Review: Prometheus (2012)
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender
Director: Ridley Scott
Country: USA
Genre: Action | Horror | Sci-Fi
Official Trailer: Here
The camera sweeps across a barren plane, flying over craggy rocks and through low-hanging cloud. All seems empty, quiet, dead. And then a lake, the shades of green, and life. Back in the 1970s when man had walked on the moon and vast new worlds were open to our eyes, Ridley Scott gave us Alien. Now, with Prometheus, he takes us back to Earth. The film’s opening sequence, shot with staggering beauty by Dariusz Wolski, emphasises the luscious vistas of our world, the entrancing majesty of home. Scott doesn’t keep us long on Earth, but he ensures that it makes an impression, that its natural wonders are clearly emphasised.
Sci-fi always works with big ideas, and Scott is certain to match these with visuals just as massive, with a sound design just as huge. His film is a technical marvel on every level, an orgy of visual and aural sumptuousness that fills one with a sense of dumbfounded wonderment.
From a design standpoint, Prometheus is just about flawless, the gorgeous view of Earth it proffers no more wowing than the elaborate constructions of the titular ship or the magnificent scope of the planet to which it journeys. Sci-fi always works with big ideas, and Scott is certain to match these with visuals just as massive, with a sound design just as huge. His film is a technical marvel on every level, an orgy of visual and aural sumptuousness that fills one with a sense of dumbfounded wonderment. In the arena of blockbuster event movies, it immediately establishes itself as a leading theatrical experience, a bold display of cinema’s greatest current innovations.
With so attention-grabbing and awe-inspiring a visual aspect, it’s not hard to understand how Prometheus’ narrative could find itself somewhat dwarfed. A sprawling crew makes for many a one-note character, though each at least serves a clear narrative function, even if it is only to forewarn the mysterious dangers of this new world. Noomi Rapace’s Dr Elizabeth Shaw is an intriguing lead, her Christian leanings forming one of the centrepieces of the film’s thematic search for meaning. Rapace is a great talent, bringing a good deal more to her role than the script’s perfunctory romance. Perhaps a dry character on the page, Shaw finds in Rapace the right kind of emotional investment and fearful curiosity to make her work at the heart of this narrative. Like all else in the film, though, she is vastly overshadowed by the astounding work of Michael Fassbender. Fassbender imbues the robot David with more delicate humanity than any of the cast can instil in their own mortal characters, his performance living up in every way to the promise of his eerie viral video released just a few months ago. He is easily the most fascinating character of the film, conjuring parallels to Pinocchio and Wall-E without ever seeming a derivative impression of either. His function as an ironic inversion of the human characters’ search for their origins brings a lot to the film on a thematic level, even despite the heavy-handed approach the writers take to ensuring the audience will pick up on this.
Fassbender imbues the robot David with more delicate humanity than any of the cast can instil in their own mortal characters, his performance living up in every way to the promise of his eerie viral video released just a few months ago. He is easily the most fascinating character of the film, conjuring parallels to Pinocchio and Wall-E without ever seeming a derivative impression of either.
With so much of the film’s hype centred on the is-it-isn’t-it an Alien prequel debate, it’s easy to forget that Prometheus is its own beast; few seem to have lost sight of that reality quite so much as Scott himself, who takes every opportunity to overbearingly harken bark (or rather forward) to his 1979 classic. In fact, he does so with such enthusiastic zeal that it seems almost as though he doesn’t trust us to know Alien well enough, as though we’re not sharp enough to spot the connective tissue without him guiding our eyes in the right direction. It feels at times almost an interactive experience, as though Scott himself is sat beside you, periodically nudging you in the ribs and pointing at the screen. Those viewing the film solely as part of the Alien universe without allowing it to stand on its own merits do it a disservice, but the way Scott constantly alludes to his own genre innovator makes it difficult not to.
Great sci-fi should strive to understand the essence of humanity: the hows and whys of our existence; the big questions as to our purpose on this planet. Scott, older and more mature than when last he tackled the genre, brings that very sensibility to the epic scale of the blockbuster, mingling existential yearning with Hollywood spectacle in such a way that it dares to be more than a passably entertaining two hours in the cinema. The problem, of course, is that nobody has the answers, and all Prometheus can do is to delegate its questions to potential sequels, to let the ponderings be overshadowed by the construction of its mythology. On the level of grand entertainment, the enormity of its design and the sheer awe of its scale more than deliver the thrills of a good story well told. But the weight of expectation hangs heavy, and Prometheus struggles to manage a fire it can’t hope to contain. It’s not the great film we all hoped for, not the modern masterpiece Scott’s fans desired. What it is, when approached with the right expectations, is a meticulously crafted and consistently entertaining sci-fi spectacle.
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