PROMETHEUS (2012): Man's origin leads to man's end

Despite how it was originally heralded, Ridley Scott's Prometheus is not really a prequel to Alien, nor is it terribly similar in concept.  Although both are set in the vacuum of space and mine considerable mileage out of the vast emptiness of the universe and the solitude of being one of a few people on an entire planet (and the titular creatures do make an appearance), Prometheus has far greater ambitions.

It seeks to explore a literal confrontation between man and god.  Its themes are similar to Altered States, a film in which a scientist took psychotropic drugs which gave him a vision of man's collective memory of his origin, and found that evolution was a little bit messier than he imagined.  Here, scientists travel to a distant planet to find what may be the engineers of mankind.  What they find is also messier than they expected.

A team of explorers is commissioned by Weyland Industries to travel to a distant planet which, according to numerous identical ancient cave paintings, is thought to be the home of those who set life on earth into motion.  While the boss, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) is mainly interested in the exploration, scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) want to make contact with our makers and find out just why we exist.

The answer isn't easy for anyone to take.  In fact, the only one who may have all the answers is David (Michael Fassbender), an android who's spent a long time studying what it's like to be human.  Having already met his maker, he has already faced what the others haven't.  And he may have plans for them.

The android David is the most complex, fascinating character in the film, and Fassbender gives a commanding performance.  When he is absent, the movie suffers.  The human characters, though well performed, are far less appealing: I just couldn't find it in me to care about Elizabeth and Charlie and their relationship, about Elizabeth's ambitions, about the flashbacks with her father (Patrick Wilson).  Theron is fun to watch as the no-nonsense businesswoman who could be mistaken for a robot herself, and the rest of the crew (including Idris Elba and Benedict Wong) are an amiable bunch of working-class schmoes.  Guy Pearce appears in full caked-on old man makeup as the 92-year-old chairman of the company.  Since Pearce looks notoriously unconvincing, and never appears in the film as a young man, the filmmakers might have cast an actual old man and saved a lot of trouble.  I hear that Christopher Lee is still working. (Okay, so a viral video was released with a fake TED talk from the Pearce character as a young man.  But was it still worth it?)

True to its sci-fi nature, Prometheus raises some interesting questions.  What if we could essentially meet God?  How does God feel about us?  Proud?  Ashamed?  Indifferent?  Might our creators feel the same way toward us as we do toward the things we create?  The movie has a great scene in which David poses this question to Charlie.  He doesn't have an answer.

The problem is that once Scott and writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof pose such questions, it seems they don't know what to do with the rest of the film.  While the first half of the film is mysterious, spooky, and thought-provoking, the second half turns into a simplistic yawn.  Once the cards are on the table, the movie goes on autopilot.  The emergence of a proto-version of the Alien creature is well-designed (H.R. Giger was brought in to "devolve" his creation a bit), but the scene surrounding it is brief, hackneyed, and suspenseless.  Fassbender is relegated to the sidelines and the movie focuses on Rapace and her less interesting arc.  A character whom we thought was dead--and did not particularly miss--makes an unnecessary late return, and only gobs up the later scenes in the film.  The climax essentially boils down to stop-bad-guy-from-doing-bad-thing, and is a cookie-cutter action scene that is unworthy of the big ideas that Prometheus presents.

The movie ends on a preposterous note of light and hope, setting up the obligatory sequel and casually ignoring that most of what preceded it was a fable about the doom of mankind.  Scott and crew appear to have learned the wrong lesson from the film.  It leaves its characters still proudly in search of meaning in the universe, when the movie has given them only ugliness.  You know it's a bad moment in a sci-fi film when you want to say to the explorers, "Nothing to see here--just go home and mind your own business from now on."

** 1/2 out of ****