Sunday, March 17, 2013

Prometheus: finally. duh!

the Poster:



















the Trailer:


the Plot:
As a hovering spacecraft departs an Earth-like world, a humanoid alien drinks a dark bubbling liquid, then starts to disintegrate. The alien's remains cascade into a waterfall. His DNA triggers a biogenetic reaction. perhaps to generate the human life on the planet.

In 2089, archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover a star map in Scotland that matches others from several unconnected ancient cultures. They interpret this as an invitation from humanity's forerunners, the "Engineers". Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the elderly CEO of Weyland Corporation, funds an expedition to follow the map to the distant moon LV-223 aboard the scientific vessel Prometheus. The ship's crew travels in stasis while the android David (Michael Fassbender) monitors their voyage. Arriving in 2093, they are informed of their mission to find the Engineers. Mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) orders the crew to avoid making contact without her permission.

The Prometheus lands near a large artificial structure, which a team explores. Inside they find numerous stone cylinders, a large, monolithic statue of a humanoid head, and the decapitated corpse of a large alien, thought to be an Engineer; Shaw recovers its head. Other bodies are found, leading the crew to surmise that the species is extinct. Crew members Millburn and Fifield grow uncomfortable with the true nature of the mission and attempt to return to Prometheus.

The expedition is cut short when a rapidly-approaching storm forces the crew to return to the ship. David secretly takes a cylinder from the structure, while the remaining ones begin leaking a dark liquid. Back in the ship's lab, the Engineer's DNA is found to match that of humans. David investigates the cylinder and the dark liquid inside. He then intentionally taints a drink with a drop of the substance and gives it to the unsuspecting Holloway. Shortly after, Shaw and Holloway have an intercourse.

At the ship, the rest of the crew discovered that Millburn and Fifield are left stranded in the structure when they get lost. As the Prometheus's captain, Janek gets in touch with them, they are told to stay put until the storm clears. However, as Janek left the control room to get laid with Vickers, inside the structure, a snake-like creature kills Millburn, and sprays a corrosive fluid that melts Fifield's helmet. Fifield falls face-first into a puddle of dark liquid.

As the storm clears, Janek and the crew heads off to the structure, only to find Millburn's corpse and the room where the remains were found are changing, with dark liquids eking. David separately discovers a control room containing a surviving Engineer in stasis, and a star map highlighting Earth. Meanwhile, Holloway sickens rapidly. He is rushed back to Prometheus, but Vickers refuses to let him aboard, and at his urging, burns him to death with a flamethrower.

Later, a medical scan reveals that Shaw, despite being sterile, is pregnant. Fearing the worst, she uses an automated surgery table to extract a squid-like creature from her abdomen and secure it in a medo-pad. As she attempts to get away from the creature, Shaw then discovers that Weyland has been in stasis aboard Prometheus. He explains that he wants to ask the Engineers to prevent his death from old age and urged Shaw to fulfill Holloway's destiny should he still be alive: find the answers that they were looking for. As Weyland prepares to leave for the structure, Vickers addresses him as "Father".

A mutated Fifield attacks the Prometheus's hangar bay and kills several crew members before he is killed. Janek, speculates that the structure was an Engineer military installation that lost control of a virulent biological weapon, the dark liquid. He also determines that the structure houses a spacecraft and that the planet is just a temporary place for them to develop the biological weaponry before it in turn devours them instead. He vows to never let the Engineers come near Earth at all cost.

Weyland and a team return to the structure, accompanied by Shaw. David wakes the Engineer from stasis and speaks to him in an attempt to explain what Weyland wants. The Engineer responds by decapitating David and killing Weyland and his team, before reactivating the spacecraft. In a restrospect, it is revealed that David intended it so just because he wants to escape Weyland's hold over him.

Shaw flees and warns Janek that the Engineer is planning to release the liquid on Earth, convincing him to stop the spacecraft. Janek ejects the lifeboat and rams Prometheus into the alien craft, while Vickers flees in an escape pod. The Engineer's disabled spacecraft crashes onto the ground; its wreckage crushes Vickers. Shaw goes to the lifeboat and finds her alien offspring is alive and has grown to gigantic size. David's still-active head warns Shaw that the Engineer has survived. The Engineer forces open the lifeboat's airlock and attacks Shaw, who releases her alien offspring onto the Engineer; it thrusts an ovipositor down the Engineer's throat, subduing him.

Shaw recovers David's remains, and with his help, launches another Engineer spacecraft. She intends to reach the Engineers' homeworld in an attempt to understand why they wanted to destroy humanity.

In the lifeboat, an alien creature bursts out of the Engineer's chest. Much like the Alien of the Alien movies. hu hu, the Prequel of Alien Prequels.


the Riviu:
i dl this movie at first because MF was on it. and then i never get down to watching it. been busy and quite uninterested in the scifi genre for a while. however, CinemaSins got me intrigued as it featured this movie as one of their projects. i mean, i can't possibly watch the sins before the movie itself, right? even wikipedia readings are not enough to sate the intrigue. so there went my 2 hours or so. and i feel it was ok enough to warrant 3 stars.

yet, it is almost unfilfilling as much as when plot believability is in concern. i mean, it must have hurt to have an uncustomised caesarean performed, and yet Shaw is jumping left and right, doing stuffs that even agile athletic person would find difficulty with within minutes of the surgery. is she an android as well?

plus, the coherence of the safety measures taken. i mean, yes, have that bubblehead for oxygen. but don't you need to have your hands covered too? nope, they don't think it matters. another plus, the flamethrower thingy. you dare to use it in a hostile land with less oxygen and more substance that can literally cause you to die in 2 minutes? what if there is other lethal combustion when you use it? no, it doesn't matter.

btw, these people surely thinks having a monster with many hands (or tentacles) are cool (or the most horrid). i mean, the Kraken is portrayed as Squid-like monster hunting the ships at seas. so is the monster in this movie. cuba la pikir idea lain kot!

but perhaps, in their defense, maybe this is a reference to the Greek mythology, of the Titan Prometheus of Greek mythology who defies Zeus and gifts humankind their origins from clay and further bestows them the gift of fire, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment. The gods want to limit their creations in case they attempt to usurp the gods.

In the Wikepedia reviews, it is written that the film deals with humanity's relationship with the gods — their creators — and the consequence of defying them. A human expedition intends to find God and receive knowledge about belief, immortality and death. They find superior beings who appear god-like in comparison to humanity, and the Prometheus crew suffer consequences for their pursuit. Further religious allusions are implied by the Engineers' decision to punish humanity with destruction 2,000 years before the events of the film. Tony Scott, the (late) director suggested that an Engineer was sent to Earth to stop humanity's increasing aggression, but was crucified, perhaps implying it was Jesus Christ.

Geez.. come to think of it, it does seem plausible that the movie is the vessel of C. no offense though. i'm just saying that now i understand why David was created in the image of its creator. that he was so desperate of being free from the shackles of his creator that he dared to experiment with the liquid, should it be the key to his freedom. hey, doesn't that seems to imply Anti-C values?! i'm boggled!

one thing i'm sure though, once you hit the button play, u'll be intrigued. and that warrants 3 stars, if you care to ignore the many CinemaSins that niggled into your mind :)

ps: if this is what Tony Scott had been thinking in his warped mind, geez, couldn't fault him for wanting to be gone from this f-up world. just saying.





2 comments:

  1. I think it still holds enough merit to see, at least for the elements that are really good, and it is worth seeing on a big screen, if you get the chance. Fine review Shah.

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  2. thanks dtmmr.

    sure it got its plus points aside. it's just that CinemaSins really made me this extra critical :)

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