Loved the Alien films, loved that this was not another, was so looking forward to it but left feeling annoyed at an average sci-fi film. Having been almost at shooting the Alien film and then scrapping it for a new story over the past years I had very high expectations of a story that would shine, that this would be a masterpiece, sadly I didn't think it was anywhere near that.
Leaving Alien out for a minute the parts that were good:
- David's part and the way his character was developed, very nice indeed. Very dark and I had hoped for something like that, a more psychological horror. That said his method of contact with Weyland, wth? Other than that his character is the best part of this film.
- Visuals, nice to look at which at times the 3D did work a treat.
- Tension, a few parts were just as tense as some of the good horror films. The drive back to the ship, the nod to Alien with the impregnation and removal scene, again nicely done (again).
- The story, promised so much at the start but as soon as they entered the 'tomb' it just fell on its face and didn't really know what to do. A somewhat save by David's character but then it careers off into being another AvP film I think in the hope to bring some sort of conclusion to a plot that at this point has so many holes in it that it becomes hard to care about any of it.
- Timeline, due to when this has been made there is a lot more technology floating around, there would be no getting around this but adding items that would have clearly helped other victims in other films fight the Aliens, well that could have been handled a lot better I think. Leaving them out actually may have helped Prometheus.
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In comparison to the Alien franchise, it's exactly what the rest of the films have been since Alien 3, which for me was the last good part of the story. A pretty average film that has best intentions but cannot deliver the claustrophobic horror of sealing six people in a room with a welding torch away from certain death outside the door (or was it?
). It's a franchise that was defined at a time when less was more, sci-fi and horror went hand in hand, the stories were simple, more focused. This film had none of that, it found it hard to raise much tension let alone fear.
The plot holes, where to begin, so there's talk of a sequel, I can't really say I care for watching it to be honest even if it was sat next to me just now.
The Engineer suicide at the start, to introduce life to Earth(?), that was destroying DNA, it was snapping the strands, I mean it was degrading DNA, not making life breed or mutate.
Why go to all that bother to make life on Earth but then want to kill it again? So say that Engineer was a 'rebel' something the rest of the race didn't want life on Earth, I guess then they need a weapon to destroy, fine. None of that is eluded to in the film. In fact we have to watch the film for about 90 minutes to find out in a few lines from Prometheus captain that LV-224 is a bio installation where the Engineers made weapons, that's a pathetic method of story telling. Cameron didn't force feed us like that in Aliens with the Queen chamber, are audiences that dumb these days that the only method to convey part of a story is to have someone blurt it out half way through the film? Know your audience Mr Blade Runner….
The planet, LV-224 (I think?) is not LV-426, so it's a different planet where Prometheus lands. So let’s treat this as a different planet for now, the derelict we see crash can't be the same derelict in the Alien film. Crashing Prometheus into the side of it and making the ‘entry hole’ may come in handy for Kane and crew later on, but this is a different planet.
The distress signal, also handy but this is a different planet.
The Engineer has left his seat to go after female doctor, again handy it is a different planet after all, so how can any chest burst happen?
There's what closely resembles an Alien running around, I guess that could be a queen, different planet though, remember?
By the end of the film we have a fifth generation evolution into the Alien we all know:
Male doctor > female doctor > squid? > engineer > Alien.
So any Alien, a Giger Alien would need to evolve in a similar set of jumps, no?
Well for one there won't be that same cycle even if there are other living Engineers on LV-224.
So, female doctor (and that reflects how much I'm not interested, I can't even bring myself to Google her character name) is off on one with David, so she might end up on LV-426, but there are no other humans alive to have the five stage jump like we just saw. So the impregnation/human mutation won't happen again.
Leaving how we got where we did out of it for a minute and going back to just Prometheus. The (all too handy storytelling, but didn’t story tell) holograms that were running around, sure they'd have been handy as hell for Kane and Lambert (who by the way would have had superior tech to anything on Prometheus, see above), they were running into the tomb, why was the Engineer running into a room full of stuff that would kill him?
What about the head high pile of Engineer bodies? What killed them? That elusive 'ping' to the west that we never see of again? Why waste all that time to show these two plums running around getting ‘information’ that is never used, impregnated with a worm mutation, again which is never used after showing it pop out of his mouth.
Why is the tattooed rock geologist guy smashing up the crew? I mean going on what happened on Earth with the suicide and the reformed exploding pilot head this bio weapon destroys by degrading DNA, not by turning things into zombies. Why did we have a ten minute fight on Prometheus deck for what seems like no reason?
In the tomb there is a clear carving of an Alien on the back wall, if that mutation took five jumps away from what is in the pods how the hell was that predicted?
Why even bother to make the worm mutation if it’s only purpose is to kill a few folks but not kill as many as geologist rock hippie?
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So yes, I’m off on one (unless you've been in hypersleep for the past 50 years, you can tell I'm a bit of a nut over Alien films) judging by what I’ve typed so far my opinion/interpretations yup they are. Gave more questions than answers, yup, it did and I’d have been totally content with that but the massive problem I have is that none of this makes any sense so the film ends up being so disconnected through bad storytelling and irrelevant sequences that the last ten minutes of here is the evolution Alien lovers that you’ve got to even question why the hell that was put in place also.
It’s an okay sci-fi film with action in it for action sake, it crutches on Alien franchise because really that’s the only true thing left for it to do. Scott might not have wanted to make another Alien film, he succeeded, I’m rather glad it is so detached.
Give me Alien to watch any day of the week over this, the next time I do watch it I’ll be doing my very best to forget about Prometheus.
This is annoyed person, last remaining survivor of average Hollywood films signing off.
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