Prometheus is grand science fiction in the strain of Blade Runner, Alien, Solaris, Dark City, etc. It just isn’t as good. It is a worthwhile viewing experience, however, if for no other reason than the fact that Prometheus, in being not-great-but-merely-very-good, casts into sharp view those qualities which made the previous greats, Greats. Prometheus wants to ask grand questions, but it answers too many of its own questions. It wants to be fulfilling, but in satiating too much of our curiosity, it leaves one just a bit empty. And while the 70’s sci-fi look of the film—a science fiction mise-en-scene which no one has improved upon in the decades since—makes you feel like you are watching great science fiction, I came to the end with one overarching though: I want to watch Alien again, because, wow, Alien was amazing.
Prometheus starts off on completely the wrong foot. Even while watching the opening scene, I was horrified by its brutal opacity. As an alien spacecraft leaves the atmosphere, some humanoid creature, on a planet that looks very much like Earth, dissolves himself into the water using some strange liquid, and we see his DNA shred itself to pieces, leading to the inescapable conclusions that life on Earth was begun by an alien race. Mind you, this is the first scene. Already, I know more than I want to know. Already, I know that the crew of the Prometheus will find some origin point of this alien race, and that they will discover that they did, indeed, create humanity. At this point, the entire movie was practically ruined, in the first scene. The only thing that kept my interest piqued was the belief that Ridley Scott must have something up his sleeve. Surely he would not show us that, and then simply follow through with it? Surely, there is something about this scene that we do not understand?
There wasn’t. The twist was that, in fact, that the Engineers—the human scientists’ term for this proto-human race—are now trying to kill us. Thankfully, the movie refrains from telling us why this proto-human species is now determined to undo that which they started, but this is about the only thing the movie refrains from answering for us. The movie ends with the following things basically known: this species created us, they then wanted to destroy us, and to do so they engineered a black goo which mutates living things into horrendous monsters, and eventually one of these mutations will turn into the Alien we were all frightened by 33 years ago. The only thing left to the imagination is why this race of beings wants to kill us.
Now, for a moment, I will ignore the damage that this movie does to Alien’s original ideas. The fact that the Alien was actually bread to destroy us, specifically, is quite a let-down. It smacks of the same Everything-Is-About-Us science fiction that I normally ascribe to lesser sci-fi artists than Ridley Scott. Much more frightening was the idea that the Alien race was simply out there. It evolved, much like we did, except that it was a nearly perfect killing machine, and we just happened to run into it, and we just happened killed in the process, unless we happened to be Sigourney Weaver. Numerous other such mysteries and concepts were ruined as well.
But I ignore these because Prometheus can stand on its own terms, and it is its own terms which I believe are continually weakened by its lack of restraint. Think of the climactic suicide crash between the Prometheus and the alien vessel. In the film, this is a triumphant moment of good triumphing over evil—or at the very least, of humanity triumphing over someone else. It is also bland and predictable. Imagine, if you will, if we really were not sure what the proto-humans’ plans were, if we were not sure that this was a weapon meant to destroy us, and if we really were not sure what “this” was in the first place. The dramatic tension and existential questions involved in that hypothetical scene would have dwarfed the actual scene. Should we ram it? Should we not? Is it our business? Can we take it upon ourselves to assume evil intentions when they are not manifestly proved? Do we want to die for a pointless cause?
As another example, we turn to the tomb/sanctuary/giant head room. One of the panels on the wall very much—very much—resembled the Alien from the original Alien. Maybe I just saw something that wasn’t there. But it certainly seemed to share many characteristics. When I first saw this, I thought it was awesome. What was the proto-human species’ experience with the Alien? Why did they have a panel devoted to it? Had they been wiped out by this Alien species? Where did the Alien come from and how did it sneak up on such an advanced civilization? Where were they now? Or maybe the proto-humans created the Alien, and it got out of control? Or maybe the Alien was actually a more ancient species, and it created proto-humans before evolving—or devolving—into a more primal, vicious form?
The questions were endless, and the imaginative possibilities seemed boundless. The holograms showing the proto-humans running from… something… were haunting, terrifying, awe-inspiring, and so forth. Was it the Alien they were running from? If so, why? How did it get there? What in the blazes were they doing here? What was going on?!
Prometheus releases the vast majority of this tension by explicitly telling you 95% of what happened. In the end, we have a banal and uninteresting history of a biological weapon gone wrong. That is nothing new, and that is nothing particularly interesting. The original Alien was not such a success because of all the answers it provided. It was a success because of all the answers it did not provide.
Indeed, the original Alien’s success can entirely be chalked up to what we did not know, what we did not see, and what we could only guess about. This is true both in the high-minded, existential, What is our place in the universe? sense, and it was also true in the “Sweet mother of all things holy what is around the corner?!?!” sense. Alien was scary because you didn’t often see the Alien. It was meaningful because it didn’t answer the questions. They found a crashed extraterrestrial ship, with some sort of “Space Jockey” on board, whose stomach seemed to have exploded. You never discover who the ship belonged to, who the space jockey was, or, later on, what the Alien was doing there, how it survived, where it came from, etc. The universe seemed huge. It seemed nearly infinite. It seemed like there might have been a trillion possible answers because, in a universe as big as that, there were a trillion different possible answers.
The best science fiction has always understood this. Dark City, for instance, leaves you guessing for much of the movie. When you finally discover the truth about the city, you are still left wondering—why? Why this space-city? Why did they do it here? And what exactly were the Strangers doing? We are given hints, but never answers. Where did they come from? Why choose us?
Even the action oriented science fiction films understand this, on a more tactile level. Aliens, otherwise known as James Cameron’s original Ode To Stuff Getting Blown Up (Because of Evil Corporations), was an ultra-intense, paranoid movie where you never feel comfortable and the action means much more than simply numbing one’s mind. And it accomplishes this not through a blunt, “How many bad guys can we kill at once” attitude, but rather through a lot of sleight-of-hand artistry. Think of the scene where the auto-machine guns are defending the installation. We know they have a limited amount of ammo. We know they are tearing the aliens to pieces, for at least a bit. But we see nothing. We only hear. We hear the rapid fire bangs of the guns, for minutes on end, and then, all at once, the noise stops. And then we are terrified. It was not guns firing and aliens dying that was scary. It was silence. Because the guns are down, and our time was up.
Contact, a science fiction film that could have been so much more, suffers from the same problem Prometheus does. It wants to answer questions. So instead of a thoughtful, novel story about communicating with an alien race that is light years away, the movie develops a deus ex machina, Time-Space Portal Machine whereby Jodie Foster can meet the alien, who explains everything to her. What. A. Letdown.
Now, I know why movies do this. I think back to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which a lot of people really didn’t like. They didn’t like it because they didn’t think the aliens made any sense, they didn’t like it because their purpose was never explained, they didn’t like it because the ending came out of nowhere. But it was superb. It was superb because it didn’t just answer every trivial, or non-trivial, question we could throw at it. It hinted at possible explanations, as science fiction will often do, but it never drew us an outline. That lets you ponder. That lets you cogitate. That lets you sink into images and possibilities. In short, that is great science fiction.
Prometheus could have been great. Perhaps most sadly, it could have been great with very little change. Remove the first scene. Remove the needless explication regarding The Purpose of the goo, and the intentions of the proto-humans. Maybe add a scene or two with a little more wonder and a little less analysis. It would not have been hard to maintain the beautiful look, capable action scenes and decent characters with a narrative that did more wondering and less talking. It would not have been hard, in other words, to create a movie that understood Alien’s strengths, and was faithful to its science-fiction wonder. This is probably the main reason Prometheus was disappointing. Despite its grand attempt, and despite being fifty times as intelligent as most summer movies—while still being eminently watchable—and despite its superlative effects and sets, the movie could have had the depth and solemnity of the original Alien, and the many great science fiction works before and after. It could have been poetry, and instead it was a physics equation.
