Scary it’s not
9 Jun 2012 12:00 AM GMT
If creepy crawlies are up your alley, then Prometheus is your film. The director, Ridley Scott, would only admit that film shares ‘strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak’. We disagree. For better or worse, Prometheus is Alien in 3D. The film was supposed to have been a fifth entry in the science fiction horror film Alien franchise: a prequel, in fact, to Scott’s 1979 Alien. But the Alien franchise decided to go on another route with Aliens Vs Predators. So we have Prometheus.
If we go by Prometheus, we were ‘seeded’ by aliens — identified as ‘engineers’ — from outer space. And it takes an archaeologist couple, Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green) to ‘discover’ this revolutionary evolution concept. Their belief had propelled them all the way to a distant moon that the constellations depicted through centuries point at. And here begins the fun. Or the ‘horror’, if you insist.
If ‘it-all-happens-in-a-spaceship’ premise is nothing new, the treatment is even more cliched. Thrown together are a bunch of believers, non-believers and smart alecs. Except the archaeologist couple, the rest are on a reluctant mission. Over time, we lose them all. Michael Fassbender portraying the android David manages to inject a bit of chill at times. Charlize Theron gets effortlessly uptight for her expedition monitor character. But mostly, the characters seem to be referring to some sort of alien manual. There’s enough blood and gore, but despite the three-dimensional take, nothing is scary. When the alien opens its ‘tentacles’, we watch unfazed.
For Alien fans, buried along the plot are answers to perhaps the questions that niggled at them while watching the series. The big question, by the way, remains unanswered. So why exactly did the ‘engineers’ release their DNA onto earth and spawn a race that looks like them? And why do they want to destroy the earth later?
Guess, Prometheus II could be quite interesting if Ridley Scott follows the sole survivor to where it all began — to where the ‘engineers’ that spawned humans come from. But then again, we could end up again on the distant moon, with the director trying to make the surviving ‘alien’ scarier, by hook or trick.
If we go by Prometheus, we were ‘seeded’ by aliens — identified as ‘engineers’ — from outer space. And it takes an archaeologist couple, Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green) to ‘discover’ this revolutionary evolution concept. Their belief had propelled them all the way to a distant moon that the constellations depicted through centuries point at. And here begins the fun. Or the ‘horror’, if you insist.
If ‘it-all-happens-in-a-spaceship’ premise is nothing new, the treatment is even more cliched. Thrown together are a bunch of believers, non-believers and smart alecs. Except the archaeologist couple, the rest are on a reluctant mission. Over time, we lose them all. Michael Fassbender portraying the android David manages to inject a bit of chill at times. Charlize Theron gets effortlessly uptight for her expedition monitor character. But mostly, the characters seem to be referring to some sort of alien manual. There’s enough blood and gore, but despite the three-dimensional take, nothing is scary. When the alien opens its ‘tentacles’, we watch unfazed.
For Alien fans, buried along the plot are answers to perhaps the questions that niggled at them while watching the series. The big question, by the way, remains unanswered. So why exactly did the ‘engineers’ release their DNA onto earth and spawn a race that looks like them? And why do they want to destroy the earth later?
Guess, Prometheus II could be quite interesting if Ridley Scott follows the sole survivor to where it all began — to where the ‘engineers’ that spawned humans come from. But then again, we could end up again on the distant moon, with the director trying to make the surviving ‘alien’ scarier, by hook or trick.
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