While YeahMovies proper undergoes a server change, I'm putting up my review of Prometheus on the blog here:
An important aspect of my opinion on Prometheus is the large amount of anticipation I had for the film coming into this summer. Alien is one of my all-time favorites, and knowing that Ridley Scott would be back in the universe he created for a precursor film jazzed me up to the core. Needless to say, I was mightily disappointed in the effort. The film didn’t live up to my lofty expectations, almost completely due to the poor script. I’ll do my best to be rational about my analysis, but be warned that the review could turn into a fanboy rant at any time. So feel free to take what comes next with a grain of salt.
I will say that visually, Scott did a great job. The look of the ship and everything inside was great, especially compared to Alien(s). Both of those films have a much more worn in and grimy feel to them, as they come years after the Weyland-Yutani Corporation began sending ships and terraforming outfits into space. Prometheus (the name of the ship in this film), on the other hand, is one of the first to go into deep space, and still has a polished look about it. In terms of the cinematography, I really liked the extreme long shots that Scott employed at different junctures to give a sense of scale. We see Prometheus as a small dot next to the planet they’re going to land on, and also as a miniature next to the huge domed structure that is to be investigated on the surface. This ties in quite well with the essential question of the film- what is the significance of mankind (i.e. who are we, where are we from). We can see in these long shots that the crew are almost infinitesimal compared to the grandiosity of the cosmos. Just because we can rationalize about the meaning of life doesn’t necessarily mean we should try to find the answer.
This idea of a thirst for knowledge is explored throughout the film, and acts as the catalyst for the plot. We all want to know how or why we’re here, and Prometheus sets out to ask those questions to a race of beings that possibly created us. The mission (and premise of the film) is to visit a planet in solar system with a sun like our own that was drawn about in many disparate ancient civilizations, all with a figure gesturing at said planet. The scientists who made this discovery believe the drawings to be an invitation by the “engineers” of the human race, and Prometheus sets forth, basically, so the crew can meet their maker. Things don’t pan out so well, as you can imagine, and the film wraps up in a way as to suggest that asking too many questions is not always the best idea. Indeed, naming the ship Prometheus isn’t exactly a good omen, either. Yes, the Titan stole fire from the gods to benefit mankind- to enlighten us. The crew in the film set out to further expand the wealth of human knowledge, but the part that they conveniently forget is that Prometheus is punished for his transgression, forced to have his liver eaten out of him every day by an eagle.
All of this is fine from a thematic standpoint, but the actual storytelling is less than stellar. One aspect that ties into this thirst for knowledge is the dichotomy set up between one of the scientists, Shaw, and the Weyland commissioned android, David. Shaw wants to learn about the engineers and who we are as humans, but also has strong ties to Christianity. She wears a cross, the only religious item in the film, which belonged to her father, a missionary. We know this because David can see the dreams of the rest of the crew while they’re in hyper-sleep, and observes Shaw interacting with her father. Thus, the two are linked from the beginning in a science vs. faith opposition. Yet it doesn’t work by the end of the movie because Shaw is not at all fleshed out from a character perspective and David’s agenda is distorted based on the decisions he makes throughout. There isn’t anything constant about David, which doesn’t mesh with his being a programmed machine. I read an interview with Michael Fassbender about the character, and while some interesting points were made about the ambiguity of David’s human qualities, I felt it was to the detriment of the film to always be questioning his actions.
The biggest drawback of the script was the sheer amount of ideas presented. Prometheus certainly takes the universe created in the Alien films and shows us more of it, but this ended up burdening me with more questions than answers. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, seeing as how one of the screenwriters is Damon Lindelof, one of the two men responsible for Lost. Many of the aspects of the film that seem to be expansion of ideas are nothing more than a source of tension. We are introduced to different aliens than what we’ve seen in other films, but there is no establishment of the relationship between them all. The epitome of the lack of structure in the conception of the aliens comes when one apparently takes over a human body and attacks Prometheus. The alien is disengaged, and nothing is said of it again. The characters go back to what they were doing, showing that the only reason the alien was written to have that power was to create an action scene.
The film started out with promise, as the first act lays the groundwork very well to get you ready for what is to come. However, things start to get shaky in the second act with new developments that didn’t feel right or necessary, and then everything derails in the third act. Prometheus left me unsatisfied, but at least there are things to discuss about it, more even that what I’ve mentioned here. Now I have to hope The Amazing Spider-Man can save my summer. Yeesh.
