PROMETHEUS (2012)

Studio:       20th Century Fox
Director:    Ridley Scott
Writer:       Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof
Producer:  David Giler, Walter Hill, Ridley Scott
Stars:     Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall

Review Score:

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Summary:

Searching for the alien race that created mankind leads a scientific research team to a remote moon harboring a terrifying secret.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After a spacecraft departs the planet, a lone Engineer sacrifices himself by drinking a strange liquid. The Engineer’s DNA strands decay at a molecular level, causing his body to dissolve as he falls into a waterfall.

Isle of Skye, Scotland – 2089 – Archaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and her love interest Dr. Charlie Holloway uncover a cave painting depicting people worshipping large humanoids pointing toward the stars.

Scientific Exploratory Vessel: Prometheus – December 21, 2093 – With the ship approaching its final destination, Weyland Corporation representative Meredith Vickers wakes from cryosleep. Vickers instructs android David to wake the other 15 crew members, who have also been in stasis for two years.

Once the entire crew is assembled, Vickers has David play a video message from dying CEO Peter Weyland recorded in 2091. Weyland introduces David as a loyalist whom he views as a son, even though the A.I. has no soul. Weyland also explains his desire to discover where humanity came from, what mankind’s purpose is, and what happens when we die. Weyland introduces Shaw and Holloway as the leaders of the current expedition.

Holloway shows everyone a collection of images from various archeological digs depicting ancient civilizations worshipping the same giant humanoids, despite these civilizations being separated by centuries. Shaw calls these beings ‘Engineers,’ as they are believed to have created humankind. Having identified distant moon LV-223 as their possible point of origin, and interpreting the star maps in the cave paintings as an invitation, Shaw and Holloway explain that the Prometheus’ mission is to find this alien race.

Vickers privately tells Shaw and Holloway that engagement with the Engineers is forbidden if they are found. When the doctors voice dissent, Vickers coldly stresses that their mission is driven by the Weyland Corporation’s interests, not strict scientific research.

Captain Janek and his pilots Chance and Ravel land the Prometheus in a valley on the moon. Shaw and Holloway set out for a pyramid-shaped structure with a survey team consisting of biologist Millburn, geologist Fifield, medic Ford, and David.

Once inside, Holloway discovers that the interior atmosphere has been terraformed with breathable air, prompting everyone to remove their helmets. David activates a panel that displays 3D imaging of Engineers running from an unknown threat. The team follows the imagery to a door that decapitated an Engineer. Frightened by the discovery of the Engineer’s lower body, Fifield and Millburn choose to return to the ship, although they become lost on their way.

David opens the door. Inside, the team finds a chamber filled with cylindrical vases that later begin leaking black ooze, an enormous humanoid head made from stone, and an elaborate mural. While the others recover the decapitated Engineer’s head, David secretly removes one of the cylinders.

An approaching storm cuts the retrieval operation short. Shaw nearly dies in the storm while making sure to secure the head, but makes it back to the Prometheus with help from the others.

Shaw and Ford discover that they actually retrieved a helmet. Inside, they find the Engineer’s true head, which still has active cells. Shaw and Ford manipulate the cells to reanimate the head, which begins morphing until it finally explodes. Shaw later discovers that Engineer and human DNA match each other.

David meets with Peter Weyland, who is secretly aboard the ship. After their conversation, Vickers threateningly demands that David reveal what Weyland told him. David relays that Weyland said, “try harder.” David later extracts a dormant alien organism from the stolen cylinder and uses the substance inside it to taint a drink that he gives to Holloway.

Forced to wait out the storm inside the structure, Fifield and Millburn find a pile of Engineer bodies. Janek reports seeing a lifeform reading near the men, but passes it off as a glitch.

Holloway remains despondent over the discovery that the Engineer race is seemingly extinct. Shaw motivates Holloway by telling him about her DNA findings. Holloway and Shaw have sex.

Janek leaves the bridge to have sex with Vickers. Meanwhile, Millburn and Fifield encounter a snake-like alien creature with acidic blood that kills both of them.

The next morning, Holloway notices a small organism inside his eye. Janek leads a party to look for Millburn and Fifield. David separately investigates a chamber where he finds a control panel, star map, and a living Engineer suspended in stasis. Although Vickers insists on monitoring David’s feed, David cuts off the transmission.

The team finds black ooze seeping out of the vases when they come upon Millburn’s body. The snake creature slithers away. After Shaw notices Holloway growing ill and starting to transform, panic rises as the team rushes him back to the ship. However, Vickers refuses to allow Holloway inside. Holloway says goodbye to Shaw and willingly compels Vickers to incinerate him with a flamethrower. Shaw screams and collapses.

Shaw wakes in a medical bay where she voices her fear that everyone who entered the pyramid could be contaminated like Holloway. David tells Shaw that she is three months pregnant, which astounds her because she is infertile and only had sex 10 hours earlier. David reveals that the fetus isn’t human, causing Shaw to grow frantic. David sedates her.

When Shaw recovers, she fights off the medics and rushes herself to an automated medical pod for an emergency abdominal procedure. Shaw escapes from the medical bay after a squid-like creature is cut out of her body.

Reanimated and mutated, Fifield returns to the ship and kills several crewmembers before Janek torches him with the flamethrower.

Shaw discovers that Peter Weyland is aboard the Prometheus. Weyland explains that he believes the Engineer that David found can prevent his death. Shaw warns that the Engineers are not what they thought and they must leave the moon immediately. Weyland insists that they cannot leave without knowing what the Engineers are as he prepares to enter the structure with David.

Janek warns Shaw that he doesn’t believe the moon is the Engineers’ home. Rather, he thinks it is a military installation where they were manufacturing biological weapons.

Vickers privately warns Weyland that he will die if he goes into the structure. Vickers refers to Weyland as “father.”

Shaw, David, Ford, and another crewmember escort Weyland into the control chamber where the Engineer lies in stasis. Monitoring from the Prometheus, Janek finally realizes that the survey team is actually inside an enormous spacecraft.

David posits that at the time of their demise, the Engineers were on their way to destroy Earth. David opens the stasis chamber and the surviving Engineer resurrects. Shaw implores David, who is the only one capable of communicating in the Engineer’s language, to ask where they are from, what is in the cargo that killed the Engineers, and what mankind did wrong that the Engineers wished to undo them. Weyland only wants David to relay his personal interests.

The Engineer tears off David’s head and kills everyone except Shaw, who flees the pyramid. The Engineer then activates a cannon-shaped seat and prepares to take off in the ship.

Shaw radios Janek with a warning that they have to stop the Engineer’s ship, otherwise it will release the cylinders on Earth and destroy mankind. Vickers refuses. Janek overrules her as he and the two pilots choose to sacrifice themselves by ramming the Engineer’s spacecraft. Vickers jettisons in an escape pod. Janek also releases a ‘lifeboat’ craft that lands on the moon’s surface.

The Prometheus explodes as it rams the other spacecraft. The Engineer’s ship crashes to the ground where it crushes Vickers.

Having been trapped underneath the wrecked ship, Shaw recovers and makes it to the lifeboat. Inside she finds the creature she birthed, now grown to an enormous size, still trapped behind a medical bay door.

David’s head radios Shaw with a warning that the Engineer is coming after her. The Engineer attacks Shaw. Shaw releases the alien creature. The creature traps the Engineer in its tentacles and consumes him. Both of them die.

David asks for Shaw’s help to recover. Although she knows she cannot trust the android, David convinces Shaw that she cannot survive without him. David adds that there are other ships on the moon and he can operate one of them so they may leave. Shaw tells David that she doesn’t want to return to Earth. She asks David to take her to where the Engineers came from so she can find out why they changed their minds about humans. Shaw and David depart LV-223 in another Engineer ship.

Back in the lifeboat, a xenomorph bursts out of the dead Engineer’s chest.

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Review:

Where do we come from?  What is our purpose?  What happens when we die?  Such questions motivate most religions, many musings, and the mission of the scientific exploratory vessel Prometheus.

After uncovering a collection of cave paintings apparently pointing toward the progenitors of mankind, archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway convince the Weyland Corporation, six years before merging with Yutani, to finance a two-year trip to a remote moon where our creators may have come from.  Figuratively coldhearted corporate sycophant Vickers oversees the expedition while literally coldhearted android David manages maintenance operations.  The usual assortment of captain, pilots, biologist, geologist, medic, and red shirt mercenaries composes the remaining crew.

Of course, seeking validation for a complicated conundrum reveals new unknowns.  The oversized humanoids dubbed ‘Engineers’ for their role in architecting humanity are unexpectedly extinct, or so it seems when the survey team explores a terraformed pyramid where the ancient race once dwelled.  Among their corpses are remnants of alien technology along with a black substance whose purpose is possibly sinister.  Whatever the Engineers were up to, it led to their destruction.  Digging into the details may yield a similar fate for everyone aboard the ship, if not from the secrets inside the structure, then from the clandestine conspiracy involving the Prometheus’ true purpose.

Both the ship’s crew and the movie they occupy are filled with ponderous philosophies regarding our identities as well as those of the hands that possibly created us.  Being that there are no easy answers, or answers at all, for the heady “what ifs” wondered here, maybe it shouldn’t shock anyone that Ridley Scott’s thesis in filmed entertainment form has the exterior scaffolding of introspective intellectualism without a substantial supposition constituting its interior.

It could be that this is the dividing line separating those who champion the film as a Kubrickian head-trip of speculative science-fiction from others who’d prefer “Prometheus” pick a perspective and support it.  Barring that, action-intensive audiences anxious for the vague “Alien” prequel promised by the premise may simply wish for more manic madness and outright frights instead of metaphor and mood.

It isn’t accurate to say “Prometheus” bites off more than can be chewed since sometimes its teeth are designed to not bite.  John Spaihts and Damon Lindelof’s script joins the director in shrugging shoulders by setting up chin-stroking pins the story sidesteps knocking down.  Whether the intention is to echo our own inability to comprehend creationism, or simply to set up a sequel(s), how much one wishes to engage his/her imagination determines whether often ambiguous fiction will frustrate or fascinate.

As far as effective execution goes, extraordinary visual conceptualizations, as if anything less than pristine production design should be expected of a Ridley Scott film, cause no concern for debate.  Scott continues filling all other futurist filmmakers with envy over how masterfully he manufactures a fully functional mythology replete with technology, terminology, and immersive spectacle for escapist fantasy.  “Prometheus” is a cool-hued marvel of stunning imagery and ideas, even though some of the latter are no more substantive than that.

Meeting the moviemaking master with equally deep devotion is a cast whose commitment morphs slender characterizations into actualized embodiment.  Underwritten roles undercut how far certain actors are allowed to carry individual themes.  Charlize Theron’s Vickers, for instance, clearly means to be more of a reptilian witch than opportunity affords.  Vickers ends up more inconvenient nuisance than nefarious antagonist.  Pure force of professional personality is the only reason she, as well as Idris Elba’s captain for that matter, shines at all.

Michael Fassbender doesn’t have to mount the same fight for material to massage into meaning.  As the deceptive android David, Fassbender puts one of the most mesmerizing artificial intelligences onscreen since Brent Spiner’s Data, condensing that character’s seven TV seasons and several feature films of developmental complexities into a two-hour span of nuanced id versus ego conflict.

The film’s flaws involve sailing its raft of high concept questions and dubiously developed characters along a river of less important techspeak, machinery navigation, and CGI vistas overstaying their welcome after functionally establishing awesome atmosphere.  The eyes and the mind enjoy soaking in all “Prometheus” has on hand, though this vanity pulls pacing from providing snappier suspense.

Lean lines to the look romanticize sleek style to where artistry elevates above self-imposed limitations.  Contemplative aspects miss marks, yet the cinematic realization of Scott, Spaihts, and Lindelof’s collective vision singes “Prometheus” with scorching flair.  In that regard, the film approaches irresistibility as scintillating fabulism.  Were its context operating on an identical wavelength, “Prometheus” could erase all argument over its disputed status as another Ridley Scott classic.

Review Score:  70

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