Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” intrigues with its opening scene and sustains this right up until the end credits, perhaps even after this point: hours after seeing the film, I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. A semi-prequel to Scott’s science-fiction horror masterpiece “Alien,” it begins rather appropriately with the silent introduction of an extraterrestrial being, but not the one of “Alien” that haunted our nightmares. This alien is tall and humanoid, with a pale complexion and the darkened eyes of a great white. Adorned in a monk’s robe, it stands atop a gargantuan waterfall in the early years of Earth, where it is shown to poison itself. Its apparent sacrifice and subsequent tumble into the flowing waters below breathes human life into our planet. Already, “Prometheus” is stirring.
We travel forward to the year 2089 and find ourselves in the mountainous landscape of the Isle of Skye in bonny Scotland. Here, archeologist couple Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, the original girl with the dragon tattoo) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green, “Devil”) discover a cave painting depicting humans worshipping a constellation, the same constellation they have seen etched into the cave walls of other ancient civilisations, none of which ever shared any contact. Shaw, whose neck dangles a crucifix, sheds a tear at the sight. Investigation into the skies above shows that this constellation exists in a far-off corner of the universe, and that sitting within it is a sun similar to our own, and a moon capable of sustaining life. Intriguing. (Continue Reading…)
(Eight outta Ten)
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