by Brett Parker
You really have to hand it to Ridley Scott here, for the old pro figured out how to sell a pointless Hollywood remake to an audience usually weary of such an enterprise. With Prometheus, he has basically rehashed his old Alien premise into a sleek new exterior using old science and space philosophies to distract us from the basic genre servings at hand. Gussying up an old car and turning it into a shiny new Rolls Royce is a tricky thing to pull off in Hollywood, usually because we tend to notice that the engine under the hood has some rust and wear. A lot of secrecy surrounded the production of this film, and Scott was clearly hoping that all the talk of whether or not Prometheus was or wasn’t a direct prequel to Alien would distract from the fact that the real surprise with this new film is that it can’t come close to being as pulse-pounding or as horrifying as Alien to save its life.
The film follows the crew of an epic spaceship named Prometheus as it journeys far into space towards the moon of an alien planet. A duo of scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), have discovered a star map found in the drawings of ancient and unconnected civilizations that may or may not be an invitation from humankind’s “makers” or “engineers” to find out the truth about their beginnings. Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), the wealthy tycoon of a vast corporation, is also interested in finding out the answers to such mysteries and funds an elaborate space expedition to follow this map and see if anything is at the other end. With a team full of scientists under the command of Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and the watchful eye of Weyland’s representative, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the crew heads to a rocky and desert-like alien land to see if anything profound is lurking beneath the surface.
What they stumble across is a seemingly-ancient pyramid hidden below the moon’s surface which suggests traces of an alien civilization. What is especially curious about the pyramid is how one of its monuments resembles a giant humanoid head and how gooey liquids found within hold traces of human DNA. But as the scientists go about their research, it becomes quickly clear that hostile forces begin stalking them in this strange new world. Alien lifeforms begin infecting certain crew members and viciously attacking others. Chaos quickly erupts aboard the ship and the scientists frantically realize that in order to survive, they must hurry to find answers from the alien civilization they’ve been studying. But as they get closer to discovering the truth, things turn out to be bleaker than they expected.
What’s most frustrating about Prometheus is that it presents us with deep questions about creation and existence but has no idea what they’re good for. The script isn’t terribly provocative with its ideas and doesn’t challenge traditional boundaries of science fiction. Scott was perhaps relying on ambiguity, and maybe perhaps his trademark cynicism, to hide the fact that he doesn’t really hold any interesting answers to these big questions. The film sustains suspense with the prospect of the characters “meeting their Makers,” but once we finally get up close and personal with our Makers, they have nothing to say and possess the deranged hostility of a werewolf. Their grand scheme for mankind is only hinted at by the characters, and it not only seems ridiculously excessive but owes more to sci-fi dopiness then to deep philosophical musings. The deep revelation here, so far as I can tell, is that Prometheus himself would’ve bitterly regretted his decision to give mankind fire and would’ve passionately kicked our asses out of spite.
What’s befuddling to me is that a film that proclaims to be a new-age Alien, made by the very filmmaker who made Alien in the first place, is absolutely nowhere near as scary as the earlier film. What’s stranger is that it doesn’t even appear to try. Alien is routinely featured on lists of the Scariest Movies Ever Made and is indeed a master-class in nail-biting suspense, jolting scares, and ominous dread. Even if Scott copped to copying the beats and rhythms of Alien’s horror bit by bit, it would still hold a lot more entertainment value than what we’re given, especially for unsuspecting audiences that haven’t seen the original. But Scott is clearly kidding himself that the script’s vapid philosophical musings are too important to succumb to the genre’s thrills. The moments that are considered “scares” by default are clumsy, simple-minded, and surprisingly flatfooted.
Even the lesser Alien sequels were keenly aware that creature-feature ickiness was half this enterprise’s meal ticket. If nothing else, ticket buyers could expect some delicious alien gross-outs to deliver some grins. Prometheus is considerably light in that area as well. Considering how the original film’s moneyshot scene of a baby alien bursting through a guys’ stomach was just the tip of the iceberg, you do feel considerably short-changed here. While the Makers themselves have an alluringly-pale humanoid look, the hostile aliens look like creature-design hand-me-downs that support Tim Burton’s theory of how movie monsters today are too complicated-looking. These alien baddies come in small spurts and aren’t nearly as viciously terrifying as the treasured space jockeys from the original Alien.
If there’s one supreme moment that does rekindle some of that old Alien magic, its one in which Elizabeth must race against the clock to remove an alien fetus trapped inside her body. The graphically-surgical way in which Elizabeth cuts into herself and the gooey monstrosity she yanks out from her insides in the only moment that is able to combine the original film’s blend of intensified suspense and stomach-turning nausea. The scene also highlights Rapace’s expert combination of vulnerability and resilience she displayed so wonderfully in Sweden’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. If she is indeed representing a new-age Sigourney Weaver, then she makes for a damn fine candidate.
Of course Rapace’s magnetism is the tip-off to the true interest with Prometheus: the endlessly-fascinating inner-motives of the layered characters and the expert way their handled by the marvelous cast. The best character, and the best reason to see this film, is David, a cold and calculating human-like android played with creative precision by the dynamite Michael Fassbender. An expertly-advanced robot with undercurrents of shady motives, Fassbender delivers this soulfully-challenged mannequin as a mix of both Hal 9000 and Lawrence of Arabia. It says something that his daily routine of maintaining the spaceship while his human counterparts sleep in hibernation is more interesting than any alien attack in this movie. Guy Pearce effectively brings a level-headed clarity to the magnificent egotism of the trillionare who funded this epic space mission, although part of you wonders why Scott didn’t find an older actor to play the part, considering his eventual nature. Charlize Theron holds a sinister beauty as the corporate overseer of the mission, although its worth noting that her recent efforts to portray cold-hearted nasties (with this film and Snow White and The Huntsman) holds nothing on the one she dished out in Young Adult. And Idris Elba, that great masculine smoothie, is allowed some irreverent fun as the ship’s captain. Whether he’s trading sexual quips with Theron or showing concealed concern around Rapace, Elba shows us he could play Han Solo in his sleep.
Whatever success Prometheus does, in fact, achieve is due mostly to Ridley Scott’s expert evocation of grand, detailed environments. As with Gladiator and Blade Runner, Prometheus is an epic world of grand sights, but with a lived-in quality that brings a startling realism to an excessive world. The vastly minute details of the spaceship wonderfully convinces you that its a fully-functional ship while the pyramid ship from the Makers evokes a convincing ancient quality about it. The film’s various hologram displays have a graphic beauty about them, none more powerful than in the scene where David is able to visualize the Makers’ mapping systems in the hull of their ship. Yet Scott isn’t just a remarkable window decorator but is unique in the way he conveys how human values buried in worlds of dread, cynical motives, and imminent hostility have ways of jolting to the surface. He tries to bring sincerity to those themes here, but the film’s lack of strong ideological footing undermines his trademark ideals.
Scott doesn’t falter when it comes to alluring character bits and the grand beauty of vast atmospheres, and those features here feel damn well strong enough to give Prometheus a recommendation. It’s just a shame that the film has very little to say about its bigger ideas, although you certainly admire that such big ideas were even evoked in the first place. So whether or not this film is indeed a prequel or reworking or whatever of Alien, it doesn’t come close to touching that far superior film (even the ending’s gratuitous and obvious link between the two films makes you groan more than smile). But it does have its visual beauty, and its perhaps the kind of sci-fi eye candy you could enjoy more if you were to watch it on mute.
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