Ridley Scott's Failed Return To The Alien Sci-Fi Genre

Rating: 3/10 (22 February 2013)

Ridley Scott, of course, made his first significant directorial splash with "Alien" - a long, long time ago now. He basically left outer space, alien sci fi behind after that one and went with more mainstream material, and "Prometheus" was really his re-entry to that genre. The influence of "Alien" is obvious in this. There are lot of connections, and a lot of similarities. One thing I liked about "Alien" was that it didn't seem to set out to scare the pants off the viewer. It was a tense type of movie, with a lot of suspense, but not much by way of real horror or gore. This was probably a bit heavier on the horror/gore metre than "Alien" was, but not much. But it didn't capture the overall atmosphere of that earlier effort by Scott.
To really work, this type of movie has to have at least one of three things going for it. It either has to be frightening, or it has to be suspenseful, or it has to have a pretty interesting moral or ethical or philosophical reflection going on at its heart. I didn't think "Prometheus" really accomplished any of that, and because of that I can't say that the story really managed to pull me in. There were moments of horror; there were moments that made me jump a little - but they were few and far between. At the base of the movie is a philosophical reflection about the origin of life, with some attention made to religion, God, etc., but while that was there, it was never really central, nor was it ever really satisfactorily resolved, with the end result being that this often seemed to lack a clear focus. What was Ridley Scott trying to accomplish with this? What statement was being made? What impact was it supposed to have on the viewer? I'm really not able to answer any of those questions.
Neither the cast nor the characters held me spellbound. I thought the performances were a bit dry, and the character development was rather weak. Aside from Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) I can't say that I really got drawn into anyone's story in particular, so I really didn't care that much for them.
In the end, "Prometheus" disappointed me. Perhaps Ridley Scott, in returning to the genre that made him famous, tried too hard to make "Prometheus" a reflection of "Alien," but it didn't work very well. (3/10)