PROMETHEUS (2012)

PROMETHEUS. Ridley Scott, dir., one of four producers, including Tony Scott and Walter Hill. Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, script. Arthur Max, prod. design. USA (though filmed largely in Canada and UK): Brandywine Productions, Dune Entertainment, Scott Free Productions (prod.) / 20th Century Fox (most dist.), 2012.

Part of R. Scott's ALIEN series. First-Contact/religious SF of the "meet your Maker(s)" variety (cf. R. Scott's BLADE RUNNER), arguably with brief visual allusions to S. Kubrick's SPACE ODYSSEY and definitely using the tradition of Erich von Dāniken's Chariots of the Gods. Of some — though not a lot of — interest for the revelation, at least in the universe of this film, that the original alien in ALIEN (1979) was a superman, but still a variety of man, in a spacesuit. PROMETHEUS also makes more literal the monstrous pregnancies and births of the earlier films, resulting in a scene where the impregnated female hero (Noomi Rapace) has her little Alien-form delivered and then killed by and while contained within a robotic medical device that performs a variation on a Caesarian section. Note also Michael Fassbender's David, a humanoid robot — android might be more accurate for appearance — in the line that would lead to Ian Holm's Ash in ALIEN: David is developed a bit more than Ash and has the significant, if not much developed, capacity for a kind of mind reading, at least reading the dreams of Rapace's character in her hibernation sarcophagus and communicating with Peter Weyland in his sarcophagus; for much of the film David is more human than his half-sister, so to speak, Charlize Theron's Ice-Queen Company Woman, Meredith Vickers. During "telepathy" and at other moments, David wears a helmet that makes him somewhat resemble Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and the general look of Futuristic spacemen; it may be significant that David and Vickers generally look Modernist and appear in Modernist settings while the less negative characters are in more Industrial, pomo outfits and spaces.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 08&9&20/VI/12