Movie Spoiler PROMETHEUS (2012)

My feelings on Prometheus are mixed.  While much of its plot is derivative of the first two films and its attempt to create its own mythology is executed haphazardly, the production values are something fierce and its attempt to stand on its own two feet isn’t without merit.  The latest edition in the Alien franchise (regardless of what the producers insist is a thin connection to the movies) takes a new crew back to LV426, where it all began—before it began (and before that began).  Its concept is actually pretty inspired, but more simple than it would like to admit.  It overcomplicates its storytelling out of self-importance instead of streamlining the plot, out of fear of having a non-epic, paltry running-time.  There are plenty of red-herrings and stretches of reality that defy logic, all told with a straight face.  It was as if the screenwriters threw everything but the kitchen sink in, thinking that its more novel conceit’s resilience would hold up after the smoke had settled.  But, it doesn’t.  However, the visual effects, art direction, and score, are beautiful, and Noomi Rapace as the lead Elizabeth Shaw holds her own onscreen.   As far as the Alien franchise is concerned, this film easily holds “third position” as a demarcation line between true classics (Alien, Aliens) and the lesser installments (Alien3, Alien: Resurrection).

Movie Spoiler Summary

(Please go easy on me, I wrote this three months after I saw the movie from chicken-scratch notes written in a darkened movie theater; I will try to finesse as a second-viewing will allow)

The opening shots include a ship hovering above a giant Albino-like being along a river surrounded by mountains on LV426, the planet where the original Alien takes place.  He lays out a container and begins drinking a substance which immediately has an adverse effect on his muscles.  The ship leaves behind the man’s disintegrating DNA, his body falling into the water. 

On Earth, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) excavates with her husband Dr. Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) in 2089 Scotland.  They discover some handprint hieroglyphics on a cave wall which are 35,000 years old.  They understand that the beings who left behind the message abandoned Earth for another planet. 

In an exploratory vessel four years later, android David (Michael Fassbender) is about to wake up.  There is a flashback that Shaw has to her childhood spent with her father.  David plays basketball.  He practices English by watching Lawrence of Arabia.  Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) awakes form hibernation and immediately begins doing pushups.  Shaw wakes up vomiting.  Janek (Idris Elba) props up a small Christmas tree.  Vickers conducts a meeting with all shipmates in attendance.  She’s a card-carrying cunt and plays a prerecorded three-dimensional presentation before everyone, produced by her father Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), a wealthy entrepreneur.  He claims to be deceased (“I am long dead, may I rest in peace") and informs everyone that Shaw and Holloway are in charge.  Charmingly, Holloway starts, “I’ve never had to follow a ghost before.”  The presentation continues detailing ancient cultures, including his discoveries in the Isle of Ske.  He pushes the theory that the life they’re investigating on a planet which can sustain it, may indeed be ancestors of humans.  Ginger Fifield (Sean Harris) doesn’t take this well, but he’s proven to be an overall curmudgeon as it is, having rebuffed Millburn (Rafe Spall) earlier.  Vickers wants to show everyone who is boss, since she is the one who raised the money for this expedition.  However, she makes it clear that she believes her father is a quack.  Her agenda is pretty ambiguous and sadly unexplored beyond being a disgruntled daughter, until it’s revealed, as no big surprise, that she too is, like David, an android.  The craft enters the planet LV426’s atmosphere.  David quotes David Lean’s epic, “There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.” 

Holloway expresses excitement at the prospect of exploring the new terrain: “It’s Christmas, captain, and I want to open my presents.”  Shaw notes the weapons on board.  They wear these fancy spacesuits, which conveniently include name tags, but, oddly wide area of glass or plastic that makes them more susceptible, I imagine, to the element, unless it’s some kind of industrial grade.  They stumble upon an unusual natural structure.  Fifield throws out “pups” or these high-tech GPS gadgets that fly around and map their surroundings, which, then sends signals back to the ship, creating a mini 3D model in the operations room.  The crew discovers water and the air is actually breathable.  Everyone takes off their helmets.  David discovers some primordial ooze.  The walls start giving playback and a fuzzy 3D image appears in the tunnel showing two aliens running at another point in time.  The team finds a decapitated body and more hieroglyphics.  Two of the crew members, Fifield and Millburn, decide to return to the ship.  Shaw utilizes a carbon reader and David opens a room containing a head that is remarkably human.  There are several vase-like pods lined up in the room, with earthworms squirming about.  The vases drip a thick black liquid.  The ceiling mural begins to act up, and Shaw, Holloway, and David leave, absconding with one of the pods.  There’s a storm brewing when the crew stumbles upon another tomb with the space jockey-like creature from the first Alien movie (thereby being the main focal point of the film, while tying it into the franchise).  A disturbance sends the crew back to the ship where Shaw drops the pod.  They discover that Fifield and Millburn are missing.  Janek makes contact with them and informs them to sit tight through the night and they’ll be retrieved the next day. 

In the lab, Shaw and the others observe one of the objects they retrieved.  The helmet-like structure reveals a head, which, with their equipment, they are able to temporarily bring back to life.  It starts to wig out and explodes.  David comments that it was “mortal after all.”  In private, he speaks to an unidentified source and Vickers approaches him. 

David opens up the vase.  Shaw processes a sample from the head.  There is DNA matter prompting Shaw to comment, “It’s us, it’s everything.”  “Big things have small beginnings.”  David and Holloway converse and the former infects the latter’s drink with an extraction from the vase.  The “pups” continue mapping out the land.  Janek communicates with Fifield and Millburn.  Shaw and Holloway talk and she shares that she’s barren, before they start making out.  To the audience's pleasure, Logan Marshall-Green’s shirt comes off.  Janek hits on Vickers and plays “Love the One You’re With” on his harmonica before heading to her quarters for a little nookie.  Inside the mountain, there are cobra-like creatures winding through black liquid, like antecedents of the face-huggers.  It attacks one of the crew members left behind.  Logan Marshall-Green looks into the mirror, again, with his shirt off, and observes something black poking out of his eye.  There’s a glitch in the mapping system at the foot of a temple.  Holloway starts to take ill.  The crew goes on a search and locates Fifield.  David sits in the chair of the space jockey and more 3D video from the past commences around him, including a solar system presentation.  When the crew returns to the ship, Vickers is armed with a flamethrower and will let everyone back on, but Holloway, who has taken on a physical deformation.  He sacrifices himself and Vickers incinerates him.

Later, Shaw wakes up from bad dreams with a cross around her neck and informs David that everyone may be infected.  It’s discovered that Shaw is “three months pregnant” with a “traditional fetus.”  She begins feeling abnormally horrific pains and demands an abortion.  We learn through flashback that her father died from the Ebola virus.  David secures her against her will.  Later, Ford (Kate Dickie) tries to wake her up, and Shaw starts kicking ass Dragon Tattoo style.  She escapes, holding her belly, and runs to a machine that will perform an emergency Cesarean section, showing off her rocking body in the process.  She gives birth to a face-hugger and finds herself temporarily trapped with the relentless attacks of the creature.  The infected Fifield takes on a beastly transformation and wages a war on the crew, who, in turn, kill him.  Shaw escapes and stumbles upon the cryogenically-preserved Weyland, who only has a few days of life left in him.  He pleads, “If they made us, they could save us.”  Down at Prometheus, Shaw learns that David poisoned Holloway.  The mapping system reveals that the mountain camouflages a huge alien aircraft.  While David sits in the space-jockey seat, an albino creatures reveals itself.  They begin talking, but then the beast turns aggressive, rips David’s head off and attacks everyone.  He assumes the seat of the ship and begins to bring it to life.  Vickers orders her ship home.  The U-shaped ship begins to surface and Shaw warns Janek the human race will be annihilated unless he stops it.  Vickers pops herself in an emergency exit vessel.  The alien ship begins to crash, crushing Vickers to death and almost killing Shaw.  She finds a creature much like the ones from the first Alien film, which does battle with the albino-like beast.  She takes off in a ship and decides she’s going to find where the Albino creatures came from (going back to the beginning's beginning's beginning), because if they created humans, someone must have created them, right?  There’s a tag at the end of an alien being born of the deceased albino beast much like the original alien that “connects” the movie to its progenitor and brings everything full-circle.