With the 30th anniversary of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner coming up later this week (which I will be writing about), I thought it quite appropriate to see his new sci-fi thriller, Prometheus. Despite the ridiculous price, IMAX 3D was a must for last night's showing, and so after getting the full effect here is what I thought:
I'd been excited to see Prometheus for some time. In fact, when I first saw the trailer I thought to myself, "now here is Ridley Scott, gonna show James Cameron how its done, and no Pocahontas crap either." Needless to say I wasn't terribly far off. As a matter of fact I found the premise to this film absolutely fascinating. I don't know if it was an original screenplay or came from some book or other source material or what but its a fantastic idea to build a film around. With a core structure of steel already put in place, however, I feel they slapped on the facade in clay or plaster. The characters were somewhat flat and at times wholly irrational, to go along with acting that was just a tad unconvincing on occasion, and there were some rather large gaps in the plot. I for one didn't enjoy the enormous jump from 'we just found these cave paintings' to 'oh look, we've arrived at this planet a billion light years away' that happened in the span of about 2 minutes to the viewer with only limited explanation later. Clocking in at only a pinch over two hours, they could have elaborated on the back-story a little more.
My grievances now aired, I have to admit that I really liked this movie. The effects were absolutely gorgeous, as was Noomi Rapace (the original girl with the dragon tattoo), and Charlize Theron played a total bitch in the role I swear she was born for. I read somewhere that one of the main criticisms was that a lot of people left the theatre feeling confused, but I see this as a good thing. This movie doesn't spoon-feed you its themes. It wants to leave you thinking and asking the big questions, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I love a sci-fi film when its done right, and despite Prometheus' shortcomings its hard to mess up a film with a premise this intriguing. 3 stars out of 4, go see it.
*Also, having not seen Alien, I can't really comment on the similarities/differences/tie-ins etc.
