Note: Ordinarily, when I watch a movie I like to mention what type of screen I saw it on (regular cineplex screen, poorly kept-up independent theater screen, fake IMAX screen, and true IMAX screen) as I do believe it makes a difference and also because—-9 times out of 10—-the 3D ticket price just isn’t worth the extra three dollars, let along the outrageous IMAX ticket price. We’ve seen a lot of movies cash in on the 3D craze that had absolutely NO added value in that medium (the Clash of the Titans remakes, pretty much any animated film), which is a big part of the reason I usually avoid it (not to mention those color muting glasses make the picture less sharp and wash out the more vibrant colors of, say, an animated film) but Prometheus in IMAX is a real experience. I still wouldn’t pay the nearly 20 dollars a ticket to see it that way, but if you can finagle somebody else into paying for it or score some free tickets like I did, you should do so.
What Works: Okay, so this is my second most anticipated film of the summer behind, of course, The Dark Knight Rises, and all I can say is that between this and the slightly underwhelming The Dictator, this hasn’t been a great start to the summer for me. I’ll get to why this film is disappointing in a minute, but for now what works are 1. some nifty visuals, 2. the reliable hotness of Charlize Theron, 3. the continual scene stealer that is Michael Fassbender, scoring yet another strong, sinister supporting turn here (after last June’s sci-fi prequel X-Men) as the ship’s robot who, ironically, also has the most vibrant personality. Fassbender creates a worthy predecessor to Ian Holmes’s android in the original Alien and takes his place among 2001’s HAL as one of cinema’s all-time great scheming robots.
What Doesn’t Work: Unfortunately, Naoomi Rapace (the actress cast in the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films) confirms my worst fears that she just isn’t much of an actress and doesn’t exactly have the most expressive face for this type of part. [To say she falls short of Sigorney Weaver’s Ripley is putting it very kindly.] Also, besides Fassbender and (to a lesser extent) Idris Elba as the ship’s captain, none of the human cast makes much of an impression and it’s clear that fully dimensional characters were the last things on anyone’s mind as they made this. Plus, there’s a strong whiff of genericism coming off this Alien prequel as we’ve now seen all of these things before in countless Alien knockoffs. Just because Alien started the whole “A crew goes into space for some convoluted propose and then gradually get picked off by an alien monster” sub genre, doesn’t mean that we haven’t seen it a hundred times before since then. And I was big time let down by the film’s “mythology” which kept teasing that it had real things to say about creation and God, but in the end turned out to be no more sophisticated (or inspired) than a typical sci-fi horror film where some stick figure astronauts die in increasingly stupid and indistinct ways at the hand of alien beast.
What I Would Have Done Differently: I think my purposes in making this film would have been very different than the filmmakers. Ridley Scott can say differently all he wants, but this is just a craven attempt to milk the Alien cash cow one last time for the legendary director. [Please don’t let him make that Blade Runner prequel since it will just be likewise plundering.] I probably would have made a much different movie that had nothing to do with the Alien franchise and actually had real interest in answering the mythological questions it raises.
the movie needed more space less scare.