The year is 2089, and archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have made an incredible discovery. Comparing various relics and cave paintings from a number of unconnected prehistoric cultures, Shaw and Holloway have pieced together what they believe is a map pointing to a distant star system. They interpret it as an invitation from beings they've nicknamed "the Engineers," who Shaw and Holloway theorize are the progenitors of the human race.
This map catches the attention of Peter Weyland (Guy Ritchie), the elderly CEO of the Weyland Corporation. Weyland funds the creation of the scientific research vessel Prometheus, and assembles a crew to follow the map to a moon in this star system. Traveling in stasis and monitored by an android named David (Michael Fassbender), the Prometheus arrives during the final weeks of 2093 and is tasked with finding the Engineers.
The crew disembarks from the ship onto the moon's surface, where they investigate an artificial structure leading to a series of ruins. While mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) orders them to direct contact with any living aliens they come across, but upon first glance, all they can find inside the ruins are the corpses of various humanoid beings. But there's more going on than the crew realizes, and whatever is alive inside these ruins is very angry.
I wasn't quite sure how Prometheus would turn out when I sat down in that theater a few days ago. I wasn't getting my hopes up, but I would have been satisfied with it being a fun throwback to the Alien movies. But alas, Prometheus ended up being a serious letdown. It's not an offensively awful movie, but I wouldn't go as far to say it's bad. Prometheus is basically a really awesome party where somebody's pooped in the punch bowl. Yeah, everything is great except for that one smelly floater.
That fatal flaw is the movie's script, written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. Holy crap, this script is awful. None of the big questions that it raises are ever even remotely close to answered, leaving a number of plot holes and inconsistencies in logic that make the movie frustrating to watch. It's like Spaihts and Lindelof figured they wouldn't bother filling the audience in on everything we'd want to know because they were anticipating writing a sequel. That's just plain dirty pool if that's the case. Leaving stuff out for a sequel that isn't yet guaranteed is just a bad idea.
It doesn't help that some of the characters are irritatingly stupid to boot. Two characters try to make their way out of the ruins because they're scared witless, then later treat the equivalent of an alien cobra as if it were a cute little puppy, which goes about as well as you can expect. A scientist is infected with something that is obviously ravaging his body and could endanger everyone else, yet does his best to keep it a secret. Logic and common sense are hard to come by. The characters that try to display any sort of intelligence and cognitive reasoning are treated by the others as not to be trusted, to boot. And the fact that this gaggle of scientists seem to know precious little about science just makes everything preposterous.
But at least the rest of the movie tries to make up for that awful script. Ridley Scott's direction, for example, is absolutely fantastic. The movie looks gorgeous, with amazing cinematography, set design, and special effects. Scott's efforts keep one's full attention even during the scenes that are boring or just plain stupid. The movie might not be the best in the world, but Scott's efforts here are wonderful regardless.
The only complaint I have about Scott's direction is that he doesn't give Prometheus the same level of menace and dread that Alien had. From the moment Alien begins, you know something bad is going to happen and it's going to be horrifying. In Prometheus, it takes over an hour before anything happens, and even then there's no real suspense maintained afterward. That's the only real flaw I could find with how Scott approached the movie, and though it's disappointing, he still does an amazing job at the helm.
Scott even makes excellent use of the 3D cameras used to shoot the movie. I usually get more entertainment out of the gimmicky "throw stuff at the audience" 3D stuff, but Scott uses it here to bring some atmosphere to the movie. The added depth really brings a lot to the movie, with the immersive feeling making the movie seem more epic. The first few minutes alone are well worth the premium added to the ticket price. It makes me wish I'd seen the movie in IMAX 3D, because that would have been the most awesome experience ever (even if the movie is kind of a disappointment).
And this brings us to the cast, who is a mixed bag. A lot of the cast are nameless cannon fodder that aren't really worth a mention or just plain fail to make any sort of impression altogether. But there are a few actors that I felt should be highlighted. Let's start with Michael Fassbender, who turns in a great performance. He's fascinating to watch, as you can tell he's being secretive to the point that you begin to believe something sinister is afoot almost immediately. But he plays the role in such a way that you're always wondering what's going through his head. You can't take your eyes off Fassbender, and his performance practically steals the whole movie.
I also thought Charlize Theron contributed a fine piece of work herself. Theron's character is portrayed as being an ice-cold bitch even though she's probably the most logical, rational-thinking person in the movie, and Theron plays the part perfectly. I enjoyed her a lot, but I do wish she'd had more to do than play the clichéd corporate bureaucrat that everyone thinks is a jerk.
But much like the movie as a whole, the good acting was tempered by bad acting. The absolute worst offender is Noomi Rapace, who is just plain terrible. She's all over the map here, never once settling into a consistent groove. Her character is incredibly stupid, often doing things that would normally break protocol or jeopardize others. This affects Rapace's performance as she comes across as an unsympathetic nitwit that you just want to slap.
It's been two days since I saw Prometheus and I'm still unsure how I feel about it. There are parts I enjoyed and parts I hated, which just leaves me on the fence. Prometheus is one of those movies that I can neither lavish with faint praise nor rail against as being total garbage, because it's two sides of the same coin. But at its core, the movie is chock full of potential that is dragged down by the bad script that wanted to be profound but was too stupid to figure out how to achieve that. So I'm going to give it two and a half stars, with the hopes that if there's ever a Prometheus 2, it'll learn from this movie's mistakes.
Final Rating: **½
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