Prometheus

UK Release Date. 1 June 2012
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 4 mins
Director. Ridley Scott
Cast. Kate Dickie, Idris Elba, Emun Elliott, Michael Fassbender, Sean Harris, Logan Marshall-Green, Guy Pearce, Noomi Rapace, Rafe Spall, Charlize Theron, Benedict Wong.
Rating. 61%

Review.

Three decades after the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott returned to the science fiction genre with the eagerly anticipated Prometheus. The director's signature brand of intelligent and visceral film-making and clear sense of vision is perfectly suited for the genre. With the seminal films, Alien and Blade Runner, Scott's influence on every other science fiction film that followed cannot be overstated.

At his peak, few directors are able to immerse an audience in an environment quite like Scott. He is a talented world-builder, but the success of his films has always hinged on the quality of his screenwriters. In Prometheus, Scott [perhaps, ominously] teamed up with the screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who wrote the script for Cowboys & Aliens. Dusting down a dog-eared copy of Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods, Scott and Lindelof have attempted to deliver a grandiose Kubrickesque science fiction epic that examines the origins of mankind. Could the creator of the human race really be an extra-terrestrial life form?

A Ridley Scott film is always perfectly shot, intelligently edited and visually impressive. Prometheus is no different. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolksi delivers breathtaking moments as standard, while the production design from Arthur Max, Sonja Klaus and Janty Yates help instill a real sense of science fiction epic. 

The comparisons with Alien are inevitable, although Scott was at great pains to dispel the myth that Prometheus was a direct prequel to Alien. But whilst the visuals are more impressive, Prometheus contains little of the class of Alien. By today's standard Alien may seem pedestrian, but the film's slow-burn defined the horror-in-space formula. In Prometheus, there is no accumulation of dread, nor any of Alien’s protracted primordial intensity. Terror needs an atmosphere to flourish and Prometheus is too busy. Too irritable. Too noisy by half. Scott seems impatient, rushing set-ups and failing to establish tension. The likes of Rafe Spall, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie and Benedict Wong have small, nicely defined crew member roles, but other disposable stock characters perish, often without any great wit or design.

One of the main reasons Alien is held in such high regard is because of Sigourney Weaver’s personification of Ellen Ripley. A woman (and her fear) with nothing to save her but her inner strength and an indomitable will to survive. And while she does have her moments, Noomi Rapace’s Dr Elizabeth Shaw is no Ellen Ripley. Shaw is the project leader for Prometheus’s Scientific Prospecting Mission, a dynamic and driven scientist, who seems truly immersed in her own mission goals.

Noomi Rapace’s personable Shaw is in stark contrast to Charlize Theron’s sleek, androgynous, automaton Meredith Vickers. The mission director, and representative of the Weyland Corporation overcompensates for a niggling, underlying vulnerability - a flaw that is exploited by a criminally underused Idris Elba as the disheveled, devil-may-care captain, Janek.

The main protagonists are joined by a multi-faceted reboot of the requisite android science officer, David - the singularly good Michael Fassbender. He is first introduced on board the ship tending to the crew who are all in hyper-sleep and watching his favourite film, Lawrence Of Arabia. He is so taken with the film that he dyes his hair and affects his voice to look and sound more like Peter O’Toole (T.E. Lawrence). A remarkable resemblance. David bears no malice to the crew. He is simply fulfilling a more darker mission at the behest of his creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). 

Prometheus is an extension of H.R. Giger's biomechanical compendium, in particular, the giant, fossilised humanoid with its ribs exploded, that was discovered in the tomb-like Derelict in Alien. This storyline portends to explore the cosmic origins of humanity, but the film struggles to find a central strand which to hang on to. As a result Prometheus is a visually stunning disappointment, filled with ill-defined characters and situations that aren‘t remotely believable, and driven by blatantly obvious plot developments and devices.