#418 - Prometheus
Ridley Scott, 2012
In the late-21st century, a scientific expedition travels through space in search of extraterrestrials that made contact with ancient Earthlings.
I have long thought of Ridley Scott as a director who didn't prioritise style over substance so much as prioritising technique over both of those qualities. While that attention to technical detail has contributed greatly to his most beloved and acclaimed works, it also makes it easy for me to take a more impersonal approach to his work and, if the plot and characters of a particular film don't prove sufficiently interesting or engaging (especially on a repeat viewing), then my attention ends up drifting to the artificial side of things and tends to stay there. As a result, my feelings about his filmography cover the preferential spectrum from all-time favourites to boring wastes of time.
Prometheus marked the first time that Scott had taken on outer space since his 1979 breakthrough hit
Alien, and of course the speculation that this would be some sort of expansion of that film's existing canon ran rampant. While I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is regarding the untagged discussion of spoilers that confirm or deny such speculation, it hardly seems relevant to the film at large. The most positive thing that I can say about
Prometheus is that it looks good, which really is one of the clearest examples of damning with faint praise that I've ever given out.
When it comes to plot and characters,
Prometheus starts out promisingly enough with the concept of humans putting together an expedition to find an alien race that supposedly had contact with several ancient human civilisations, leading them to plot a course for the co-ordinates common to every ancient inscription. Of course, the film doesn't spend too much time defining its characters all that well - you have the jerkass who only cares about getting paid (Sean Harris), the person begrudgingly financing and supervising the expedition (Charlize Theron), you have the extremely nervous scientific type (Rafe Spall), the laid-back ship's captain (Idris Elba), etc. The two characters of any particular note end up being Noomi Rapace as the chief archaeologist and also Michael Fassbender as the expedition's token android. Rapace gets the most expansion on her background, especially how her perspective balances science and faith even after she deals with various personal traumas, whereas Fassbender's character models himself on the titular character in
Lawrence of Arabia as a means of approaching some semblance of humanity despite the fact that every other character still feels the need to point out his objective lack of it. He comes across as a somewhat interesting attempt to graft some of the themes regarding artificial beings from
Blade Runner onto an
Alien kind of film, though it feels kind of disappointing how Scott and co. seem to be recycling concepts from all two of the other science-fiction films he's done. Besides, in a film that attempts to feature as large an ensemble as this one does, having only two of the characters stand out in any sufficiently favourable way does not say much about how well this film handles its characters.
While the visual effects definitely make for the best part of
Prometheus, they are still considerably undone by the poor development of the story. When the film isn't trying to show off its elaborate sets, holograms, and gadgetry, it's too busy getting caught up in some poorly judged plot developments. From one character removing his helmet at the slightest suggestion of breathable atmosphere through Spall's constantly terrified character becoming inexplicably friendly towards alien fauna all of a sudden to characters attempting to evade a large rolling object by running in a straight line instead of to the side, there are plenty of leaps in logic and believability that not even the inherent vagueness of the planet's alien materials can adequately justify. As a result, while
Prometheus may have some impressive effects, a couple of characters whose development covers more than one dimension, and a cursory attempt to address themes of faith as a result of its human characters' search for their "creators", it's still a fundamentally flawed piece of work and a difficult film to genuinely appreciate. According to IMDb, this film is currently slated to receive a sequel (produced but not directed by Scott) at some point next year. While a sequel to a film I genuinely disliked sounds like a bad idea in theory, it is at once a slight compliment and a grave insult to this film that a sequel sounds like something that needs to happen to it.