In our media-drunk era, Prometheus has already earned plenty of vituperative bashing online. This is, I think, entirely predictable: it had tons of hype, and represented a renowned creator returning to a beloved, longstanding IP which is cherished closely by a sizable subset of the population. (A subset to which, it should be noted, I myself belong.)
For a sample, visit the IMDB user reviews page. Most of this "criticism" is delivered in the lingua franca of the internet, that familiar idiom of hyperbolic, childish tirade: "ruined forever", "pure vomit in film form", "written by a 10 year old", etc. It's a bit ironic that this dipshit dialect would be used to denounce the supposed watering down of a classic piece of popular art. Such is the culture consumption of late capitalism: see the movie, and either "like" it on Facebook or post a steaming, apoplectic denunciation using tenth generation, recycled "Comic Book Guy" tropes.
This is a clear instance where the traditional media, sputtering from its deathbed, still plays a valuable role. Newspaper critics have been much more balanced: Slate's razor-sharp reviewer Dana Stevens skewers the film's lapses in logic and explanation, while still lauding the film's dazzling visuals and sheer craft; Kenneth Turan and A.O. Scott deliver many of the same judgments but offer a stronger view of the film overall; and Roger Ebert doesn't hesitate or hedge in calling it "magnificent" and awarding it four stars.
The truth? Prometheus is flawed, but brilliant. It sometimes underwhelms, but it frequently overwhelms. It is narrow and mythic at the same time, and often a sense of skin-deep shallowness hides a surprising, almost Romantic depth. It is a film that leaves much unsaid, which is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. In the end, it is a towering achievement, a lofty vision that is wholly unconcerned with the insects nibbling at its heels.
If you're as fanatical about the Alien movies as I am, then take it from me: you really, really owe it to yourself to go see Prometheus without having anything spoiled for you. Having seen it, I can better appreciate the shell game played by Ridley Scott in the months leading up to release: is it an Alien movie, or isn't it? If you love the series, don't let anyone tell you the answer.
That said, I can't imagine trying to talk about the movie without heavy spoilers (for reasons I'll get into), so consider this fair warning.
SPOILERS AHEAD! DON'T READ UNTIL YOU SEE IT!
Prometheus takes place in the late 21st century, and concerns the eponymous science vessel's search for the origins of mankind in the far reaches of space. Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered a recurring pictogram in a wide range of ancient human civilizations, which provides a map to a distant solar system capable of sustaining life.
With generous financial backing from Weyland Industries (and let me tell you what a treat it is to hear a smooth, computerized voice chirp "building better worlds"), the Prometheus sets out on a journey to find these interstellar benefactors, whom Shaw and Holloway call "Engineers."
The ship is crewed by a motley assortment of scientists and spacefarers that more or less fall into a generic template. Among others, there's Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a ball-busting ice queen overseeing the mission for Weyland; the ship's captain (Idris Elba), who suggests Al Matthews' gruff-but-good-hearted Sgt. Apone from Aliens; a pair of wisecracking pilots who recall Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto's grease monkeys in Scott's 1979 masterpiece (down to their concern about "shares"); a prickly, tattooed geologist who is clearly earmarked for doom; and, of course, there's Shaw, who is this film's Ripley. (Which is not to say that the character is much like the iconic Warrant Officer.) Perhaps most notably, there is also David (Michael Fassbender), an android progenitor of Ash and Bishop from the Alien films.
Prometheus is utterly, shockingly beautiful. Shot in a cold, Gigerian color palette tempered with bursts of shipboard, electronic warmth (sound familiar?), it's the kind of movie where every few seconds there's a shot suitable for framing. I found the opening scene—which chronicles a mysterious suicide, and its consequences—absolutely riveting, and a captivating blend of the Romantic (the tiny individual literally swallowed up by nature) and spectacular sci-fi. This sense of wonder didn't ever really flag until the credits.
For me, part of this may be due to the fact that Prometheus is intensely, overwhelmingly reminiscent of Alien. This is most immediately noticeable with our first glimpses of the Prometheus, where the deserted bridge, sterile compartments, and hypersleep chambers seem very much like a deliberate homage to the Nostromo. It also, somewhat surprisingly, takes more than a few pages from James Cameron's Aliens (which is my favorite movie of all time)—most notably with the obligatory hangar bay briefing scene, and a violent homage later in the film.
At this point, I should note that the performances are a mixed bag. Logan Marshall-Green, as Holloway, is woefully out-of-place and almost instantly annoying, and for me he was one of the film's real weak points; I found myself wishing that Guy Pearce had taken his role, instead of being buried beneath a thick layer of makeup for a two-scene cameo as Peter Weyland. Theron and Elba are satisfyingly workmanlike, and though they don't really have much to do they are—as usual—endlessly watchable.
Rapace really delivers, and though her protestations of not aping Ripley are fully justified, her combination of vulnerability and toughness (the "cesarean" scene is a great example of wordless, physical acting) is very much in the tradition of Sigourney Weaver. As many critics have noted, the most compelling performance comes from rising star Fassbender, whose David is a studied, coldly aloof and childlike creation; appropriately, he makes later models like Bishop (or even Ash!) seem much more human.
Okay, so let's just cut to the chase. Far from a George Lucas style retcon (or an unrelated property cashing in on franchise association), it's surprising how much of the bedrock of Prometheus' mythology is held over from the original Alien. The Engineers that the crew of the Prometheus are seeking happen to be the same race as the "Space Jockey" discovered in the first Alien (and who Scott originally envisioned using the xenomorphs as bioweapons), and LV-223 is discovered to be a kind of military installation, housing numerous ships like the one fatefully explored by Kane, Dallas, and Lambert. It is also a kind of weapons storage facility, housing thousands of small "vases" (which may remind you of something) containing a mysterious black substance, which is quickly revealed to dramatically mutate life forms it comes into contact with.
Although it's purtportedly a military installation, the eerie murals and artful decoration of the alien outpost suggested something else to me. All through the latter part of the film, I kept thinking of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult infamous for releasing sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. I couldn't help seeing the Space Jockeys as a splinter sect from the Engineers, a kind of alien death cult who have their own form of bioweapon to release on humanity (or the galaxy), bringing about the apocalypse. And that maybe, in the end, Shaw would find the answers she was seeking.
Of course, this is all just speculation. Which brings up the film's biggest weakness: the script. Penned by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, it has a sense of generic vagueness and frequently backslides into cliche. Where Lost had a long-form format to string out its mysteries and deepen its initially stock characters (e.g. rock star junkie, haunted soldier, con man with a heart of gold), Prometheus has just two hours. As as a result, the characters (even the good ones) gain little dimension, and often serve as little more than plot devices. One of the biggest examples, for me, was the snap decision by the two pilots to go down with the ship at the end: up to that point, we had no reason to think of them as self-sacrificing.
But this basic lack of depth and explanation is largely overshadowed by the broader mythos and mystique of the incredible world Scott and company create. The Engineers, their civilization, the black goo—it all provides an irresistible desire to know and to understand in the same way that Lost did at its best. (A theme which also happens to be exactly what the film is about.) For every forehead-slapping piece of dialogue, there's another picturesque scene beckoning the viewer with a grand sense of otherworldly strangeness.
Along the way, there are more and more tantalizing allusions to Alien, from the look of the alien vases to a number of very facehugger-like mutated creatures. It all culminates in the revelation of the cockpit that the film's Space Jockey was originally found in—and in the film's final minutes, the suggestive link between the films teased by Scott is made very explicit. Perhaps the most remarkable of these moments for me was a brief glimpse of an engraving in one of the Engineer outpost's chambers: the camera lingers on an abstract, silvery image that could be a Rorschach blot, but which looks unmistakably like an alien queen.
In the end, Prometheus is a staggering visual feast, and a smorgasbord for Alien obsessives. It's worlds away from, say, Avatar, and I much prefer Prometheus' grand, mythic sweep to that film's reheated, space-born Dances With Wolves. Even if the characterization and detail doesn't always cohere, Prometheus more than compensates by providing a brand of dark, existential sci-fi that has been sorely lacking at the box office.
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