PROMETHEUS

Prometheus (15)
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Damon Lindelof, Jon Spaihts
Starring: Nooami Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender
They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.

When you ask someone to list their favourite films of all time, Alien is usually on there. The sequel sometimes overshadows it but Alien remains a genre-changing masterpiece that is still a benchmark in sci-fi horror.

So when Prometheus was announced there was a tremendous amount of excitement. Let’s face it, the last decent addition to the franchise was Aliens, and that was back in 86.

You can forgive people for getting hyped up about a film that was being directed by Ridley Scott and was being billed as an Alien prequel.

And that, I’m afraid to say, is where the film falls down. Because it does not feel like an Aliens movie. I don’t doubt that it never intended to mimic its predecessors and that it very much intended to have its own style and its own identity. In this regard it is a success.



As a stand alone film, Prometheus is visually breathtaking and intriguing. It explores the biggest question that humans have ever asked. Where did we come from? Its focus on this is fierce and in some ways admirable yet somewhere along the way, amongst the spirituality and philosophy, it loses its edge. Engaging? Yes. Exciting? Not really.

Some people have slated this film – describing it as a massive flop - amongst other things. This view is not from a tiny minority either. And this is all down to expectation. In a nutshell, this is what the audience wanted and hoped to see; Humans on a spaceship fighting aliens.



That may sound a bit juvenile and naïve but it’s what people wanted. The philosophy stuff is not a problem, the audience can deal with that added dimension as long as at its core, it satisfies their desire to see aliens and action. It was a tough ask to please everyone and Ridley Scott, as much as he tried to play down its prequel tag, failed to understand quite what the audience had been waiting to see for 25 years.



The film itself is not a disaster in any way, shape or form. The first half is contemplative and full of promise, Fassbender is superb as the android and the visuals are stunning. However there are problems here aside from the unfulfilled promise of action. Rapace does ok but it feels like there are too many characters here and not enough time to get to know them properly. Her relationship with Logan Marshall-Green is unconvincing and Guy Pearce’s inclusion as Weyland just feels unnecessary and disturbs the final act, which is on the whole, a little underwhelming. The script is adequate but when expectations are so high, adequate doesn't feel quite good enough.



However by the last frame, Scott has posed some interesting questions that need answering and a sequel is very much in the pipeline. A sequel that will be well worth watching. Yes it's a disappointing film if you compare it to Alien and Aliens, but dig deeper and you will see that is nowhere near as bad as some are claiming.