Prometheus

prometheusQuestions will be answered. That may be true, but there were a number of other questions that were raised in Prometheus that are left unanswered. And this is a straight prequel to Alien, there’s no getting around it. In the Alien films there’s a massive corporation Weyland-Yatuni attempting to acquire an alien to study and perhaps weaponize it. In Prometheus (and this isn’t a spoiler) almost right away we are introduced to the Weyland Corporation.

As a prequel, Prometheus does a lot right. It introduces some of the themes and settings that take place later in the franchise. We initially meet Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Greene), excavating ruins in Scotland. They make a discovery that puts them on a course that eventually takes them to outer space.

Now for the spoilers. This next paragraph will be heavy in spoilers. It also contains my biggest problem with the film.

My biggest problem with Prometheus was how it played out almost like the first Alien film. You have a strong female lead, an unknown biological menace, a corporation with an agenda and an android willing to carry that agenda out. Want to guess how the film ends? A final showdown between an alien threat and the female lead? Alright, so there are differences, some minor, some major (instead of a distress signal the salvage ship is following, it’s a mission to see where a “signal” comes from), but it’s almost like Ridley Scott and co-writers Jon Spaiht and Damon Lindelof took the original Alien script and retooled it.

End major spoilers.

It’s no secret crew members are going to die. We expect that. How is the question, and in Prometheus, what we get is something very new from what we have seen in the Alien franchise. We expect that as well. Prometheus, named after the Greek deity who gave fire to man, delivers an interesting morality tale not for the viewer, but for the characters, only they don’t know they are in it. And there is a bit of a spiritual exploration as well.

The performances are good, but Michael Fassbinder’s android David is a standout. Early on we see him fascinated with Peter O’Toole’s performance as T.E. Lawrence, which he effectively imitates, but with a distance that is appropriate for an android. Charlize Theron does a great job of course as one would expect. I particularly liked Idris Elba as the ship’s captain, a simple man with a simple mission, yet still complex enough to be interesting. Unfortunately most of the other crew members are faceless and not developed.

I asked for the multi-disc 3D version of the film for review, and didn’t get that. Instead I got the more bare-bones Blu-ray/DVD combination. It’s a real disappointment as there are a host of special features not included in this version. One of them is a massive “making of” documentary (over three and a half hours) which I was looking forward to seeing. Then there are the still galleries, pre-visualization animatics, screen tests and more that we miss out on this version.

What we do get is alright (a couple of audio commentaries, deleted scenes), but it’s not the complete package. Even if you don’t have 3D capable playback, get the bigger set just for the special features.