Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott is a master of colour and light. He is arguably one of the greatest visual directors of our time, capable of creating beautiful landscapes alongside claustrophic confines and weaving them seamlessly into one film. Though for all his artistic achievements, Ridley has one tragic problem, his fatal flaw, a hamartia if you will. It appears Ridley Scott cannot tell what a bad film script is. Robin Hood is the prime example of this but it appears Scott has decided to follow it through to Prometheus. Thus Scott turns what should have been a masterpiece into a weird uneven creation which is sometimes astonishing and breathtaking but is ultimately marred by the scenes of bizarre and convoluted dialogue.
The plot follows the crew of the spaceship Prometheus as they attempt to seek the origins of humanity through star maps that have appeared in many unconnected ancient civilisations. What they instead find threatens the extinction of the human race. The set-up is reminiscent of Alien as the various crew members of Prometheus are all there for their own agenda, just as they were on the Nostromo. In fact, there are times throughout the film where it feels as if you could be watching Alien, or at least an ode to Alien, but it’s difficult to further elaborate on this without exposing more of the plot.
Aesthetically, this film is brilliant. As the crew are exploring, the dark caverns of the planet they are on wonderfully juxtapose the light and airy feel of the spaceship, creating an oxymoronic mesh of security and danger. The CGI is not overdone and feels real and organic, which is refreshing after the great but almost so-big-its-self-aware CGI of The Avengers. The action sequences in this film are its saving grace, with colossal events being displayed with ease, leading the audience to be on the edge of their seats throughout. The fantastic soundtrack, composed by Marc Streitenfeld adds to the portentous atmosphere, but there are times that I felt it was a little too upbeat in the darker moments of Prometheus. It was music to accompany a Sci-Fi epic which, although this was in part, it sometimes felt that Scott wasn’t ready to fully throw off the shackles of Sci-Fi horror, so in some more scary scenes which were akin to Alien the music felt jarringly out of place.
Indeed, moments of brilliance are often overshadowed by the downright bizarre. The elderly Peter Wayland, CEO of Weyland Corporation, is played by a Guy Pearce who is heavily caked in very obvious makeup. When this is compared with the scenes of CGI brilliance, the audience is led to question what on earth inspired Ridley Scott to choose this; it’s as if he was deliberately sabotaging his own film. The dodgy and cliché filled dialogue doesn’t help things either. There are times where the dialogue really strikes a chord with the scene, but ironically, I personally think the best scenes of the film are the ones where there is no dialogue in them. Scott shines through above the terrible script and shows the audience what he is capable of. The script is clunky and just odd in places, with mistimed or ill-thought out jokes that don’t really sit with the feel of the film. There is one particular piece of dialogue, (which I won’t spoil but I hope you’ll be able to guess what it is) which was so cringe-worthy several members of the audience let out a collective sigh of disappointment. This is no surprise considering the original script was written by Jon Spaihts of the Darkest Hour fame (if you want to know what was wrong with the Darkest Hour, check out my review from a couple of months ago TLDR: It’s not very good).
The character development and interaction also undermined the film. Many characters felt underdeveloped or just seemed to be there to serve plot points or fill a certain role; there was not an awful lot of emotional depth given to many characters. The only stand-out performance for me was Michael Fassbender as David, who managed to combine the audience’s reassurance with cold distrust; the viewer’s being never too sure whose side David really was on. All actors gave a solid or commendable effort, but nothing really to write home about.
To conclude, do not take this review to mean that Prometheus is a bad film. It is a good film, a very good film, but the frustration of watching it is the realisation that it could have been a masterpiece. The fact it should have been a masterpiece make the terrible scenes and dialogue even more irritating. There are scenes in this film which are truly some of the most beautiful shots I have ever seen in cinema history. However, there are also some of the worst scenes and dialogue in cinema which makes my conclusion on this film an odd one. Prometheus is probably the weirdest film I’ve seen all year. No, Prometheus is the weirdest film I’ve ever seen. I have never seen a film which has managed to be so so good yet so so bad simultaneously and it’s for that endearing reason you should go and watch this film.