PROMETHEUS Review - Breathtakingly Stunning Sci-Fi Epic
Like many of you, Ridley Scott's sci-fi film Prometheus was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. Everything I saw up until watching the actual movie looked amazing, and I had no doubt in my mind that it was going to be awesome, and guess what... it was! The movie was extremely entertaining, and it delivers some powerful horsepower. I do have a couple gripes about the film, but that doesn't change the fact that I still thought it was incredible!
One of the first things I want to talk about is the marketing campaign for this movie. The studio ended up showing way too much of the film in the trailers and clips. There were just way too many spoilers for the movie. It's like I knew what was going to happen next all the way throughout the film as I was watching it, and ultimately I knew how it was going to end because they basically put the stupid ass ending of the film in the trailers! I think I would have enjoyed the movie more if I didn't know as much as I did. But I guess that's my fault since I watched everything the studio released. There were still some cool and surprising moments, one in particular was incredibly intense! There's a brief clip of it in the trailer, but the moments leading up to what is shown in the trailer are absolutely terrifying and a lot of people in the theater found it hard to watch. You'll know the scene I'm talking about when you see it.
Even though I felt a lot of the film was spoiled for me, it still entertained the hell out of me, and it was still well made and beautifully shot. There were a few areas where I felt the story was stumbling on itself, but I think that might just have come down to the film's editing for time. I'm not saying the story was bad, I freakin' loved the story! I'm just saying it could have flowed a little better. There were just so many cool ideas they wanted to pack into the movie, and they did the best they could getting it all in there.
Scott and the screenwriters, Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, took the audience on a gloriously epic journey with Prometheus. It was so cool to see them revisit the Alien universe Scott created. They took the mythology of Alien and created a film with it's own unique and horrifying awesomeness. The movie is most definitely a prequel set in the same world, but Prometheus is its own beast. It's definitely more of a sic-fi film than horror, the tone was closer to that of 2001: A Space Odyssey, than the original Alien film. There's still plenty of horror elements in Prometheus, it's just not the main focus. While we're on the subject of Alien, I will say that as much as I loved Prometheus, I still like Alien more.
The cast of the film did such an incredible job in their roles but Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron stole the show, and Theron is beautiful. The rest of the cast includes Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Guy Pearce, and Patrick Wilson.
I also absolutely loved the design of the movie, you already kind of know what you're going to see from the stuff in the trailers, but watching it on the big screen and in 3D is a whole new mind-blowing experience. I also thought the humanoid alien designs were interestingly cool as well. You should watch Prometheus in 3D if you can; I don't usually recommend watching movies in 3D, but every once in awhile a film like this comes along that gives you a fantastic 3D experience.
There are a lot of thought-provoking themes in the movie as well. It's not a mindless movie, this one makes you think, which is always nice. The second trailer for the film opens up with the following dialogue, "A King has his reign and then he dies… it's inevitable." This right there is one of the themes of the movie, and in more ways than what you think. I don't want to go into any details because I'm trying to keep my review spoiler free, but it also includes themes from Greek mythology. Prometheus was actually a titan who represented human striving, the quest for scientific knowledge, the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences, and how his efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy. These are the underlying motives of the story wrapped up in a breathtakingly stunning sic-fi epic. It explores the dangers of searching for answers. This is something I think most of us can relate to. We look for answers to questions we have only to find the answers we sought weren't the ones we were looking for.
I know you're going to love Prometheus, I honestly don't see how you can't--it's got everything we love about movies. If you've already seen, it tell us what you thought below!