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Prometheus Movie Review
Prometheus marks the return of director Ridley Scott to the Genre which brought him his first box office success in the science fiction movie Alien, and Prometheus also has ties to that movies along with its own storyline. Interestingly enough Prometheus was originally born of an idea to produce a prequel to the Alien franchise, but ended up following its own course and a unique story.
We join the universe of Prometheus seeing a tall alien humanoid figure drinking a bubbling fluid that then reacts and seemingly destroys the DNA of the alien figure. We are then led into the main cast in 2089 where space archaeologists Charlie Holloway and Elizabeth Shaw, played by Logan Marshall Green and Naomi Rapace have discovered that multiple civilizations from history have all mapped the same star alignment. The star cluster could potentially leading them to a planet that might explain the history or beginnings of human kind, which is where Peter Weyland the ageing CEO of Weyland Corporation is funding the expedition. Weyland played by a heavily made up Guy Pearce is pronounced dead at the start of the journey and communicates his desires through a holograph projection to the expedition team. The team are lead by Meredith Vickers a no nonsense employee of Weyland, played by Charlize Theron and an android David, played by Michael Fassbender. Along with a small crew the team travel to the star cluster and the moon LV-223 on the ship Prometheus to explore the planet, which is where the real action of Prometheus begins.
Prometheus has lineage, or is even the start of the lineage of the whole Alien franchise in some ways, and the movie looks the part. The visuals are superb and have an almost dated but contemporary science fiction look to them, which is suitably fitting seeing as how this movie is set before Alien. The ships, the costumes and the sets are beautifully designed, lit and shot and the movie has plenty to be proud of on the visual front.
The story itself kicks along at a fair old pace, personally I found it was perfectly timed for cinema audiences, but myself I would have preferred a bit more character time and a longer run time. Prometheus feels like its always sprinting on its toes as soon as the opening speech is delivered by Weyland and it never lets up till the end. We can instantly tell which characters are mere fodder and which are big players simply by the screen time allotted but the whole suspense and mystery could would have felt more satisfying to me had the rest of the crew had more time, which is something this movie is definitely lacking over Alien and Aliens.
The cast all do a pretty stellar job, Naomi Rapace is perfect as the strong willed feminine lead, with Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron as the Weyland employees, tow the company line perfectly and the rest of the cast including Logan Marshall-Green and Idris Elba keeping everything up to standard too.
Overall I loved Prometheus, but I knew I would, it wasn’t quite the rush I was hoping for but it had pretty much everything I expected it to, and it was done to near perfection. For science fiction geeks Prometheus is going to do the business, for everyone else it’s no Alien, but I thoroughly recommend it, and really hope that Ridley Scott or Damon Lindelof the writer, have some good ideas of where to go with the next movie, should there be one.
