When Ridley Scott comes on board to helm a film about alien life forms and the secrets of the universe at the age of 74, you know he means business. With a 33-year gap between this and his first-and-only Alien film, Prometheus is a thinking man’s actioner boosted by state-of-the-art special effects (go for the IMAX version). It makes for one of the most immersive movie experiences in a long while, and its fascinating and inevitable twist on the origin of mankind is a breath of fresh air.
The plot is a predictable re-visitation of Alien, but a more purposeful one at that. It’s Christmas Eve 2093 and on board the spacecraft Prometheus, a bunch of mission crew awakes after a two hundred year slumber to find themselves in a distant galaxy where mankind was supposedly birthed. Led by archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) under the financial backing of the dead Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the crew soon find themselves reopening a Pandora’s Box of ancient secrets that are better left untouched. Bloodbath ensues.
What makes Prometheus work is Scott’s closeness to the subject at hand (a little trivia: the film’s title is based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—a tale about tampering in God’s domain and was subtitled as A Modern Prometheus in some countries). Scott injects it with deft details and the help of a stupendous cast.
Michael Fassbender (A Dangerous Method) is a revelation as the android David, who acts as the able assistant to Weyland and the ship’s caretaker, delivering his performance with a snappy and crisp wryness. His is the mostly fully realized character (even as an automaton)—from mimicking and fixing his hair like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and belying his God complex to spewing great lines like “That being said, doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?”, Fassbender’s performance is the film’s centerpiece.
Rapace is also game enough to relive the grittiness of her role in the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, including a self-mutilation scene to rid a growing alien fetus inside her (not for the fainthearted). And Charlize Theron replays her evil Queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman as the cold, unfeeling ship director Meredith Vickers to the hilt.
The film’s sustained, absorbing atmosphere is another skilful recreation of Scott’s, with an organic industrial design courtesy of H. R. Giger and a score by Chopin played throughout to reflect on the crew’s ironic journey.
Prometheus marks the director’s long-awaited return to form.