One of the great mysteries of our time – or at least the past
year – has been solved. Ridley Scott’s insanely secretive new sci-fi thriller Prometheus is indeed a loose prequel to
his 1979 classic Alien. The
cryo-sleep capsules. The obligatory ambiguous android. The slow title reveal. The
mysterious alien spacecraft many viewers will remember from the original movie.
The connections are much too obvious to be ignored, putting an end to months of
speculation fueled by deliberately cryptic trailers, viral videos and
promotional interviews. In fact, the undeniable presence of Alien DNA underlying the story may be
one of the only things the movie manages to make clear, and even so, there is a
plot point or two that doesn’t quite add up.
If that sounds like a brazen put-down, it is – sort of. Full
disclosure: I’ve been intensely excited about Prometheus for months, ever since that first spine-tingling teaser
trailer was released, but as much as I would like to gush over and rave about
the final product, I can’t deny that, narratively, the film is a bit of a mess.
The script, written by polarizing Lost
show-runner Damon Lindelof, takes some rather befuddling leaps in logic, and
certain character motivations are either weakly hinted at or never really
explained at all.
That said, though it may not sound like it thus far in this
review, I enjoyed the movie, and luckily, most of the plot holes don’t distract
from what’s going on onscreen, only becoming evident upon subsequent musings. Part
gory monster/horror flick, part cerebral meditation on faith, humanity’s
origins and all life’s other Big Questions, Prometheus
is endlessly compelling, thankfully deviating from the slow pacing and
ponderous tone of the original. Ambitious and visually breathtaking, it effectively
generates both an intense sense of dread and genuine awe, sometimes in the same
scene. A fair number of moments, especially a sequence involving an emergency
C-section that is disturbing, to say the least, in its can’t-look-away
gruesomeness, are guaranteed to linger in the minds of audiences long after the
theater lights come back on.
Like in any monster movie, the aliens (who, in this case, are
also accompanied by the ever-enigmatic Engineers, a species of creatures that
might have created mankind) are only as interesting as the people fighting them,
and the crew of this particular ship happens to have been very well-chosen. After
making her Hollywood debut with a thankless role in last year’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,
original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
star Noomi Rapace gets her first lead role in an American movie as Dr.
Elizabeth Shaw, the inquisitive and driven archaeologist who, along with lover
Dr. Charlie Holloway (played by charming relative newcomer and Tom Hardy look-alike
Logan Marshall-Green) sets up the mission that takes our heroes to the planet
LV-223 (not the same planet that
served as the main setting for Alien,
as observant fans will notice), where they encounter said aliens and the
Engineers. With her surprisingly melodic voice and unique, sophisticated
beauty, she brings conviction and a subtle vulnerability to her portrayal of a fiercely
determined woman who struggles to stave off despair as what was initially a
scientific exploration collapses into a fight for survival. Also worth noting:
with his piercing blue eyes, suave yet unflappable demeanor and uncanny ability
to convey nuanced, contradictory emotions without letting them fully surface on
his face or in his voice, Michael Fassbender, who plays the android David,
represents one of those rare instances of absolutely pitch-perfect casting.
Furthermore, as the enigmatic and bitter Meredith Vickers, Charlize Theron is
at her ice-cold, calculating best, the character’s disappointing end
notwithstanding.
While it is far from a masterpiece and the murkiness of the
plot, much of it possibly intentional, will likely infuriate many a viewer, Prometheus is still utterly fascinating
and well worth watching. It’s a theater experience you probably won’t soon
forget.
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