Prometheus

2012

Ridley Scott

Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender

You'd think Alien would have run it's course as a three time film franchise.  It's been since 1979 since the first Alien popped out of a stomach and into a man's birthday cake, and today we still have acid blood that eats through helmets, and snake-like creatures that dominate men and seem to like esophegii.

But what we do not have in this film is cheesy effects and off-screen suspense as style.  We have instead the great visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott, author of Bladerunner and Gladiator, both stories having different epic proportions.  He was the perfect choice to bring this story line back to life, and as he's said in an interview, "re-open that book".

Story is oftentimes everything, but here in Prometheus, it is story and look and feel, just as cinema should be.  Film is show, and not tell.  The showing does the telling, and we are offered a great feast of first rate special effects, practical sets mixed with digital artistry, and wonderfully orchestrated mise-en-scene.  That would have been Roger Ebert's vernacular.  But what would Gene Siskel then say?
"Basically, for a scary movie, it's beautiful."

As for myth, Prometheus was a progenitor, Greek mythology, making man from clay, so it's appropriate to show the self-sacrifice of an "Engineer", allowing his own genes to be utterly destroyed in order to populate a virgin planet with the genetic makeup of a god.  Am I giving away too much?  He was a Titan, so you'd think this would draw some superhero fans, ok maybe not.  But this Titan evidently obtained Fire for mankind as a sort of blessing, yet for it, was given a curse by the gods.

In this story one is prone to associate Prometheus with the Engineers, but we need to remember that name was the name of the ship.  Considering the ending, it's quite possible that the name Prometheus sticks very closely with the mythical tale in proving that anything like an attempt at improving mankind ends up in tragedy somehow.

So the Engineers made us.  Well, ok, but then the pertinent question does get asked somewhere in the story,"So who made them?"  Yes, tricky.  Seems destined that we're off to a Prometheus II in some future day, given the end does lead us trailing off to somewhere else.  Everybody wants to get to the core, right?  And still the questions dangle, why the Aliens?  Why the escape tactics?  Questions begging to be answered in a sequel, we still don't really know.

My own personal theory is that the Alien species exists as an antithesis to the Creation.  Creation/Destruction, much like the balance of Yin and Yang.  It would seem they are a pet creation of the Engineers themselves, as their ship is brimming with enough ephermeral goo to....well anyway...we all know, however, that this balance in theology is not a theology, but rather a lack of one, and there is no real beginning, or at least the beginning is unknowable.  As  the astronaut/archeologist played by Noomi Rapace places the cross necklace back around her neck, the AI, David, by Michael Fassbender, asks her, "After all this, and you still believe?"

Yes, yes of couse she does. All the answers have not been given.  Only a robot would ask such a question.  Shh David, you just shush up until the sequel.

Many critics have cited the numerous "science" flaws and lack of professionalism by the crew, and the ability at the end for the inept captain and remaining crew to just give their lives completely to stop the alien ship.  There were quite a few inept and inappropriate moments afield, not to mention that you don't just get up from an operation that cuts open your gut and walk around.  But Scott knows that science is not all there is to the sci-fi.  It's mostly fiction, and you can get away with quite a bit with a compelling mystery and narrative.

4 stars of 5 for beauty and cinematography
4 stars of 5 for the editing, pacing, but not the music really (maybe a 2 on that)
5 of 5 for directing and 3.5 for acting - incredible "operation" scene by Noomi - just un-reeeeel.  But most of the acting was nominal.  Fassbender was terrific.