Movie Review: Prometheus

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Movie Review: Prometheus (2012)
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce
Plot: A “somewhat prequel” to Ridley Scott’s Alien, this sci-fi horror flick doesn’t quite live up to the hype generated by the advertising.

[SOME MILD SPOILERS]

In the not-too-distant future, humans find a final cave painting linking together multiple ancient civilizations that would otherwise have had no contact with each other, providing a hypothesis that aliens helped create humans. A group of scientists venture off into deep space looking for these so-called “Engineers,” each with their own personal reasons and agendas.

The crew consists of several almost cartoon characters:

– Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) – this eager scientist with good intentions who, along with her lover (husband?) discovered the Engineers
– David (Fassbender) – an “emotionless” robot with no clear motivations or allegiances
– Merideth Vickers (Theron) – an “emotionaless” robot-like person who…well, I’m not really sure what she was doing there
– Captain Janek (Elba) – the only character with a real personality
– and a slew of other cartoon-looking and acting characters that, let’s be honest, are really just there to die

Upon arriving at this planet where the star map directed them, the humans find an outpost of Engineers. As they investigate further, they find that all of the Engineers are dead – caused by some unexplained event – and there’s this black ooze in containers that makes monsters.

Can the humans find out where they came from and the meaning of life before something goes wrong and they all end up dying on some alien planet?

I think this movie may have been over-hyped for me, because I found the flick to be disappointing. Visually it was amazing – Ridley Scott at his very best! Special effects were top notch (except for some of that aging makeup they used on Guy Pearce), but the movie never really answers the question is starts out with. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, since Damon Lindelof (LOST) wrote the thing.

Let’s review pros and cons. We’ll start with the pros:

1) Visually stunning – Ridley Scott has outdone himself with the cinematography and camera work.
2) Special Effects – fantastic. The ships are well designed, and the creatures look photo-real
3) Acting – Noomi steals the show. And what’s amazing to me is that she just learned English (she was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the original Sweedish movie – and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, stop reading and go watch it on Netflix)

Cons:
1) Acting – Noomi is the only person who doesn’t act like a character or an emotionless machine.
2) Plot – confusing, hard to follow, and (apparently) filled with a lot of visual references to mythology and religion that will probably go way over the heads of most (or all) movie goers
3) The Rules – In Alien, there’s a queen who lays eggs. The eggs produce face huggers who attach to someone’s head and lay eggs in their gut. This egg produces a Chest Burster, who comes out of your chest and it’s a freakin’ killing machine alien. However, this movie doesn’t follow a similar (or linear) logic at all. I won’t spoil what happens, since there’s some fun shocking moments – but it’s not as simple as in Alien.
4) Complexity – the flick has a simple enough premise, which asks a lot of existential questions. Unfortunately (probably because Damon Lindelof was writing the thing) the answers became less important than throwing a bunch of cool stuff at the audience, regardless of whether it made sense or not. I guess, if you ask an existential question you get an open and existential answer…or this flick.
5) Music – I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t really set the tone for me.
6) Alignment with the Alien movies – there are some very subtle (and many not-so-subtle) visual throw backs to the Alien flicks. However, why they couldn’t just tie it in more directly is beyond me.

I’m told there was about an hour or so of footage cut from this movie, and it was also intended to be the first of a two-parter. However, while the ending is left somewhat open for a sequel, there’s not enough set up for another flick. We know so little about what’s going on that we’re not really interested in answers anymore – the flick becomes about survival. But then, at the end, it is still about finding answers. But if you go through the events of the flick, it should be a more personal journey – it should be about revenge.

But back to the movie at hand (and not a potential sequel somewhere down the road).

I wanted to like this movie more than I did, and I had high expectations for it. Sadly, I just didn’t feel like it delivered on my expectations. The acting was mostly disappointing, the characters were either bland or cartoon characters, plot holes when put into the chronology of the Alien flicks, and a bunch of unanswered questions (which Damon Lindelof is notorious for, apparently) litter what should be a great prequel (or spiritual prequel) to the Alien franchise. These things keep me from really truly loving this movie like I wanted to.

Worth checking out, but not worth paying a lot of money to see.

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