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Films on the to-do list

  • Armageddon Time
  • Black Widow
  • Chimes at Midnight
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • Last Christmas
  • Remember Sunday
  • Shazam! 2
  • Thor: Love and Thunder
  • Spy Guys

Prometheus (2012)

Film review: Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott

It’s some 80 or so years into the future, and in that time, we’ve gone from putting people on the moon to doing proper interstellar travel. One such expedition is woken up from their stasis aboard the Prometheus by the humanoid robot David (Michael Fassbender), because they’ve arrived at their destination: a planetary system far, far away, which seems to be what ancient peoples around the world mapped out on cave paintings.

Funding the expedition is an old man, Peter Wayland (Guy Pearce in lots of tale-tell makeup, and I wonder why they didn’t just get a really old guy to play the part instead), and his representative on the spaceship is Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a no-nonsense kinda gal there to keep them all in check.

Piloting the ship is Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and his crew (Emun Elliott and Benedict Wong, not that they get to say much), and there’s also a team of scientists out to explore what they think might be the origins of mankind. The two main scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), are the ones who have been researching the cave paintings, and they found the cave in question on the Isle of Skye.

So, they land on a planet far, far away and go out to investigate some sort of structure. But what is the structure, and WHAT GOES BUMP IN THE NIGHT? Aliens! Aliens, I tell you!

Also starring Sean Harris as the gruff geologist Fifield, Rafe Spall as Millburn the biologist and Kate Dickie as Ford, a … doctor or something?

Apparently this isn’t a prequel or a sequel to the Alien franchise, but something set in the same universe. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never actually seen any of the films. Unless you count the first five minutes of Alien, and a bit of running about in the snow and dying in Alien vs Predator. Haven’t the foggiest what the aliens are supposed to look like or how it all connects, but they say you don’t need to be familiar with the franchise to enjoy the film. And, well, yeah. It’s true, I still enjoyed the film.

There’s plenty of gore, so if you’re of a sensitive disposition you might want to give big parts of this a miss. There’s space goo, there’s surgery, there’s blood, there’s tentacles and stuff bursting out of people and icky bits like that.

On the other hand, there are also plenty of interesting things, like Fassbender’s android, who seems to have his own moral code. Can’t quite figure out if he’s meant to be knowingly sinister or just not knowing that doing things a certain way is not necessarily a good idea for everyone else. I suppose, what I’m pondering is if he a sociopath by design or by accident. Still, always nice to see Fassbender on screen, even if he kind of looks like a Nazi era poster boy in this film. All you need is a swastika and a slogan in a fraktur style font about strong, Aryan workers or something. Creepy.

While I’m not liking gory films in particular, and being unfamiliar with the Alien family, I still thought it was a good film. There was suspense, and it asked some interesting questions. Indeed, if we were manufactured by an alien race, why did they make us? For what purpose?

There are plenty of shots of nature, and those shots are absolutely amazing. Wow, such landscapes! Definitely worth a special mention. Oh, and apparently, the 3D is actually worth it, sources say – we saw it in 2D, and it was spectacular enough in that.

If I had seen the other films, maybe I would appreciate the film for different reasons. As it was now, it was a good sci-fi film about a group of humans going to another planet in another solar system on a research mission they probably regretted as soon as they realised things were going pear-shaped. (Or phallus shaped, if you look at those things popping up from the goo …)

Curiously enough, Mr T (Alien veteran) and I gave it the same rating, so they must have done something right. Aside from the “it’s -12°C, let’s all not put our helmets back on!” thing, because that didn’t really make much sense. -12°C is pretty cold to not wear something to cover your head.

4 out of 5 probes.

Traxy

An easily distracted and over-excited introvert who never learns to go to bed at a reasonable time. Enjoys traveling (when there's not a plague on), and taking photos of European architecture. Cares for cats, good coffee and Boardwalk Empire. A child of her time, she did media studies in school and still can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up.

4 thoughts on “Prometheus (2012)

  1. enjoyed your review as usual. Prometheus does sound alot like Alien (ulterior motivated android and all – actually programmed to be) and i did enjoy all of the alien movies so this is a must see for me.

    1. I really ought to watch the Alien films … Can I say in my defence that they were the sort of films my mum didn’t allow me to watch when I was younger?

  2. This was my daughter’s first movie and through bout’s of her squeeing quietly “I did that”, we did manage to enjoy the movie. It’s relatively creative enough to stand alone without the history of Alien behind it, but does start to answer a few of those questions some Alien fans have had hanging over them for goodness knows how long. The scientists are a little off of the radar, but them aside the special effects are good (but them I am biased) and as for Michael Fassbender’s “David” well – he carried the film to another level – I do hope we see him in the other two movies RS has up his sleeve. RS has a serious thing about aliens and women though!! Anyone planning a “C” section may want to look away or stay away!! As for me, I will never look at staples in quite the same light ever again!

    1. Ohh definitely. I was thinking “what are you doing running around like that, girl?! Your stomach’s just been STAPLED SHUT for goodness sake!” Nasty business.

      So your daughter worked on this film, did she? Congratulations to her for a job well done! 🙂

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