Alienating Prometheus

As a film geek, Prometheus is exactly the type of film you dread; a highly anticipated epic that fails to meet level of quality one reasonably expected of it. Disappointing in other words. After two decades of evil film studio Twentieth Century Fox fannying around with weak Alien sequels (Alien Resurrection) and pathetic crossover prequels (AvP Requiem) it was impossible not to get excited when it was announced that Sir Ridley Scott would be returning to the Alien universe that he created back in 1979 with a loose prequel story. Not to mention Mr Scott, a science fiction visionary, would be returning to the genre 30 years after Blade Runner cemented him as one of the great cinema artists of all time.

Prometheus is a mess. A beautiful, mesmerizing, gripping, thoroughly enjoyable, frustrating mess of a movie. It’s been mentioned before in other reviews, but Prometheus most feels like the Alien 3 of the three decade old Xenomorph franchise. That 1992 sequel has great ideas, fantastic set pieces and was undoubtedly a gorgeous (in a grim looking way) piece of stylistic film making by debut director David Fincher. But, much like Prometheus, it had a large cast of characterless characters that you couldn’t tell from one another and couldn’t care less about who were there simply as monster fodder. It also had a lazy, under-developed script where stupid characters did crazy, stupid stuff because no one could be arsed to apply logic to the story as it developed.

To be fair most of the problems with Prometheus lie with Damon (Lost) Lindelof’s half assed excuse of a screenplay. It starts off promisingly enough with the mission, the themes, the characters and the locations all being introduced very well indeed. Things begin to fall apart as the intrepid Prometheus crew enter the alien structures where they hope to encounter mankind’s makers, an alien race thought to have seeded Earth thousands of years ago. For a hardcore scientific expedition with a corporate company board member in charge, the team pay little attention to procedure (or even common sense) in a likely hostile environment. Therefore the head of the expedition does little to lead her team (after assertively making the point that she’s in charge), scientist wonder off and get lost, disregard orders about removing protective helmets, not touching potentially dangerous artefacts or re-entering their own spacecraft regardless of contamination risks. Even Michael Fassbender’s robot is allowed to go unsupervised to collect biological samples, given time to study it and then go unchecked to experiment with the samples on his fellow crewmates (all with his boss tucked away on the very same spaceship…he no mad, he crazy!)

But that’s just the beginning of the script problems. The best of the characters manage to be two dimensional at best, and that includes Noomi Rapace’s lead scientist, with the rest being a sea of nobodies waiting to die. To its credit Prometheus does toy with lots of concepts such as where did mankind come from, science and faith, what it means to be human, and the nature of life from birth, evolution, procreation, offspring, old age and death. It’s all good stuff to be sure and it’s even more impressive that this is being dealt with in a mainstream science fiction blockbuster from Twentieth Century Fox of all people, but with such little thought having been given to script structure few if any of these ideas are explored to any degree of satisfaction. You only have to look at Christopher Nolan’s Inception or Joss Whedon’s Cabin In The Woods or even Scott’s own Blade Runner to see how a film with multiple thematic layers can work effortlessly. Even the overall story which, after raising the most alarming and surprising question in the entire movie, is effectively ignored at the very end in favour of blatantly setting up a direct sequel during its cop out conclusion. Therefore Prometheus, entertaining though it is, feels like a film without an ending. It even has the cheap-ass audacity to throw in a sell-out Alien reference in a cheesy mid-credits scene at the movie’s end.

Editing is another huge problem in Prometheus. The first issue is in the overall pacing of the film. Individual scenes work just fine and it’s in the individual parts that the film works the best. But, when viewed as a whole, characters disappear from the narative for long stretches when we ought to be aware of their actions with regards to everything else that’s going on. There’s one sequence where an imperilled Noomi requires urgent medical assistance and you’d swear from the way it was edited she was the only person on the spaceship. Earlier the film is so busy following the adventures of robot Fassbender, Captain Elba and CEO Theron that Noomi practically disappears from her own story. There seem to be major lost opportunities when editing the action as well. A Thing-like creature turns up to terrorise the crew but it’s extremely unclear which character is the threat, a storm sequence starts out well but ends in a confusing muddle of jostling space helmets and the climactic end game scenario is so devoid of alternative outcomes that all suspense has been stripped from the most epic moment of the entire film.

In terms of how Prometheus relates to the rest of the Alien franchise it is pleasingly distant in tone enough to form it’s own identity. There’s a grander, more awe inspiring feel to the film that’s echoed in the production design, effects and the lush score by Marc Streitenfeld which sets the story up as less of a horror film and more of a grander, serious science fiction spectacle along the lines of 2001. That means, despite the aggressive creatures hunting the crew, that Prometheus is less scary than Alien and less action packed than Aliens and that’s cool as it’s doing is own thing. The film does go out of its way to include as many of Alien’s story beats as possible such as the expedition to an unknown world, the shady company agenda, the seemingly untrustworthy android, ‘egg’ chambers, impregnation, body horror, lifeboats with hidden nooks and crannies and the obligatory attempt to prevent the danger from getting back to Earth. This gives Prometheus a strong connection to Alien and it feels familiar, yet different, in so many ways including how the film was designed visually…but in terms of story structure, James Cameron’s Aliens did this so much more intelligently.

My final problem is with casting. Noomi Rapace is fine in the lead role; she’s strong, passionate and oddly attractive but the idea of her being an English woman is as preposterous as Connery being a Russian or Statham being a Yank. Idris Elba, Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce are all great although their roles are tragically underwritten while it’s down to Michael Fassbender to steal the show as coolly detached Data-like android David. Meanwhile Brit badass Sean Harris makes an early impression before disappearing while Logan Marshall-Green comes across as the zero-dimensional, younger brother of Tom Hardy. The rest of the crew highlight the same problem Ridley Scott had when casting his 2010 epic Robin Hood…apart from the leads the supporting cast are bland and unmemorable, no matter what quality work might have preceded Prometheus.

Now, despite all that negativity and complaining, I really, really enjoyed Prometheus. It looks utterly stunning from the production design (which comes across as a cross between the original Alien and a cleaner Star Trek vibe), the 60’s retro-cool of the spacesuits, the stunning special effects (the planetary flybys are jaw dropping) , the sense of adventure, the atmosphere of dread, and of course the fascination with how it all links in with Alien. It’s a spaceship bound, far future science fiction epic which is catnip to me, Scott directs with a non-Hollywood Euro-feel which despite his advancing years, makes the film seem fresh and cutting edge, and the story is gripping regardless of structural issues.

Prometheus is a beautiful, unfocused, undisciplined mess but one that is still head and shoulders above most science fiction releases and it should be applauded for at least having some ambition. If the planned sequel goes ahead, it may go some way to addressing the feeling of incompleteness in Prometheus’s story, it’s just a shame Scott and Lindelof couldn’t make it work as a self contained piece of storytelling.