Prometheus Review

Director Ridley Scott returns to his Science Fiction roots with the alien thriller Prometheus. Prometheus is an exploratory vessel that is used to accept the "invitation" of an alien race documented by several civilizations on earth throughout history.  Only now do we have the technology to do so.  The plan was simple: go to their world, explore, report back, and leave.  While the crew of Prometheus hoped to discover clues or maybe even the answer to the oldest question ever "Where did we come from?"; instead they find they were lured into a trap.  This alien race isn't the answer to our origins, but the very real threat to our existence and it's up to them to stop the aliens.

 I was delightfully surprised at the restraint in the use of digital technology to create this film; and the computer graphics used were tastefully done and added to the effectiveness of the movie rather than distracted you from the story.  While watching Prometheus, it was more than just a little similar to Scott's Alien movie from over 30 years ago.  The plot of Alien is that the hibernating crew of the ship Nostromo is awakened while returning to earth when they intercept a strange transmission.  They go to investigate and find an egg chamber and one of them releases an alien that attacks one of the crew.  Breaking protocol, they bring it back on the ship where it ultimately begins to aggressively kill all of the crew.  One of the crew, Ash, is an android that is ordered by their corporate employers to bring the alien back to earth at all costs.  Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) foils that plan and decides to trap the alien on the ship, activate the self-destruct, and escape in a pod. Ripley finds the alien made it onto her escape pod and ultimate kills it leaving only herself and a cat to survive.

The plot of Prometheus is that a crew voluntarily spends two years in hibernation while traveling to an alien planet they believe to have the answers to their origins. The expedition is funded by a corporate employer who has his own agenda with the aliens.  They have their own android on board who is programmed to do the corporate bidding even at the expense of the crew's lives.  They discover a chamber of tubes that contain alien DNA that can use human bodies as incubation hosts.  In this chamber, they find a decapitated alien head and the android secretly stashes one of these DNA tubes, both of which are brought back onto the ship.  Ultimately they find the aliens are not looking to provide answers but to destroy earth and mankind.  One last alien is about to escape but the surviving crew of Prometheus decide to use their own ship to destroy the alien and ultimately we are left with one female crew member, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and one final alien who bears more than slight resemblance to the creature in Scott's film from 30 years ago.

Upon further investigation, I found that originally Prometheus was to serve as a prequel to Alien.  Scott didn't want that, so they re-wrote the script so this story "precedes" the Alien movie, but isn't directly linked to that series.  Right.  Without even reading that, it was obvious this was more of an Alien re-make than a brand new original thought.  That being said, the previews are pretty accurate in what you get out of the movie.  It's a sci-fi scary alien movie.  Honestly, I would have liked to have a little more explored about our origins as a race rather than an abrupt turn into a violent alien war, but that's not what this movie was ultimately supposed to be about.  It was entertaining, moved right along, but still had the sense of "I swear I've seen this all before" throughout.  That being said, I was pretty close to my 3 star prediction, but think I will ultimately give it 2.5 stars.  It was worth renting, I don't think I'd see it again and it won't be in my collection.  So what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.