Alright so here I am, having just seen Prometheus I would obviously like to share my thoughts. This is a two-part review, the one you are about to see are my thoughts, and the one in spoiler tags is pretty much everything that happens in the movie.Well Prometheus started off in an interesting way, I certainly wasn't expecting for the film to begin by showing us what the Engineers' look like right out of the gate. Apparently this Enginner has taken upon himself the responsibility of sacrificing himself in order to bring us into existence. The film's pace at the beginning was just off for me. We are introduced to Shaw and Holloway, but are them quickly thrust into outer space where we see the Ship Prometheus already having embarked on its quest to find the Engineers.
Character development was fine, but only for the characters that really mattered like Shaw, Holloway, Vickers, Janek, David, and Weyland himself.
Although the above list are great characters, the one I have a real problem with is Holloway. This man just looks like he wants a damn ego boost, and goes ahead and does some real stupid risks. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't remove my helmet that allows me to stay alive on this planet even though the scans are reading that there is a built in atmosphere. "They were terr-forming!" I don't give a damn Holloway, you don't do a stupid risk like that. So there's that, I don't want to say anymore about Holloway other than the fact that I have no idea just what in the hell Shaw sees in this guy.
Most of the characters, those that aren't important, are hardly given any character development, if at all. They are mostly there to serve their purpose, and then later on die when the script asks for them to die. This is most obvious when Fifield awakens as some sort of monster-man and proceeds to kill everything in sight.
I will just skip ahead to the ending, because this is something that I believe is all everyone's going to be talking about for a while. First of all, the whole bit with Shaw basically repeating similar lines that Ripley had at the end of Alien was unnecessary. In the end, this didn't ruin anything for me, but it could have done without it.
Now on to the last part of the ending, after Starbeast body-hugs the Last Engineer, we are treated to a scene that most of us were probably expecting, but only because when we heard the words "PREQUEL" we immediately thought..."oh, we know how this is going to end." But no, it doesn't end exactly like that, but it ends pretty much how we expected it to.
The Xenomorph body-bursts out of the Last Engineer and looks similar to, but still very different from the Alien we all know and love. It juts out it's mouth, which almost looked like a nod to the inner jaws that the rest of the Xenomorphs we have seen have at their disposal.
All in all, we get a film that in two hours succeeds in the story it wanted to tell. We have plenty of characters, less than half are given proper character development, and with their own agendas. The film is left very ambiguous throughout the entire thing. We don't know much about the black goo, or how it even produces life, but we can guess as to how it works. What was with the Engineers running for their lives? Why were they building biological weapons? Who were they for? (Humans couldn't have been the only reason why they were making these bio-weapons) What was with the wall mural of the enginner, and that wall scultpture-looking thing of what is undeniably a Xenomorph, possibly the one that shows up at the end of the film. Why does Starbeast exist for? To create the Xeno we see at the end of the movie? Was Starbeast an unforeseen by-product of the many experiments that must have taken place at this installation?
More questions begin to pop up, and these are just but a few that popped into my head, and many more that I don't want to bother typing up. I will admit that we are left with plenty of questions, because we still hardly know anything about these Engineers/Space Jockeys that many of us have been discussing about for years, and even decades.
The movie gets an 8 out 10 from me.
I really enjoyed this film, there are flaws here and there, but this is a film that I can say didn't suck at all. I have no problem with how this film started, or ended, the entire middle part was great, there was actual suspense happening, and we got to see a bunch of stuff that none of us ever though we would ever see, because a Prequel actually happening was more than likely never going to happen, but I think it was the only way to go.
Spoiler
So I just finished watching this movie about an hour ago (as of this review being typed). Now I am going to just give my thoughts on the film, I'll try and be as neutral as possible without going apeshit or anything, but that doesn't mean that I'll be doing a review where I don't say what happens in the film, because I will. As before, spoilers...but I believe that in the just talk thread it was already said that we can spoil away now, so here goes.
At the beginning of this film we are introduced to our first "Engineer." I would like to call this guy Prometheus based upon what I saw. I was too distracted by what was going on to actually view the surroundings, but I assume that he is on Earth. The Engineer drinks the black goo that we are shown throughout the film and starts to die, he does this all while falling down into the water which is where apparently life starts to take shape. Soon after this we are introduced to Holloway and Shaw. Shaw discovers a painting, the one we all have seen during the trailers and other pieces of footage. We are then immediately placed on the ship Prometheus with nothing in between this scene and the one before it. If you have seen the viral videos, then you can piece it all together, for those that haven't seen it, you aren't missing much since this is all pretty much explained later in the film.
We are then introduced to David 8. We see that he is looking into Shaw's dreams, and whether this was something that he had to do as ordered, or just out of curiosity...we don't know. Moving on we get to see a bit of David here, we are shown what he does, and most of the time he listens to videos on how to speak a certain language. Soon after, David begins to wake up everyone just as soon as he finds Vickers doing some push-ups because she is badass like that apparently, all while barely having left the stasis pod. We're introduced to most of the characters, but the only ones that are worth anything are Shaw, Holloway, David 8, Vickers, and Janek. These characters, and Weyland himself (who appears later in the movie) are the only ones that have any sort of character development. The rest are just there to die when the time arrives for them to do so.
Not long after this, some of the crew that includes David, Holloway, and Shaw, decided to venture forth into the unknown after discovering odd structures on the surface below them. They enter only for David to get curiosity get the better of him and unleash projected recordings of The Engineers running away from something. The crew follows these projections until they come across the end of the Projection where one of the Engineers falls dead on the floor, which leads them to the room with that giant head we have all seen. A storm starts to kick up, so the crew gets out of there. David looks around the room with the jars and takes one. Shaw takes the decapitated head of the fallen Engineer and takes off. We get a scene where the storm is causing much dismay to Shaw and Holloway only for David to come to the rescue.
Back in the ship Prometheus we are told that Fifield and Milburn are not back, and are apparently lost, which they are as the film later shows. David begins to examine the Jar that he took, while Shaw and Ford begin to do their own examination of the Engineers head, which turns out to not be an exoskeleton as Shaw believed. We then see the familiar face of the Engineer, much like the one from the beginning of the film. This head soon pops as soon as Ford does some prodding. A sample is taken, and we soon find out that its DNA matches our own. David 8 then starts to take apart the jar and the black goo reappears once again, David then uses this in the drink of Holloway, which later turns out to be a most unfortunate thing.
Things aren't going well for Fifield and Milburn. They are lost, and begin losing their shit over a ping in one of Fifield's "pups" that seems to be detecting a life form, which Janek later says was just a glitch. Milburn and Fifield eventually get their first look at one of the creatures that Prometheus presents to us. I can only assume that the Black Goo, mixed with any sort of liquid, eventually starts to take life of its own, possibly, I have no idea, then again I don't believe there was any sort of water around the jars...so this can be disregarded. Anyway, Milburn is thrilled to see this thing, and soon after he gets screwed by this thing, while Fifield, in an attempt to cut the damn thing off, is splashed with acid that messes with his face, and later on...somehow turns him into some sort of crazy primitive looking, super strong, bastard of a monster-man. Again, this probably has more to do with what happens in between this scene and his eventual reappearance, but who knows, something causes him to turn into a monster-man, and I don't think that the acid was it at all, although it possibly could have been all that was needed for this to happen.
So then we get the crew going back down into the Engineer dome looking thing, and they come across Milbrun who is now dead as can be. David takes it upon himself to go fix this "glitch" that one of Fifield's "pups" has been experiencing, which is an excuse for David 8 to discover more things to keep hidden away from the rest of the crew. He finds a chamber...similar to the one where the Space Jockey was in as seen in ALIEN. Apparently these Engineers where headed for Earth which we later find out was because they were going to wipe us out. David then comes across one of the Engineers who is still alive, which is great news for him and for Weyland, and terrible news for everyone else. Holloway is showing signs of some sort of sickness, and Shaw yells for everyone to start getting the hell out of here. They do so, only for Vickers to kill Holloway as he asks for death. We then thrust into a scene where Shaw is apparently pregnant. She pleads to David 8 to take it out of her, but he gives some bullshit response that they can't do that. Shaw then takes it upon herself to remove the thing herself, and succeeds. As this happens Fifield returns and begins to kick the living crap out of the cannon fodder that this film brought. Fifield is killed and we are never sure as to why he became this monster-man.
Shaw later finds out that Weyland is pretty much alive, and has been on the ship this whole time. We also find out that Vickers is his daughter. Weyland and the team prepare to leave once again and venture inside the chamber where the Last Engineer is holed up in. They open the chamber, and the Last Engineer pops out. David is decapitated by the Engineer and pretty much kills everyone except for Shaw who is running the hell out of there. The Last Engineer sets a course for Earth, Shaw tells Janek to stop this ship, Janek does so by sacrificing himself all while Vickers leaves by escape Pod. The ship comes crashing down, Shaw and Vickers begin to run, and Vickers ends up being killed by a section of the ship landing right on top of her. Shaw barely makes it out alive and heads for a section of the Prometheus that detached itself before it crashed right on the Engineer ship. She walks in, and finds out that her baby, the STARBEAST is huge as hell and wanting to comes out. David 8 is still alive and tells Shaw that The Last Engineer is coming after here, which it actually is because it's already right there a few feet away from her. It pounces on her and she pretty much unleashes hell by releasing Starbeast to attack The Last Engineer. Starbeast then proceeds to win the struggle that it and The Last Engineer become a part of. Shaw leaves, and David 8 tells her that there is more than one ship. So Shaw takes David 8, they leave the planet, and head for the Engineers' home planet to ask some questions about why they wanted to kill us after having created us.
The close of the film is pretty much The Last Engineer being body-bursted and out plops a Xenomorph, similar to the one we all know and love, but very much different.
So the movie ends, credits roll...and that's it.
