Hey! Remember when Ridley Scott used to direct great films? Neither do I, because I wasn't born yet. Okay, there
was Matchstick Men, but even that was almost ten years ago now. For the last decade plus, Scott has been busy crafting lofty, "respectable" films, historical epics and quaint dramas about wineries. I realize that this all sounds incredibly negative, but I bring it up in this way only to communicate the excitement that I was certainly not alone in feeling now that Scott has shucked all of this shameless Oscar-bait and has returned to the genre he helped legitimize thirty years ago with the modern sci-fi epic/pseudo
Alien prequel,
Prometheus. And, while I'm guessing that some will be disappointed, maybe even dislike it intensely, I say
Prometheus delivers... For the most part.
Prometheus follows a crew traveling through space to a distant planet where a duo of archaeologists, Holloway and Shaw (Logan Marshall Green and a brilliantly faux-frail, surprisingly survivalist Noomi Repace), believe human life originated. Hoping to find Life's Engineers, they've convinced Peter Weland (the "W" of
Alien's Weyland Yutani Corp.) to fund an expensive mission, which enlists a cold, apathetic Charlize Theron (continuing her streak of appearing in "the best movie of the summer so far" (cameo in
That's My Boy?)) as the ship's commander, Idris Elba as a goofy redneck-of-the-future, playing the ship's captain, and Michael Fasbender as the ship's android companion (an
Alien staple), deceptively carrying out a secret agenda while modeling his mannerisms and speech patterns after Peter O'Toole from
Lawrence of Arabia, which is quite good, and quite effectively unsettling. All, of course, are joined by a handful of other doomed souls who will demonstrate the horrors of the alien menace contained on the planet in the disguised exposition of act two... And I say that with the utmost adoration.
Amidst all of the body horror (which includes throat snakes and eyeball worms, among others I'll not mention here) and the steadily rising level of suspense and dread are some deeper, more existential questions, and this where the film gets really interesting, and also where it ultimately falls a bit short. A film about the search for the creation of life naturally poses an unanswerable question, and though the film posits an interesting theoretical answer early on, replacing it with a more disturbing question, asking why our creators wanted to destroy us. The film leaves this question unanswered as a tease for the sequel, a copout for sure, though I must admit one that absolutely piques my curiosity. Also running parallel to this issue of creation is that of religion vs. science, though I'm not exactly sure where the film falls on the topic. Though the film is essentially about curiosity itself, this unanswered thematic ambiguity mounts throughout the film, setting up an inevitable feeling of slight disappointment in the end.
But that's focusing on the negative, especially unfair considering it actually has the courage to ask grand philosophical questions, the closest to which we've had this summer being "How does Bruce not constantly turn into The Hulk?" And what's more important, at least in summer movie terms, is that its action and the scale of its spectacle are just as big as its unanswered questions. Scott and his cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, create an darkly enchanting experience that is bleak and beautiful. Using real, wide-open landscapes, Prometheus is as overwhelmingly huge as Alien was cramped and claustrophobic. Combined with an elegant use of 3D, this film is visually unmatched, and is the first time I've been less impressed when seeing the 2D presentation the second time around. Scott also heeds the advice he received from effects master Douglas Trumbull on the set of Blade Runner: "If you can do it live, do it live," which makes for a (mostly) minimal use of CGI, and gives the world of the film that much more dimension.
Prometheus also deserves a lot of credit for its originality. Reboots, remakes, sequels, and the like are getting very stale, and Prometheus offers a new way to build on a franchise, (very refreshing if the practice must continue), for it is really only technically a prequel... That is more of an extra tidbit, for it is completely its own film with its own characters and mythology. It just so happens that it also sets up a previously established film series, and while its handling of this tie- in at the very end was a little ham-fisted, the idea is no less interesting for it. And while this may not have been the brilliant masterpiece we all hoped it would be, it'll certainly do for now, and I suspect it will endure. If nothing else it's a welcome return to sci-fi for Ridley Scott, and a strong case for the potential of 3D as a genuine cinematic device. Bravo.
