Prometheus

Director and producer Ridley Scott, the man responsible for blockbusters and critical successes like Black Hawk Down, American Gangster and the 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner has another monetary success on his hands with Prometheus. But this time, he has done something completely different than any of these mentioned earlier films. Prometheus is…forgettable.  Reviews and buzz around the film have been mixed. I can in no way call myself a “sci-fi junkie,” but being a movie fanatic and film scholar, I have to unfortunately say that my review is the same. Prometheus is just “so-so.”

Allow me to address the cinematic successes of the feature first. The film’s biggest accomplishment is its use of CGI to create both setting and creature. When the movie first opened, I said to myself, “Wow, this is really beautiful.” The film is aesthetically stunning throughout. In this science-fiction feature, Scott left nothing to the imagination. And I mean this in the best way possible. Aside from its achievements in visuals, the performances are mostly quite good. Noomi Rapace (2009’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) plays Elizabeth Shaw, the film’s heroine, and she truly delivers. Shaw’s character could not have been better cast. The rest of the cast is top notch as well. All of the world is familiar with Charlize Theron. She is not only strikingly beautiful, but her performance also does not disappoint. Although, I have to say, in terms of female leads and performances, this is certainly Noomi Rapace’s film. Idris Elba gives a questionable performance with him having accents that go and come throughout the film-this facet really through me for a loop. Although, since the film is set so far in the future, perhaps the film is making a statement about the future life for humans being one of varying descents, and ancestry no longer being clear and defined. I at least hope this is what they were going for. My favorite performance of all comes with Michael Fassbender’s portrayal of David, the anatomically and rhetorically correct robot. David is so advanced, even calling him a robot seems to take something away from his essence. Fassbender gives David the most precise amount of superficiality so that the audience easily believes that this extraordinarily life-like looking man, is in reality, a scientifically generated being.

As far as cinematic achievements go, that is really it for Prometheus. The film as a whole is very slow. The pace of the film speeds up, and slows down, speeds up and slows down. If we were in traffic, this would have been an overwhelmingly nauseating car ride. Aside from the slow pace, there are glaring holes within the plot. At one moment, there will be extreme danger, and the next, the focus has changed, and what was once deadly, somehow now no longer is. Character relationship and back-story is never fully developed. There are several relationships and potentials for them within the film, but none of them are ever fully hashed out, leaving the audience unable to connect completely to any one character.

Nothing sets Prometheus aside from any other science fiction movie.  We have seen every character and every storyline within this film if not once, then many, many times before. Ridley Scott also directed the 1979 classic Alien, where Sigourney Weaver plays the iconic Ripley, like Rapace plays the brave Shaw in Prometheus . Scott seems to try to mimic his earlier hit in Prometheus, and he just misses the mark. And  to be fair, this alone is not a valid complaint. All movies “bite” off of other movies. Rarely has something never been done before in this industry. But the question is always, "did you do it better?" "Was this somehow more unique than when it was done the first time?" And Prometheus just was not. This one isn’t worth a theater run. It will be in the Red Box box for $1 rent soon enough.