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Released by: Fox
Released on: October 9, 2012.
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
When you've made a movie as successful and almost universally beloved as Alien and decide to make a prequel to it of sorts, there's no way you're going to make everyone happy - particularly if you wait a few decades to do it. So with that said, it's probably not much of a surprise that there seem to be as many people nonplussed with Ridley Scott's 2012 film Prometheus as there are those who were impressed.
An opening scene on an unnamed alien planet shows a sole inhabitant dying. He vomits into some water nearby and his DNA travels with it. From here, we cut to 2093 where the space ship Prometheus is on course to a planet where a team of scientists believe there may be clues to the origins of life. Scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) believes in a higher power while her boyfriend, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), belittles her for not sharing his completely scientific beliefs in evolution. An android named David (Michael Fassbender) is on board to help where he can while Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) continually tows the company line as the official representative of the corporation that paid for Prometheus' mission. The ship's captain, Janek (Idris Elba), does what he can to keep everyone happy and safe but he's only one man.
The team is initially disappointed with what they find on the surface - it amounts to a whole lot of nothing, but soon discovers that something has made straight lines in the dust, indicating that there may be some other presence of some sort there that they haven't found yet. They follow the lines to a massive structure that looks like some sort of dome, and of course, they head inside to investigate. Inside they find humanoid beings that are not from Earth, or at least they don't appear to be, but a DNA test with some human tissue brings up a match. But who are these beings, where did they come from and what have they been doing here in suspended animation for so long?
The most common complaint about the film is that the characters do too many illogical things. Given that this is a team of space travelers on a purely scientific mission, those complaints are not without merit and it's understandable that for some, those unable to suspend their disbelief in this department, it could ruin the film. There are some pretty serious logic gaps and completely stupid decisions on display in the film and occasionally some pretty heavy plot points hinge off of them. A little more polish in this department probably would have gone a long way towards making those viewers concerned with the science and logic aspects happy - again, these people are legitimately entitled to their viewpoint, because once you stop and think about it, in many ways they are right.
But there's more here than that. This is a movie after all, a work of fiction and not of fact and looking at the film solely as a piece of entertainment it works very well. The movie looks beautiful, from the set design to the creature design to the Bava inspired 'Planet Of The Vampires' costumes to the interior of the ship and the caverns that the characters traverse. The effects are excellent, and if done mostly in CGI, fairly seamless and never in the least bit distracting. The film is very ambitious in its scope and lofty in its storytelling, and the performances are pretty strong all across the board with Noomi Rapace doing very fine work here and both Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron turning in work almost as impressive. The film moves at a great pace and offers a few good scares, plenty of thrills and loads of style.
If you overanalyze it too much, you're bound to ruin the fun, just enjoy it as the massively budgeted B-movie that it is and roll with it. If it doesn't always work as a piece of heady, uber intelligent science fiction, it does pretty much always work as a good precursor to the events in Alien, as a fun ride through a darkness populated by frightening creatures. This is spectacle, a popcorn movie that offers little in the way of intelligent science but in place plenty of style over substance and awesome effects. Turn off your brain and enjoy.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Prometheus gets a reference quality transfer presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition and framed at 2.40.1 widescreen. Detail is pretty much perfect from start to finish and if the color scheme used for the movie leans heavy on blues, it's all reproduced very nicely here on Blu-ray. Skin tones look nice and natural, there are no issues with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or aliasing and texture is also very strong throughout the movie. Black levels are deep and inky and there's really nothing worth complaining about here at all. Fox has done excellent work in this department.
Just as impressive is the disc's English language 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix. Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound tracks are provided in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Ukrainian and a Russian DTS 5.1 Surround Sound track is also included. Optional subtitles appear in English SDH, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish and Ukrainian.
The lossless mix here delivers everything you'd want it to - strong bass when the movie calls for it, an excellent score, crystal clear and perfectly balanced dialogue and some very interesting surround activity noticeable throughout the movie, not just in the action and horror scenes. There aren't any traces of hiss or distortion, everything sounds as clean, clear and concise as you could want it to.
The extras kick off with two commentary tracks, the first with Ridley Scott flying solo, the second with co-writer John Spaihts and co-writer/executive producer Damon Lindelof. Scott's track is a good one, well pace with a lot of great information not only about the making of the film but about his intentions with the project as well. There are a few too many moments where he simply tells us what's happening in the movie as if we're unable to see it for ourselves, never a good quality in a commentary, but this doesn't sink the track - if you're a fan of the movie this is worth listening to. The track with Spaihts and Lindelof was edited together out of two separate recordings and as such is a bit choppy in spots. It's interesting, however, as it gives us input from Spaihts, who wrote the original story, and Lindelof, who did the rewrites on it. Regardless of how you shake it, the track is a pretty informative one with some welcome insight into character development, themes and ideas scattered throughout the film. Both tracks are worthwhile and nice additions to this release.
From there we move on to a pretty extensive collection of deleted and extended scenes, each with optional commentary from editor Pietro Scalia and visual effects supervisor Richard Stammers:
Arrival of the Engineers (2:45) / T'is the Season (1:07) / Our First Alien (00:51) / Skin (00:51) / We're Not Alone Anymore (1:32) / Strange Bedfellows (3:11) / Holloway Hungover (1:35) / David's Objective (00:31) / Janek Fills Vickers In (3:43) / A King Has His Reign (3:56) / Fifield Attacks (2:14) / The Engineer Speaks (4:23) / Final Battle (5:51) / Paradise (5:20)
With just over thirty-six minutes of material here, there's a fair bit to go through and some of it is quite interesting. None of it would really have changed a lot of the movie in terms of the key story elements but some of the smaller more character driven moments do flesh out various characters and their motivations rather well and it might have been interesting to have had a version of the movie with this material left intact.
Also included here is nineteen minutes worth of The Peter Weyland Files, which were originally released as internet promo videos before the movie hit theaters. There are four segments here and they are done 'in character' and quite fun:
1 - Quiet Eye: Elizabeth Shaw: Shaw makes a video conference call to Weyland in which she talks about the results of her research.
2 - Happy Birthday, David: Here we're introduced to the film's android, David, who shares with us some of his thoughts and feelings.
3 - Prometheus Transmission: This clip contains some interviews conducted with the ship's screw recorded prior to their mission.
4 - TED Conference, 2023: Peter Weyland gives a speech where he talks about his plans to change the world.
Menus and chapter stops are included and all of the extras on the disc are presented in full high definition. There's also a 'Second Screen Movie App' available for the disc that lets you interact with it on a smart phone or tablet as you watch it. As this is a combo pack release, a DVD version of the movie is included as is a digital copy.
The Final Word:
Prometheus isn't a perfect film but it is a very enjoyable one if you go into it with expectations in check. It's really just a very dressed up monster movie performed by an interesting cast and loaded up with slick sets, cool costumes and plenty of interesting sci-fi style. The performances are good, the set and creature design is very cool and the admittedly very large logic gaps can be easily ignored all in the name of good old fashioned entertainment! Fox's Blu-ray contains some solid extras and offers up reference quality audio and video.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
