PROMETHEUS IMPREGNATES SMALLS' MIND WITH IDEAS

For all you Alien fan boys out there (that includes myself)...the day you have waited for has finally arrived. Prometheus has landed in theaters, promising us long awaited answers to questions that were raised in the hit film Alien. I suppose the only question that matters this time around is this: does Prometheus  provide us satisfactory answers ? Let's delve right into this squirming squid fetus and find out.

Before we do any delving, let's see what the plot has in store for us today. Prometheus is about discovery, and what happens when meddling humans (and androids) mess around with things we shouldn't be messing around with. Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and boyfriend Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Greene) are scientists (Archaeologists?  Geologists??? The mind can't remember right now) who discover similar cave paintings across the world that depict a star clutter/solar system. Shaw and Holloway assume it's an invitation for us to meet our creators....but is it? Either way the not-quite-evil-yet corporation Weyland Industries decides to fund a voyage to the clutter/system and sends mysterious android David (Michael Fassbender) and corporate dog Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) along for the ride. When the Prometheus touches down on LV-223, they receive terrifying answers to their questions (as do we) and are chucked into a race to save the earth and undo the damage they have caused.

By far the best actors here are Charlize Theron, who puts on a slightly menacing but still human performance as Vickers, one of my favorite characters in the film (also helps that she looks downright yummy in a skin tight suit).  Michael Fassbender is also superb as the eerily aloof and mysterious android David, who has his orders of his own to follow(The safety of the rest of the crew be damned. Yes....David does indeed have an Ash-like vibe to him, although he doesn't seem as downright evil as Ash did) and questions. David inhabits a grey area of definitely not good, but not really evil that I really dug and Fassbender pulls off the blank eyed eerie android thing perfectly. Together, David and Vickers have a sort of rivalry going on, and there is definitely a line drawn between the two. They are both similar, but different.....is one more of a good guy/girl than the other one is? I'll let you decide. Another fantastic performance is Idris Elba who plays Janek, captain of the Prometheus. The script doesn't give him much to do, but Elba makes the role his own nonetheless and creates a pretty compelling character out of nothing....a great triumph if you ask me. Rapace does a good job as Shaw, but is never fully compelling as the faith questioning scientist and Greene is essentially a throw away as Holloway, a character that seems to only have one real purpose. Something interesting does begin to happen to him, but before the consequences of this can be fully explored he's tossed to the side.  Guy Pearce is also awesome as Weyland CEO Peter Weyland. We only get a few glimpses into his character, but he still does a fantastic job as a man who has questions of his own about humanity. Pearce acts in heavy old age makeup, but that doesn't seem a challenge for this talented actor.

Back in the directors seat is the legendary film maker Ridley Scott, who created the first Alien and Blade Runner, both are sci-fi classics. It is a treat to see him return to a genre and a franchise he excelled so well at, and you can really tell he is having a blast re-visiting a universe he created so many years ago and getting the chance to more fully explore it.

The film was shot in 3D, and the scale this gives the film is fantastic. The film is full of awe-inspiring scenes, but the impact of the 3D is lost somewhere after the first act of the film. While it is some of the better 3D you can sample today, I still say stick with 2D since the 3D doesnt really affect the film all that much save for a few cool shots and some added sense of scale here and there. 

The question that has been burning in people's heads ever since Prometheus was announced....is is this film a prequel to Alien? The answer is sort of/kind of/not really. Prometheus does indeed take place in the same universe as Alien, and the moon that Prometheus takes place on is LV-223 which, I assume, is only  moons away from LV-426 (the planet from the film Alien). This means that during the film we are essentially a hop skip and a jump to LV-426 (pretty cool huh). The Weyland Corporation plays a huge role in the film, and we do get a good enough glimpse at the company to satisfy mosts appetites. It is fun to see the corporation in a stage where  it's not completely evil yet, but is starting to show seeds of the bad things it's going to do later on in the franchise. The ship Prometheus is clean, pristine, and white....much like some parts of the Nostromo. It has areas that are sure to remind most of aspects of the doomed Nostromo including a dining area and an overhead compouter unit (very neat). We also get glimpses of proto-aliens (facehugger, and Xenomorph), and the Space Jockey does play a HUGE role in the film. That said, the events in the film don't appear to directly influence events seen in the first Alien..... but they do give us some answers. So....it's a film that is directly related to Alien....but I wouldn't really call it a prequel (It's a prequel only in that it takes place before Alien and has some recognizable creatures in it). It's a hard film to define.

The film Prometheus is in reality about the nature of discovery and exploration, and it's also about the true nature of the Space Jockeys (in this film, they are referred to as Engineers, but I'm going to continue to call them Space Jockeys). The film also is very much about science vs. religion. We do finally learn who the Space Jockeys are, and luckily Scott found some way to keep their scale just as impressive as it was in Alien. They are still incredibly large beings. I don't want to say too much more, but they may not be as friendly as we had hoped they would be, and the film does challenge our preconceived notions of who these majestic  and terrifying beings really are. We also get some answers about exactly what Xenomorphs are and where they come from, but I'm not going to delve any further into that answer here... wouldn't want to ruin too much of the fun.

So yes, the film does give us some half-answers to questions raised in the first Alien film. If you were looking for definitive answers, you came to the wrong film. The film raises many questions of its own, and even it's answers are full of questions. Damon Lindelof, one of the writers of Lost, wrote the script for Prometheus and it shows.  That said the questions it does leave us with and the answers we get are deep enough that most will be analyzing them for weeks/months to come.

Prometheus is a film that is quite unlike anything we have viewed recently: It is an intelligent man's sci-fi film. The marketing team has been making this film out to look like a horror film much like Alien was...but in reality it's really not. It's a heavy sci-fi film with some horror influences/aspects in it. Imagine the first 30-40 minutes of Alien  stretched into two hours, except the atmosphere isn't as strong here (Scott does an admirable job at attempting to re-create the atmosphere from the first film, and for the most part he succeeds but he changes enough in the film so that this film comes across as something completely different). There are long stretches of exposition and dialogue, and there are some slow parts in it (this never really bothered me to be honest). This may not translate well with general audiences, I think we live in an ADHD world now where most audiences like things fast paced and like to have everything explained to them . Prometheus goes against all this, and I imagine this may frustrate a good few.

If you haven't seen Alien yet, then you MUST see it before viewing Prometheus...things will make more sense  and you'll have a better overall experience if you view that timeless classic first. As much as I would love to say Prometheus is a stand alone film....it's really not. The elements of Alien are so deeply ingrained in this film that without prior knowledge of the universe of that film I imgaine most would get lost. It is indeed another Alien film, but it's pretty different from what we have seen before, so don't walk in expecting Alien.

Prometheus is a film that dares to be different, and in an age where the norm is copy and paste, that makes all the difference. It's far from a perfect film , and it most likely won't be what most expected...but it does succeed at tickling your brain cells. I know my head is still spinning with all the things this film left for me to chew on. Prometheus is a success, it set out to be a different kind of sci-fi film and it succeeds beautifully. Let's hope there's a sequel, so we can get some more answers/things to chew on (and as far as I'm concerned, as long as Ridley is making Alien films I'm in heaven).

4/5 Stars

UPDATE: February 2014.

After watching the film numerous times I've come to these conclusions:

Space Jockeys are a militaristic species

They created humanity, we don't know why

For some unknown reason they don't like us anymore, or have simply grown tired of us. it is implied they want to create a new life form.

They want to destroy us and use our DNA to create new life forms.

They have several "installations" where attempts to create an organism/organisms that could destroy humanity while creating new life at the same time occur. Since Jockey's have the same DNA as humans, the organisms they create inevitably turn on them first and do the same process on the Jockey's as they would on humans, This is what occurred on LV-223 (Prometheus) and LV-426 (Alien).