"A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable"
It’s 2089 and two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi
Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover the same star map
amongst paintings and artefacts from various different ancient civilisations
which had no interaction with each other. Convinced that this map is somehow
connected to our origins the two enlist the help of Weyland Industries and
visit the moon LV-223 aboard the ship Prometheus.
Four years later they and the crew, totalling seventeen are woken from
Stasis by robot David (Michael Fassbender) and with specific instructions from
Weyland representative Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) not to interact with
any species they might encounter, set off into an unidentified structure on the
Moon’s surface.
Firstly I’ll get the Alien
stuff out of the way. It definitely helps if you have seen the Alien franchise but is in no way a
necessity. The film can be viewed as both a stand alone movie and as a prequel. I’ve only recently watched the series for the first time so it is
still fresh in my mind. As such on a few occasions I thought to myself “ooh I
recognise that” and “aahhh, so that means…” but the film also made me want to
watch the original Alien again as I
was a little confused at times. I think that my confusion was due to two
reasons. Firstly the plot is fairly complex and you have to pay close
attention. Secondly, there are far too many plot holes. I won’t go into them
here in order to avoid spoilers but if you’re interested then fellow blogger Life vs Film has compiled an extensive
list here.
For me the film’s biggest strength was its atmosphere. The
film isn’t as tense as I’d expected it to be but is rather more like a mystery.
Unlike say Alien you aren’t waiting
for something to jump out and scare you but rather it unfolds very slowly, creating
more questions as it progresses. Many of the questions are subsequently
answered but some are left open which I liked but left me feeling slightly
frustrated. The tone was much less about horror and more about what, why, where
and how and tone wise it is closer to Scott's Blade Runner than Alien. I loved how slowly the plot unfolded but wonder if the Transformers generation will have the
patience to stick with it?