Plot
A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Release Year: 2012

Rating: 8.1/10 (9,944 voted)

Critic's Score: 63/100

Director: Ridley Scott

Stars: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender

Storyline
A team of scientists journey through the universe on the spaceship "Prometheus" on a voyage to investigate Alien life forms. The team of scientists becomes stranded on an Alien world, and as they struggle to survive it becomes clear that the horrors they experience are not just a threat to themselves, but to all of mankind.

Writers: Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof

Cast:
Noomi Rapace - Elizabeth Shaw
Michael Fassbender - David
Charlize Theron - Meredith Vickers
Idris Elba - Janek
Guy Pearce - Peter Weyland
Logan Marshall-Green - Charlie Holloway
Sean Harris - Fifield
Rafe Spall - Millburn
Emun Elliott - Chance
Benedict Wong - Ravel
Kate Dickie - Ford
Patrick Wilson - Shaw's Father
Lucy Hutchinson - Young Shaw
Giannina Facio - Shaw's Mother

Taglines: They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.

Details

Official Website: Official Facebook | Official site |

Release Date: 8 June 2012

Filming Locations: Toronto Film Studios, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Technical Specs

Runtime: 124 min

Did You Know?

Trivia:
The Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, who plays British character Shaw, worked on set with a dialect coach to help her achieve an appropriate accent.

Quotes:
Peter Weyland: 100,000 BC: stone tools. 4,000 BC: the wheel. 900 AD: gunpowder - bit of a game changer, that one. 19th century: eureka, the lightbulb! 20th century: the automobile, television, nuclear weapons, spacecrafts, Internet. 21st century: biotech, nanotech...

User Review

Ridley Scott forgot everything about great movies except for the craft

Rating: 3/10

I'm really sorry, but this a major disappointment.

No, I didn't expect miracles or something close to the original Alien. I've been following Scott for 30 years - and it's clear that he has been on the decline since Gladiator and Black Hawk Down.

I liked a few of his later movies like A Good Year - but most have been rather flat and uninspired.

One thing I've noticed, is that he's gotten increasingly complacent with his own "point of view" in terms of historical facts and how things work in reality. It's like he has a complete disregard for plausible motivations or factual information about how things work.

Case in point - there's a scene in the movie where a certain character has to have an operation performed on her body - and it involves slicing directly through the skin and muscle-tissue of her Abdomen. After the procedure, she's simply "stitched together" by metal clips in like 3 seconds - and with a bit of local anesthetic, she continues to move and jump about with some moaning. Ehm, you CAN'T have any kind of normal movement with your muscle tissue completely severed - and there was absolutely no healing involved. Just one of a series of ridiculous events.

The plot is entirely juvenile and cliché stuff with "profound" questions like who created us. For some reason, the beings who created us also want to kill us - and it seems to involve incredibly elaborate genetic engineering that also happened to kill most of our creators in their remote "lab facility". They're CLEARLY much more powerful than we are - and they could just bomb the hell out of us, or do it in a thousand simpler ways. But no, they seem to want to utilise excessively elaborate and dangerous genetic modification or infestation - that they can't handle at all. At least, that's what I got out of it.

They also like to record recent events with some kind of holographic recorder device that is unable to render clear images, only some cool ghostly images that I bet Scott loved to play with. But they're quite polite in how they let you play recordings of their security procedure - so you can easily access their systems with zero effort.

Characters are completely void of personality and growth. They're REALLY REALLY stupid - and they like to freak out for no apparent reason, and they like to stay calm and playful when there IS a reason - like when encountering an alien species for the first time in history.

Among these people with zero personality - we have some willing to gleefully commit suicide by ramming an alien ship, because they like their captain, and they're required to do so because he "can't fly worth a damn" - despite him being the primary pilot hired by a billionaire to do nothing but fly the ship.

Then we have a religious scientist who concludes that she's found our creators, based on: "It's what I choose to believe".

Then we have people who decide to open the door to their ship with no thought process, despite having just faced complete chaos by extremely hostile alien forces - because one of their crew mates seems to be lying in front of the door. This while other crew mates have just been taken over by some kind of alien infestation.

Then we have the very same religious scientist look at an alien "head" they brought back - and she notices some "strange growth" on said head. She then spends 2 seconds thinking and concludes that this is obviously some kind of "foreign cell stuff" (impressive deduction, I must say) - and she decides (for kicks) to stimulate the cells with some kind of energy - just to see what happens. No research - no caution - no nothing.

Then we have the boyfriend of said religious scientist who decides that the air in a completely alien environment is breathable because his device tells him it is - and he immediately removes his helmet. A classic Hollywood scientist moment.

This movie is FULL of this kind of utterly implausible behavior and random decisions.

It has a couple of "for effect" gore scenes - but Scott manages to include ZERO tension along with them. As a result, they're mildly disgusting - but they have no lasting effect whatsoever.

The "aliens" that are a part of this movie all look like plastic - because of overly smooth and pale skin. They look like Lovecraft creatures without a much-needed paint-job.

Inexplicably, the "alien eggs" are now urns with something completely different from a face-hugger inside them. They're full of some kind of genetic modification "goo" technology.

We have Guy Pearce doing a pretty weak "powermonger" performance in pretty bad old-guy make up.

We have a horribly predictable twist involving Guy Pearce and a certain other cast member. Totally wasted and pointless twist, to make it worse.

We have an android, well-acted by Fassbender, who seems to be completely random in his decisions and motivations. I simply didn't get what he was about or why he did what he did. It made no sense in any context - not to me anyway.

The music was overwrought and didn't fit with the mood of the film, and it seemed like one theme being repeated endlessly. A surprise, given Scott's usual flair for good music.

I think Lindelof is a complete and total hack - who only got the job because he was the "yes-man" who could match Scott's ego. This is pretty obvious in interviews - where Lindelof always manages to publicly kiss Scott's behind.

1 Star for Fassbender's performance.

1 Star for the amazingly detailed visuals.

1 Star for how the above combine to form the excellent beginning.

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