Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Prometheus’

Written by Scott Edwards

Logan Marshal-Green, Noomi Rapace, and Michael Fassbender as Charlie Holloway, Elizabeth Shaw, and David in Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS. (Photo Courtesy of Kerry Brown/Twentieth Century Studios.)

​One of the subjects that I love to listen to people talk about is where did we come from. As there are only a couple different trains of thought when it comes to this, the religious path, the evolutionary path and of course the alien path, I love to hear why people think what they do. As I am still not sold on all of these, I've heard great points to support someone's beliefs and when debating this, I hope that people actually are able to speak with substance on them, if they don’t, they just sound silly. It can be a touchy subject for many people and can cause relationships to be torn apart and until there is a definitive answer to it, the debates will continue to go on.

Researchers Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway have stumbled across another great find and have been putting the pieces together for years. Seeing that different civilizations have been drawing the same symbol all over the world, there has to be a reason behind it; that the earth has been visited by beings from another planet, and they are inviting us to come meet them. Being able to find a wealthy backer to fund their expedition, the two have found transport on the Prometheus to take them to a world that has never been charted.  With a final blessing from Peter Weyland who has long since passed away, the two may be able to discover the origins of life on Earth.

Arriving at the planet, all on board the ship have their own doubts about what they will be able to find, but when seeing massive pyramids that are not made by the elements, Shaw and Holloway know that they are on the right path. Getting a group together to go and explore the alien site, the crew is quick to discover that terraforming has taken place inside of the pyramid that allows them to breathe the air in the alien environment. Searching the ancient site, the crew’s android David is able to activate a holographic program that points them in the correct direction. Finding the body of an Engineer and being able to date it back two thousand years, the group still has no idea what they are really looking for, but when David is able to open the door to a sealed off room, they find something that will change their lives forever.

Entering the cavern and seeing a large face that almost looks human, the group notices that the change in the environment is eating away at everything that they have found and need to find a way to preserve even a little piece of what could change history. Being able to secure the head of the Engineer that they found in the hallway to bring back to the ship, David has his own mission and secures one of the leaking vases in the room. Getting back to the ship to run their tests, Shaw and her crew are able to unmask the dead Engineer and see that it is more human like than they could have ever imagined. But David’s find is much more sinister when he is able to examine the vase he picked up and finds that it has something alive inside. Wanting to run a test on the sample of the living organism he collected, David spikes a drink meant for Holloway and watches as the scientist goes through a disturbing transformation. As the crew tries to understand their discoveries, an infected crew member, along with missing researchers, leads to the Prometheus being locked down, but it may not be enough when all of the alternative motives are revealed.

I've made a point to stay away from what other people think about this movie and how it relates to the timeline of the Alien franchise, which means that all I see is the birth of a freaky alien that will kill everything put in its way. This movie has more of an action feel with a bit of science thrown in for good measure since there is always science in an alien movie, but the discovery aspect is what really made it play well for me. Trying to find the origins of life on Earth, the group finds something so much more when they find out what the planet, they are on was actually used for and the true purpose of those vases. I have very little to complain about in this movie as I did not catch that many plot holes and when things started to get stagnant, you would get a laugh or some action to get it moving again and I cannot wait to revisit the second chapter in this prequel series, to see what I might have missed the first time around.

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