By now the marketing for this precursor (but not by any means a prequel) to Alien has you well informed of the myth of the titular titan evoked here. But had the filmmakers the insight to delve into the meaning of the name, they would have realised that Prometheus means ‘Forethinker’, forethought being one of the crucial points in all storytelling. Unfortunately here you’ll find a story much more relevant to Prometheus’ own kin, Epimetheus; meaning ‘Afterthinker’. The implications of such a name summarises what’s sadly wrong with Ridley Scott’s interminably belated third entry into his very own brand of science fiction homebrew.
For those of you questioning the film’s placement as a precursor to Alien; as opposed to a cut and dry prequel. Well, the film itself doesn’t seem to be sure either, in fact it won’t even be clear to anybody why this needs to be set 50 years before Alien at all. What it is sure of is that this is the Space Jockey’s moment, but it’s not the shining kind. Did the Engineers (formally Jockeys) create us? Sure they did do just that, although for the rest of the story they are given nothing else to do. Other than submit to slasher movie monster tropes and a fatal lack of the grotesque foreboding that entranced us in the first place. The revelation that the much discussed Jockey is nothing but an exosuit, concealing an all too human face inside is-on paper-a refreshingly perverse inversion, but like Darth Vader and Leatherface before it, there’s all too little underneath.
Tonally the film is doomed to follow the same route; much of what is discussed in the screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof (the themes being: the great unknown, creation and the presence of the divine) has little to no bearing on what is taking place in the plot. If we are to point to the white elephant: Alien established a beast whose biology worked in tandem with its own story (egg – parasite – larva – drone). Prometheus’ offerings aren’t based in any rationale other than shock value. The famously phallic Xenomorph is replaced here with a medley of cephalopodan critters, mingled with fauna of the uterine variety. ‘Cobra-ginas’, non-sequitur human mutations and what can only be described as a ‘vaginapus’ are not only uninteresting visually, but follow no conceptual reason other than jump scares and slack symbolism.
It’s a wonder then that the film manages to be half as entertaining as it is, certainly it’s peppered with jarring tonal shifts (the opening sequence in particular begins with a sense of awe rare outside of Imax documentaries, but tops itself with an aggressive swing into a poorly devised CGI-inflected self-sacrifice, featuring needless zooms into microscopic DNA so rote that even CSI does them) and an oddly uninspiring production design (Scott, previously ahead of the sci-fi pack, has fallen in line with his Minority Report-cum-Mass Effect contemporaries) but the pacing always maintains interest and it’s bolstered by a cast as game as you’d expect them. Michael Fassbender of course devours the scenery as you’d expect (a valiant effort, given his character’s borderline incoherent motives) however it’s Noomi Rapace who takes centre frame here.
Elisabeth Shaw as a character won’t be dining in the horror veteran country club with Ripley, Sarah Connor or Clarice Starling in the near future. But she is at least a refreshing antithesis to Ripley’s stoicism; Shaw is a tender, soft and utterly innocent. In this case, an endearing and heartbreaking concoction. So much so that you can’t help that wish that her (inevitably) short lived romance with Logan-Marshall Green’s Holloway could have been a richer and much more involved relationship. The connection and chemistry is all set, but sadly the story and Scott have other plans.
Harrison Ford has famously been caught griping that Deckard the detective did very little detecting in Blade Runner. Here we have a gang of explorers who really don’t do a lot of exploring, or at least none that yields any discoveries that produce interesting conclusions. The film is certainly never boring and may yet provoke repeat viewings (probably as a result of sheer frustration) however the fact is that much more provocative ideas for this story germinated in the blogosphere. Wherein phony scripts and speculation gave way of androids becoming mortal, two kidnapped male colonists forced by Space Jockeys into homosexual copulation in order to birth Xenomorphs (no, really) and the myth of Prometheus writ large as man’s folly finds a hubristic crew member fused to H.R Giger’s iconic chair as a chestburster punches through him (titan-rock-eagle-liver).
The most unsatisfying thing about Prometheus is just how little relevance the title has, the namesake slapped on superficially because co-writer Damon Lindelof thought it ‘would be cool’. Betraying an evident lack of forethought to the inception of the premise. With any luck in the near future – preferably when the co-scribe of Lost is downing his latest almond and pistachio shake over a platter of the finest sushi San Fernando has to offer – perhaps he’ll heed the name ‘Epimetheus’ before pursuing what will become his next afterthought.