‘I think I’ve been quite successful in resurrecting a notion
but going off at a new tangent’ said Sir Ridley Scott in a recent interview,
and in a way, he has. Prometheus, the
‘indirect prequel’ to Scott’s low budget space-horror Alien, may be set on the same planet a century before the events of
the original, yet it still manages to be its own film.
It begins in the Isle
of Sky when two scientists, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, discover a
cave painting dating back thousands of years that features a constellation, one
that has been uncovered in various locations and from different time-zones throughout
the world. It is a map to a solar system in which a single planet, LV-426, is
able to sustain life. The pair believes this to be the key to discovering the
origins of humankind and so accompanied by a crew of scientific experts they
make their way to this planet on-board the ship Prometheus in the hope of
answering life’s biggest question.
This film needed to
be made. Not least to satisfy the science fiction fans hungry for more, but to
answer the many questions posed by the hugely successful Alien quadrilogy (discounting the yawn-inducing AVP spin-offs) that were never expanded
upon. The 1979 original sees Ellen
Ripley and co discover a huge metallic alien birthing ground and an
unidentifiable body attached to a pilot seat (‘the Space Jockey’, as fans have
dubbed it) yet there was no speculation throughout the entire series as to where
they came from or who they were made by.
Prometheus answers
these questions to a satisfying extent without going into too much detail, at
the same time exploring issues never covered before in the series (one of the
more interesting elements is the characters’ attitudes to morality and religion
in the face of extra-terrestrial life) and this is why the film works so well;
Scott didn’t make this simply for the Alien enthusiasts – he reveals a lot of
the back story, he digs far deeper than any of the previous films so far and yet
it doesn’t hinder the narrative in any way; it never becomes so complicated
that it leaves its audience behind.
Shaking off her bad-girl attitude from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series,
leading actress Noomi Rapace may seem like just a Sigourney Weaver replacement
to begin with, but she has such a compelling presence on screen that this preconception
is dispelled immediately. As the film progresses Rapace becomes much more than
Weaver ever was; not just a standard female action hero, but an independent,
strong minded and insecure character who makes the film’s climactic scenes all
the more impressive. Michael Fassbender is equally brilliant as the android
David, creating a character as unnervingly positive as he is synthetic. Other
performances stand out, but Shaw and David are both incredibly well scripted
and believable characters that give Prometheus
that certain warmth which similar films seem to lack.
Prometheus is not
just an exceptional addition to the Alien
series; it’s a refreshing and intelligent contribution to the science fiction
genre in its own right. Scott not only delivers the aliens, terrifying yet
unique, but injects the story with its own vitality; something which may even
lead the way into a new and uncharted vein of the Alien mythology.
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