Prometheus Review

When director Ridley Scott released his sci-fi horror flick Alien back in 1979, the movies were a very different place. The studio system of the 1960s, a system that had churned out glitzy, star-studded melodramas to the point of exhaustion, had collapsed, and in their panic Hollywood turned to guys like Scott to help revitalize the industry. It worked. Alien was a smash that spawned three direct sequels, influenced many future filmmakers, and created a mass of fans who were beside themselves with excitement when Scott announced that he would be helming a prequel to Alien called Prometheus.

Tough luck for those fans. While Prometheus has many of the earmarks of a great movie, it’s noticeably constrained by the demands of a new studio system, a modern one that’s forever chasing after the almighty Blockbuster. I imagine the pitch meeting for Prometheus went something like this:

Ridley Scott: I’d like to make a prequel to Alien that examines the nature of man’s relationship to God.

Producer: Okay, but there’s gotta be a scene where the heroes save Earth from an alien invasion. And at least two sequels.

Ridley Scott: Can I hire an unknown Scottish actress to play a minor role?

Producer: Fine, but only if you cast Guy Pearce as a super-old guy.

If I seem bitter, it’s only because the movie is so very, very good before it starts to suck. We begin on planet Earth, where archeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) has discovered a series of cave paintings she believes suggest that human life is extraterrestrial in origin. She gets some funding from the shady Weyland Corporation, and faster than you can say “suicide mission” she and a small team of scientists, mechanics, and corporate overseers blast off in search of a faraway moon where humanity’s alien progenitors may still be living. Their spaceship, naturally, is named the Prometheus. It’s a heady concept, and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof have no problem diving into what it may mean for humanity to come face to face with their makers. The film stops very short of becoming a philosophy lesson, but it’s nice to see a big budget movie willing to tackle Life’s Big Questions.

The crew of the Prometheus is a personable lot, and Scott gives most of them time to breathe during the firm’s slow burning first hour. Standouts include Charlize Theron as icy corporate enforcer Meredith Vickers and Idris Elba as blue-collar space jockey Janek. The most interesting character is Michael Fassbender’s nearly human android David, who acts as the group’s translator and affects his haircut and persona from Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. These are assured, nuanced performances, and there’s a surprising amount of convincing rapport for a movie that eventually becomes about aliens eating off people’s faces.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and make no mistake that Scott and his design team give us some face-eating aliens for the ages. The special effects, from the creatures to the sets to the pyrotechnics, are absolutely top notch, with the interior of a crumbling alien catacomb and a particularly nasty, many-mouthed fella toward the end taking the cake for eye-popping goodness. It’s just that by the time the movie reaches some of its more memorable visual wonders, the script has lost its way. The home stretch, which conspires to turn what had been a vaguely cerebral special effects-driven creep fest into the final scenes from Armageddon, is particularly disappointing. Also troubling is the sequel-bait ending, not so much because it exists but because it’s so blatant. You’d figure that a prestige piece like Prometheus would be above stuff like that.

And in 1979, you might have been right, but times have changed. In 2012, Prometheus is a great movie that perhaps was never allowed to be anything more than good. Scott marshals much of his considerable talent to build a convincing, eerie alien world, but he loses his grip by the end and I left the theater disheartened. At the same time, I can’t in good conscience tell people to avoid the movie completely; it may be worth seeing once for the visual imagination alone, but the search for movies as wonderful as they want to be continues.