(From Wikipedia) “Prometheus is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who in Greek mythology is credited with the creation of man from clay and the theft of fire for human use, an act that enabled progress and civilization. He is known for his intelligence, and as a champion of mankind. The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a major theme of his mythology. Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for his transgression. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus, was sent to feed on his liver, only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences.”
The opening cinematography is absolutely stunning and would be worthy of any quality nature documentary. I had a hunch that it was my beloved Iceland (and the closing credits proved me correct), and we were treated to a spectacular vista of glaciers, glacial rivers, craggy mountain peaks, valleys, lakes and waterfalls. Visiting Iceland was one of the highlights of my life and I would certainly recommend having it on your "bucket list"!
(Note: Wikipedia is acknowledged as the source of some of the plot description.)
The introductory sequence itself is rather puzzling. A solitary hooded and robed figure strides to the edge of a waterfall, and reveals himself to be a powerfully muscled albino. A spacecraft hovers overhead and he opens a small container which is filled with a seething dark liquid. He consumes it, starts to convulse, his appearance changes and he literally starts to fall apart and topples into the waterfall just as a hovering spacecraft leaves. In the water his body appears to dissolve and his DNA rearrange itself and spontaneously develop into a new life form, the cells of which divide and multiply.
In the next scene we are introduced to two of the main protagonists - Drs Elizabeth Shaw (played by the luminous Noomi Rapace of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" fame) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who are on an archeological dig on the Isle of Skye in 2089. They discover a wall painting that features a particular constellation that has independently been found depicted in a number of other locations around the world. They conclude that it is a guide map left behind by travellers (“the Engineers”) who want humanity to find them, the creators.
A deep space mission by the scientific vessel Prometheus to the distant moon LV-223 is funded by the Weyland Corporation. The human crew travels in stasis whilst the ship’s caretaker is an android named David (Michael Fassbender), who rather fancies himself as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, adopting Peter O’Toole’s hairstyle and accent. Since the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.22 light years away, it is not clear how the Prometheus manages to reach its mission objective in a mere four years. Upon arrival the motley crew (in common with all “Alien” movies some people are there “just for the money”) wakes up and the full details of the mission are revealed by a hologram of an ageing Peter Weyland. Mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) tells the scientists that she is boss. Conveniently they find a series of built structures on the surface of the moon and land the ship and go to investigate.
Inside the first of the structures, they find numerous stone cylinders, a monolithic statue of a humanoid head, and the decapitated corpse of a large alien, thought to be an Engineer. They find other bodies and presume that “no-one is home” alive. At this point I became a little agitated, as their biohazard precautions were less than ideal and I would not want these people keeping me safe from alien contagion. David secretly takes a cylinder, while the remaining cylinders begin leaking dark liquid. This liquid looks and behaves in a similar way to the infamous black oil in the “X-Files”.
A rapidly approaching storm forces the crew’s hurried return to Prometheus with the decapitated head, leaving lost crew members Millburn (Rafe Spall) and Fifield (Sean Harris) stranded in the structure overnight at the same time there is a “bogey” detected moving around inside.
Back on board Prometheus, in a cunning piece of wizardry that contains a direct reference to the original ”Alien” movie, it turns out that the alien head is wearing a helmet, which when removed reveals a very life-like humanoid head almost identical to the alien in the opening segment. DNA is extracted and found to match that of humans, and when residual electrical activity is detected in the head it is “brought back to life” with interesting consequences. Meanwhile the malevolent David, who has clearly never heard of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics forbidding harm to humans (not to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being), investigates the cylinder and discovers a dark liquid. He then taints a drink with the substance and gives it to Holloway. Shortly after, Shaw and Holloway have sex. At this point, things are a bit confused. There is clearly a hidden agenda, but what is it and who are the bad guys? David is one of them, and he seems to be collaborating with Vickers and another unseen person.
Bad things happen to the two men trapped inside the structure. A snake-like creature kills Millburn, and sprays a corrosive fluid that melts Fifield's helmet, exposing him to the leaking dark liquid. In echoes of “Alien”, we once again see humans being unpleasantly intubated by alien life-forms, and have the sense that this is somehow linked to that storyline. The crew later returns to the structure and finds Millburn's corpse. David goes off on a frolic of his own, even severing the video transmission to Vickers, and separately discovers a control room containing a surviving Engineer in stasis, and a virtual star map highlighting Earth (the special effects are absolutely stunning in this segment, including a 3D hologram of the Earth which wistfully fades away when the projection abruptly shuts down). At this point we are really wondering about David’s hidden agenda and recalling the folly of corporation hacks who thought that they could subdue an Alien and bring it back to Earth.
Holloway's ingestion of the dark liquid leads to an infection that rapidly ravages his body. He is rushed back to Prometheus, but Vickers refuses to let him aboard, and at his urging, burns him to death with a flamethrower. Later, a medical scan reveals that Shaw, despite having earlier revealed that she is unable to have children, is pregnant with an alien offspring. Shaw manages to escape from David and the fellow crew members that want to put her back into stasis (to ensure that the alien embryo is transported back to Earth – echoes of the “Alien” franchise again) and is just desperate to rid herself of the creature. There is an automated surgery table on the ship and she optimistically asks for a caesarean but it replies that it is only programmed for male anatomy and cannot comply. Whoever heard of such craziness – sending a robotic surgeon into deep space just to operate on males – I don’t think so! Thinking laterally, she orders it to perform the removal of a foreign body from her abdomen and has to undertake some pretty gutsy self-anaesthesia. Conveniently the machine has what looks exactly like a pair of birthing forceps to extract and subdue the squid-like creature. Shaw escapes and stumbles around for much of the rest of the movie clutching her stapled abdomen and in great pain. I have seen some women happily walking around the day after a caesarean but Shaw is really forced to ‘push to the max’ physically in order to survive.
Weyland (Guy Pearce) is revealed to have been in stasis aboard Prometheus pulling the strings, and explains to Shaw he wants to ask the Engineers to prevent his death from old age. As Weyland prepares to leave for the structure, Vickers calls him "Father". Before the party can leave, a mutated Fifield attacks the hangar bay and kills several crew members before being killed himself.
The Prometheus's captain, Janek (Idris Elba), speculates that the structure was part of an Engineer military base that lost control of a virulent biological weapon, the dark liquid. Janek also determines that the underground structure is in fact a spacecraft. The shape of the spacecraft is eerily similar to the one seen crashed in the opening scenes of the “Alien” movie, so various strands of the backstory have been woven together by this point.
Weyland and a team return to the structure and are foolhardy enough to awaken the sleeping Engineer. David, who has been studying Earth’s ancient languages during the long trip, speaks to the Engineer, who responds by decapitating him and killing Weyland and his team. Shaw just escapes the spacecraft as the Engineer prepares to fly away. Shaw warns Janek that the Engineer is planning to release the liquid on Earth and convinces him to stop the spacecraft via a suicide mission. Vickers and her lifeboat are ejected before Janek bravely collides the Prometheus with the Engineer's spacecraft. The Engineer's disabled spacecraft crashes onto the planet and rolls across the landscape, killing Vickers and finally dispelling that nagging doubt that Vickers was also an android.
Shaw goes to the lifeboat and finds her alien offspring, which is still alive and has grown to gigantic size. David's still-active head warns Shaw via radio that the Engineer survived the crash and is coming after her. The Engineer forces open the lifeboat's airlock and attacks Shaw. She releases her alien offspring onto the Engineer; it thrusts a tentacle down the Engineer's throat, subduing him.
Shaw feels that she needs to know why the Engineers would want to destroy the human race, which they had created. As there are more buried alien spacecraft which David believes that he can fly, she enters into a pact with him and recovers his head and body. In the dying moments of the film they launch another Engineer spacecraft as Shaw intends to reach the Engineers' homeworld in an attempt to understand why they wanted to destroy humanity. In the lifeboat, a large alien creature bursts out of the Engineer's chest. Guess what? It’s the same lifeform as in “Alien” except with pink gums and a very human looking set of choppers (teeth) rather than the metallic variety that we became so used to.
It is a good ensemble cast, with stand-out performances from Rapace, Fassbender and Theron. At times it is difficult to work out whether Shaw has an English or a Continental accent, and she has a tendency to mumble, detracting from the import of what she is saying. Fassbender is absolutely chilling as the soul-less and mercenary David, and Theron again impressively reprises the role of an ice-queen.
Although the plot does contain several predictable elements from the “Alien” franchise, it hangs together reasonably well and continues to surprise. Like Ripley and her android Bishop, Shaw and David are the sole survivors, leaving scope for a sequel if they do in fact make it to the Engineers’ homeworld.
The aforementioned scenery is stunning, as are the special effects. However, the underlying premise of the plot, that the Engineers would want to destroy humanity (a relatively primitive race) after having gone to all the trouble of creating them, remains perplexing. A friend of mine has it all worked out. He thinks it is all to do with intergalactic trade and there is a missing link with the “Alien vs Predator” franchise, in which the Aliens were bred for the Predators to hunt. Imagine the profits if you infect a whole planet and create a bottomless supply of Aliens! The whole deal may well have been brokered by the Ferengi, who are not unfamiliar with the Rules of Acquisition!
While it is not viscerally challenging in the same way as the raw horror of the original “Alien” movie or the sequel “Aliens”, there is sufficient unpredictability and murkiness of purpose to keep you guessing and at times on the edge of your seat. There is certainly a sense of the ‘puniness’ of humans in the overall scheme of things and it is in many respects a cautionary tale not “to mess with things you do not understand”. Both the humans and the imperturbable David (even when decapitated) are ill-prepared for what they actually encounter, and make the fatal mistake of assuming beneficence on the part of the creator Engineers. We see the whole craziness of what makes up human nature – love, folly, bravery, risk-taking, the quest for exploration and finding answers, betrayal, sacrifice and the will to survive.
Is it groundbreaking in the same way as “Alien”? No. Is it clever, complex and interesting? Yes. Does it raise more questions than it answers? Yes. Did I enjoy it anyway? Yes.
Sometimes watching a movie like this with some fairly significant unexplained portions of the plot is a bit like being a scientist in real life – we want to know all the answers but sometimes we just have to admit that nobody knows at the moment! The difference with a movie I suppose is whether it is a convincing enough package to engender a “willing suspension of disbelief”. This is one where you will have to decide for yourself!
In the next scene we are introduced to two of the main protagonists - Drs Elizabeth Shaw (played by the luminous Noomi Rapace of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" fame) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who are on an archeological dig on the Isle of Skye in 2089. They discover a wall painting that features a particular constellation that has independently been found depicted in a number of other locations around the world. They conclude that it is a guide map left behind by travellers (“the Engineers”) who want humanity to find them, the creators.
A deep space mission by the scientific vessel Prometheus to the distant moon LV-223 is funded by the Weyland Corporation. The human crew travels in stasis whilst the ship’s caretaker is an android named David (Michael Fassbender), who rather fancies himself as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, adopting Peter O’Toole’s hairstyle and accent. Since the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.22 light years away, it is not clear how the Prometheus manages to reach its mission objective in a mere four years. Upon arrival the motley crew (in common with all “Alien” movies some people are there “just for the money”) wakes up and the full details of the mission are revealed by a hologram of an ageing Peter Weyland. Mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) tells the scientists that she is boss. Conveniently they find a series of built structures on the surface of the moon and land the ship and go to investigate.
Inside the first of the structures, they find numerous stone cylinders, a monolithic statue of a humanoid head, and the decapitated corpse of a large alien, thought to be an Engineer. They find other bodies and presume that “no-one is home” alive. At this point I became a little agitated, as their biohazard precautions were less than ideal and I would not want these people keeping me safe from alien contagion. David secretly takes a cylinder, while the remaining cylinders begin leaking dark liquid. This liquid looks and behaves in a similar way to the infamous black oil in the “X-Files”.
A rapidly approaching storm forces the crew’s hurried return to Prometheus with the decapitated head, leaving lost crew members Millburn (Rafe Spall) and Fifield (Sean Harris) stranded in the structure overnight at the same time there is a “bogey” detected moving around inside.
Back on board Prometheus, in a cunning piece of wizardry that contains a direct reference to the original ”Alien” movie, it turns out that the alien head is wearing a helmet, which when removed reveals a very life-like humanoid head almost identical to the alien in the opening segment. DNA is extracted and found to match that of humans, and when residual electrical activity is detected in the head it is “brought back to life” with interesting consequences. Meanwhile the malevolent David, who has clearly never heard of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics forbidding harm to humans (not to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being), investigates the cylinder and discovers a dark liquid. He then taints a drink with the substance and gives it to Holloway. Shortly after, Shaw and Holloway have sex. At this point, things are a bit confused. There is clearly a hidden agenda, but what is it and who are the bad guys? David is one of them, and he seems to be collaborating with Vickers and another unseen person.
Bad things happen to the two men trapped inside the structure. A snake-like creature kills Millburn, and sprays a corrosive fluid that melts Fifield's helmet, exposing him to the leaking dark liquid. In echoes of “Alien”, we once again see humans being unpleasantly intubated by alien life-forms, and have the sense that this is somehow linked to that storyline. The crew later returns to the structure and finds Millburn's corpse. David goes off on a frolic of his own, even severing the video transmission to Vickers, and separately discovers a control room containing a surviving Engineer in stasis, and a virtual star map highlighting Earth (the special effects are absolutely stunning in this segment, including a 3D hologram of the Earth which wistfully fades away when the projection abruptly shuts down). At this point we are really wondering about David’s hidden agenda and recalling the folly of corporation hacks who thought that they could subdue an Alien and bring it back to Earth.
Holloway's ingestion of the dark liquid leads to an infection that rapidly ravages his body. He is rushed back to Prometheus, but Vickers refuses to let him aboard, and at his urging, burns him to death with a flamethrower. Later, a medical scan reveals that Shaw, despite having earlier revealed that she is unable to have children, is pregnant with an alien offspring. Shaw manages to escape from David and the fellow crew members that want to put her back into stasis (to ensure that the alien embryo is transported back to Earth – echoes of the “Alien” franchise again) and is just desperate to rid herself of the creature. There is an automated surgery table on the ship and she optimistically asks for a caesarean but it replies that it is only programmed for male anatomy and cannot comply. Whoever heard of such craziness – sending a robotic surgeon into deep space just to operate on males – I don’t think so! Thinking laterally, she orders it to perform the removal of a foreign body from her abdomen and has to undertake some pretty gutsy self-anaesthesia. Conveniently the machine has what looks exactly like a pair of birthing forceps to extract and subdue the squid-like creature. Shaw escapes and stumbles around for much of the rest of the movie clutching her stapled abdomen and in great pain. I have seen some women happily walking around the day after a caesarean but Shaw is really forced to ‘push to the max’ physically in order to survive.
Weyland (Guy Pearce) is revealed to have been in stasis aboard Prometheus pulling the strings, and explains to Shaw he wants to ask the Engineers to prevent his death from old age. As Weyland prepares to leave for the structure, Vickers calls him "Father". Before the party can leave, a mutated Fifield attacks the hangar bay and kills several crew members before being killed himself.
The Prometheus's captain, Janek (Idris Elba), speculates that the structure was part of an Engineer military base that lost control of a virulent biological weapon, the dark liquid. Janek also determines that the underground structure is in fact a spacecraft. The shape of the spacecraft is eerily similar to the one seen crashed in the opening scenes of the “Alien” movie, so various strands of the backstory have been woven together by this point.
Weyland and a team return to the structure and are foolhardy enough to awaken the sleeping Engineer. David, who has been studying Earth’s ancient languages during the long trip, speaks to the Engineer, who responds by decapitating him and killing Weyland and his team. Shaw just escapes the spacecraft as the Engineer prepares to fly away. Shaw warns Janek that the Engineer is planning to release the liquid on Earth and convinces him to stop the spacecraft via a suicide mission. Vickers and her lifeboat are ejected before Janek bravely collides the Prometheus with the Engineer's spacecraft. The Engineer's disabled spacecraft crashes onto the planet and rolls across the landscape, killing Vickers and finally dispelling that nagging doubt that Vickers was also an android.
Shaw goes to the lifeboat and finds her alien offspring, which is still alive and has grown to gigantic size. David's still-active head warns Shaw via radio that the Engineer survived the crash and is coming after her. The Engineer forces open the lifeboat's airlock and attacks Shaw. She releases her alien offspring onto the Engineer; it thrusts a tentacle down the Engineer's throat, subduing him.
Shaw feels that she needs to know why the Engineers would want to destroy the human race, which they had created. As there are more buried alien spacecraft which David believes that he can fly, she enters into a pact with him and recovers his head and body. In the dying moments of the film they launch another Engineer spacecraft as Shaw intends to reach the Engineers' homeworld in an attempt to understand why they wanted to destroy humanity. In the lifeboat, a large alien creature bursts out of the Engineer's chest. Guess what? It’s the same lifeform as in “Alien” except with pink gums and a very human looking set of choppers (teeth) rather than the metallic variety that we became so used to.
It is a good ensemble cast, with stand-out performances from Rapace, Fassbender and Theron. At times it is difficult to work out whether Shaw has an English or a Continental accent, and she has a tendency to mumble, detracting from the import of what she is saying. Fassbender is absolutely chilling as the soul-less and mercenary David, and Theron again impressively reprises the role of an ice-queen.
Although the plot does contain several predictable elements from the “Alien” franchise, it hangs together reasonably well and continues to surprise. Like Ripley and her android Bishop, Shaw and David are the sole survivors, leaving scope for a sequel if they do in fact make it to the Engineers’ homeworld.
The aforementioned scenery is stunning, as are the special effects. However, the underlying premise of the plot, that the Engineers would want to destroy humanity (a relatively primitive race) after having gone to all the trouble of creating them, remains perplexing. A friend of mine has it all worked out. He thinks it is all to do with intergalactic trade and there is a missing link with the “Alien vs Predator” franchise, in which the Aliens were bred for the Predators to hunt. Imagine the profits if you infect a whole planet and create a bottomless supply of Aliens! The whole deal may well have been brokered by the Ferengi, who are not unfamiliar with the Rules of Acquisition!
While it is not viscerally challenging in the same way as the raw horror of the original “Alien” movie or the sequel “Aliens”, there is sufficient unpredictability and murkiness of purpose to keep you guessing and at times on the edge of your seat. There is certainly a sense of the ‘puniness’ of humans in the overall scheme of things and it is in many respects a cautionary tale not “to mess with things you do not understand”. Both the humans and the imperturbable David (even when decapitated) are ill-prepared for what they actually encounter, and make the fatal mistake of assuming beneficence on the part of the creator Engineers. We see the whole craziness of what makes up human nature – love, folly, bravery, risk-taking, the quest for exploration and finding answers, betrayal, sacrifice and the will to survive.
Is it groundbreaking in the same way as “Alien”? No. Is it clever, complex and interesting? Yes. Does it raise more questions than it answers? Yes. Did I enjoy it anyway? Yes.
Sometimes watching a movie like this with some fairly significant unexplained portions of the plot is a bit like being a scientist in real life – we want to know all the answers but sometimes we just have to admit that nobody knows at the moment! The difference with a movie I suppose is whether it is a convincing enough package to engender a “willing suspension of disbelief”. This is one where you will have to decide for yourself!
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