Prometheus: Burned by the Gods

A king has his reign and then he dies, so says Charlize Theron’s morose Meredith Vickers in Prometheus, this summer’s dark sci-fi Alien prequel-in-everything-but-name. Yet she very well could’ve been referring to the film’s regal director, Sir Ridley Scott, a filmmaker whose own reign has lasted for over 35 years. And after this massive, gorgeous-but-hollow misfire, it’s quite possible that this king’s rule at the top of the cinematic roost has come to a disappointing end.

While the end result has more laughable moments than there are terrifying, the marketing campaign for Prometheus has been nothing short of masterful. Between the pedigree of a director who practically invented the modern sci-fi genre with his seminal one-two futuristic punch of Alien and Blade Runner, a mesmerizing initial movie trailer with an incredibly effective sound design, and clever viral video plugs like Guy Pearce’s 2023 TED talk, the folks at Scott’s own RSA Production company have set the template for raising expectations beyond what anyone – even Scott – could possibly live up to. But don’t get me wrong, Prometheus isn’t a disappointment simply because it wasn’t as good as the hype. It’s a disappointment because it’s a fundamentally terrible film.

Prometheus is laughable when it should be thrilling, boring when it should be taut, and insultingly unpolished at the script level when it should be terrific—and all of this is just inexcusable coming from the veteran filmmaker who so expertly created heart-wrenching tension, pathos, and memorable characters in Prometheus’s predecessor, Alien. While the clever marketing campaign never fully admits that Prometheus is an official prequel to Alien, it absolutely is. Being secretive about this was smart in adding that allure of mystery around it; but after seeing the film, I wonder if they weren’t just cheaply latching onto the classic 1979 sci-fi film that started a thirty-plus year, (now) seven-film franchise because they knew they had a disappointing, dumb film on their hands and needed moviegoers to create all of the interesting parts in their mind that they failed to put on celluloid.

The only things that didn’t disappoint were the visuals. The sets were amazing, as were the makeup and costume designs for the Engineers (what they call the Space Jockey’s race of alien beings). I especially loved that Scott used computer graphics to enhance the practical effects rather than relying on CG alone. But, give me a break: we’ve seen photorealistic CG for years so let’s all stop pretending that hiring some fantastic computer artists to create amazing landscapes and effects is enough to give a movie a pass. It’s not. With Scott at the helm, Prometheus was supposed to be more than just eye-candy. But sadly, that’s its only redeeming feature.

And that, ultimately, is the fatal flaw of Prometheus: screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof fail to create actual characters for us to care about. Despite the whole plot revolving around this sciencey science expedition helmed by scientist Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) and sciencey love interest-slash-fellow-scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), the characters filling out the team act more like the disgruntled miners from Alien than the super-sciencey scientists they’re supposed to be. Actually, that’s giving them too much credit since they aren’t even characters: they’re just names lazily picked out of a hat and plopped onto the page with random job descriptions that don’t at all fit their personalities. It’s the only way to explain how biologist Millburn’s (Rafe Spall) idea of investigating the fauna on the foreign world involves an ill-advised cosmic version of “Here, kitty kitty.” Or why Holloway is so flippant when talking to the android David (Michael Fassbender) about why humans created artificial intelligence, completely ignorant of the fact that the question David asks him is precisely what Holloway wishes he could ask these alien creators. Or why geologist Fifield (Sean Harris) spends infinitely more time getting over-the-top angry for no good reason than he ever does looking at rocks, much less, I don’t know, studying a dirt sample or two from this completely alien planet. Perhaps it’s overly general of me, but when I think of scientists getting the chance to investigate an alien lifeform for the first time in history, I don’t imagine that they’d only be there to collect a paycheck. Yet everyone on board the Prometheus except for Holloway and Shaw seem like they were forced to go against their will and have zero personal interest whatsoever. And if they’re that unimpressed by their adventure, why should we feel any different?

Honestly there are so many "Really!?" moments that the best way to watch Prometheus would be on BluRay with an Amy Poehler/Seth Meyers commentary track running the entire time. With characters this dumb, acting in such nonsensical ways we’re pulled out of the story too much and too frequently to truly enjoy pondering the bigger questions that the film wants to explore, such as “who created us” and “why are we here”. These are ideas that make for intelligent sci-fi, which is far too rare these days. But Prometheus loses the audience’s interest and respect when even the most basic elements of good storytelling are handled so poorly, and this drains its interesting raw concepts of any impact. Perhaps part of the problem is due to the film being forced to wrap these ideas around the existing framework of the original Alien.

I’m sure the intention was to use the new storyline of mankind’s cosmic origins to enrich the already existing Alien mythology. Instead, it turns it all into a farce—a hollow, facehugging shell of a movie that attempts to add complexity and meaning to a world that started with the simple story of a beast stalking passengers on a spaceship. This film fails to capitalize on its cinematic lineage and it fails to create an entirely new world of exciting possibilities. Instead, what we get is a made-for-TNT mini-series reimagining of Alien with a Hollywood budget.