seems quite as concerned as they should be when David starts acting in his own interest, and starts giving lingering, evil glares at everybody. And then, we start to get a sense that maybe these "engineers" were not as friendly as initially believed. We get some strange creatures, we get some goopy blood and gore, and we get a rather uncomfortable scene where one the crew members is forced to perform surgery on themselves, in order to remove something that may be growing inside of them. (This scene is the closest the movie gets to creating any genuine tension and fear.) It's at this point we realize that after 33 years since directing the first movie, Ridley Scott doesn't really have much new to show us, and is going to be relying on a lot of old tricks.

I was expecting at least some fresh new ideas, but Prometheus really does end up being more of the same in a new coat of shiny 2012 paint. It's never boring or tiresome, but it does become familiar, especially when the movie starts relying on tired jump scares, and unexplained motivations for the characters, and even the monsters themselves when you get right down to it. The script is filled with half-baked ideas, characters who barely reach two dimensions, and an overall sense that everybody is working in accordance to the plot. Everybody's actions can basically be summed up as "if they didn't do this, there wouldn't be a movie". It gets frustrating after a while, especially since the performances are uniformly very good. Everybody's at the top of their game here (especially Rapace, who makes for a strong and sympathetic heroine, and Fassbender, who brings the right unearthly quality to his performance as the android), but the script does them no favors.

At the very least, the movie tries to distract us from its faults by being an outstanding physical production. The costumes, the alien world itself, the effects, and the ships are all beautiful, and designed with a great attention to detail. I mentioned earlier that this beautiful production design kind of removes the thrill factor, and it does. It's hard to be scared of what could possibly be lurking in the shadows when you're constantly marveling over the beautiful sets. But, I'm certainly glad the effort was made, as it's the one area where Prometheus truly impresses. This is obviously a style over substance film, and for some people, that will be enough. All I can say is if as much time went into the script as it did the sets and effects, we'd be looking at a film for the ages here.

This is a movie that promises and hints at big ideas, but seems smaller the more you think back on it. Sure, there are a lot of questions that it asks (mainly so that it can inspire more Alien movies), but in the end, it resembles a puzzle that's just not worth the time to solve. In returning to expand the ideas in one of his past movies, Ridley Scott may have ended up lessening the impact of the original, and probably should have left well enough alone.

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