Prometheus

n°1 - 6/10 No Name

August 16, 2012  Spoiler

Hi, here's my recession of Prometheus; it comes paired with my critique to that blockbuster-movie: After 33 years of abstinence Ridley Scott now returns to sci-fi-genre which he, back then, ‘had helped to define’. For this movie the plot is rather simple: it narratively and visually re-assembles lots of elements from Hollywood productions of sci-fi / fantasy genres of that past 30 years. Indeed it stands in the finest tradition of Scott’s craftsmanship, but it doesn’t even attempt to defy nowadays conventions of digital graphics and special effects. Quite the contrary: the whole story is based upon that digital razzmatazz which also involves brand-new 3D filming-tricks- Anyway, here’s what happens: A team of natural-scientists of various scientific fields start off for a space travel— it’s a mission to far off solar-system. Their huge and massive spaceship is called ‘Prometheus’. Two of that team, a guy and his girlfriend, had initiated the whole endeavor; for they are crypto-archeologists they’d to convince technocratic-tycoon Weyland (company name is a term from the Alien-saga) to follow their sneaking suspicion up.Their theory is, that life cannot hail from earth and must have derived from somewhere else. It is corroborated w. their finds of ancient rock-inscriptions of different civilizations, which all show up a star map.That all takes place before the story sets in. In the main-storyline, this couple of archeologists plays at first a subsidiary role, just as the rest of scientific staff onboard. Accompanied and supervised by android David and human resources director Mrs. Vickers, their long journey not only gets more bearable, but it is only made possible!; Later-on it’s also David who (with his superior cognitive and fine motor skills) restrains the crew all the time… As soon as ‘Prometheus’ has landed on ragged and cliffy terrain, the crew is dying to start their expedition: They start off with several armored personnel carriers and ATVs to explore a gigantic structure which is shaped like a pyramid. Arrived inside, they find dozens of corridors which meander from one floor/level to the next. It’s all very dark and walls are lined with bone-like bracings. Some spots on the walls show up enigmatic inscriptions. Full of beans, David immediately starts to explore these relics and enters some combinations in the alien-keypads. Soon, the expedition team discovers that they’ve found what they were sent for- seemingly skeletonized corpses pave their way, so the whole structure once must have been inhabited by those, when still vivid. As tall as a beanstalk, these ‘Godfather’-engineers were all white musclemen looking like skinheads. Their spacesuits are of the same shape of biomimetic overalls as that of the spacejockey -‘skingineer!’ who had been introduced in the first Alien-movie. Unfortunately, all of them seem to have fallen victim to some catastrophic incident thousands of years ago, however none of them shows up a bursted chest. Furthermore, the team discovers hundreds of urns standing on the floor of a dreary dome and loosely grouped around a huge monolithic ‘skingineer’-head. Those vases contain some crudeoil-like fluids- which has some mutagenic properties on any life-form exposed to it. Then, all the sudden, an extraterrestrial storm front is raising. This makes the expedition-team skip this place hastily. Back on the Prometheus, they notice that they’ve left behind two of their men who got lost in the maze of dark corridors. In the meantime, David explores one of those urns which he had brought secretly onboard of the Prometheus. Inside of it, he finds some samples of translucent greenish fluid- he is not going to analyze it further in a laboratory; instead he plans to reveal its effects when exposing a man to it. So he secretly administers it to Holloway (one of archeologists) who, soon after, shows first symptoms of genetic mutation- however he has sex with his girlfriend and impregnates her with mutant sperms- that's before severity of symptoms become evident. Then, when the scientific-delegation is out on a limb on a second expedition, another ‘trade’-secret is revealed: Mr. Weyland, who is ought to be dead for a long time was also kept on life support and is awakened again from his cryo-sleep; this old doater’s plan is to gain immortality by asking betimes a ‘skingineer’ for a ‘fountain of youth’ or some way to keep longer alive. Along the way, the expedition experiences the effects of ‘acroagnosis’: Inside the pyramid-temple, the team members are jeopardized occasionally and some others get infected with those mutagenic fluids. When remaining members of Prometheus-crew notice that they’re changing, those get expelled from the ship. Besides humans, there are some alien-cobraworms which got exposed to fluid as well…. All who were infected so far get killed instantly (with a flamethrower) and archeologist Shaw initiates an abortion on her own (lastly with the helping hands of a robot-surgery). She doesn’t want to give birth to an alien-baby although she originally has been completely infertile?!? Abominably, her alien fetus survives and grows even quicker outside her womb—to a giant squid. Davids curiosity finally leads him to discover one last ‘Spacejockey/ engineer’ alive- he's just another guy who was kept on live support, however in his spaceship. David immediately fetches Mr. Weyland such as remaining scientists and then starts to get that guy up. The space-jockey hesitantly awakens. When he’s back in his constitution he stands up eight foot (2,5 meters) tall and looks down at the delegation. David bunches out and declares the purpose of their visit to the ‘skingineer’ in some Indo-European protolanguage and declares that Mr. Weyland seeks to gain immortalty. (Instead of David) The Spacejockey is smiling mockingly and acts in best hooligan manner: he catches David and tears of his head— with it he then clobbers over the head of Mr. Weyland. Both are lying on the ground and Mr. Weyland seems to pass away. Contrasting him android David is still working, even with his head separated. Gaining momentum, the Space-engineer determinedly leaves to initiate the launching-sequence for his own spacecraft, a crescent derelict-ship. After David naively has picked it out of the onboard holographic star map, Jockey's destination obviously is earth. Archeologist Mrs. Shaw meanwhile has made her escape from the site; panic-fueled she runs over extraterrestrial plateau and warns her remaining fellows via radio transmission to stop that engineer going berserk by any means. Human resources director Mrs. Vickers refuses instantly to sacrifice HER ship, but Prometheus Pilots are already preparing to start off and ram the departing juggernaut; meantime they instruct Vickers to leave if she doesn’t plan to join their self-sacrifice. Vickers makes her escape and even saves an integrated convoying ship from the collision. Then, the two large ships collide and its carcasses fall to the ground-- just landed, Vickers starts to run immediately away from it. So does Shaw. But it’s too late and the falling wreck is overwhelming them. Vickers gets gooified and Shaw, crouching in a recess, survives. Now, Shaw, the Engineer and damaged David are the last remaining actors...; if there wasn’t still a small squid-alien, which meanwhile has grown to remarkable size… When Shaw enters Vickers conveying boat to fuel up her respiratory reservoirs, she learns from David (‘s head) that the engineer has survived the crash and ‘is coming for her’. Not prepared for a fight she lures him to the access-airlock of the robot-surgery and then opens it abruptly. Now the Space jockey gets caught and entwined by several tentacles; the alien-squidhugger is about impregnating the Space-Engineer with its own breed. Once more, Shaw makes her escape: in the ending she picks up David’s head and corpus and leaves with him for a reconnaissance proper to the ‘homeworld of the Skingineers’. She wants to learn why they’ve decided to wipe out human race that once was created by one of them (which is largely obscure, either).