FILM: Prometheus dir. Ridley Scott (2012)


Prometheus opens with a breathtaking sequence of scenery and it remains visually stunning throughout, the aliens are not ridiculous, there is a decent amount of blood and gore and the intergalactic settings are believable. Generally the casting is pretty good: Michael Fassbender once again proved how versatile he is, playing a quirky intelligent robot, Charlize Theron is convincing as the cold ambitious commander of the ship and Noomi Rapace generally plays the lead well. Having said that Rapace doesn't exhibit much grief over the death of her partner and she seems ridiculously naive over the precedented for handling alien substances, seeing as she is a scientist in that field. The film unfortunately had a lot of elemental flaws, often seeming to follow a clichéd horror film rather than recapturing the originality of the first Alien film. The peripheral characters have stock roles making it clear who will die first and stupid mistakes are made, such as opening the ship's hatch to an infected team member, the captain leaving the tracking board to go and have sex when the machine has picked up the signal for an alien life form, and generally characters having a very lax approach to quarantine procedures. I think the most ridiculous moment occurs at the end of the film when Noomi and Charlize continue to run in the path of a falling space ship instead of just taking a couple of quick steps to the side and easily avoiding it... Having said all that, the film does fit in quite nicely with the Alien films and it definitely kept my attention throughout: the story was compelling and the 'abortion' scene was suitably disturbing. It may be no where near as good as Alien, but if you are a fan of the original films it is definitely worth watching.