Fire From the Gods

Prometheus has generated a fair amount of division.  It seems to be a love it or be completely annoyed by it situation.

I guess I am not part of either group.  I enjoyed it, though certainly hoped for more. I appreciated that they made a prequel that is fully funtional on it’s own.  You need to know nothing of  the Alien franchise to understand what is going on in the film, yet it is a bit richer of you are.

For me, the standout performance was definitely Fassbender’s David.  The character is both sympathetic, yet has a certain air of the ominous.  His goals and desires seem, at times, uncertain.

The whole basis of the plot is kind of tired.  The chariots of the gods deal (basically, aliens “seeded” the earth resulting mankind).  There is a twist to this one.  But  get the impression they were only concerned with the theory of origins in sofar as it provided a basis for getting the team to run off to a new planet  and chaos to ensue.  This results in some muddles thinking.  There is a sequence which involves a medical pod that apparently is specifically programmed to operate on male anatomy.  Awfully strange for a high tech surgical computer to notbe aware of half  (or moer) the population.  I suspect the answer is in one of the twists, but it is actually not a very good answer.  The real reason is to create tension in the scene.  But the in story reason makes no real sense.  It makes the designers of the future look incompetant.

The biggest disappointment to me is the reveal of the engineers…the “Space Jockey” of the first alien looked inhuman and fueled a lot of speculation over the years as to what they looked like.  We find out they are just really tall chalky white guys with attitudes.

One thing I mentioned is that fans of the Alien franchise will see a lot of familiar imagery.  The Engineer ships and space suits aer the most obvious.  But there are strands of all four alien films woven into the film.  Again, you won’t miss it or be lost if you have no knowldge of the films…but they enrich the film for those who are. 

Overall, the look of the film is terrific, and it is a solid cast.   The effects are excellent and the pacing is perfect.  The movie never gets dull.  In the end, though not a deep film, Prometheus was enjoyable for me.  I won’t lie…it did not quite reach the heights I was hoping for, but I found it a nice sc-fi diversion.