PROMETHEUS (15)
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron
Director: Ridley Scott
Running time: 124 minutes
Released 2nd June 2012
Released by: Twentieth Century FoxIn 1979, Ridley Scott gave us the crew of the Nostromo. The likes of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Kane (John Hurt) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) were ordinary people, a blue-collar scientific crew out in the black and unknowingly on their way to a close encounter with one of the greatest screen monsters of all time. Thirty years later, most people who've seen it can tell you the characters' names or at least the people who played them.
In 2012 - circa 2077 story-wise - there are seventeen members that make up the crew of the Prometheus, but perhaps the most telling problem about the film of the same name is that mere minutes after exiting the cinema, I'm betting you don't remember most of them, even some of those with lines.
It's the end of the century as archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and partner Charlie Holloway uncover ancient hieroglyphics on the Isle of Skye. It provides the last element in a possible star-map, pointers to a solar-system far beyond the naked eye. Several years later, the mighty Weyland Corporation has funded a trip to the stars. Accompanying Shaw ( a believer in higher powers) and Holloway (who only has time for what he can touch) are a group of engineers and scientists who are also there for a variety of reasons - some theological, some financial, almost all pragmatic. Of course, these things never go well and the crew of the Prometheus are about to uncover some home truths about how life may have started and how it may end.
“It's all been a theological lap-dance - seductive in its premise, suggestive at the outset, but never following through on its coy glances and winks to the faithful. Lindelof claims that some of the answers have been saved for further chapters - but unless those far-from-certain additional films are going to be free to those already shelling out for Prometheus tickets, that's not remotely fair. It's a galactic bait-and-switch..."
Scott, a veteran and accomplished film-maker - his impact on the film industry is undeniable - insisted that the film was not an Alien prequel in the most obvious sense.. and in some respects making sure the movie didn't have the famous prefix'd branding is entirely an understandable choice. Despite the trailer, this isn't after all, a film that is predominantly about acid-blooded monstrosities stalking a crew for ninety minutes - quite the other way around, actually. No, Prometheus wants to be, to say, something else entirely - to profoundly speak to the greater questions of life, the universe and everything. There are two wrinkles with this 1) You don't get to build a project around such weighty issues and then say providing answers isn't important (a trademark, unfortunately, of screenwriter Damon Lindelof, late of LOST) and 2) you shouldn't seek to make a film that stands apart from its parental franchise and then consistently trade off the very moments that got you here (for which one has to cast some blame towards Scott).
On the plus side: even if you see the film in 2D, the visual effects ARE outstanding - one thing Scott has always been able to do is provide the environments that stimulate the mind. His outer space is as clean and cold or as rough and dirty as you could want. Equally, he's got a cast with proven acting chops. The problem is that his ensemble are given little more to do than play out familiar cookie-cut characters who fail to act either remotely professionally or consistently within the confines of the story. Noomi Rapace - the Girl with the original Dragon Tattoo) is a good actress, here asked to carry a role that will inevitably be compared to Sigourney Weaver's Ripley and yet it IS an unfair comparison as she simply doesn't have the same level of material to get her teeth into. Michael Fassbender's artificial 'David' is a nicely and deliberately restrained performance - arguably and ironically the best performance in the entire film - but the character's cold pragmatism is as restricting as it is potentially interesting. His agenda is vague and inconsistent, there to provide a metaphor for life-forms built by others - an analogy eventually as unsubtle as the film's title. Elsewhere, Charlize Theron is an obligatory ice-queen with daddy issues though arguably the most sensible of the human crew, Idris Elba is a captain who's so laid-back he may never get up again and Logan Marshall Green is the kind of gung-ho archaeologist that only exists in a Hollywood script-writer's keyboard (and walks around doing a spot-on impression of Tom Hardy). Notably, Guy Pearce as trillionnaire Weyland is good, but unrecognisable under layers of prosthetics, making his casting somewhat redundant.
It could be argued, with some merit, that thirty years of expectation are almost always guaranteed to sink a project at the box-office - that after an opening weekend of peaked interest it won't and can't live up to the promise. It was unlikely Prometheus would live up to those expectations, but it is quite astonishing just how far it falls short and how much it pays mere lip-service to what it wants us to find profound. I have no snarky axe to grind - I wanted to like Prometheus and fully appreciated it wouldn't and shouldn't be just another 'Alien' outing. But while not truly, offensively bad in the sense of a Transformers 3 scaled debacle, it is in its own way, just as inexcusably and frustratingly lazy - an array of strange plot-holes, abrupt narrative dead-ends and conflicting abstract ideas with no specific gravity despite the pedigree and packaging. In his movies, Michael Bay gives us inappropriately sweaty oil-jobs instead of plot, while Scott's turn-ons are dark tunnels and birth metaphors. Neither are able to cover the fact of what's missing. The result is not so much a epic of pre-Biblical proportions as a colouring-in book for Scientologists.
By the time the credits roll, you'll suddenly realise you haven't cared that much about any of the underwritten and cliched characters (potentially more interesting back-stories referenced but consistently kept at arms-length); that you've seen all these archetypes before (and better) and apart from a few 'ewwwww' type scenes, this is a film amazingly lacking in momentum. If it's all about big ideas, then you really DO need bigger pay-offs. It's all been a theological lap-dance - seductive in its premise, suggestive at the outset, but never following through on its coy glances and winks to the faithful. Lindelof claims that some answers have been saved for further chapters but unless those far-from-certain additional films are going to be free to those already shelling out for Prometheus tickets that's not remotely fair. This isn't a TV pilot, or advertised as a 'Part One..' - it's a tent-pole feature-film and thus deserves to have some self-contained framework. Instead, it's a galactic bait-and-switch... and with Lindelof admitting he may not even be the one to write such possible sequels, did he EVER have an answer to the BIG questions he posed? If not - THERE'S your biggest tell and example of inadequacy. Even the emperor's new clothes were rentals.
Praising the film's ambitious big questions, appreciating the startling canvas it is painted upon and acknowledging its intentions are all well and good, but judged solely on the finished product that Scott lays before us, there's really no excuse for Prometheus squandering the innate fires it was given. It wants to reach for the stars and explore its origins and has a vast array of talent and tools at its disposal to do just that. Instead, it spends far too much time contemplating its own navel before rushing to a deja-vu denouement (largely already spoiled in every way in the trailer and posters) that attempts to join dots to the original franchise but literally misses by a light-year or so.
Sadly, what we ultimately get is not dark-matter stardust, but doesn't-matter fluff. A B-Movie populated by A-List special effects and A-List actors, released as a major summer blockbuster... yet pleading to be simply judged like an indulgent arthouse release.
Very, very disappointing.
2/5
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