Prometheus: movie review

Most of the best effects in 'Prometheus' are lifted from director Ridley Scott's 'Alien,' and the film's meditations on life and the universe don't amount to much.

|
Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox/AP
'Prometheus' actress Noomi Rapace (center) is game, but isn't given much to do.

Ridley Scott has made two iconic sci-fi films, “Alien” (1979) and “Blade Runner” (1982). Trying for a hat trick with “Prometheus,” he comes up short.

I’ll say this much for it – it’s not boring. How could it be when it features sequences like the one in which the heroine gives herself a self- administered Caesarean and out pops an alien?

That heroine, circa 2093, is scientist Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace in a frisky manner about as far removed as can be from her somnolent girl with a dragon tattoo.

Elizabeth and her scientist boyfriend, Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green), have hit on the theory that aliens created earthlings. Heading up the spaceship Prometheus, she hopes to make contact with the creators on the desolate planet she believes beckons us. Of course, once the spaceship has landed, the alien malevolence kicks in and you can forget about all that we-come-in-peace stuff.

Scott makes functional use of 3-D here, and most of his best shock effects, like that alien birth, are lifted from “Alien.” (The film at one time was engineered as a prequel to “Alien,” but that notion seems to have evaporated.) Charlize Theron, in the same witchy mode as in “Snow White and the Huntsman,” plays the on-board corporate honcho. The film’s most creepily amusing character is Michael Fassbender’s David, the spaceship’s supersmart android who patterns his movements and diction on Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia,” his favorite film.

Rapace is game as Elizabeth but doesn’t get much to do except look alternately blissed-out, terrified, and poleaxed. The film’s meditations on The Meaning of It All don’t amount to much. Elizabeth conspicuously wears a cross around her neck and declares that she is “willing to discount three centuries of Darwinism.” As for the “creators,” and why they want to obliterate their creation, if you stick out the end credits you’ll notice a sequel is in the offing. As if you hadn’t already guessed that. Grade: B- (Rated R for sci-fi violence including some intense images, and brief language.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Prometheus: movie review
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2012/0607/Prometheus-movie-review
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe