Lambie Reviews Prometheus

Year: 2012
Accolades: One of the Most Polarising Films Ever Made

Many years ago in 1979, a man by the name of Ridley Scott created a film called Alien, simultaneously scaring the bejesus out of cinema goers and film lovers for decades to come and spawning one of the most successful film franchises out there. So when news rolled around that Scott was going to make a prequel of sorts (which was explicitly a prequel, then wasn't, then ended up finally sort of being one) you can imagine how high fan expectations were.

Of course, you can't please everyone, and so when the film was released you either loved the film or you hated everything it stood for. It was either brilliant sci-fi or a complete mess of a film. There was no in between. There was no room for compromise.

Having now seen the film, I can finally make up my own mind: In my opinion, it is actually somewhere in between. It's got some pretty terrible plot flaws, but it's still well made and highly entertaining if you are willing to forgive the bad stuff.

In order to discuss the film in depth, I'm going to break everything down into the common points of discussion that usually arise when you mention the film (plus a few more I want to talk about anyway). As such, there are spoilers. Consider yourself warned.


The Plot - The Characters Do Stupid Things

And how. The entire mess of the expedition could have been avoided had everyone used a bit more caution and actually acted the way scientists act (more on that in a bit). Instead they all rush out with only 6 hours of daylight (which doesn't end up mattering anyway because a silica storm rushes in cutting the trip shorter), people get separated, treat alien life forms as though they're nothing more than fluffy dogs, hold grudges against people who actually do the right thing (Vickers not letting a clearly contaminated Holloway back on board is sensible, given he deteriorated to that state over a matter of hours), and eventually make a series of decisions that result in people being killed in gruesome ways.

It's true. Had everyone acted a little more rationally, and acted with a bit more kindness and less ambiguity toward the android, things wouldn't have gone to hell. It wasn't the greatest piece of writing every devised, but it ended up being necessary for the film in order to create the tension. The problem is, the more I think about it, the more I realise that there could have been better ways to achieve the end results of killing off characters. Sometimes we have to accept, though, the stupidity is necessary for plot advancement, otherwise things can easily get bogged down or drama and tension will fail to happen at all.


The Plot - It Ended Up Being Too Much Like The Original Alien

Especially in terms of character portrayal. I have seen the argument summarised as follows: The characters in the original Alien were a bunch of "space truckies". They hauled cargo around and had a very informal rapport with each other. The characters in Prometheus, or at least the main ones, are either scientists or otherwise professionals. Yet they still act like truckies, because that's what we're used to seeing in the Alien universe.

It was definitely something that bugged me a little with the film, and was completely at odds with things like the pristine condition of the ship interior. These people are scientists, and yet they act like the cliched mob of ragtag soldiers that you see in other sci-fi action flicks that were heavily based on Alien and Aliens. It came complete with the tension between the scientists with the kooky theory and the rest of the bunch (usually soldiers again). Hell, for a while I thought some of these people were soldiers until we were told they were people like biologists and geologists. They sure as hell don't act like it until they're out in the field. I guess at least one of them was security, but a fat lot of good they did.

The plot can also be said to end up just like the standard Alien films, in that people get offed one by one until there's just a survivor or two left. The film even ends pretty much the same way Alien did - with a voice over and the heroine flying off to adventures unknown.


The Plot - Too Many Things Are Ambiguous or Left Unanswered

It's true that there are a lot of plot elements that aren't fully explained. Probably one of the most prominent is that Dave's actions seem needlessly callous towards some members of the crew because they don't seem to serve any purpose in forwarding his main programming of saving Weyland. However, the subtleties of Dave being told to do whatever is necessary to find the answer to this problem are in the film (although admittedly I was in the dark on this until I read up on it later).

Of course, the biggest questions and answers relate to the "space jockey" from Alien and the origins of the aliens themselves. A lot of people found this frustrating. I think it's where the film really shines, and what lifts it up from being dodgy because of the other plot holes to a level where it's worth watching.

Yes, the main plot involving the actions of the characters is somewhat stupid, and so is that rubbish with the DNA, but the ambiguous nature of everything else is what makes the film intriguing. And yes, he answers simple questions like the nature of the space jockey (again with that disappointingly rubbish DNA stuff) and, to an extent, the xenomorphs. But was that Engineer at the beginning of the film on Earth or not? Why did they create life in the first place? Just why do they hate us now? Why choose to kill off humanity with some weird mutagen in the form of black goo and crazy deadly aliens when such an advanced race could just blow the damn planet up or something? Did they just want to correct some mistakes rather than kill us off? The space jockey in Alien was found on a different planet, so where was that one going?

Scott chooses not to answer these questions, and that makes the film stronger. They are all such fundamental and interesting questions, particularly the "why kill us?" which becomes Shaw's motivation to keep going, that any answer would ultimately be a let down. Like the ambiguous nature of the original xenomorph and space-jokey in Alien, the open ended nature of the questions the film raises and chooses not to answer make it worth talking about.


Guy Pierce's Make-Up is Awful

Yes it is.

This is all I could think about whenever he was on screen. It baffles me that they cast Guy Pierce to play an extremely old man. Why not hire, you know, an old actor and just accentuate his features a little? I thought that perhaps the casting of Pierce meant that he would actually succeed in his quest, and end up younger again. But no. (On the other hand, such a plot advancement would have been incredibly ludicrous.)


The Cinematography

It's worth mentioning, because visually the film is stunning to watch. The opening sequence, while a little self indulgent, is beautiful in its simplicity and does everything it needs to. It perfectly sets the mood and themes of the film. Scott's handling of lighting and framing throughout the rest of the film really keep the suspense up, and make the big reveals of open spaces breathtaking.

The action sequences are intense, and brilliantly call back to what made the original Alien scary as hell but with a modern cinematography twist. He doesn't go for the completely unseen approach that made Alien (and Jaws for that matter) successful. Instead, the way he shoots the sequences ensures that we're not entirely aware of what's happening, even if we can see everything that's going on action-wise. It's not so much the unseen but the unknowable that makes this film tense. I never thought something as simple as a large wormlike creature squeezing and breaking a guys arm would be so suspenseful.


The Score

The score is as epic as the visuals. It's full of thematic hooks, whilst almost entirely avoiding the style of score that the Alien franchise is known for. This cleverly distances the film from the other Alien films a little, since it's not about the aliens. It's about the race that made them. I'm pretty sure I detected trace elements of something that could be described as something from the soundtrack to Alien, but it was so subtle that I might have been imagining it.


Concluding Remarks

This film is in no way as bad as everyone says it is (or, if you prefer, it's not as bad as you think it is). The problem with films like Prometheus is that expectations are unreasonably high. People want all the answers delivered in a flawless film. Every film has flaws, including Prometheus, most of which were indeed script related. Does that mean that the dodgy parts of the script should malign one's enjoyment of the film? Of course not.

Many people went into cinemas expecting or wanting to see an origins story of the xenomorphs and the space jockeys. What we got wasn't that, but something much more subtle that raised just as many questions as it answered. There are people out there who genuinely didn't enjoy the film, and that's fair enough and to be expected. I can understand how some parts of the plot would put some people off, but we should all at least try to see past a films flaws before passing judgement.

The problem is that some cinema goers and critics these days are of the mindset that if it wasn't what they wanted, then they can't enjoy it and it must therefore be bad. If the film-makers didn't deliver on their expectations, then the film-makers must have failed.

Prometheus was not what I was expecting. And that's why I liked it.