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Movie Review: Prometheus

Mike Tyrkus

Director Ridley Scott returns to the genre of science fiction (he helped set the standard for the modern sci-fi film with Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982 but has focused primarily on dramas and action-adventure films since) with the underwhelming prequel to the Alien saga, Prometheus. While visually stunning throughout, a poor script saddled with uninteresting characters that tries to include far too many elements, results in a surprisingly boring film that squanders the many talented people involved in its creation.

The film begins with a breathtaking overture that showcases the dawn of life on Earth. As this scene reaches its zenith, an alien being is seen imbibing a dark liquid that causes him to disintegrate and be absorbed by the planet which in turn brings about the creation of life as we know it. Several thousand years in the future, a pair of archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Halloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover evidence of this ancient being which leads to the Prometheus expedition. Funded by Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the purpose of the mission is for Shaw and Halloway to make contact with the beings who may have been the “engineers” of our genetic material. Of course, nothing like this can ever go exactly as planned and the crew of the Prometheus (which also includes Michael Fassbender as the android David, Charlize Theron as mission leader Meredith Vickers, and Idris Elba as Captain Janek) soon find themselves in a battle not only for their own lives but for the entire human race.

Despite such an intriguing setup, there is little to keep the viewer from being bored throughout a significant portion of Prometheus. Director Scott seems to have been consciously trying to avoid copying both himself and the original Alien film. So, instead of a taught, well-acted, claustrophobic and legitimately scary sci-fi horror movie, he opts for a meditation on what is humanity’s place in the universe. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, the problem is that he never follows through. Instead, he throws a bunch of clichéd characters together and gives them dialogue from a lazy, uninspired script and then, when it appears he’s grown bored with the film as well, allows it to mutate into a mundane action film that is nothing more than a boring Alien retread (precisely the thing he seemed adamant in avoiding).

Michael Fassbender in “Prometheus.” © 2012 – Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Of the many members of an extremely talented cast, only Michael Fassbender proves remotely interesting during the film’s two-hour running time. He easily delivers the best performance but that may be due more to him getting the bulk of the good dialogue and actions of the film than anything else. Even when Noomi Rapace seems on the verge of becoming a Ripley-esque type of heroine, she isn’t allowed to and is left with little more to do than look scared and scream. She does get a few nice moments that seem designed to showcase her as an empowered female character but these scenes are so disjointed and out of place (as is most of the film) they fail to resonate. In the end, you may get the impression you’re supposed to believe she’s a strong character because the filmmakers think she is, regardless of whether they’ve proven it or not.

There are many moments that should play like exhilarating action scenes in Prometheus, but these simply fall flat when they’re followed by clumsy, out-of-place exposition. It’s as if the characters in the movie were forgetting what they were doing from one moment to the next and needed to be constantly reminded. This is the essence of what fails in Prometheus, it is a movie that is trying to be so many things that it fails to be the one thing it should have been – entertaining.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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