Prometheus

In the tradition of those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't even teach, review, here are a few thoughts on Prometheus.

I think the main point we can take away from both Prometheus and the upcoming Blade Runner sequel is that Ridley Scott's pension pot obviously wasn't performing as well as he would have liked, and needed a bit of topping up. There's nothing really wrong with this film. Scott is a great director, and it shows. The action is fast-paced and the performances are good. You can see and hear what's going on at all times. You never get a stray boom mike bobbing into view or catch a glimpse of the film crew in one of the many reflective surfaces. I'm sure if I'd seen it in 3D — instead of 2D, as god intended — things would have flown out of the screen at me in a very satisfying manner. It was all very competent.

There is a problem with prequels that they can borrow too heavily from the films which came before (after)(this could get confusing) them. In his encyclopaedic analysis of the Star Wars prequels — which as I'm sure you're aware were never made and so do not actually exist — Mr Plinkett points out that Luke and Obi Wan (and Uncle Owen and the bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina) dress the way they do because they live on a hick desert planet. Yet, come the prequels, these desert rags have been adopted as the official uniform of the Jedi. So it is with Prometheus. Maybe David playing basketball has nothing to do with the court scene from Resurrection, but we get the muster scene and the head-mounted cameras from Aliens, the sexually-threatening Android and the flamethrowers. Yet there's one notable absence...

Prometheus also borrows heavily from elsewhere, which is a shame given the strong, unique world which the original films created. As Kim Newman points out, the whole "ancient astronaut" plot has been done to death in SF over the decades since Alien. For my money, 2001 had already presented the definitive version of the story ten years before Alien was released. It also did the boredom of space travel far better. It's sad to see a franchise which originated so many quotable scenes resort to quoting other movies (David's obsession with Lawrence of Arabia). The SF props which make up its background have been drawn from far and wide. The autodoc practically asks you to please state the nature of the medical emergency. (And I'm going to come down on the side of, yes, a caesarian was what she meant to ask for.)

Since Wayland-Yutani-branded crates turn up in Firefly I guess it's only fair that the Prometheus herself should look like Serenity. There is plenty of random shiny gadgetry for the actors to stare at and poke whenever they need to do anything exciting. It makes you wonder exactly how old and backwards the Nostromo was. I wish they'd kitted the ship out with old clackety keyboards and green-screen monitors which clucked as the letters appeared. They could at least have edited out the "Where are you?"s as the character asking stands looking at a 3D map showing with flashing yellow diamonds exactly where everyone was. Also, it was a shame that Chekhov's Iron Man suits didn't get an outing, despite the number of time they were ran past.

(I also wonder about the choice of name "Prometheus" for the ship. (And as a quick aside, Mr Wayland, Prometheus wasn't so much "cast down" by the gods for bringing man fire as "chained to a rock and had his liver torn out on an infinite loop". Subtle difference there.) Something about the metaphor doesn't quite sit right. Personally, I would have kept the Prometheus theme for the aliens and called the ship "Pandora", after the wife the gods fashioned for him. It would be a little more apposite, given what we know about her tendency to open up cans of face-hugging chest-bursting worms.)

The film gets extra points for kicking off the main action on my 118th birthday. (Nice one, Ridders. I do appreciate little touches like that. Cheers.) Unfortunately, about ten minutes in, I'd convinced myself that "Elizabeth Shaw" was the name of Keira Knightley's character in those Pirate movies, and was composing a far more interesting film in my head. One where the feisty heroine swashbuckled her way past Space Jockeys and slime monsters.

Alien was a B-movie horror flick made a thing of beauty by brilliant design and direction. Prometheus... well, I'm not sure what it is, and I'm not sure if it knows, either. It's disappointing in the same way that 3 or Resurrection were when you learnt of the (limited) involvement of William Gibson or Joss Whedon, respectively. It could have been so much more than it was, but it ended up lacking something. And I don't just mean the Alien.