Prometheus--Review

          I will start off by saying, that Prometheus is a beautifully epic, masterfully shot, and brilliantly scored sci-fi film that is totally worth seeing.  Yes, there is a “however” coming.  However, I had a lot of problems with it.  First, let’s look at some of the history leading up to this film, which as a geek, you kinda have to.  Way back in 1979 director Ridley Scott brought to the screen a film that defined alien films, so much so that it proudly holds the name “Alien”.  Starring a young Sigourney Weaver as Ripley an officer aboard a ship that encounters a life form on another planet that (spoilers for this 30 plus year old movie) starts to take out the crew.  It is considered a classic that spawned an awesome sequel directed by James Cameron, and a few more not so great sequels, and I have to mention but I try to forget the horrendous ‘AvP’ films.  If you don’t know what AvP means, I wish I was so lucky.

Prometheus, when it was announced started the internet a buzzin’, was this an Alien prequel, was it not?  To me none of this was too important, I just wanted to see a film that lived up to that amazing teaser trailer.  I don’t want to give away too much of the story as it will spoil too much as the more recent trailers already have, so I’ll just say that a group of scientists go looking in space for beings that may or may not have created the human race.  For the most part I was not disappointed, what I wanted to work really did, the movie was amazing to look at, the ideas presented were big and interesting, the effects and some of the gore are fantastic.  They even managed to one-up the chest bursting scenes from the other Alien films.   One thing though with the appearance of Guy Pearce in the film, it does seem that the effect of making someone look ‘old’ has not progressed much since 1985’s “Back to the Future”.  Michael Fassbender as the synthetic life form David is incredible, and is by far what I will remember the most about the film. Noomi Rapace and the rest of the cast don’t add much to the story, but I don’t blame them.  That rests on the filmmakers.  The average movie going audience doesn’t really care about all of those things though, they just want a really good sci-fi movie.  And you get one here, only not much else.  What did not work I mostly attribute to the sloppy writing by John Spaihts and Damon Lindelof.  Again some big ideas are presented, and pretty much none of them are present or addressed again throughout the narrative, and some beats look to be shoehorned in, like a checklist for anyone coming to see more of what they saw in other Alien films.  It also did not feel like any chances were taken here.  Maybe it’s been so long since Ridley Scott has played in this sandbox, but where he does seem right at home visually, the good storytelling elements were lacking.  There are moments that literally had me thinking I am going to see something amazing here, which turn into seeing something straight out of a B-horror movie.

  I think audiences will enjoy Prometheus for the most part, and I do feel that I had more fun talking afterward about the ideas presented in the film than I did actually watching the last half unfold.  I admit, I wanted more, and maybe I wanted too much, or more like I expected too much from a film that is trying to re-launch this dying franchise.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect to have every question answered for me and I don’t want to have the entire story all lead up to the doorstep of the original, but after you see the film and think about it for a bit, you will see plot holes bigger than that space that no one can hear you scream in.

--Robert L. Castillo