Prometheus

Prometheus is a return to the science-fiction genre by the director Ridley Scott.  Many people, including myself, were very excited about this movie.  Prometheus is set in the same universe as the movie Alien, also directed by Ridley Scott.  Scott has done other science fiction films, including Blade Runner, which in my opinion is one of the best movies of all time.  Unfortunately his latest offering did not live up to his reputation.

The writing in this movie is so atrocious I don’t even know where to begin.  All of the characters, except for Elizabeth Shaw (the lead character and scientist played by Noomi Rapace) and David (the android played by Michael Fassbender) were never given much of a backstory or any interesting dialogue or character development, even though his is where the original Alien really excelled.  Whenever a character was killed, you actually felt something because the characters in Alien where interesting.  In Prometheus, it seems the deaths mainly serve to either advance the plot, or for the movie to go “LOL LOOK AT THE BLOOD!!!!”.  Since Prometheus tries to be an intelligent science-fiction film, this just doesn’t fit in at all.  Why would scientists from a trillion dollar corporation all be morons?  Seriously, the biologist of the crew tries to pet one of the alien creatures like it’s a household pet.

There are other ways to advance a plot then giving the characters a temporary IQ of 65.  That’s another problem with the movie, it just doesn’t flow well at all.  The characters are making decisions that just make no sense based off of information they learned 10 minutes ago.  There are parts of the movie where it seems like the scenes are just kind of stuck together, with absolutely no transition.  The major plot twist is lackluster because there’s no buildup it just kind of happens and then goes away.   There are many times when this movie raises a lot of questions, but the never resolves any of them.  It’s a real shame it wasn’t done better either, because there are some things the writer did well.  The theme of Creationism vs. Evolution is very strong here.   That’s a very relevant topic in today’s world, but for some reason it was only brought up a couple of times and was forgotten later in the movie.  Damon Lindelof was the head writer for Prometheus, and he’s also responsible for the television show Lost.  I think that’s the best way to describe the plot of Prometheus, it’s just lost.  There’s no real direction, and that’s a real shame, because there are some incredible parts to this movie.

In an interview, Ridley Scott said that “God is in the details” while he was describing Prometheus.  Despite whatever your religious beliefs may be, I think we can appreciate a movie that is keen on details.  I must say, Scott has done an excellent job with that.  One scene that sticks out in my mind is when a crew member makes a remark about how David (the android) is basically property.  After this David holds something on his finger that’s important to the story (trying to keep this as spoiler free as I can), you can see the symbol for the corporation that made him etched in to his fingerprint.  There are plenty of other examples in Prometheus that casually hint to huge implications.  I have to say, Michael Fassbenders performance as David is incredible.  A lot can be learned about David just by his facial expressions and reactions to some of the crew members’ dialogue.  This takes an incredibly talented actor to pull off, and I was impressed by it.  Ridley Scott also does a good job making some of the scenes really gruesome and horrifying.  There are many things to enjoy in this movie if you’re a fan of the Alien series, or if you just want to see a decent sci-fi film.  But don’t expect it to be the masterpiece we were all hoping for.