A Visually Stunning Exercise in Wonder and Terror

Rating: 9/10 (10 January 2015)

Prequels are always a dicey proposition, as director Ridley Scott discovered with his recent take on Robin Hood. This is especially when there is only the most tenuous connection to the original. But he's beaten the odds this time around. Not since Close Encounters has a science fiction movie filled with such wonder as Prometheus, and not since the original Alien has one filled me with such terror. And few movies from any genre have ever given me so much to ponder.
The wonder of this film comes from the first half. It begins the moment we first lay eyes on the barren world. I do not know where these scenes were shot, but I know that if it is a real place that I must go there someday. Rarely has such utter desolation ever held such magnificence as these craggy vistas and bleak flats. And the sense of wonderment (with an undercurrent of dread) only grows with each development. The discovery of breathable atmosphere inside the tunnels. The holograms that David the android activates. The perfectly preserved, 2000 year old body of a humanoid alien before a great door. And especially the room that lies beyond.
The crew thought it was a tomb. I thought it was an Ark, a repository to hold the species' genetic information for their future revival. We were both terribly wrong. It's here that the sense of wonder begins to mix with one dread, one that only grows as in an alien necropsy scene that for me evoked spine tingling memories of a near identical sequence in Howard Hawks' seminal The Thing from Another World. And then the real terror begins, because something is alive, something worse than any of them ever imagined. And like the original, every time you think it's over, it's not. There is always another horror.
Noomi Rapace deserves only the highest praise for her performance, and for even agreeing to this role. The ordeals she- and her character- endures in Prometheus are beyond even what she went through in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Ripley had it easy by comparison. She may have been trapped alone in space with one of the universes deadliest predators, but she never experienced a violation on the order of what Doctor - Shaw suffers. Many observers have commented on how the Alien from the previous films is basically a metaphor for rape. Prometheus takes it a step further- though thankfully not in the way that first comes to mind. Still, it is hard to overstate how disturbing parts are. This is not a film for the faint of heart.
A far different effect comes from watching David (Michael Fassbender), the first character seen aboard ship, and who looks far too gorgeous to be true. And indeed he is. He's an android, a fact that is made clear to everyone very early on. His beauty and obvious intelligence are captivating, even charming. But at the same time there's an almost paradoxical sense that he's too perfect. And it's clear that he knows more about the mission than he's sharing. In some ways, mainly his total lack of emotion, he reminds me of HAL 9000. Yet he still manages to come off as more human than Miss Vickers (Charlize Theron) the mission's commander. She is an absolute ice queen, aloof, condescending, impeccable in speech and manners, and supremely self confident and in control- in short, a cast iron B. She is every bit David's equals in the looks department, and there is some question among the crew as to whether she might be an android as well.
Nor is it only the people who are beautiful. Besides the barren plains and mountains mentioned before, there's the Prometheus itself. Far from the cramped, darkened corridors and ducts of the tug in the original Alien, the Prometheus's interiors are gleaming white. The early scenes in which David roams the ship alone to the accompaniment of classical music are a clear homage to Kubrick's 2001, one that contrasts markedly with the ugliness to come. And nowhere is this film more beautiful, more enigmatic, or more like 2001 than in the breathtaking pre-title sequence in which we first lay eyes upon what I call the Alabaster Man. It may produce utter bafflement at first, but once understood, this scene is as magical as any ever put on film.
Then there are the questions: the questions of our origins and purpose which the scientists seek the answers too, and which mankind has asked itself for as long as we have existed. And the true genius of Prometheus is that it does not provide a complete answer. For one thing, any answer it gave would ring hollow, and lack any weight outside the context of this film, resting as it does on the idea that we came from aliens. But more importantly, within the world of the film, the partial answers raise even more pressing questions, ones that we may not want to know the answers to.
People will see this movie to be scared. They will be scared, and they will be awed. But more than the terror or the wonder it creates, it is the imagination and inquisitiveness it displays that makes Prometheus a work of art, and a truly great film.