Would you like to feel elderly? That cool Alien prequel film you had a passing interest in, but was conventionally frustrated with in a way that didn’t allow you to fully concede its merits?
That was Prometheus and that was ten years ago!
A sophisticated return of the Alien film franchise that was needed after the gimmicky ludicrousness of both 1997’s Alien Resurrection (directed by a Frenchman, no less, and setting a new bad precedent for science fiction franchise late sequels with the word “Resurrection(s)” in the title!) and the even more dreaded Alien vs. Predator in 2004 (with its own godforsaken 2007 sequel).
Not only did Ridley Scott return to direct – his first science fiction project in thirty years since Blade Runner in 1982 – but notorious eccentric Swiss artist H. R. Giger also turned up to do more than just receive a credit for providing inspiration with his extraordinary original designs of the Aliens, the Derelict and the Space Jockey (as had been the case on virtually every Alien franchise film since the first) and made some brand new original designs for the film.
A prequel to Alien but only insofar as it happens to take place within the same – dare I use the phrase – CinematicUniverse™ of the Alien films, and before the events of the original Alien. There is no overlap of any human characters or their bloodlines, though there is of course overlap of backdrops, contexts, institutions, settings, technologies, inanimate objects, etc.
In the 2003 documentary The Beast Within: The Making of 'Alien', associate producer Ivor Powell makes the comment “I wanna know who that Space Jockey is. What are the Aliens doing in the silo? Are they armaments? Are they shipping them somewhere? I think that, for me, is fascinating” with a clip from Ridley Scott following this saying “I mean that’s what we’re meant to do. You can end it and bash it on the head and bury it, but you can just as easily invent the end of one and the beginning of another.”
Clearly uncontrived organic seeds of inspiration for an Alien prequel have existed for a long time. However, it is also clear that there are near infinite possibilities for this. The astonishing spectacle of Giger’s Space Jockey and Derelict ship, let alone the Aliens themselves, inevitably creates this discomforting mystery as to its origins. Some would even shun the idea of a prequel on that basis; let the mystery stay a mystery.
But as long as there was someone somewhere in the ranks at Fox who thought it would be a good investment, of course this was always going to get made.
The film was highly anticipated. After release, however, for a not insignificant number of people, this did not seem to pay off well enough. The talking heads found it easy enough to praise the immediate attributes of the film, such as visuals and sets and performances, but criticised unresolved plots and confusing philosophical themes.
It is just so quickly taken for granted that a new instalment in the Alien franchise is quite generously and ambitiously trying something new rather than falling back on safe clichés of the franchise, or general science fiction adventure clichés that the Alien franchise played a large part in formalising themselves. The gratitude for this ambition is almost completely unrealised.
It is perfectly reasonable for the filmmakers – if not more respectful than not to audiences – to imply that they simply don’t have it in them to provide such an exacting Alien prequel. A scope of imagination on the audiences’ behalf with their own theories and suspicions is what was supposed to be an integral part of the viewing experience. In light of the mysteries of origin of the Space Jockey, the Derelict etc. inevitably aroused with the first Alien, Prometheus helped to strike a healthy balance between filmmakers just spoonfeeding an exacted origin story to audiences and them leaving audiences with absolutely no exact points of reference for possible origin story of these things which would leave them with too much effort to ultimately care.
Similarly with the brand new themes in the film not explored before in the franchise, they put as much effort as could be expected from them in a single 124 minute science fiction space film; arousing the interest in and providing a foundational guidance to the topic of creation and faith in the context of the Alien universe without telling you so exactly how one must feel about it. Some of the stones for turning on this topic would be naturally out of reach.
Despite all this, the film is certainly not without flaws. The dialogue was not as ridiculous as it had been in some other Alien franchise offerings, but it had its definite low moments. Some individual characters had peculiar motivations in certain actions (for goodness sake, if the strange alien snake is hissing and signalling threat to you, do not try and pet it! If you are running away from a big falling thing, do not run in its shadow!) When watching the film’s Deleted Scenes, some of these varying examples of strange character actions are better explained, which incriminates the filmmakers in two ways. Related to that, 44-year-old Guy Pearce’s portrayal of a very elderly Peter Wayland (with heavy aging prosthetics) is eventually rendered somewhat redundant since Pearce’s scenes without the prosthetics where he is playing a middle-aged Wayland are also absent from the final cut. Some characterisations were poor, particularly Logan Marshall-Green’s character of Charlie who seemed too simply arrogant and obnoxious to be someone who would be invited on such a big important space mission as this. Swedish leading actress Noomi Rapace has an attempted British accent that might be considered objectively worse than Dick Van Dyke’s, because it sounds as if there is no effort in it all, as if her character is meant to be Swedish.
In my opinion, one of the worst flaws of the film is that the original concept for it, a script entitled Alien: Engineers written by Jon Spaihts, who is given an official writing credit in Prometheus, on which Prometheus was based but is ultimately different from, seems to be a much better story for the film. A story with more explicitly direct connection and reference to the original Alien, though still exploring brand new themes, it would have been perfectly possible to pull off this script well. Giving the people what they want, but also breathing new life into the franchise that has been stagnating for decades.
Despite all this, the film has many strengths outside of its more overt falsely-alleged flaws. On top of the general merits with visual styles and designs, when watching the making-of documentary The Furious Gods, one gets an understanding of how very little the film relies on computer generated effects that one would expect. Extremely impressive levels of prosthetics, practicals, model sets and real animatronic alien creatures, and even a scene which a character gets burned to death involving a real stuntman in real flames. This implies much respect to both the actors in the scenes themselves and the overall customary craft of filmmaking which has otherwise found itself saturated with digitisation in postproduction, particularly in science fiction. Marc Streitenfeld and Harry Gregson-Williams’ efforts in the soundtrack reflect well all these different moods that the films goes through – grandeur, courage, suspense, fear, adventure, terror, discovery – with much effective Holstian influence that Jerry Goldsmith had also used himself for the original Alien (and essentially every other space film soundtrack composer ever!)
Both with plotlines and themes, Prometheus’ purpose was to excite and arouse imagination. The franchise has naturally done that already ever since 1979 with its own extended lore and many spin-offs in media outside of film, particularly comics and novels. The newly explored themes of creation and existence were just simply not as badly executed as people conventionally believe, and certainly not in retrospect. Obviously not every casual filmgoer can be expected to have that level of investment, but it shows what potential for audience imagination that is implied by it, more so than your average science fiction film. Prometheus in retrospect can also not be discussed without the legacy of its legitimately flawed sequel Alien: Covenant in 2017. That film is suspected to be Ridley Scott's response to the main critics of Prometheus for not being Alien-y enough. It included almost everything that the shallow conventional desires for an Alien prequel would have demanded, and despite that, still managed to give an unsatisfactory ending. As Oscar Wilde's Mr. Dumby said in Act III of Lady Windermere's Fan:
"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
If you are just there to be spoonfed and get your dopamine hits from that thing I recognise (which Prometheus served up well, without going overboard or appearing desperate and exploitative, and Alien: Covenant had in excessive droves) then you’re better off with Alien vs. Predator and it's incidentally classic lines as (yes, this is a real) “This is like finding Moses’ DVD collection.”
Prometheus was a fine film and deserves official retrospective reassessment and praise. I urge you all to give it another chance.
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