** Warning – if for some reason you didn’t think that this film featured a strong female lead, a treacherous android and lots of crew members that all get horribly killed, then this review contains spoilers. **
Ridley Scott has once again returned to the world of Alien in his latest film, Prometheus. The first Alien was a horror classic, and the second set new standards for an action flick, now the good news is that this new film jumps to a third genre – an hilarious space farce!
Yes, there are laughs aplenty as this bucket of ragtag no hopers travel vast distances through deep space to be killed in imaginative ways. In the tradition of farce the drama lurches from one improbable set piece to another, littering the trodden path with dismembered and transmuted crew members. Chortle as idiot spacefarers pet ravenous xeno-worms, awaken murderous titans, and bumble hopelessly around with psychotic androids. Laugh helplessly as they impregnate one another with titanic starfish, goon about sinister ancient statues, and slurp weoponised bio-goo down with their bubbly. Wonder at where exactly this Weyland chap found this collection of misfits, and why on God’s clean earth he would choose to spend a trillion dollars flinging them half way across space to be slain by Mr Universe and his travelling circus of bio-engineered murder-fun.
It’s marvellously watchable stuff’ and great to see proper sci-fi on screen again, even in improbable comedy, rather than all the whizz bang rubbish we’ve gotten used to in recent years. Sadly your most likely conclusion is to note that Ridley Scott is a cinematic genius who could direct the phone book into a watchable two hours if he wanted to, or in this case a confused pseudo-theological exercise in physical comedy.
The actors do a great job, and wail and gnash their disintegrating teeth very effectively as they are stuffed, eviscerated and immolated in turn. Noomi Replace is great as baby Ripley, Charlize Theron is icy if obvious as heir to the throne, and Michael Fassbender is show-stealing as David the android, the straight-man to all the crew’s clownery.
In fact it makes no sense at all, and is insulting nonsense to anyone who has asked themselves big philosophical questions, or tried to reconcile scientific rationality with religious beliefs, but my advice is to put away your critical faculties and enjoy the show. It’s chariots of the gods meets the greek myths meets channel four’s embarrassing bodies season – and it’s easily the third best Alien film, which is higher praise than it sounds. Recommended.
Updated (13-7-2012) – Chris Bailey sent me a link to this insightful YouTube post from BarelyPolitical about the pre-flight training for the Prometheus crew. Explains everything :-)