Prometheus (2012)
*****This is a completely spoiler free review!!*****
I’ve been waiting over a year to see PROMETHEUS, Ridley Scott’s new film that began as a prequel to his 1979 masterpiece, ALIEN, but has since evolved into more (way more). When you’ve been eagerly anticipating something for so long you never know how you’re going to react after experiencing it. Over the last year we’ve read the interviews and set reports where Scott and one of the writers, Damon Lindelof, discuss how this film evolved into so much more than just an ALIEN prequel. There are a lot of recognizable ALIEN elements in PROMETHEUS, but this is most definitely a standalone film with some very high ideals. Is this a straight up horror movie? Absolutely not. There are, though, a lot of horror elements running throughout this film. Hell; there’s a lot of different genres and ideas in PROMETHEUS, but what it comes down to is whether or not all these elements blend together to make a great movie.
PROMETHEUS begins in the near future (around 2089, I believe) in Scotland. A team of archeologists headed by Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Dr. Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) unearth evidence, in the form of cave drawings, that seem to be scattered all over the earth in many different cultures throughout history. The picture details human beings seemingly worshipping a giant humanoid who is pointing to the stars. Our plucky scientists believe this is an invitation to come find our “makers.”
Meet the crew of the Prometheus
Flash forward a few more years in the future where we join David (Michael Fassbender), a human-looking robot who’s taking care of the hibernating crew aboard the ship Prometheus. The crew is on a mission to seek out the planet where all evidence points to life on earth actually beginning. We get the typical scenes of seeing the crew waking up out of stasis and meeting the individual crew members and learning their specialties. There’s Fifield (Sean Harris), a geologist; Millburn (Rafe Spall), a biologist; and Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a representative of everyone’s favorite futuristic conglomerate, the Weyland Corporation; and others who are part of the ship’s crew, security, and medical staff. As Shaw and Holloway fill them in on why they’re all there and what the nature of their mission is, they’re met with various reactions. Some think it’s a huge waste of time, others are interested in learning more, and still others are scared at what they might find.
Remember everyone; androids aren’t bad … they’re programmed that way!!
Once they land on the planet they enter a structure that definitely wasn’t a natural formation but had some kind of intelligent design behind it. It’s here that they find their answers. Wait a minute; let me correct that. It’s here they begin to piece together the answers to their questions and get more answers than they wanted. Yes people, PROMETHEUS is a movie full of high ideals and even flirts with philosophical questions. This film explores the same questions that were posed in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 epic, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: The creation of life, who (or what) created us, what meaning is there in our creation, and why did our creators abandon us? I really appreciate that Scott didn’t feel the need to have the standard religious character and turn the story into one of religious faith vs. scientific faith. We’ve been there and seen that!! There are people on board who believe in god (Shaw for example) but their beliefs seem to be balanced and not so black and white. As Shaw says, “It’s what I choose to believe in.” I really loved the script and story here. We get, as I mentioned, the same themes as 2001, but we get them presented in a very different way. I really like where Scott and writers Lindelof and Jon Spaihts took the story and how they didn’t feel the need to create an over-the-top action sci-fi movie that tries to rival THE AVENGERS (which is an awesome flick). PROMETHEUS is a cerebral sci-fi flick that’s a throwback to films like Scott’s BLADE RUNNER. There’s a lot of action here, but there’s also a lot of ideas and brain activity going on as well.
The “Space Jockey” is back … kinda.
So what’s the connection with the ALIEN franchise, you may be wondering? Well this is a spoiler free review so I don’t wanna say much. I will tell you that Scott and the writers include a decent amount of the ideas seen in ALIEN, but they do so in very clever ways that fans of the original ALIEN will recognize immediately. If you’ve never seen any of the ALIEN films then those scenes will be lost on you but you won’t miss out on any of the fun. PROMETHEUS is a standalone film that fans of ALIEN will get a real kick out of. There’s also a lot of room for a sequel or two (as writer Lindelof hinted at a few weeks ago). We get answers here, but the answers raise even more questions that need to be explored. There’s also the opportunity to take the next film straight up into horror territory.
Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) is one tough broad!!
Yes I’m being vague … very vague because PROMETHEUS is a film you need to experience for yourself. Don’t go into it expecting an action film like ALIENS, or it being a direct prequel to ALIEN because you’ll be disappointed. PROMETHEUS is a thinking man’s scifi-action-horror-thriller film that I found really satisfying. I can’t help it; I’ll always be a philosophy student at heart, and us philosophy students always wanna know the answers to the big “Why’s.” PROMETHEUS answers those big questions and then some.
Hhmmm; this seems familiar.
I’ve been consumed with PROMETHEUS for over a year (just do a search on anythinghorror.com), and was afraid that my expectations wouldn’t live up to the delivery. Luckily I was wrong in this case. The ending feels a little rushed especially since there was so much going on, but the ending is wholly satisfying. With a great cast, great writing, amazing sets, high ideas, and excellent execution, PROMETHEUS is one great film. Ridley Scott creates a beautiful film that reaches far and succeeds. Don’t go in expecting a direct prequel to ALIEN; that’s not what this film is about. This is it’s own film that contains some elements of ALIEN (mainly the origin of the creatures). If you go into PROMETHEUS expecting to see a great Ridley Scott film, you won’t be diappointed. Don’t miss this one in the theaters.
My Summary:
Director: Ridley Scott
Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Gore: 3 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains
Reviewed by Scott Shoyer
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[...] Prometheus lanzará secuela Posted by Dan Alamillo on agosto 6th, 2012 04:57 PM | Entretenimiento, Noticias, POParadise imagen vía [...]
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[...] (Anything Horror Scott’s review): Ahh, Ridley, you know how to get people talking. There was so much buzz on the Internet for this [...]
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[...] PROMETHEUS (my review): [...]
I thoroughly enjoyed the role David (Michael Fassbender) played in this film. The Weyland Yutani androids have always been one of my favorite aspects of the franchise as a whole.
Excellent point, Loup L’Orange!! The androids have always been some of the most complex characters in the ALIEN films!! I loved Henrickson’s android in ALIENS!!
This has been the first film I’ve had the time/made the time to go and see at the cinema in a very long while. I’m glad that you enjoyed this one mate, but I have to tell you I feel very very conflicted about this flick. On the one hand I think its great story and an absolutely excellent precursor to Alien, and on the other hand I think it’s absolutely retarded as a film.
I’ll try and explain what I mean a little bit more by this. I think that overall as a story PROMETHEUS is very good and offers some excellent theme for critical thinking. The problem is that when you apply critical thinking to the rest of the film it really begins to fall apart. It’s like looking up from the ground at the Sistine Chapel but then when you go in for a closer look you realise that all the art work is the finger painting of a five year old.
I’ll give my biggest grievance with as an example of this, when Elizabeth got the surgery to remove the prototype facehugger. Arguably all the other issue with this move could be considered to be quite nit-picky and I was still invested in the film at point, but this one scene took my suspension of disbelief and booted it right out of the fucking cinema. Leaving aside the fact surgery was clearly botched (and this is coming from someone with no medical knowledge) and Elizabeth would in all likelihood have massive internal injuries, there is NO WAY she would be even able to walk let alone run around the structure performing death defying leaps of faith for an entire 3rd Act. This is one of the most stupid unbelievable things I’ve seen since guy in ALIEN RESURRECTION died by falling 10 feet into water.
I saw a retrospective review of ALIEN recently which stated that at the time of it release (1979) when Sigourney Weaver was still quite an unknown; no one actually knew that Ripley was going to be the hero until very close to the end of the movie. Something similar to this would have been great in PROMETHEUS and I think would have given us one of the greatest death scenes ever. Imagine it; Elizabeth kills herself in that surgical pod in an attempt to get the Alien creature out of herself. That would have been awesome and then the hero character could have legitimately passed on to someone else like captain Janek, who was actually pretty cool and not developed nearly enough as he should have been. Instead what we get is Elizabeth running around going “Ooh, ooh, I have a slight bit of discomfort from my major sugary which I had a couple of hours ago. Oh well time for some acrobatics to conveniently escape this fucking massive ship which is falling on me.”
The problem is the film is full of silly things like this. Like the guys who made the map of the structure getting lost or Meredith not going directly to her life boat when Janek is going to crash the ship into the other ship, when the life boat is specifically designed for her survival. I could go on and on about these things which plague the film in great detail and there are a lot more than the ones I’ve listed here, but this is turning into quite a long ramble as it is.
Another thing that really annoyed me was lack of proper character development / resolving character arch’s. On the Nostromo there are 7 people, all of whom we get some good insight into their character before they die (or escape in Ripley’s case). The Prometheus has 17 people (or is that just the number registered and there is actually more if you count Weyland and his medical team?) and yet we only really get to know 3 of them Elizabeth, Charlie and David. I suppose we get to Meredith a little bit but not really enough I think, and nothing is ever resolved between her and Elizabeth. I found Meredith’s death very unsatisfying, although admittedly it is more realistic than Elizabeth surviving that falling ship. We could have had Meredith go to her life boat (which would have made sense) and then have the prototype facehugger kill her, much more satisfying. My general point is that I didn’t really give a shit about the other characters. When Charlie comes back as a burn alien mutation I found myself going who are these people? Why should I care that they’re getting killing, in let’s face it quite uninteresting ways. When Janek is going to crash the ship and generic asian guy and generic redneck guy say that they are going to stay with him, my response was “well I would care about your noble sacrifice but I don’t know who the fuck you are, so whoops a daisy.”
One last thing that annoyed me, and I realise that I’m getting into serious nit-picking territory with this one. Right at the end when the traditional alien busts out of the humanoid aliens chest, in Meredith’s life boat does not line up with what the crew of the Nostromo find in ALIEN. In ALIEN the humanoid alien is clearly sitting in the pilot seat when the traditional alien busts out of his chest. Ridley Scott really couldn’t be bothered to show a couple of extra seconds of the humanoid alien stumbling back to his ship and pilot seat after the prototype facehugger? From a continuity stand point this makes sense as there is a gestation period which the traditional alien needs in order to grow inside its host. What’s worse is ALIEN is Ridley Scott own film and he can’t even keep his own continuity straight. This does not bode well for a BLADE RUNNER squeal (which I’m firmly in the camp against by the way).
All of my complaints aside, this film does have some really good things to offer. For example Charlie’s death scene is really emotional, I really felt for Elizabeth there. Superb acting from Noomi Rapace, helped in no small part by a superb music score by Marc Streitenfeld. The dialogue between Charlie and David as they talk about what they would say to their creator is really insightful and thought provoking. There are some great moments of suspense and tension which genuinely had me on the edge of my seat. On top of this I love, and I really can’t stress this enough, I absolutely love the story of how the traditional aliens we get in the ALIEN franchise are created. I thought it was really original and creative, and adds something really special the franchise as a whole. More over this completely destroys any claims that the two ALIEN VS PREDATOR films have on official canon. PROMETHEUS dosn’t even come close to being as bad as those movies were and in fact knocks them off the franchises shelf into the trash can where they belong, so score one up for Ridley Scott there.
I think this film frustrates me so much because I can see a really good film within it if it weren’t for the continuous silly things which bog it down. Massively reduce the size of the cast to spend more time developing their characters and massively rework the script so we’re not constantly seeing stupid things which pushes our suspension of disbelief beyond breaking (and then some), and I honestly believe that this film could have been a classic in its own right. As it is the only thing I think that will keep this film from fading into obscurity completely is its connectivity to the ALIEN franchise, and I sorry but I can’t honestly say that I really think the film deserves any better.
You can sit & pick apart any film like that, Buzz. I thought PROMETHEUS was a very well made & executed film. No it’s not perfect. The self surgery: if there’s a machine like that, why is it do hard to believe that such a machine has such precision with its incisions & overall operation that it greatly reduces the discomfort of recovery time? Maybe there’s organic-based nanobots healing Rapace from the inside & eliminating the pain?? See what I mean?
It’s not a perfect film, but PROMETHEUS is a damn good film that I know I’ll watch over & over in the (near) future!!
The thing with the organic-based nanobots might be fine (although I still think it’d be a stretch) if it was specifically stated in the movie that the machine did this, but the simple fact is that it did not. Sorry but the local anaesthetic that was spread on her abdomen looked fairly rudimentary to me. I suppose you could argue that that the nanobots could be in this anaesthetic paste, but again never stated. You could argue that you don’t want massive exposition dumps which can bog films down, but to that I’d have to say why not have the machine explain what it is doing when it is doing e.g. “Applying anaesthetic nanobot recovery paste now”, or something like that. Contextually speaking I think this would actually make sense as I think that most people would want to know what’s actually happening to them if they’re kept awake during sugary.
Instead I rather think the machine went the other way and showed its self to be less advanced then the film wanted it to be made out as. I will list these things now:
1. Why would Meredith, a woman, have a multi-billion dollar machine that is only geared up for men? (You could say that it was just for Weyland, but I’m not buying that Meredith, the vice-president of the company wouldn’t make damn sure that it could be used on her during a potentially dangerous mission as well. From the limited character development we got of her she seemed like quite a calculating person)
2. How would the multi-billion dollar medical machine not recognise that Elizabeth is a woman and not a man?
3. Why did the machine not restrain Elizabeth for the sugary when her squirming could (and probably would have) caused the surgical implements to have cut in vital tissues or organs that it didn’t mean to.
4. Why did Elizabeth have to continue rip things out of herself (I’m pretty sure that ripping things out of yourself instead of gently removing them would defiantly cause serious internal injury) instead of having the multi-billion dollar surgical machine do it properly.
5. Why didn’t the machine do any form of scanning or probing for other masses or internal injuries other than merely scooping out the prototype facehugger with what, lets face it, were a pair of glorified tweezers.
6. Is stapling someone’s surgical opening closed in under 10 seconds (again with no restraints) with a staple gun really the best method of helping someone to recover? I mean we have biodegradable surgical stitching now, why use metal staples? I know that Elizabeth was in a hurry to get out of the machine, but how would the machine know this? And even if it did, it still wouldn’t have any idea about the nature of the prototype facehugger, so wouldn’t the machine be programmed to be more concerned about making sure it’s patient was ok, and doing a proper job?
7. Why haven’t we seen this machine before in any of the other films? The price on technology tends to drop over time and it could have been really useful in helping Hicks after the alien blood messes him up. I’d say that this is probably because the machine suuuuucks!
I stand by my original statement, I really think Elizabeth should have died in the machine and the hero character should have moved onto someone else.
I have been constructively criticised before by several of my friends, including yourself, for sometimes over thinking films and reading too much into what’s going on. I hold my hands up to this, I think this is an entirely fair and accurate criticism. I do sometimes over think films where I should really just switch my brain off and enjoy whatever is going on on-screen. This is not one of those films. You said it yourself in your review, this is a film which is by its very nature is designed to make you think. I would argue very strongly that this thought process should work both ways. Either the film is designed to switch your brain off so you can enjoy whatever is playing and ignore the silly, or it switches it on and you think about everything that is going on, including the silly. In essence we should not merely think about what is good in the film but also think about what’s bad.
I think we should also consider the types of thinking that film inspires in us. I think that there were times where cerebral thinking about subjective issues is used to great effect in this movie. An example of this is when Elizabeth is talking about faith and belief when compared against evidence of the alien architects. This is great thinking, as there is no right or wrong answers but is gives us some points to ponder for ourselves and gives us a fantastic insight into Elizabeth as a character. This is story telling at its finest, is something that I think we need more of in films and is something I think PROMETHEUS does very well.
On the flip side there were also times (a lot of times) where what was going on made no sense or was silly. I know you say that nanobots could have been in the machine and this could have been what gave Elizabeth the ability to leap around for an entire 3rd Act and as ideas go it’s actually a pretty good one, but neither you nor anyone else should have had to come up with this idea, it should have been Ridley Scott’s idea. Forcing the audience to think in this way in order to justify the actions or abilities of character/s in a movie is not good story telling, it is in fact is very bad story telling and unfortunately there is a lot of this in PROMETHEUS.
Although the medical surgery machine scene was a major sticking point for me, as it drew me completely out of the movie, I maybe could have forgiven this is this was PROMETHEUS’s only flaw. One or two mistakes in a film I can forgiven especially if the film has some other fantastic things like acting, music, story, and visuals effects to offer, which PROMETHEUS defiantly does. However, when a film is making me go “that doesn’t make sense” or “that’s a bit silly” every 10 minutes or so then it’s bound to leave a bit of a negative impression, despite all of the other good stuff. You say that I can pick apart any other film like this but I think I really have to disagree with you there mate. As an example, I cannot pick apart ALIEN like this. Everything that happens in ALIEN makes sense within the bounds of the films rules/logic and the character development which it very clearly establishes. The only flaw with ALIEN that I can think of is right at the end where the alien seems far slower than it really should be in waking from its dormant state in order to kill Ripley. One flaw, which is really minor, yeah I can easily overlook that, ALIEN is still a fantastic timeless movie.
Maybe I’m a little bit more disappointed than I would usually be because I’d been looking forward to this movie for so long and because I hold the ALIEN franchise in very hard regard so perhaps I put PROMETHEUS on a pedestal a little bit. That being said even if I hadn’t been looking forward to this for so long and it had nothing to do with the ALIEN franchise I still would come down very hard on this film (although I probably wouldn’t have rambled on about it for so long) because I vehemently believe that this kind of cavalier attitude where plot points don’t have to make sense and characters don’t have to be fully developed is bad film making.
Honestly mate I’m not trying to ruin this film for you or anyone else. If you can look past this films many flaws then that’s great, and I honestly do think that beneath those flaws is a good movie. The problem for me is that I just saw so many of these flaws that they just became more and more glaringly obvious. This being said I do not think that PROMETHEUS is necessarily a bad movie. There were enough thought provoking points to make me want to reexamine the movie in order to greater understand the messages PROMETHEUS is trying to get across and by the same token there is enough enjoyment to be had in this movie for me to watch in and generally have a good time. I think my overall point is that the good things about PROMETHEUS could have made it a timeless classic like ALIEN but the bad things will I think make the film fade into obscurity.
I’ll defiantly be checking out the director’s cut of PROMETHEUS. It’ll at the very least be interesting and hopefully it will address some of the issues I had with the film. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the film after you watch it a few more times like you say that you are going to, and if it will stand up to repeat viewing.
I wrote to Scott abotu my initial feelings when i saw PROMETHEUS. It does have its flaws, many of which Buzz had more eloquently pointed out, so I won’t go into detail about them here as well. But on reflection I feel like its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. The characters of Elizabeth, David, Charlie and Janek were well-rounded and well-portrayed, and that the questions and themes raised also raised the intelligence of the average science fiction movie. I daresay the inevitable Extended Director’s Cut of PROMETHEUS will no doubt prove a more coherent, improved version.
Thinking about an Extended Director’s Cut of PROMETHEUS gets my nipples hard!!
It will definitely be the best DVD of the year!
Absolutely, Deggsy!!
Amen, Brother. Something you forgot to mention in your awesome and on point review is how the 3D was so natural. So natural, in fact, that I forgot I even had those stupid glasses on and felt like this shit is unfolding right in front of my eyes.
Oh, and I never in my life thought I’d say any woman could give Ellen Ripley a run for her badass money, but my GOD Noomi Rapace completely does. Brilliant. Magnificent. Bravo/as all around.
And a great review, to boot.
Should have signed that last comment:
–Sezin
Excellent point about the 3D, Sezin!! I saw the plain version (no IMAX or 3D), so I couldn’t really make a comment on it from first hand experience.
I also agree 100% about Rapace … she did a phenomenal job!! Move over Ripley; theres a new broad in space!!
I get exited reading this! I didn’t pay much attention to Prometheus because i thought Ridley Scott had turned to the gay movie market when he made Robin Hood starring Russell ‘feel my manhood’ Crowe… Love the Alien franchise though, loved AvP2 despite general opinion. Always wanted to see those Aliens wreak havoc on earth! Take the Predators for ballast then…
‘Prometheus has landed!’ Well… a year ago. Let’s celebrate! I prometheus that i won’t drink too much! And about that “Extended edition”, we know now that it won’t happen because Sir Ridley prometheud that he won’t do one. Otherwise i wouldn’t have bought the blu-ray 3D! (I’m waiting for years now for Avatar extended and some extra’s maybe, but i doubt by now that i will ever see Avatar, what’s wrong with those people!)
I’m pretty confident that we’ll eventually see a Director’s Cut of PROMETHEUS.