"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man?" - Paradise Lost

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2012)

When Alien first appeared in 1979, it really was a game-changer for the science fiction genre. For the first time, a creature from outer space looked believably extra-terrestrial on screen and had a five-stage life cycle (egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, young adult and adult or warrior as James Cameron calls it) straight out of Biology 101.
James Cameron's Aliens was that rarity, something that respected the first film but nevertheless improved upon it to make one of the best sequels ever made (Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for her performance, how many sci-fi films can boast about that? Not many).
Alien 3 literally crashed the franchise and, while Alien Resurrection was an improvement, that's not saying much. Alien Vs Predator wasn't bad, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem with annoying teenagers added to the mix was a forgettable misfire to say the least.
And now, 33 years on, original director Ridley Scott has returned to the franchise he kicked off in such dazzling style. Comparisons have been made to George Lucas returning to the Star Wars series to do prequels with mixed results but I believe Ridley Scott's effort here is better than that.
The film starts off with a huge albino giant with killer abs drinking what looks like an eel smoothie and having something awful happen to him (he's like a cross between the Silver Surfer, the monsters in Duran Duran's Wild Boys video and that bald dude from The Hills Have Eyes.) Fast forward 2,000 years to the year 2089. Noomi Rapace plays Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, an archaeologist who discovers primitive cave paintings that seem to point to alien visitation in prehistory. Another fast-forward of four years, finds Shaw on board the spaceship Prometheus in deep space about to stop off at the planet hinted at in the cave paintings. Weyland Industries (the evil company from the first Alien films hasn't merged with Yutani just yet) has funded this exploration to the tune of a trillion dollars.
Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender are perfect Aryan blondes in the mould of Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah from Blade Runner. Theron's character starts out as a cold control freak reminiscent of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. When she is prepared to let people die on the planet or even take up a flame-thrower and kill them herself, she becomes something much darker. Later on, it is revealed that she is old Peter Weyland's daughter and, when she refers to her father as a king, it takes on a Shakespearean, King Lear dimension of the old man giving control of his kingdom to his vicious daughter.
Ireland's Michael Fassbender gives another assured, notable performance and he is rapidly bagging all the plum acting gigs going. It is interesting to see him progress as an actor.
Noomi Rapace is impregnated with a precursor of the chest-burster and gives herself an astonishing DIY abortion that has to be seen to be believed. (If this is a prequel to Alien, how come they didn't have all that fancy medical equipment, 360-degree helmets and 3D cave-mapping drones in a time that is supposed to be more technologically advanced? Another question I had was, if it was so easy to infect the space crew by skin contact or airborne droplet infection, why bother evolving into the chest burster? Seems a much faster way of transmission.)
The film is nowhere near as bad as the first reviews suggested. I think it was just the weight of 33 years of expectation not being met (what could live up to the reputation of the classic Alien we all grew up watching again and again on VHS, DVD and now Blu-Ray?) The ending of Prometheus is left tantalizingly open for a sequel with many questions still unanswered and I believe there could be life in the old Star Beast yet.