Prometheus

“Sometimes you must destroy in order to create.”

The H-Bomb:  Let me start off by addressing the 800-pound Xenomorph sitting in the room, just so we all understand, Prometheus IS a prequel to Alien.  There, are we all clear on that?  Good.  Now, notice I said it’s a prequel to Alien, not the prequel to Alien, because, assuming this one pans out, there will be others, since the ending of Prometheus does not leave off where the first Alien film begins.  Also, it is important to note that while this is a prequel to Alien, it is NOT an Alien movie.  No face huggers, no chest bursters… at least, not as we’ve come to… well, let me just stop there.

(H-Man Aside:  This is going to be a bitch to review properly without spoilers.  I’m going to try my best, but I make no guarantees).

While Alien, and its sequels, were essentially space age monster movies, Prometheus is not… it doesn’t start out as one, anyway.  It’s actually a film about discovery, ala 2001: A Space Odyssey, only less cryptic.  Two scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) find what appears to be a star map painted on the wall of a cave, left by a race of intelligent beings that have visited our planet at several points in the past.

The fact that other ancient cultures around the globe (Egyptian, Mayan, etc.) have this exact same pictogram, hieroglyphic, cave painting, whatever, is enough to convince ailing business tycoon, Weyland (Guy Pearce, who cameos in laughable old man make-up), the head of “The Company,” which will become infamous in series’ canon, to fund an expedition to the distant planet, LV-223, which is not LV-426, the planet from Alien and Aliens, but is in the same intergalactic neighborhood.

Shaw and Holloway believe that this alien race, “The Engineers,” or as those of us versed in Alien lore know them as, “Space Jockeys,” hold the key to the origin of humanity, so they view this quest as a journey to “meet our makers.”  Thus far, this whole notion of an alien race leaving us directions to come find them is sounding a bit like Contact.  However, instead of Jodie Foster bouncing around the galaxy in a cosmic pinball, just to meet her dead daddy on a cartoon beach, there is something very different lying in wait for Shaw and Holloway, as well as the fifteen other crew members of the spaceship Prometheus.  Something far less hospitable and, thankfully, far less sappy.  Think of it as Contact with an actual payoff!

When they first arrive, the scientists find, much to their initial disappointment, the remnants of an extra-terrestrial race that was, by the artifacts they find, most definitely humanoid, and now appears to be most definitely dead.  However, not everything is as it appears, as the explorers do come upon a weird black goo, as well as some nasty as hell snake/vagina things that bleed acid when they get a boo-boo.  From there, shit gets uglier, bad things happen, and the Prometheus crew find themselves realizing that they walked into a giant booby-trap, and wishing that they just stayed home.

As a fan of the Alien series (1-3 anyway, 4 blew and the AVP flicks can suck my sack), I’m finding that trying to review Prometheus to be a really frustrating task.  Not because I’m disappointed by it.  In actuality, I fucking loved it!  But rather, because there is so goddamn little I can say about it, without revealing things I shouldn’t reveal, because practically everything that happens once the ship sets down on the planet in a spoiler.  Yet, as a fan of the series, Prometheus, as a rare example of a good prequel (ahem, Mr. Lucas), provides me with so much that I just want to chew on and discuss with other Alien fans.

This is the first film since James Cameron’s Aliens to really expand on the ‘alien’ mythology in a meaningful way.  In a way, that like in all great science fiction, explains many questions we had (who/what were the Space Jockeys, what were they about), while simultaneously raising new ones.  Again, it irks me that I can’t dive into specifics, because the best way to go into this thing is with as clean a slate as possible.

I must also re-iterate, while this is technically part of the Alien series, do not expect this to be an Alien movie… it is not.  At least it’s not in the sense of there’s a monster loose aboard a ship, running around air ducts and corridors killing people.  Prometheus is, overall, an entirely different kind of science fiction film.  One, that is in terms of its ideas, far, far more ambitious.  It’s something that starts off in the existing Alien universe, then expands it, and just completely takes it to a whole new level.

It’s not the Alien story, it’s the Alien back-story, which again, is an expansive narrative unto itself.  One that actually delves into the ultimate existential question: Why?  This may seem too lofty for some fans of the series, and it may very well be, but for anyone who has listened to director Ridley Scott’s commentary on the DVD for the original Alien, that he recorded a decade ago now, this is the exact film he promised he would make, should he ever return to the franchise.  On that commentary, he goes into specifics as to who the Space Jockeys are, and what their downed spacecraft is.  All of that comes to pass, here.  Fuck, I wish I could say more!

Okay, I’m just driving myself nuts with this plot I can’t talk about, so I’ll just move on to something I can, the performances.  Everyone is fantastic in this ensemble. Much like in the original three movies, there is not one weak link I can point to.  Rapace, this time not rocking a Dragon Tattoo, creates a strong, sympathetic female lead, who, miraculously, managed to not remind me of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley at all.  Elizabeth Shaw is entirely her own woman, and Rapace brought her to life flawlessly.

I also loved Charlize Theron as Vickers, the bitchy “Company Woman” who is overseeing the entire expedition.  These films always gave us at least one contemptible human character we loved to hate, and this time, it is her.  The best performance in the cast, however, belongs to the one who isn’t even playing a person, at all.  Michael Fassbender, who has been rockin’ it a lot recently, completely owns as David, the Weyland Corp.-built android, who, as we remember from the earlier films, comes from a time when androids were “a bit twitchy,” and not always acting in the best interest of their human colleagues.  Fassbender gives his milk-bleeding synthetic a kind of passive, soft-spoken creepiness that makes him just as scary as the films slimier villains.

Oh, but there I go, saying too damn much, yet again.  I suppose I shall just end it now.  I can only stress that while there are elements of the Alien films in Prometheus, strands of Alien DNA, if you will, it is entirely its own creature that raises the stakes of the series and really opens up the possibilities of where it can go from here.  As a die hard lover of the first three films (yes I like the controversial Alien 3), Scott delivered everything I ever could have hoped for with his return to this universe.

Do I have any complaints…?  Yeah, I guess.  I thought some of the CGI looked a tad hokey in spots, the 3D, as per usual, added absolutely nothing to the picture (seriously, just catch it in 2D and save yourself the money), and that fucking old-age make-up they put on Guy Pearce . . . what were they thinking???  But aside from those very minor nitpicks, Prometheus is as close to a perfect Sci-Fi epic as I could ever expect, this side of 2001.  Again, some fans who just want to see Xenomorphs snacking on people are going to be left wanting, but those willing to embrace this new chapter in the saga with an open mind, may just find it to be the most fascinating and rewarding one yet.