Okay, I am freshly back from seeing Prometheus (in 3D, of course), and I can say I was okay with the movie. Just okay, though. I was sort of expecting a lot more depth, and the dark foreboding feel of the original Alien. The best way to describe this movie is a prequel, even though it is being said that this movie is separate from the Alien movies, it most certainly is not. It is hard to say what the time frame of this movie is to the original Alien time frame, but from the look of things I would have to guess it was before Ripley cut loose with her flamethrower on LV-426. The Prometheus looks like a proper earth designed ship from 2090, and it has ion engines as well as thrusters. There is no magical fusion generator or unknown power source powering the ship, but some of the other tech seems oddly advanced. More on that later.
The Prologue of the movie begins with one of our Engineers (formerly known as Alien’s “Space Jockeys”), which we begin calling them after being introduced to our characters later. These beings (we only see a male) are about twice the size of humans in every dimension. The male we see is pale white with black eyes and has a chiseled, well muscled body. He looks humanoid, but definitely alien. He performs some sort of ritual where we are visually told that this being has become the source of new life on some other world somewhere. We see a huge ship leaving this world. We see cells dividing in the waters after our sacrificial Engineer has disintegrated. The effects were done very well here. Unfortunately for me, it gave away where the writers were going. The concept that life on planets was intentionally seeded by superior beings has been done already, and it was like somebody flashing you their poker hand slow enough for you to CLEARLY make out every card. I felt it was too much too soon. But it was visually cool to watch.
We are taken to the cliffs and caves of Scotland where our main character Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) are exploring some ancient cave art. Evidently, the symbols in this art indicate a commonality to other art in disparate cultures like ancient Egypt, South America, China, etc. This picks up the same obvious hint at what is to come as did our Engineer seeding life on some distant planet. (execute full eyeroll here). I forgive them at this point.* The findings are presented in a high tech presentation involving holographic screens and such, beautiful imagery and effects that did not at all feel overdone or gimmicky. More like a logical extension of the current pace of development of existing technology. It was very believable. So, these art finds and their interpretation all point to a special star system, and they want to go. To find our Creators.
The story of our characters begins streaking through space on the Prometheus. All of the crew are in stasis, and we are introduced to David (played by Michael Fassbender) who by far is the most interesting character in the entire movie. David is an android, and much in the tradition of Bishop later and HAL9000 in 2001, David has a human demeanor and performs human tasks to appear as human to the actual humans as possible. We see him playing basketball, android-style, watching movies and doing impressions. No real problems with those scenes, but the choice of those scenes seemed odd. WWII-era movies? And what was with the stiff Hitler Youth haircut and shirt? Still, he was a fun and interesting character to watch. Without him, the movie would not have been nearly as watchable. The other main characters were Meredith Vickers (played by Charlize Theron), Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace), Captain Janek (played by Idris Elba). You can find a complete list of the cast here at IMDb.
After we get a chance to become familiar with David, alarms start going off all over the ship. Proximity warnings tell David it is time to wake everyone up, because they have arrived at LV-223.* First to awaken and move around is Meredith Vickers who is a sexy, very smartly dressed woman after she gets dressed. She follows through with the Hitler Youth Noveau-SS look that David has.* She is running the show here, and she makes a believable leader. After the crew awakens, we start to meet them, and they are a varied lot. We meet Fifeld, Millburn, Chance, Ravel and Ford. These characters seem oddly collected, since at least one of them is mentally unstable and antisocial. The characters are briefly introduced to the audience and to each other, but it seems rather odd that this assortment of people comes to be on the ship which is to make the most important discovery of Mankind.
The other interesting character is Meredith Vickers, who is the first to awaken, and quickly establishes herself as the leader of the expedition. Her demeanor is strong, and believably in charge. Her sexy, post-Hitler look compliments David’s look. We approach the landing site on the planet which has been determined by the computers, and we get a lot of cool flying scenes with Prometheus finally landing near huge artificial structures. They are found to be hollow by scanning them, and once our team enters the structure, the tone of the movie is set. We see a lot of HR Giger’s influence in these alien corridors. The feel is almost foreboding, and feels very old. This place seems dead. David wanders to a different area of the cave where he can evidently activate the control panels and read the alien symbols. This is because David is an android and has the data which had been collected on earth from these Engineers. He is able to activate a holographic log which shows our Engineers running down the corridors in a shimmering holographic recording. The effect is done well, and the proper feeling is conveyed that perhaps things had gone wrong long ago. The team follows the shimmering images to a huge door and an Engineer who had been decapitated by the door being closed on its head. At this point, two of our Team decide to go back to the Prometheus, and they try to make their way back through the corridors.* The holographic recording indicated that the structure they were inside of had been sealed as some sort of fail safe. David can open this door, of course. He does, and the decapitated head of the Engineer is just beyond the entrance. He has the head of the “Space Jockey” we saw in the original Alien movie. I will skip forward some more…a heavy silica/sandstorm forces most of the team to return to Prometheus. David has his own salvage operation which centers around odd looking containers containing an odd liquid which moves. He manages to take one of the cylinders and bring it back to the ship along with the head of the Engineer. Our two characters who had left for the ship earlier are stuck in the structure as the storm hits.
Our female lead character is Dr Elizabeth Shaw, and her character is full of contradictions. She feels very deep passion for her scientific work in archeology, yet she also has a deep religious conviction and wears a crucifix on a chain around her neck. I suppose this is to appeal to a wider audience? Elizabeth Shaw comes off as more emotional and vulnerable than any of the other characters in this movie. Her and Charlie have a brief moment at some point where it becomes known that Elizabeth is unable to bear children. Elsewhere on the ship, Davis has been examining the contents of the cylinder he brought back. He takes a sample of the liquid, about a drop, and intentionally infects Charlie with it via giving him a drink. This is sinister and very top secret. But this is where the tension of the movie begins and builds. I will not give a play by play after this point in this review, because that is the part of the movie you will find worth whatever you paid for your ticket. The action is done very well and we see many connections both direct and indirect which connect this movie with Alien. There are few twists and turns in the story which I will not go into in this review. The ending of the movie is left open for a sequel, but what direction will it go? There is the new mythology of these Engineers which I personally do not find that interesting. But we also see a pre-Alien form of our Alien with its elongated head and multiple mouths bursting from the cheat of a infected Engineer. They could go either way.
Go see this movie. If you see it, pay the extra for the 3D and you will feel like you got your money’s worth. If you are going to see a movie with the same dark mysterious feel of the original Alien, and a dynamic lead character, you may feel a bit disappointed.
The Prologue of the movie begins with one of our Engineers (formerly known as Alien’s “Space Jockeys”), which we begin calling them after being introduced to our characters later. These beings (we only see a male) are about twice the size of humans in every dimension. The male we see is pale white with black eyes and has a chiseled, well muscled body. He looks humanoid, but definitely alien. He performs some sort of ritual where we are visually told that this being has become the source of new life on some other world somewhere. We see a huge ship leaving this world. We see cells dividing in the waters after our sacrificial Engineer has disintegrated. The effects were done very well here. Unfortunately for me, it gave away where the writers were going. The concept that life on planets was intentionally seeded by superior beings has been done already, and it was like somebody flashing you their poker hand slow enough for you to CLEARLY make out every card. I felt it was too much too soon. But it was visually cool to watch.We are taken to the cliffs and caves of Scotland where our main character Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) are exploring some ancient cave art. Evidently, the symbols in this art indicate a commonality to other art in disparate cultures like ancient Egypt, South America, China, etc. This picks up the same obvious hint at what is to come as did our Engineer seeding life on some distant planet. (execute full eyeroll here). I forgive them at this point.* The findings are presented in a high tech presentation involving holographic screens and such, beautiful imagery and effects that did not at all feel overdone or gimmicky. More like a logical extension of the current pace of development of existing technology. It was very believable. So, these art finds and their interpretation all point to a special star system, and they want to go. To find our Creators.
The story of our characters begins streaking through space on the Prometheus. All of the crew are in stasis, and we are introduced to David (played by Michael Fassbender) who by far is the most interesting character in the entire movie. David is an android, and much in the tradition of Bishop later and HAL9000 in 2001, David has a human demeanor and performs human tasks to appear as human to the actual humans as possible. We see him playing basketball, android-style, watching movies and doing impressions. No real problems with those scenes, but the choice of those scenes seemed odd. WWII-era movies? And what was with the stiff Hitler Youth haircut and shirt? Still, he was a fun and interesting character to watch. Without him, the movie would not have been nearly as watchable. The other main characters were Meredith Vickers (played by Charlize Theron), Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace), Captain Janek (played by Idris Elba). You can find a complete list of the cast here at IMDb.
After we get a chance to become familiar with David, alarms start going off all over the ship. Proximity warnings tell David it is time to wake everyone up, because they have arrived at LV-223.* First to awaken and move around is Meredith Vickers who is a sexy, very smartly dressed woman after she gets dressed. She follows through with the Hitler Youth Noveau-SS look that David has.* She is running the show here, and she makes a believable leader. After the crew awakens, we start to meet them, and they are a varied lot. We meet Fifeld, Millburn, Chance, Ravel and Ford. These characters seem oddly collected, since at least one of them is mentally unstable and antisocial. The characters are briefly introduced to the audience and to each other, but it seems rather odd that this assortment of people comes to be on the ship which is to make the most important discovery of Mankind.
The other interesting character is Meredith Vickers, who is the first to awaken, and quickly establishes herself as the leader of the expedition. Her demeanor is strong, and believably in charge. Her sexy, post-Hitler look compliments David’s look. We approach the landing site on the planet which has been determined by the computers, and we get a lot of cool flying scenes with Prometheus finally landing near huge artificial structures. They are found to be hollow by scanning them, and once our team enters the structure, the tone of the movie is set. We see a lot of HR Giger’s influence in these alien corridors. The feel is almost foreboding, and feels very old. This place seems dead. David wanders to a different area of the cave where he can evidently activate the control panels and read the alien symbols. This is because David is an android and has the data which had been collected on earth from these Engineers. He is able to activate a holographic log which shows our Engineers running down the corridors in a shimmering holographic recording. The effect is done well, and the proper feeling is conveyed that perhaps things had gone wrong long ago. The team follows the shimmering images to a huge door and an Engineer who had been decapitated by the door being closed on its head. At this point, two of our Team decide to go back to the Prometheus, and they try to make their way back through the corridors.* The holographic recording indicated that the structure they were inside of had been sealed as some sort of fail safe. David can open this door, of course. He does, and the decapitated head of the Engineer is just beyond the entrance. He has the head of the “Space Jockey” we saw in the original Alien movie. I will skip forward some more…a heavy silica/sandstorm forces most of the team to return to Prometheus. David has his own salvage operation which centers around odd looking containers containing an odd liquid which moves. He manages to take one of the cylinders and bring it back to the ship along with the head of the Engineer. Our two characters who had left for the ship earlier are stuck in the structure as the storm hits.
Our female lead character is Dr Elizabeth Shaw, and her character is full of contradictions. She feels very deep passion for her scientific work in archeology, yet she also has a deep religious conviction and wears a crucifix on a chain around her neck. I suppose this is to appeal to a wider audience? Elizabeth Shaw comes off as more emotional and vulnerable than any of the other characters in this movie. Her and Charlie have a brief moment at some point where it becomes known that Elizabeth is unable to bear children. Elsewhere on the ship, Davis has been examining the contents of the cylinder he brought back. He takes a sample of the liquid, about a drop, and intentionally infects Charlie with it via giving him a drink. This is sinister and very top secret. But this is where the tension of the movie begins and builds. I will not give a play by play after this point in this review, because that is the part of the movie you will find worth whatever you paid for your ticket. The action is done very well and we see many connections both direct and indirect which connect this movie with Alien. There are few twists and turns in the story which I will not go into in this review. The ending of the movie is left open for a sequel, but what direction will it go? There is the new mythology of these Engineers which I personally do not find that interesting. But we also see a pre-Alien form of our Alien with its elongated head and multiple mouths bursting from the cheat of a infected Engineer. They could go either way.Go see this movie. If you see it, pay the extra for the 3D and you will feel like you got your money’s worth. If you are going to see a movie with the same dark mysterious feel of the original Alien, and a dynamic lead character, you may feel a bit disappointed.
