Prometheus: Proof that epic sci-fi doesn't belong in the Alien franchise.

Previously: Disturbing viral marketing for Prometheus: Happy birthday David, from Weyland Industries.

My feelings about Prometheus are very mixed. As a grown-up sci-fi blockbuster movie, it was excellent, albeit a little cumbersome at times, but as a prequel to Alien it really didn't seem to know what it was doing. The pre-movie marketing included a lot of extra information on the extended universe -- a timeline of Weyland Industries' technological developments; background on Michael Fassbender's android character David; an in-character TED lecture from the fictional billionaire Peter Weyland -- but the film itself included very little of that worldbuilding, and not in the sparsely-written, isolated sense of Alien. Compared to the fast-paced thriller tone of the film as a whole, the reoccuring themes of religious belief and creationism seemed clumsy and out-of-place.
I feel like Prometheus must be a very different film to people who have no previous experience of the Alien franchise. Aside from the handful of lines that were objectively clunky, my main problem with this film lies in the way it relates to the Alien franchise, particularly Alien itself. Each of the Alien movies is different: The first is a slow-build horror movie, the second is a military adventure story, the third (in addition to being a total mess) is an action thriller set in a prison, and Alien Resurrection is a sci-fi blockbuster. The one theme that all four of these movies share is that shadowy, distant corporations control the characters' lives without them knowing it, and are happy to kill the worker ants in the name of profit. They tried to include this theme in Prometheus, but in terms of internal consistency within the premise of the mission (to explore an alien moon for signs of life) it didn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

Given that Peter Weyland is one of the richest and most powerful people in existence and that the Prometheus' journey to LV-223 is a trillion-dollar investment, I assumed that this was a well-publicised exploratory mission, albeit one where the religious undertones of their research were being kept under wraps. Taking this into consideration, one would think that the crew of the Prometheus must be the best of the best: Shaw and Holloway as the leaders, and the other scientists coming along to help with on-planet survival and any research that isn't directly connected to the Engineers and/or "finding God". However, when the crew is first introduced, we learn that they don't even know why they're there. Why not? Why did they sign up to go on a deep-space exploratory mission if they didn't know what they were doing or even who they were going to be working with? One of them wonders if they're going to be working on terraforming (which makes sense if you know the Weyland slogan: "Building Better Worlds"), and the rest are just there to provide backup, loose cannons every one. Seeing as Weyland is rich enough to build his own spaceship to fly off on a vanity mission to find god, and Vickers (Charlize Theron) is obsessed with "minimizing risk", this seems like an extraordinarily impractical recruitment strategy.

In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are working stiffs and have very little personal stake in the work they do for Weyland-Yutani. Likewise in the sequels, most of the primary characters are low on the corporate food-chain and are unaware that they're being screwed over by their bosses. But while the Nostromo is a mining ship crewed by the famous "truckers in space", the Prometheus is more like the Starship Enterprise, crewed by academics, idealists, and explorers. It would have made far more sense for the crew to begin the film with a sense of well-organised confidence, and then have the first signs of conflict appear as they discover that their well-planned mission is not what it seems, that they've unknowingly been providing cover for a religious megalomaniac all along.

The basic problem is that Prometheus tries to occupy an impossible hinterland between the world of sci-fi epics and the world of the Alien franchise. Star Wars is a myth about rebellion and heroism, Star Trek is about a crew of peacekeepers and scientists exploring the wonders of the galaxy, and the Alien franchise is a series of horror stories set within a cynical universe where no one cares if our beloved protagonist lives or dies. Prometheus, on the other hand, is a story about a scientist's search for God, an aging trillionaire's search for immortality, and the dangers of hubris when it comes to creating life in "unnatural" ways. These are all common sci-fi themes, but they don't really gel with the Alien universe. Up until now, the Alien franchise has dealt with amoral corporate lackies, tired blue-collar workers, violent convicts, and incompetent soldiers. It's difficult for Prometheus to exist within the context of a series where most characters are far more interested a steady paycheck than in the meaning of life.

Maybe it would've been possible to successfully tell an epic story about God and creation within the Alien extended universe, but not without removing most of the references to Alien itself. It didn't help that every scene that took place outside the spaceship was purposefully designed to provoke a feeling of awe and wonder. It seems strange to be complaining about the design and visuals of a film being too good, but I found that it muddied the waters to have to concentrate on individual human fears and the sense of "Oh, wow, we're on an alien planet full of untold wonders," at the same time.
 

There were several aspects of the film that failed to live up to the marketing, but Peter Weyland's casting was, to me, the most confusing. Guy Pearce performed the TED Talk used in the film's viral marketing campaign, and his name was in the credits of the movie, so many viewers would be aware before the film even started that Guy Pearce would be appearing at some point. This meant that his old man prosthetics were extremely distracting, because all the way through I knew that Guy Pearce was lurking underneath, and why the hell would they hire a young actor to play an old man? I spent the entire time waiting for him to be magically de-aged by some alien technology. Did they cast Guy Pearce just so he could do the viral marketing campaign?? Wouldn't it have been more effective to hire an unknown actor to play the young Peter Weyland, and someone like Peter O'Toole to play the older version in the film itself? To make matters more confusing, another Weyland video was released after the film came out.

screencap from here.

While I do believe that Prometheus failed as a prequel to the Alien franchise (and, more simply, that God should stay out of sci-fi unless you go for the full-on cheesy Chariots Of The Gods schtick, as seen in Stargate), there were some Alien quadrilogy nods that I did enjoy. David playing basketball was a fun reference to Alien Resurrection, and the production design (which I'll tackle in a separate post) was full of little details that harked back to the aesthetic of the other Alien movies. And, criticism aside, it was nailbiting thriller. The action scenes were frightening and avoided the kind of obviously unrealistically cliches one often sees in movies of this size, and the moments of visceral horror were incredibly well-executed.

Next: Costume design and the crew of the Prometheus. 

Links
My previous posts on the Alien franchise. 
Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About. This review focuses on the religious aspects of the film, including Ridley Scott's original (horrible) idea to include a Jesus-like figure among the Engineers.
Featurette on the visual effects of Prometheus.
Five ways to improve Prometheus.
Reddit: The Secrets of Prometheus: Explained.