Prometheus

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.  

The first Alien and its sequel, Aliens, are both excellent films that strive for different things.  Ridley Scott's original plops us into a spaceship--which could well be a large one, but when space is finite and you're running for your life, it'll always feel too small--and lets the eponymous character go to work in the cramped dark, preying on the terrified passengers one by one.  We never get a great look at the xenomorph and its only after all these years of action figures and lesser sequels that we know what the crew of the Nostromo is running from; the scariest monster, of course, is always the one that your mind creates for you.  Its follow-up would have to up the ante in order to sell tickets, so the franchise wisely went in a different direction.  James Cameron turned Aliens into more of a para-military action thriller, because since we (and main character Ellen Ripley) now know what we're dealing with, terror must be sacrificed for suspense in order for interest to remain.  And it does. Alien reveled in the mystery, Aliens abandoned it before it got too boring. 

Prometheus, Scott's return to the Alien universe, goes back to the mystery--and brings loads of it.  The crew of the Prometheus search for the creators of human life and the reason for that creation: there's hardly a more compelling subject, is there?  Prometheus was never going to answer that question and that's alright because how could it?  No, it actually bothers me more that, after so much effort in setting up the question, it hardly attempts to answer it before introducing a second question: why would our creators apparently want to destroy us?  And then it fails to answer that question, too.  We start with one question and finish with two, with nary a hint that could facilitate even a discussion, or allow our minds and imaginations to play with.  There's a difference between the unresolved and the unexplored. 

On the unexplored front, Michael Fassbender's robot character (Fass-bot?), David, was the most hyped performance of the film.  And that hype is justified.  He keeps the audience guessing with his own series of educated (if childlike) guesses about actions and reactions; he has no interest in why--as the humans in the film and the audience do--but lots of interest in what.  The trouble is, we get very little of the what and why of David.  Lots of "what's all this, then" and no "by Jove, I think I've got it" moments.  When he poisons Holloway with a substance he found in the wrecked ship, is it because Holloway was being kind of a dick to him?  We've been told David has no soul, but can he still pick up on dickishness?  And is he then programmed to respond with even worse dickishness?  But why have that substance prepped and ready to hurt someone with in the first place?  Why bring it aboard and not tell anyone--not even the father figure, Peter Weyland, from whom he is apparently receiving orders?  (By the way, no film is hurt by adding more Guy Pearce.  Just saying.)  Or is this one of those "move the plot forward" moments where it's briefly necessary to forget about motivations and qualifications.  We get a similar moment with the biologist, Milburn, screwing around with Slimy Tentacle alien, but at least that leads to some satisfying horror and promises more to come.  We also never care about Milburn--or mohawked geologist Fifield--the way we want to care about David, despite his lack of humanity. 

Along with Peter Weyland, we have Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers, who possesses the same cold detachment as David, but with a more obviously human basis for that.  Her motivations are better fleshed out than David's: a corporate employee overseeing the financial boondoggle of its founder (who also happens to be her father, I guess).  But for someone who has such personal stake in the journey, she sure is good at maintaining that cold front.  Why not let everyone in on her own reservations and make clear with everyone just what is supposed to happen and what they can/should do if... oh, never mind--look at the giant pale alien!

This leaves us with the main character, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, about whom I have no complaints, in large part because she does her damnedest to drag some answers out of the muck.  The only overtly religious character, her perspective might be a good one to check in on now and again--perhaps using her atheist boyfriend Holloway as a counterpoint before he's poisoned and eventually char-grilled.  But the film can never quite get 'round to doing that.  There's too much else to contend with and Shaw gets the short stick to go with her messy and painful surgery. 

I give some points back to Prometheus because I always like when a film (and a major blockbuster especially) tries to have ideas.  But to go from "pretty good" to "great," the film must make good on those ideas and establish them beyond those first "what if's."  What ground Prometheus might make up for by being a big, idea-teasing film never comes together because we're all too aware of this larger universe and the possibilities it contains.  It's impossible not to think of Prometheus' predecessors.  The best sequels work on their own terms, enhanced by the existence of the original, but never relying on what came before.  Ridley Scott can say that Prometheus shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak," but he seems to spend an awful lot of time setting up elements from the first movie, even giving us a good long glimpse at a xenomorph (albeit an adorable adolescent version), the likes of which he teased us with but never allowed in the first film.  The first two Alien films stood on their own and answered their own questions.  Prometheus, wanting to grapple with much larger questions and more interested in what came before than it is in itself, never stands up under its own weight.  What chance does it have with the added weight of two beloved entries in the genre? 

Grade: C+