Prometheus (2012) Review

Serpentine.

Prometheus (2012): 5 out of 10: It pains me not to like Prometheus. Ridley Scott returning to the Alien universe should have been an event. This is the man who directed the original film, one of the most influential science-fiction horror movies ever made, coming back decades later with modern technology, a serious budget, and apparently something new to say about the universe he helped create.

And the frustrating thing is that Prometheus looks exactly like the movie you would hope Ridley Scott would make. It is gorgeous. The production design is tremendous; the alien landscapes are striking, and there probably isn’t a genuinely bad-looking shot in the entire film. Michael Fassbender is excellent as the android David, Noomi Rapace makes for a compelling lead, Charlize Theron has enough screen presence that she barely needs to do anything for me to enjoy watching her, and the rest of the cast is filled with perfectly capable actors.

Unfortunately, these talented people have been placed inside a screenplay where supposedly brilliant scientists behave like people who would get lost during an elementary-school field trip.

The story follows the crew of the spaceship Prometheus, sent across the galaxy after archaeologists discover evidence suggesting that humanity may have been visited, or even created, by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. The expedition arrives at a distant moon, discovers structures that clearly did not occur naturally, and begins investigating the ruins in search of answers about mankind’s origins.

What follows is theoretically a grand science-fiction mystery about creation, faith, evolution, and the danger of meeting your maker. 

In practice, it is two hours of very attractive people making increasingly questionable decisions around mysterious black goo.

The Good

Let’s begin with the obvious: Ridley Scott still knows how to shoot science fiction.

Prometheus is absolutely beautiful. The landscapes are enormous without feeling artificial; the interiors have wonderful scale, and the technology manages that difficult trick of looking futuristic while still feeling as if it could exist in the same broad universe as Alien. This is a movie you could pause almost anywhere and find something worth looking at.

The acting is also considerably better than the screenplay deserves. Michael Fassbender’s David is easily the most interesting character in the film. He is calm, unsettling, curious, occasionally funny, and just human enough that you begin wondering exactly how much humanity he actually possesses. 

Fassbender understands that playing an android is not simply a matter of acting like a robot. David has interests, resentments, ambitions, and possibly a sense of humor, but they are all just slightly sideways from what we recognize as human.

Noomi Rapace also does good work as Elizabeth Shaw. This is an Alien film, so eventually somebody has to become the final girl, and Rapace has the charisma and physical commitment necessary to carry those portions of the movie.

Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers is colder and less developed, but Theron is one of those performers who can make simply standing in a room interesting. Even the actors portraying complete idiots successfully convince you that these people are complete idiots, so I suppose technically that still counts as good acting.

There are also individual sequences where everything clicks. Scott can still create tension; the physical production is impressive, and when Prometheus briefly stops explaining its mythology and remembers that it is supposed to be a science-fiction horror movie, there are glimpses of something much better. The problem is that those glimpses never quite become the movie.

The Bad

Earlier this year, I reviewed Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott’s sequel to Prometheus, and I discovered something rather strange when I came back to this film. I liked Alien: Covenant better.

By almost any rational definition, Prometheus is probably the better movie. The characters in Covenant are more cartoonish, the plot somehow manages to become even more ridiculous, and the entire production eventually wanders into territory where “so bad it’s good” becomes a legitimate part of the entertainment.

But things happen in Alien: Covenant.

People run around. Monsters attack things. Stuff explodes. Ridiculous decisions lead to ridiculous consequences. It may be stupid, but it has enthusiasm. Prometheus, by comparison, is a drag.

It takes forever to get where it is going and then, once it finally arrives, doesn’t seem particularly sure what it wants to do there. There is an enormous amount of Plot, with a capital P, but very little momentum. People discuss creation. They discuss faith. They discuss ancient civilizations. They stare at things. They investigate things. They discover things that create three additional questions for every question supposedly answered. 

And the people doing the investigating are astonishingly bad at their jobs. In fairness at least Prometheus has the decency to put its explorers in helmets when they first arrive, unlike Alien: Covenant, where everyone seems to treat visiting an unexplored planet like a camping trip in Norway.

Of course, eventually the helmets come off because otherwise how is mysterious alien material supposed to get inside anybody?

Then we have two members of the expedition who become lost inside the alien structure. One of them is essentially part of the team responsible for mapping the place. Let that settle for a moment. The man whose job involves helping map the alien structure gets lost in the alien structure.

Meanwhile, the people back at the ship apparently manage to leave these two crew members behind before realizing they are missing. Your elementary school field trip had better procedures.

I can picture some third-grade teacher standing beside the Prometheus expedition with a clipboard, asking Ridley Scott whether everybody remembered their buddy.

The movie also expects us to be amazed that giant, artificial-looking structures discovered in an otherwise empty valley might have been built by somebody.

There is an early insistence that nature doesn’t create straight lines, which is one of those statements that sounds profound until you spend approximately thirty seconds thinking about nature. Nature creates lines all the time. Rays of light, spider webs, and the RBH-1 are just three of many examples. (RBH-1 stands for Runaway Black Hole 1 which I had just seen a video on. It is very large, very fast, and is definitely going in a straight line.)

Certainly, if I arrived on another planet and discovered what appeared to be a line of castles sitting in a valley, my first thought would probably be, “Somebody built those.” My second thought would be amazement that the electronics still worked.

I go away on vacation, and half the electronics in my house have stopped cooperating by the time I return.

The Ugly

Then we get to the mythology. Oh dear. The central biological threat in Prometheus is mysterious black goo.

And once you’ve watched enough The X-Files, it is impossible not to look at this stuff and think: that’s the black oil from The X-Files. They even do the same eyeball thing. .

Now borrowing a creepy science-fiction idea is hardly the greatest cinematic sin in history. Except this is an Alien movie. You already have one of the most recognizable monsters ever created. The word Alien is right there in the franchise. (Though, as has been pointed out to me, not in the title)

Instead, Prometheus spends much of its running time developing mysterious goo, strange genetic reactions, giant pale humanoids, half-developed creatures, pseudo-Aliens, and various biological combinations.

Eventually something vaguely Alien-ish appears in the stinger, presumably so fans can point at the screen and go “Ooh!”

The movie also includes a supposed revelation involving someone aboard the Prometheus that I am trying to discuss without spoiling anything specific. The problem is that I’m not entirely sure I realized it was supposed to be a revelation when I first watched the film.

The screenplay telegraphs the situation so heavily that when the dramatic moment arrives, the reaction isn’t “What a twist!” It’s more along the lines of “Yes, obviously.”

You cannot spend the entire movie stocking Chekhov’s gun store and then act surprised when the audience expects gunfire during the third act. And then there is the scene.

Even people who have never watched Prometheus have probably seen it. A gigantic rolling object is coming directly toward two characters. They run directly away from it. In a straight line. (Just like nature intended) For a very long time. Rather than moving approximately one hundred feet to either side.

This moment launched a thousand YouTube videos, essays, memes, and explanations, and deserved every single one of them. It is spectacularly silly. The irony is that this may also be the most memorable scene in Prometheus.

The movie spends enormous effort constructing complicated mythology about mankind’s origins, ancient civilizations, genetic engineering, godlike extraterrestrials, and the philosophical relationship between creator and creation. And what everybody remembers is: Run perpendicular from the giant rolling alien donut, you muppets. 

In Conclusion

Prometheus is one of those movies that somehow becomes less entertaining the more seriously it takes itself.

There is tremendous talent here. Ridley Scott makes the movie look magnificent. Michael Fassbender is excellent. Noomi Rapace is good. Charlize Theron is Charlize Theron. The production design is first rate, and there are individual moments where you can glimpse the genuinely great science-fiction film that might have existed. But the screenplay keeps getting in the way.

The characters repeatedly behave like idiots because the plot requires them to. The mythology produces more confusion than fascination. The pacing is ponderous; the supposedly profound ideas are frequently less profound than the movie thinks they are, and the whole thing spends far too much time explaining an Alien universe that worked considerably better when nobody was explaining it.

Which leaves me in the strange position of preferring Alien: Covenant. Covenant is a movie I can imagine watching again.

Prometheus is considerably more respectable. It is also much more boring. Sometimes a ridiculous movie that knows how to blow things up is preferable to a serious movie standing in front of mysterious black goo asking us to contemplate the meaning of existence. Plus as you can see from the title screenshot on my Alien Covenant review, Alien Covenant has a shower sex scene that ends in a threesome with a full-grown actual Alien monster… I mean, that has to help.