Fast forward several eons to 2089 and archeologists Elizabeth Shaw (the marvelous Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (newcomer Logan Marshall-Green) discover a recurring motif in cave art worldwide. Somebody or something communicated with ancient civilizations and apparently left invitations for us to read when we were technologically advanced enough. Invitations pointing the way "home". Shaw and Holloway convince Weyland corporation to spend a trillion dollars to fund an expidition to accept this invitation and everbody's off to see the wizard.
The setup while effective seems overly simplistic/too matter of fact in its delivery, going from cave paintings to the depths of space to finding the alien habitat and effortlessly touching down without missing a beat. Personally I wanted to see some of the world of 2089 and learn more about how these 2 scientists convinced Weyland corp to finance their field trip. (Viral videos don't count as part of the movie.)
However, all is not lost during the setup as Scott uses all the empty narrative space to introduce David (Michael Fassbender), the expedition's resident android and arguably the film's central character. David is fascinated with "Lawrence of Arabia" and quotes from it at strategic points throughout Prometheus. If you're at all familiar with David Lean's masterpiece you'll probably get these references. If you don't you'll be missing a big piece of the David puzzle. David seems to use Peter O'Toole's extraordinary performance as a way to create a subtext for his own actions. Like Lawrence he's got a secret agenda, one he knows will result in harm to his hosts. This creates conflict within him which he neutralizes using Lawrence's trick; "The trick... is not minding that it hurts." Some other quotes from Lawrence of Arabia include "Big things have small beginnings", "Mortal after all" and "There's nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing." As these references spill out of him you can see David internally imposing the Lawrence narrative on the unfolding events to provide himself context and again if you are familiar with "Lawrence" you'll know that this is not necessarily a good thing because hard lessons are waiting on the road to Damascus.
While David and Shaw are characters that shine there are others that don't work at all. Charleze Theron's mission overlord "Merideth Vickers" is a wood cutout of a character and its not all the writer's fault. Theron seems to think that "cold" equals "authoritative" when actually it means just the opposite. The way she's played here Vickers wouldn't last more than a few hours before being subjected to interstellar fragging. They are, after all, light years from home with no police force around, and the crew would have plenty of time to concoct a story about what happened to her. The other character that doesn't even begin to work is Fifield, a mohawked, crybaby coward with a nasty disposition who would never in a million years be allowed on a prolonged expedition of any kind in the real world.
Happily Prometheus gets most of its issues out of the way in the first act and once the alien worm-critters make their debut things shift into another gear. The scientists, in their rush to investigate what they're faced with upon landing, are unaware they've got a renegade android on their hands and David does his passive/agressive best to undermine the proceedings. In short order his actions begin to endanger the mission and its members and things go from bad to much worse when he sneeks some alien protoplasm on board and then sets about to "engineer" a way to get it home. And speaking of engineers, those humungous creatures who created us (and it seems the aliens as well) and are supposed to be the ones with the answers seem to have all perished some 2,000 years before Shaw and her colleagues land to interview them. Or have they?
Prometheus is loaded with big questions. None bigger than that old standby "Where did we come from?" In the best scientific tradition it doesn't really answer any of them. Instead it handles the immediate issues and leaves the bigger questions for the proverbial 'later day' (read 'sequel') where the answers will again no doubt be left dangling just out of reach.
It's stumbles are never enough to land it on its face yet are significant enough to make me wonder if Ridley wasn't paying attention here and there or if I just missed something. Personally I'm chaulking most of Prometheus' problems up to the presence of David Lindelof. His TV-shaped fingerprints are all over the films weaknesses (inexplicable characters, crappy TV-show musical theme and serial fetish) and it's my sincere hope that he's not allowed anywhere near the sequel, once it gets underway.
The atmosphere Scott creates is never dark enough for Prometheus to be considered a true horror film ala "Alien". What it is is a hybrid of sorts. Part house of horrors, part character study, part history lesson and part franchise reboot. It's visually breathtaking first frame to last, never less than engaging and often exciting with some truly "horrific" scenes. It's well paced, ambitious, imaginative and thought provoking and is Scott's best film in years. For the reasons mentioned above, however, it comes up just short of being a great film and I was left feeling a bit like Lawrence, staring off into space, wondering what might have been.
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