2089. After uncovering what they see as incontrovertible evidence that Earth has been visited in the past by aliens, leaving evidence of their point of origin, archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway convince ailing Peter Weyland, head of the massive Weyland Corporation, to fund an expedition that they hope will reunite mankind with its creators. The point of origin is LV-223, a barely-habitable planet where the expedition ship, the Prometheus, soon finds evidence of past life – but what they find isn’t entirely what Shaw and Holloway had expected.

What They Say:
A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

The Review:
Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s return to the universe that brought us Alien (although whether this counts as a prequel or not depends largely on your definition of “prequel”), has been top of my most-anticipated list for a while now. Some of the movies it follows were major milestones in my movie-watching life: Alien was a horror experience left me scared witless for weeks after I first saw it (aged 12), while Aliens still rates as my personal favourite action movie, 26 years after release. Even Alien³ I’d call seriously under-rated. While strictly speaking Prometheus doesn’t feature everyone’s favourite xenomorph, though, by returning to that universe and exploring the origins of the creatures and of Alien‘s mysterious Space Jockey, the movie calls upon itself a large dose of expectations.

The movie leans on works that have gone before. The opening scene, featuring android David’s shipboard routine while the rest of the crew are in stasis, feels very close to similar scenes in 2001 (amplified by Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of David, easily the strongest role in the movie, having noticeable similarities to Dave Bowman); aspects of the plot could almost have been lifted from Alien v Predator; certain scenes ‘mimic’ comparable scenes in previous installments of the franchise; while the Prometheus crew is a mix of familiar stereotypical personalities, although with one or two exceptions they’re a far less memorable bunch. Shaw and Holloway are driven by discovering what humanity’s “Engineers” were trying to achieve; company rep Meredith Vickers is there to be the voice of risk assessment; David, right from the start, oozes a sense of threat and untrustworthiness, thinking nothing of the rest of the crew and only of achieving his own (presumably pre-programmed) aims – if anything, he’s more the villain of the piece than any Engineer or alien. Past them, the rest of the crew are forgettable and expendable, which becomes a problem when the mission inevitably begins to go wrong. You simply don’t care enough about them to care when they’re being killed off – there’s a sense of detachment that only lifts when the danger starts to focus in on Holloway and Shaw themselves.

Taken as a stand-alone movie, none of this is necessarily bad – there’s real sense of threat in many scenes, some surprises that made me physically jump at their unexpectedness, and some scenes that are decidedly uncomfortable to watch; and it’s all tied up with some beautiful presentation. For the most part, it’s also a visual treat. But always there’s the nagging thought in the back of the mind that something’s missing. That feeling isn’t helped by the movie’s own batch of aliens, who in-universe would seem to be an earlier incarnation of the ones we’re familiar with. They have a slightly different lifecycle, a slightly different appearance, but while there are enough similarities to let you know that they’re from the same family tree, their appearance simply isn’t ominous enough to frighten in the same way that “the” Alien does (in one form, Prometheus‘ version looks more like the alien baby from Men in Black, and would’ve encouraged more of a “D’awww” response if not for the scene it appeared in).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA6OKoW30Pk?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Where the movie does do some really good work, though, is in filling in the backstory to the Alien universe. The Engineers are enigmatic, the great unknown driving events, and it’s easy to sympathise with Holloway’s and Shaw’s desire to learn more about them. Revelations of how the Engineers used the Aliens are unsurprising (they’ve been covered by Ridley Scott in interview dating back to Alien’s days), but it’s nice to get them out there in a form that’s definitely canon. There are enough gaps in the story to leave your mind buzzing with possibilities for a while, filling in the blanks for yourself, while the ending of the movie leaves events hanging nicely for a potential sequel to start work on filling those gaps in for us. “More questions asked that answered” is a common comment I’ve seen, and I’d have to agree.

The thing that will likely hurt perceptions of Prometheus most is the weight of expectations, driven by comparison to Alien and Aliens, and I can fully understand why talk of this being a prequel has been downplayed – it doesn’t live up to its forebears. Those unanswered questions also leave it feeling incomplete, as though this is the first chapter in an evolving tale – which may be the most sensible way to look at it. Director Ridley Scott has said that, should this installment be successful enough, it’ll be the first part of a trilogy that should tie up all those loose ends, and personally I can’t wait to see them.

In Summary:
Sitting on its own, and with expectations put to one side, Prometheus is a visually impressive, enjoyable scary movie – it’s just over 2 hours long, and I laughed, squicked, shuddered, and internally yelled at the characters all the way through, just as you should with any scary movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the time certainly wasn’t wasted. Inside the universe it’s placed itself, though, it’s playing with some real classics and can’t yet quite scale the same heights – but it’s crying out for further development of the ideas that it introduces but doesn’t get around to fully exploring. Getting the chance to do that may change how Prometheus is considered in the long run. While it’s flawed, though, it’s still something I could recommend as well worth watching.

Grade: B+