Thursday 6 November 2014

Prometheus (2012)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ORIGINS OF THE ALIEN (1979) ALIEN?)

[I'm not going to pretend that this bust is anything more than an excuse to comment on what was for me, at least, a bit of a let down.]

Prometheus (2012) is an Anglo-American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, and Charlize Theron.

In the end, spacefaring archaeologist Noomi Rapace encounters an ancient survivor of the extraterrestrial super-race responsible for life on Earth, and unwittingly spawns the progenitor of a species of super-predator with a turbo-evolutionary parasitic life-cycle.

Convinced that ancient cave art is proof of the extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth, mega-wealthy space-industrialist, Guy Pearce, nearing the end of his life, mounts an interstellar voyage of discovery, lead by his daughter, Charlize Theron, in the hope of learning the secret of immortality.

Roused from an extended period of stasis, unaware that Pearce has travelled with them, the crew set down on a barren planet near a series of artificial looking mounds, one of which they set out to explore.

Finding the structure riddled with tunnels, the party discover the headless remains of a long dead, giant humanoid, that a holographic projection they trigger shows was killed when a massive overhead stone door slammed shut during a panicked evacuation.

Opening the door reveals an elephantine severed head and further giant corpses, in a cavernous chamber dominated by a gigantic statue of a recognisably human head, surrounded by a large number of stone flasks that immediately begin to leak their contents.

With the party forced, by an approaching storm, to return to their ship, a pair of geologists, who, finding themselves first lost and then cut off, after having earlier decided to head back separately, return to the chamber seeking shelter for the night, only to both be attacked and killed by large snake like creatures that developed rapidly from tiny worms in the chamber's soil floor, since the flasks started leaking.

Examination of the grotesque head recovered from the chamber by Rapace reveals it to be a helmet containing a giant human head resembling the chamber's monolith, tests proving it shares the same genetic heritage as humans.

Delighted with their momentous discovery, Rapace celebrates by having sex with her archaeologist colleague and life partner, neither of them aware that he has secretly been infected with the contents of one of the stone flasks, surreptitiously removed from the chamber by the mission's caretaker artificial intelligence, Michael Fassbender, an android designed by Pearce to maintain the ship and see to the needs of the crew and himself while they are in stasis.

Returning to the chamber, the crew discover the dead geologists, and the monstrously evolved worm-snakes, just as Rapace's partner starts showing disturbing symptoms, which escalate so rapidly, that by the time they make it back to the ship, mission leader Theron refuses him entry, and at his request, flame-throwers him to death.

Appalled by this turn of events, Rapace is horrified to discover she is pregnant, despite being infertile, with a squid-like creature that she uses an automated surgery unit, in the medical bay of the ship's lifeboat, to remove.

Heavily self-tranquillized, following the procedure, Rapace confronts Theron, only to uncover Pearce's presence on-board, and him preparing to lead a party to a still-living giant, Fassbender has separately discovered in a life support capsule, part of a craft located within the structure.

However, before they can leave for their rendezvous, the ship is attacked by the zombie-like corpse of one of the dead geologists, killing several of the crew, leading the ship's captain to speculate that what they have stumbled upon is not the remnants of the civilisation that seeded humanity, but a purposefully isolated biological warfare facility that suffered some catastrophic failure that lead to its dereliction.

Unperturbed, Pearce has Fassbender rouse the sleeping giant, and explain Pearce's ambition to meet his makers and learn their wisdom, only for the giant to rip Fassbender's head off and kill Pearce and his body guards, before engaging the craft's drive and navigation systems, that reveal Earth to be its intended destination.

Exiting the craft, Rapace manages to warn the ship's captain of the danger its departure poses to Earth, should it escape, prompting him to ram the craft out of the sky, in the process crushing Theron, who was attempting to flee in an escape pod.

Reaching the shattered lifeboat the captain had ejected as a refuge for her, Rapace receives a warning from what remains of Fassbender, that the giant survived the crash and is headed her way.

Discovering the aborted squid foetus has grown to monstrously fierce proportions, Rapace releases it from the medical bay, just at the giant attacks, allowing her to escape, collect Fassbender's remains and make off, with his help, in another alien craft located in the structure complex, leaving the monster to impregnate the giant with a chest-bursting alien off-spring. And so it begins...


Unfortunately, this is an example of a production that ignored the first rule of science fiction, which is "If you're going to reboot a franchise, get J. J. Abrams to do it."

Rather rashly, it also ignored the second rule of science fiction, which is "IF YOU'RE GOING TO REBOOT A FRANCHISE, GET J. J. ABRAMS TO DO IT."

Of course, it is entirely understandable that someone like Ridley Scott would want to wrest back one of his (and Dan O'Bannon and H. R. Giger's) most iconic creations from the grip of adolescent beat-em-up-gamer-generation film-makers, and demonstrate that science fiction movies can be about more than just my-alien-is-better-than-your-alien school-yard arguments.

And certainly there is no lack of ambition to the tale he aims to tell, or the sumptuous gorgeousness of the images he uses to do it. But in hitching his creation myth chariot to the discredited ravings of a lunatic from the land of cuckoo clocks, Scott has really betrayed the science fiction purity of its original concept, and firmly planted this movie alongside the science fantasy offering of those he might have sought to distance it from.

Because, although it is entirely possible that in the vastness of reality, some extraterrestrial organism might have arisen and evolved with acid for blood, silica reinforced exoskeleton armour and a nasty habit of parasitizing other species to incubate its young, there is no evidence (let me just repeat myself, for emphasis) absolutely no evidence, whatsoever, that little green men pooped in the primordial soup in order to kick-start life on Earth.

And to try to justify your "little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum" proposition by suggesting that NASA and the Vatican are singing from the same hymn-sheet when it comes to matters creational, is to so misrepresent both organisations stances on the subject, that it is beyond risible.

You can fool some of the geeks, some of the time, Ridders. But you can't fool all of the geeks, all of the time. (Or maybe that should be "some of the Greeks" given the movie's title?)

Perhaps Scott can be forgiven, though, for having taken his eye off the ball with this and his, frankly bonkers, tarantino-ish pulp-fiction-esque The Counselor (2013) given the personal trauma his family tragically suffered.

Let's just hope there's still plenty of lead left in his directorial pencil, because even his a-bit-of-a-let-down productions are better than practically anything anyone else cares to put up on the big screen.

By the way, was absolutely anyone surprised to learn that it will be man's hubris in creating a free-thinking automata servant, that ultimately decides it knows what's best for us and instigates the greatest threat to our survival? I don't know about you guys, but I think it's time we called a halt to all this research into artificial intelligence. Don't you? :P

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(2012_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counselor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000