I'm pretty sour on most of what Hollywood has produced in the past decade, including what's being made these days. The sense of plot-plowing, lazy archetypes and the marketing double cheeseburger (ala The Deathly Hollows, Part 2) have completely choked any true meaning (which, in this case, is thrill and spectacle) out of blockbuster films. It's just about the transient gratification and the social hype - studios will always scramble for new ways to pander and squeeze every last dollar out of consumers.
Despite this, I still find bits of ingenuity, slivers of good storytelling, dashes of satisfying action, remnants of full-fledged character development and smatterings of well-choreographed special effects within the Hollywood spectrum. These are elements that come no where near the territory of "memorable" but they do present an intriguing potential all the same. With Ridley Scott's Prometheus, there are murmurs of promise, but the uneven pacing, inconsistent acting and an ultimate desire to impress a wide-ranging audience seals the film's fate as a gun that goes off into your toes instead of your face.
The film is a precursor to the Alien series, taking place well before the events of the 1979 classic, before the eventual evolution of the xenomorphs to their iconic movie-culture image. It revolves around the crew of an exploratory space vessel, Prometheus, and more specially, the lead scientist, Shaw. Set out to a distant planet, Shaw hopes to uncover the secrets of human existence by interacting with an alien civilization that she feels may have created humans in the first place. Naturally, when they arrive, things don't go as planned.
Perhaps the best and worst thing about Prometheus is the acting. Noomi Rapace fills in Shaw with an intriguing mix of idealism, ambitious curiosity and politeness. She is definitely the heart of the film, and Rapace, being a talented actress regardless, does her damnedest to provide a fleeting sense of weight to the film's overall context. Michael Fassbender as the android, David, also makes a strong performance. Fassbender plays David as a mincing enigma, at turns courtesy, heroic and devious, he plays a key role in setting the Weyland Corporation's agenda into action. Guy Pearce also stands out as Mr. Weyland, though his role is extremely brief.
But then you have this cadre of ham-handed support roles - almost like all the creative juice was spent on Shaw and David. Rapace shares the protagonist spot with Logan Marshall-Green, a dead ringer in looks for actor Tom Hardy, but not at all as talented as him. Marshall-Green plays Shaw's love interest and fellow scientist, Halloway, as a sort of...bro scientist? The glaring inconsistency is that he's supposedly sensitive to the trappings of science, yet he provides the cowboy bravado of the crew and berates David, a pure product of science, at every turn. Throw in a goes-nowhere villianess performance by Charlize Theron, a contradictory ship captain played by Idris Elba and an inane crew that is made up of cookie-cutter caricatures (two guys that have some weird bet with each other, the spiky crewman who wants no friends, the doughy crewman who only wants to be friends with the guy that wants no friends) and you can imagine why Prometheus feels very unbalanced.
However, even more inconsistent is the way the film is paced. The first 30 minutes of the movie has this very measured flow to it, leading from Shaw's expedition on Earth to a cryo-sleep sequence where David takes care of the ship, watches old movies and shoots hoops while riding a bike. It's a strong build-up with time for the characters to breath. Right after the crew's briefing with Weyland, the film begins to jolt forward in very strange intervals. There are weird turns where important information is tossed in, then resolved within a matter of minutes (such as Shaw's infertility). It feels like the plot and subplots have all been smooshed and funneled down to fit a tight run-time, acceptable for most audiences. By the time Prometheus careens down the hill to it's inevitable conclusion, you find yourself wondering, "did all of this serious business just happen in a matter of 20 minutes?"
Even with the rampant issues of the film, there's no denying that Prometheus is a great bundle of cinematography, set design, special effects and refreshingly intense horror sequences. The ship interior is a great mixture of white bulkheads, stylish digital interfaces and glowing orange-yellow lights, the crew's exploration suits have a satisfying mix of bulky armor plates, well-placed LEDs and streamlined diving suit underlays. (SPOILERZZZZZZZ) There is a gorgeous sequence where Shaw gets caught in a sort of metal sandstorm, with small sharp chunks of shrapnel cascading around her as she hangs on to the ship for dear life. Of course, the craziest sequence has to be where Shaw finds out she has been impregnated with a monstrous-DNA fetus and must use an advanced medical pod calibrated for men along with self-injected anesthetics to extract the thing before it kills her.
All in all, Prometheus is a half-cleaned up mess. It looks good and it sounds good, the acting is good...sometimes, the plot is paced well...sometimes, the characters are interesting...sometimes. I feel the lesson to be learned is that all the hype and viral marketing in the world won't save a film from it's financial obligations or its attempts to satisfy everyone at once. Prometheus is ultimately a good idea crushed down by the massive car pile up at the intersection of art and commerce.
