PROMETHEUS

A spoiler heavy review of PROMETHEUS after the jump...




If creation myths need a devil, then devils also need creation myths, and that is more or less what I got from PROMETHEUS. Ridley Scott’s prequel to his perfect haunted house movie in space doesn’t sully the original, nor does it get too caught up in setting the table for the events to come that we have already been privy to (or, at least, it didn’t for my tastes), but instead is mostly allowed to exist as a freestanding film that does not depend on prior knowledge. A film that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Look, it’s summer, and I really just want to have a good time in a dark room for two hours. A few bits that make me jump or laugh is enough. Howard Hawkes famously said that a good movie is “Three great scenes, no bad ones,” and PROMETHEUS has given me cause to amend that for summer movies. I had a really good time watching this movie, but at the end I could boil it down to one great scene, one great character, and only one line that’s a real clunker. Times and standards have changed. Hawkes probably paid a nickel to see a double feature, with newsreel and cartoon. I paid $14.25 and expect far less.

The $14.25 was matinee pricing for the 3D IMAX ‘experience,’ an ‘experience’ I had only ‘experienced’ once before sporadically throughout TRON: LEGACY. You can enhance a movie with occasional IMAX footage (THE DARK KNIGHT, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL), but the presence of the giant Oakley-style 3D IMAX glasses demands more than peppering in 3D scenes as you see fit. I will say that I thought the 3D in PROMETHEUS was handled well, and actually seemed utilized, unlike THE AVENGERS or MEN IN BLACK III. Although I can’t think of one moment that justifies the use of 3D in any of those movies. I felt far more enveloped by the aforementioned MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE sequel in non 3D IMAX, and seeing INCEPTION in a regular old movie theater was more immersive than any 3D film I’ve ever seen.

One thing that opening day IMAX has that regular old movie theaters does not (save for the midnight screening) is a line waiting to get in, and as any local news team desperate for a thirty-second spot will tell you, you can find some incredibly awkward freaks in a line waiting to see a movie first showing on opening day. When I saw STAR TREK, a gentleman sitting in the row in front of me shared his collection of badges he had fashioned at home out of tin foil with insignias that he assured me were cannon, but had not ever been officially issued. In the line for TRON: LEGACY, someone at the front of the line ordered a bunch of pizzas, took a couple of slices, and just passed the boxes down the line. Someone else had a giant Tupperware tub of homemade cookies that also made the rounds. The line for PROMETHEUS was much more sparse, a lot of grey ponytails, paunches and bald spots. Taking in the lot of us, I would have guessed that we were attending a local comic book shop’s memorial service for Ray Bradbury. Apparently artifacts from King Tut’s tomb were also on display for the last time in North America (With an optional audio guide narrated by Harrison Ford! Which, had I purchased it and played it intermittently throughout PROMETHEUS, would make a second Ridley Scott feature with optional disinterested voice-over narration from Harrison Ford.) but none of us could be bothered with actual historical artifacts. We were here to watch a man in the present attempt to make a film that predated a film he had made in the past’s vision of the future.

If you have not been to the IMAX theater recently, or ever, it begins with a stupid prerecorded message pointing out that there is a large screen in front of you, and several speakers around you, you know, like a movie thee-ater. It then dazzles you with its lifelike recreations of the sound of a cave, a rocket launch, and a cell phone ringing. If I ever become obscenely wealthy, I will force them to amend this message with the addition of David Cross saying, “I can fart like a turtle, or I can fart like an astronaut!” Next comes the trailer for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, to which I can only say, holy shit, I’m going to see the fuck out of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Will the real Barry Pepper please stand up?

PROMETHEUS begins with the birth of humanity, the seeds of which are sown by the suicide of an engineer left behind on Earth. The engineers are a race of giant aliens with vaguely human features. They look not unlike 8D8, the torture droid from RETURN OF THE JEDI (Yes, I had to look that up. I don’t know the names of droids on the periphery of STAR WARS scenes. Shut up. Leave me alone.) They also left behind a number of maps with primitives around the world, pointing the way toward the moon of another planet, far away. These star maps are later found by Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace, who has an oddly beautiful but animalistic quality, almost like the spawn of the original Alien and Sigourney Weaver, and Logan Marshall-Green, who looks kind of like Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy Lite.) who then get a mission funded to travel to those far off lands promised in so many cave paintings. Shaw is propelled by a need to understand her creator, a want to connect with god that was instilled by her father (Patrick Wilson in an odd cameo, but not the oddest casting of the film. We’ll get there…), a missionary who was consumed by Ebola but who never lost his faith.

We then jump to the ship, and meet David (Michael Fassbender). David is an android who seems to really enjoy being the only one not in stasis on the long journey through space. Everything is clean and orderly. He can view the dreams of the ‘sleeping’ crew. He can play basketball on a bicycle. He can watch and quote LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. He can dye his hair blonde. (This is really one of my favorite touches in the entire film, and one that opens up all of the questions of motivation and autonomy of David. He is not under anyone’s order to dye his hair; it seems to be his choice. At first, it seems to be to be in honor of Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence, whom he strikingly resembles. But later, as he is revealed to be a pseudo-sibling to Charlize Theron’s Vickers, his motivations become muddied. Is he trying to be in a more direct competition with Vickers for their father’s love in every manner, even hair blondeness?) One of the first ads I saw for PROMETHEUS was the ‘Introducing David⁸’ poster, so I knew that Fassbender was playing a robot. Then, when I saw a trailer, I noticed that Charlize Theron had similar blonde hair, so I assumed that she also was a robot, a sentiment echoed by the ship’s pilot Janek (Yaphet Kotto Idris Elba, who seriously should be the next James Bond) in the scene with my least favorite line. It’s the one concerning Stephen Stills’ relevance 100 years in the future, which in my mind could only have been salvaged with a blaring rendition of “Love the One You’re With” over the end credits. (Also, if you’ve ever wondered how much personal storage you would be allotted on a space freighter, the answer is: enough to bring along a celebrity squeeze-box.) At no point is it definitively proven that she is not a robot, and in a world populated with androids that look like Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, the population would dwindle pretty quickly. No wonder later models are built to resemble Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen.

Once the moon is reached, the crew is awakened. In addition to Shaw, Holloway, David, Vickers, and Janek, we also have Fifield and Millburn (Sean Harris and Rafe Spall playing, respectively, a gutter-punk and Wes Anderson). Also present are Chance, Ravel and Ford (Emun Elliot, Benedict Wong and Kate Dickie) who exist to make bets with each other, have accents, be diverse and also assist in piloting the ship and evenly distribute the body count. (Does it strike anyone else as odd that they seemed to go out of their way to make the crew international, but also had Idris Elba put on a gruff American accent?) Once on the surface of the alien world, the away team all move with trepidation and wonder, except for David, who seems to have purpose and knowledge that he is not sharing. (Again, I have to praise Michael Fassbender’s work in this movie. He makes a lot of interesting choices, including but not limited to his posture and the deliberate nature of his movements, and he adds just enough inscrutability as to make his role in everything questionable.) As they come across an increasing number of ancient engineer corpses, the nature of the mission becomes clearer to the more scientific factions of the away team (Fifield and Millburn), who decide to head back to the ship early. The rest of the team find a room filled with canisters, and decide to stay and collect a well preserved severed head as David secretly stashes one of the canisters, which are filled with some manner of toxic black space goo. Their meddling seems to trigger the goo to start leaking into the soil, onto some space grubs, and also causes a space storm of some kind. On the way back to the ship, Shaw almost loses the head in the storm, and is only saved by David’s quick thinking. Once on the ship, they discover that Fifield and Milburn never made it back, and are left to weather the storm with the now mutated killer space grubs.

While the ladies are busy reanimating the severed head with science and electricity, Holloway decides to get drunk. In this state, he insults David repeatedly and sort of stumbles upon the answer that everyone in the film is looking for. He posits the question of why the engineers would create humanity, and David asserts that the he could ask the same question of humanity. Why did men create David? Because they could. And though both man and robot admit that this is not a satisfying answer, they also must concede that it is the only answer. Then David infects Holloway with the alien goo. Why does he do this? The only answer that I can come up with is that Holloway’s failing health with provide a sufficient distraction for David to finish his mission. It also serves as an experiment to see just what will happen when the alien goo is introduced to a human body. Also, it seems that David just plain doesn’t like Holloway. Is this me projecting, or is it there? Again, I imagine that David is under orders to do these things, but he seems to want to as well. A few times in the film he seems to understand the concept of wanting far better than an artificial man should. He also exhibits the skills to bargain and scheme, long after his orders have been completed, which gives him more in common with Roy Batty than Ash or Bishop.

On the planet’s surface, Fifield and Millburn become a reluctant comedy duo. They are forced to wear their helmets as the temperature cools, which must be nice for Millburn. I wish all crusty punks were forced to wear a space suit, recycling the same stale, unwashed air they cultivate for them and them alone. Fifield smokes weed through his rebreather and says dumb stoner things, then they are both killed by the mutated space grubs. While this is happening, Shaw attempts to explain to Holloway that the DNA of the engineer head matches human DNA, proving that they did in fact create humanity. Holloway insults her and is a jerk, so naturally they have unprotected sex.

After the storm has passed, they form another away team to attempt to locate Fifield and Millburn. This would seem to me to be a sufficient diversion for David to break away and complete his mission. So, again, why does David contaminate Holloway? I suppose that could have been the original plan, and Fifield and Millburn were just a lucky coincidence, but I would think that a machine as complex as David would recognize such good fortune. Either way, David breaks off on his own to discover the last of the engineers, still alive in stasis. The rest of the team discovers Millburn’s body, just as Holloway becomes too ill to continue. As they try to board the ship, Vickers bars them from entry and threatens to incinerate Holloway with a blow torch. Though Shaw is the obvious Ripley surrogate (the ‘final girl’ who runs around in her underwear), Vickers is closer in some respects. Remember, it was Ripley who was adhering to guidelines and refusing to readmit the contaminated away team in ALIEN. Holloway seems to realize the severity of his situation and commits suicide by space marine. Shaw loses her shit and passes out. When she awakens in the medical bay, David examines her and informs the sterile Shaw that she is pregnant. Again, David seems almost pleased with this news. Perhaps he is an engineer of another kind, attempting to create new life through whatever synthesis possible, because he can. Shaw cannot be bothered with an alien fetus growing rapidly inside of her, so she enters Vickers’ private antique surgi-tube. I have little else to say about the surgi-tube scene, save that it sort of made the movie for me.( I appreciate the Joe Bob Briggs maxim that in a true drive-in movie, “anyone can die at any moment,” and indeed for a while I thought PROMETHEUS was going to abide by this rule. In the end, it did not, but I so enjoyed the circumvention that it hardly matters. I also was kind of hoping that by the climax of the film, it would be revealed that the alien of the first ALIEN film was in fact a mutated Noomi Rapace, but this also was not to be.) Having completed her surgery, Shaw runs around the ship, covered in blood and in her underwear. She then stumbles upon David and the very old, thought to be dead Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), fresh from stasis.

Why is Guy Pearce playing a withered old man? He appears early in the film in the form of a hologram, and is clearly a young man in makeup. It’s not bad make up, but it is also clearly not an old man. Which causes me to wait for a flash back scene, or file footage on a computer of the younger Peter Weyland, because why else would you cast a young person to play an old one, but that scene never comes. He starts old, and he ends old. Looking online, I see some viral videos that have Pearce playing Weyland as a younger man, and perhaps at some point these were intended to be a part of the film, but as it stands, it’s just a distraction, and as I do not have the capabilities for sound on my current computer, I cannot actually watch the viral video in question to determine if ultimately it was worth it. I do know that Guy Pearce is making some odd decisions lately, most notably to play his role in LAWLESS as Bob Geldof.

Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?

So, removed from stasis, Peter Weyland is brought (in a bionic-spine-suit!) to meet with the last of the engineers, essentially his attempt to speak with god before he dies. This leads me to another question. We see sort of a projection of security camera footage at one point, showing the engineers running from something, and then later we see their bodies. Some form of alien killed them in short order, and no alien body is seen. Does this mean that an alien is roaming the moon, alive and well but not seen during the duration of this film? Or is the last engineer that is still in stasis sort of the Ripley of his own story? The lone survivor, having killed off the threat, now left to wait for someone to come. He certainly reacts as I would expect Ripley to if she was awakened by a gathering of unfamiliar aliens. Anyone who kills a father with his son’s severed head is okay in my book.

Finally, everyone is killed except for Shaw and parts of David, and a lot of the remnants found in ALIEN are explained quickly and neatly. We also get a replay of the finale of ALIEN, with the ‘final girl’ thinking she is safe in her pod, but this time she is attacked on two fronts at once, by both the last surviving engineer and her own aborted alien fetus, which since we last saw it has grown into Audrey II. She manages to sort of feed them to each other, which leads to what can only be described as on-screen-inter-species-alien-sex and birth within the same scene. Show me another movie where that happens. Then Shaw and the severed head of David (the second head she has taken from the alien’s catacombs) fly an engineer’s ship, which the planet is apparently littered with, away toward the engineer’s home world, in search of the same unsatisfying answers they’ve already received.