Arriving in theaters on the back of a portentous ad campaign, Ridley Scott's Prometheus assumes the air of something more than a summer movie, a blockbuster-with-brains that links the genesis and the ultimate fate of mankind beyond the stars. It is, incidentally, the story of an ambitious mission gone wrong.
The discovery of a cave painting on the Isle of Skye is the "X marks the spot" moment. Comparing ancient pictograms from the world over, an archaeologist couple, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green), find a recurring image that depicts humanity's titan forebears pointing skyward to a formation of planets that are always arranged the same across all cultural boundaries. This is enough to secure shady corporate backing for a trip to a distant galaxy where precisely that formation has been discovered, a quest for answers as to the origins of humanity from the beings Shaw and Holloway hope to find there: "We call them 'Engineers,' " Shaw says. "They engineered us."
Prone to shallow ponderousness, Prometheus works best when it steps back from contemplating the cosmos to enter the domain of flesh-and-blood and hereditary terror. There are a few set pieces here that will find a place of honor among aficionados of body horror and all things clammy and viscous, gyno-phallic cave creatures and a scene of self-administered surgery that will stain the memory long after such significant-sounding bits of dialogue like "That being said, doesn't everyone want their parents dead?" have gone.
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With Star Trek Into Darkness, J.J. Abrams Boldly Goes Back to KhanThe events of Prometheus take place at the end of 2093, as the exploratory mission's crew awakens from suspended-animation stasis: Shaw and Holloway are joined by the ship's squeezebox-toting Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and, working according to her own mysterious M.O., mission director Vickers (Charlize Theron as an ice queen wearing her hair in a sculptural blond knot). There are also a number of superfluous crew members who might as well be wearing Star Trek red shirts, for on this trip to meet their makers, many will.
The deep space, deep-freeze commute will be familiar to most viewers from Alien, directed some 33 years ago by Scott, as will be the steel-ribbed, organic-industrial, H.R. Giger–deco interiors of the seemingly abandoned compound that the landing party finds — housing Engineer carcasses, mysterious, bongo-shaped canisters and prehistoric monoliths — upon setting down at the distant moon that is their star-mapped destination.
The script, by Jon Spaihts and Lost's Damon Lindelof, originated as a prequel to Alien, Scott's first hit, before developing into its present spinoff form. Rather than setting out, as scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon did with the original, to build the ultimate creature feature, these gimcrack philosophers have loosely sown Prometheus with Big Themes in hopes that one might perchance take root.
Shaw, a nominal Christian, simultaneously grapples with the mystery of creation and her own (routinely established) sterility. The title, citing the mythical benefactor who stole fire from the gods for mankind, is also the name of our good spaceship, carrying a freight of associations of forbidden knowledge.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's story of man tampering in God's domain by creating life, was subtitled A Modern Prometheus. Scott's film features the product of a future Prometheus, David (Michael Fassbender), the ship's android factotum and caretaker. David stars in the film's single most original sequence, using the Prometheus as his private playground while the mere mortals that he serves slumber, fixing his hair like Peter O'Toole's after watching Lawrence of Arabia and effortlessly sinking impossible hook shots in the gymnasium.
Fassbender gives a wry performance of crisp, precise gestures, but the character's programmed motivations and motives don't quite scan. One bit of business, which involves him slipping someone a mickey, is simply baffling, while scenes that reveal David betraying an expression of private pleasure needlessly tease one to wonder if he is really such an unfeeling automaton.
The same sense of buildup toward a payoff that never arrives — are we supposed to placidly await a sequel? — defines Prometheus. This feels less like deliberate open-endedness than an inability to control tone and effect. Although supposedly our point of entry into the narrative, Rapace and Marshall-Green inspire no interest in their fate as a couple, and a scene that calls upon them to perform a wrenching act of sacrifice only reminds one how Brian De Palma, even with a problematic property like 2000's Mission to Mars, could invest similar material with eloquence and pathos.
Inviting comparison to The Tree of Life's formation-of-the-universe digression or 2001: A Space Odyssey's monolith overture, Prometheus begins with a freestanding prologue imagining our planet's infancy. Scott is swinging for the fences here — he is 74 and perhaps looking for a career-capping legacy film to tackle life, the universe and everything — but his gifts have coarsened considerably over the past decade.
With this overreaching Prometheus, Scott seems a bit like David carefully arranging his hair in imitation of O'Toole's Lawrence. He can still mimic the appearance of an epic, noble, important movie — but the appearance is all.
PROMETHEUS | Directed by RIDLEY SCOTT | Written by JON SPAIHTS and DAMON LINDELOF | 20th Century Fox | Citywide
Funny, I think the animatronics off the chain are the fun yet trivial parts of the movie that will fade in memory after time. It makes little sense to say that Scott's gifts have 'coarsened' with time either. He would only gain in control. Perhaps it's a question of a gentler, more sage perspective. Why shouldn't the adrenaline serve to carry an injection of higher themes? I think it's worth it.
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Another three-shells story brought to you by another of the emotionally-infantile Lost team. So much in this movie makes no goddamned sense, but, alas, that's the only game Lindelof knows. Story lagging? Have your main characters do something devious... for some reason. Can Lindelof, Wheadon, and Abrams take a page from Bill Gates--retire and cure a disease, because your "art" isn't worth watching.
I wish the writer of the piece would point out that Dan O'Bannon was the initial screenwriter on this project. He died early on, so "The Lost" writers took the story into a whole different direction. This was originally intended to be an Alien Prequel all the way.
Totally disappointing. Deviated to ancient Greek mythology of "wars between sons of gods" like Clash of The Titans Movie. Theron's talent wasted with the soupopera treat of "who she really was" and had no way to perform. Scott ran out of time so "a character had to rush intense physical workout right out of comic's heavy surgery". The droid served no purpose. And the Blob Squid was just stupid. Disaster of movie. So bad I want my money back. Sigourney remains in title.
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