An archaeologist couple (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green) travel on the spaceship Prometheus to a far-off moon, seeking a race of ancient astronauts. Also on board is an icy representative (Charlize Theron) of their corporate sponsor (Guy Pearce), the crew (led by Idris Elba), a team of scientists and an android butler (Michael Fassbender). But alien horrors are waiting to punish their technological hubris.
Ridley Scott’s gorgeously shot prequel to his 1979 horror film Alien is named after the mythic Titan who was punished for stealing the gods’ fire and giving it to humankind. Another apt myth is Prometheus’s brother Atlas, who was condemned to hold up the sky. So much weighs on Scott’s shoulders – gimmicky trailers; fan anticipation of Alien’s famous tropes; his 2010 stinkeroo Robin Hood – that Prometheus sometimes flounders trying to balance everything.
While its abject gore echoes the Alien franchise’s gender and sexual anxieties, Prometheus is almost palpably about the awe of existential yearning; creation and destruction alike are presented as uncanny and sublime. It’s a familiar Scott theme; Fassbender’s morally ambivalent android recalls Blade Runner’s soul-searching replicants. Prometheus also strongly recalls 2001: A Space Odyssey; not just in its visual poetry, pristine spaceship interiors and recalcitrant robot, but in the mood of mystery generated by the opacity of plot and character. Prometheus makes seekers of us all.
In cinemas June 7
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Australian Competitions Club
