Prometheus
While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of
the Alien franchise, I was still
thoroughly intrigued by Ridely Scott’s return. The first movie, the original Alien, is a little too high on the old
Spook-o-meter for me, but I still liked it and respect what Scott did in the
film. The second, James Cameron’s Aliens,
is much more to my taste, and I mostly really enjoy it. Mostly. I haven’t seen
movies three or four, and don’t plan to, but the first two contain plenty of
good material worth revisiting*. So how does Scott do in his long-awaited
return to sci-fi?
*However,
I actually have seen the Aliens vs.
Predators movie (the first one, anyway), which no one seems to dispute is
essentially a big-budget fan fiction.
A prequel in the way that X-Men: First Class is a prequel, Prometheus tells the story of two
scientists, Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green) who are
able to demonstrate a recurring star pattern among ancient cave paintings that
are otherwise unconnected. Funded by the gigantic Weyland Corporation, the two
proceed to a star system that matches the pattern on the titular starship,
looking for an alien civilization that may have influenced the creation (or at
least development) of mankind. Also on the ship are a frosty Weyland
representative named Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the amusingly laconic
captain (Idris Elba), and an android named David (Michael Fassbender), whose
motives remain murky. The ship finds the target planet without incident, but
(unsurprisingly) things start to go awry once they disembark and find a large
facility of some sort, stocked with containers of a mysterious black ooze.
