Prometheus

Yes, this is a remarkable film. Is it a prequel, of sorts yes it is, and it may well be followed by another film before long as well. So archaeologists find star maps across the earth and decide that this is an invitation to travel across the galaxy. The ship Prometheus is then sent to these coordinates, and android, David, spends his time learning languages while the crew sleeps until they reach a moon where lots of questions are maybe answered, and posed.


That’s the nub really, questions, the scientists discover the architects of humanity and also discover that these architects may have had other plans for humanity. There are a number of agendas at play here as well. The scientists are attempting to make their discoveries, but someone has paid for all of this and they may well have their own ideas as to what should happen and what the worth of all of the resources in the mission might be. This theme has been developed in the first four Alien films and really coloured Ripley’s judgement on a number of occasions.

This film not only refutes all human religion, but also has a go at Darwinism as well. All theories of humanity are turned on their head. We’re not made in the image of the creator, human life didn’t evolve in the way we thought on earth, we’re not unique and we’re really bottom of the heap in the galaxy.

In comparison to some prequels I’ve seen the pieces fall into place in quite a subtle manner. The film is made by director whose director’s cut of Blade Runner was actually shorter than the original film, he’s therefore not afraid to do things for solely creative reasons. He’s apparently also known for moving furniture round in his house in the middle of the night, just to try out how things look. He obviously knows his film history as well, judging by all the references to 2001 for instance. I wasn’t as disappointed as I thought I might have been. Although there are times when you may find that you say to yourself, ‘don’t look in there’, ‘it’s not a good to stay the night in there’, as I did.