Prometheus (2012)

I was halfway through rewatching Prometheus when I got the news of H.R Gigers death. Although Giger did not work on this movie the whole look of it is taken straight out of his masterful designs on Alien which means that this review will be my tribute to the most exceptional artist the world has ever known. RIP.

Ok, there are a couple of major issues with Prometheus, coming from one single source: the script.

Firstly we have the Alien connection. By rewriting the alien history a lot of fans were pretty damn pissed off, and fair enough, I understand them. A little. We wanted xenomorphs, not squids. But as far as the plot goes it isn't that bad, only different from what we wanted. A little blunt maybe but still worthwhile. And the squid is actually quite a cool creature. I mean, anything with tentacles is cool. Even Monster shark.

Then there are the characters. Looking back at Alien with its colorful crew we have to settle with a bunch of bickering, faceless buffons. Yes, they bickered in Alien but that felt like it was actual people arguing, not actors speaking from a script.

And now we come to my only genuine hatred towards Prometheus. The space jockey. One of the absolutely coolest things about Alien is that so very different remnant of a creature, one of the very very few instances in cinema history where we were able to lay our eyes upon a truly alien being, something so mindbogglingly different from all the bugeyed aliens before and after. I was well and truly pissed off over the fact that this was just an exoskeleton, a fucking spacesuit. Years of picturing from what alien hell this was spawned from was just blown out of my mind with a single scene. I hate the filmmakers for that, I really do.

So why am I still rating this movie as high as I do? Because no matter what flaws the script have, it still is one hell of a gorgeous looking scifimovie that has all that sure craftsmanship that we are used to from Ridley Scott. And as soon as I remember that this isn't really a prequel to Alien, then I'm actually pretty damn content. Just the scene of the Prometheus entering the atmosphere and landing on the surface of the planet makes the blu-ray worth its price..

Oh, I forgot about the donutscene. Why the hell would you try to flee a tumbling spaceship by running in it's PATH? Gah.

And they really should have used the alternative scene of the mutated geologist attacking the Prometheus. It looks so much more alien instead of a guy covered in latex.