Not wanting to turn this blog into a culture review site I hesitate to follow up my in-depth, Pulitzer prize-winning Derren Brown review with one for Ridley Scott‘s new movie, Prometheus.
Oh, go on then.
This is a movie that seems to really polarise opinion. In the first camp are people (for shorthand I will refer to these as Educated) who understand this is not an Alien prequel and can appreciate a spectacular film made in a familiar universe. The second camp contains people (here I’ll go with Idiots) who -despite Sir Ridley banging on for months that Prometheus was only vaguely associated with Alien- entered the cinema expecting a direct prequel complete with darkness, dripping chains and xenomorphs with major dental problems.
The answer is of course somewhere in between. As a self-styled Educated Idiot I thoroughly enjoyed the movie -seen in the darkness of Cineworld Didsbury, along-side a number of other lone, forty-year olds wearing U.S.S. Sulaco t-shirts from Last Exit to Nowhere – despite its numerous flaws. There are plot-holes; Idris Elba doesn’t have enough to do and the Space Jockeys turn out to be smaller and less alien than hoped. But it is beautiful -never more so than in the opening scenes of a primordial Earth- and looks truly epic. The benefits of Ridley’s insistence on actually building sets to act against, rather than just going with greenscreen, are really obvious.
Once you realise that the moon all this plays out on is not the same moon as in Alien; different spaceship, different aliens, possibly a completely different time period, it makes a lot more sense. It’s not perfect but it is visually stunning, highly entertaining and though provoking.
Just don’t get me started on the Blade Runner prequel…
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