Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus': a Review

Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' has been long awaited in some quarters, and whilst the film proved to be entertaining and at times visually impressive, it represented to a considerable extent a lost opportunity, in which plot and dialogue were sacrificed to predictable chase scenes and others that looked more akin to computer gaming than to cinematography. H.R. Giger's influence upon the look of the film remained heavily in evidence, not only in its depiction of the Aliens themselves, but in the interior settings on a far-flung moon: a dark, menacing and tormented fusion of industrial metallic and organic forms.

Shot in 3D, 'Prometheus' was at its most spectacular when displaying Iceland's desolate scenery of ice, rock and water and the Cuillins of Skye; the wild landscape wrought by the blind forces of nature trumping the artifice of the human programmers. 'Prometheus' set out to be mythic, dealing as it did with the age-old questions of human origins, mortality, evil, fear and more recent preoccupations with the employment of science and technology for good and for ill. This was how the film was set up, but the promise of the exploration of these themes was left unfulfilled, leading to a less satisfying second half. In part, it proved to share its premise with the bizarre Raëlian Movement, but whereas this contemporary cult believes our putative creators to have been 'benign', 'Prometheus' takes quite the contrary position.

In reaching into the future 'Prometheus' delved into the past, with some of its early scenes involving the archaeological investigation of a newly discovered cave on the Isle of Skye, containing artwork said to be 45,000 years old; its depictions of horses' heads clearly inspired by the stunning Palaeolithic paintings from Chauvet cave, and of humans by the current fashion for claiming that ancient Europeans were black. Without wishing to give away the plot in its entirety, this quest for origins became conjoined with the search for a futuristic version of the fountain of youth and of the transcendence of space and time.

It thus seemed strange that an expedition costing a trillion dollars revealed upon arrival at its destination that its members appeared to have been selected more upon the basis of the criteria employed in the making of 'reality' television than those used in scientific and commercial exploration. The archaeologists were overly emotive and irrational (removing helmets on another world: had they never considered the possibility of bacteriological contamination?), the geologist seemed to be temperamentally unstable and a number of other crew members did not seem to be particularly bright. Having spent a trillion dollars on an interstellar expedition, surely Earth could have furnished a rather better crew than this?

European Palaeolithic Art: Chauvet Cave

Strangely, the most interesting character - David - proved not even to be human. The scene in which he attempts to communicate with another being in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European is certainly one of the most memorable in the film. Weyland Corporation employee Meredith Vickers in a way forms a female complement to David, albeit human and possessed of a similarly icy and emotionless demeanour; beautiful, yet strangely sexless. The pair form a natural foil to the irrational and emotive archaeologists, but it is clearly the flawed and very human Elizabeth Shaw with whom we come to empathise.

'Prometheus' is at times a good-looking film, at others an ugly one, and contains the occasional shock and a number of stomach-churning moments for the squeamish; but it is underscripted, underplotted and lacks a satisfying conclusion. Originality is absent, and even its best characters are two-dimensional. Thus, it is a long way removed from the original Alien film, Blade Runner or Gladiator, but it does make for a reasonable couple of hours entertainment on a rainy afternoon. If you want to know more, then you will have to watch the film yourself.