This brilliant, misunderstood sci-fi movie epic deserves a second look on streaming

Stephen Porzio

While the film may have confused audiences upon release, it has aged extremely well.

Alien: Romulus, the much-anticipated next instalment in the legendary Alien franchise, lands in cinemas this month – which will no doubt prompt a lot of the series’ fans to revisit its previous movies that are all streaming on Disney+.

While 1979’s original Alien and its 1986 sequel Aliens are widely considered the high-water mark for the horror sci-fi franchise, we here at JOE would say each of its main entries hold plenty of merit (I’m not including the honestly pretty fun spin-off Alien vs. Predator in this or its dire sequel Alien vs. Predator: Requiem).

I’d argue though that the third best movie in the series is probably its most divisive: 2012’s reboot Prometheus – a prequel which saw Ridley Scott, the director of the original Alien, return to helm the project.

The film garners its title from the Greek myth of Prometheus, the god who was punished by his fellow deities for stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity – a myth also referenced and deployed as a metaphor in Christopher Nolan’s recent Oscar Best Picture winner Oppenheimer.

Set in the late 21st century, the sci-fi centres around Elizabeth Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace, hot off the Dragon Tattoo trilogy of movies and leading a stellar cast). She is an archaeologist who uncovers a star-map in a Scottish cave with her colleague and boyfriend Charlie Holloway (the underrated Logan Marshall-Green).

A deeply religious person, Elizabeth believes the map is a guide for humans to meet an advanced race of beings that came before us and perhaps created us – Gods, if you will.

Receiving funding from shady elderly CEO Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in old age make-up), Charlie and Elizabeth assemble a crew on the spaceship Prometheus and lead an expedition to the distant moon shown on the map.

Joining them on the mission includes a Weyland-created android named David (Michael Fassbender), Weyland’s cold-as-ice daughter and representative Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the ship’s captain Janek (Idris Elba) and the quirky bickering scientists Fifield (Sean Harris) and Millburn (Rafe Spall).

After landing on the distant moon and exploring an artificial structure found there, the expedition goes horribly, horribly wrong.

If you think this set-up to Prometheus sounds a lot more complex than any of the other main Alien movies – where Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley every time would join a space crew but get targeted by disgustingly fascinating Xenomorphs – you’d be correct.

Co-written by Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) and Jon Spaihts (Dune: Part One and Two, Passengers), director Ridley Scott first met up with the latter to discuss working on a potential Alien prequel.

While Scott enjoyed the draft of the script Spaihts turned in, both he and Lindelof – who was later brought into the project – felt that it relied too much on elements from previous Alien films. This is something the director wanted to distance himself from, out of fear that he would be repeating himself.

As such, Lindelof was tasked with crafting a more original story, something that could include elements of Alien but not overly rely on them.

Speaking about this on The Kevin Pollak Show, Lindelof explained:

“It started as an Alien prequel… But there is a real issue which is — what is the state of the Alien franchise at this point in our lives? There has been Alien vs. Predator and all these things, and its been completely and totally diluted.

“I’ve always felt that really good prequels should be original movies… You can do movies which take place before Star Wars, but I don’t need to see the story of the Skywalker clan. Show me something else which I can’t guess the possible outcome of.

“There is no suspense in inevitability. So a true prequel should essentially proceed the events of the original film, but be about something entirely different, feature different characters, have an entirely different theme, although it takes place in that same world. That was my fundamental feeling about what this movie wanted to be.

“The draft that existed before I came on was written by this guy named Jon Spaihts and it was very good. And there were a lot of things in the movie, Prometheus, which were Jon Spaihts and I feel like somewhere in the media reconstruction of this story, the tale is that I come in, I pitch an entirely new story, and it’s so original that everything else gets thrown out… In my brain, that’s not exactly what happened.

“But I also do feel that this movie is the movie I would want to see as a fanboy, take place in that Alien universe, which precedes the events of the original Alien, but is not necessarily burdened by all the tropes of that franchise with Facehuggers and Chestbursters, and all that stuff that I love… but it’s sort of like, we’ve seen it before, can we do something different this time? And that’s the movie that Ridley wanted to make.”

Indeed, this approach leads to much of what is thrilling about Prometheus. While the prequel does boast some of the phenomenally executed monster movie thrills of Alien and Aliens – the scene in which Elizabeth has to perform emergency surgery on herself is indeed one for the ages – much of the blockbuster is tackling deeper, more philosophical and hard to answer questions that continue to resonate.

Where did humanity come from? If we could ever meet our makers, what would we ask them? If we now have the ability to create artificial intelligence like David (Fassbender, giving arguably his best performance as the enigmatic scheming android), are we ourselves not gods in a sense?

On top of this, the movie has a completely different visual aesthetic to the Alien movies. Perhaps this was a way for Scott to move further from what came before and also a method of signifying to audiences that Prometheus takes place in a near-future when space travel was still relatively new – a contrast to the original where Ripley was part of a crew of essentially space truckers.

Gone are the tight, dark, smokey, industrial interiors of the 1979 movie in favour of more wide-open, colourful, bright, sleek spaces that look absolutely stunning.

Honestly, it’s only in its closing moments that Prometheus’ main connection to the Alien series is properly explained, something which in hindsight is very effective but may have been a bit of a hindrance upon release.

While Scott and the film’s trailers tried to down play the prequel’s link to the rest of the franchise, news of the blockbuster’s development basically let the cat out of the bag.

As such, there were audience members who showed up to theatres fully expecting a new Alien movie that were bound to be disappointed – leading to a slightly muted reaction upon the sci-fi horror’s release.

While Prometheus was a box-office success – grossing over $400 million – reviews for the large part were only mixed to positive.

One imagines that this made producers slightly wary as to whether there was enough of an appetite for a straight-up Prometheus 2. We instead got Alien: Covenant in 2017 – a sort of half Prometheus-prequel (Scott and Fassbender returned, while Rapace makes a brief appearance) and half more standard Alien slasher.

Perhaps, if Scott could have pulled off the trick M. Night Shyamalan did in making his thriller Split a secret sequel to his earlier film Unbreakable, Prometheus would have been more beloved upon release.

All this being said, as we move further and further from the burden of expectations placed on the 2012 blockbuster ahead of its release, the more it stands beautifully as its own daring, exciting and intelligent achievement – the type of big swing you wish Hollywood would take more of a risk on going forward.

If Alien: Romulus or Noah Hawley’s upcoming TV series Alien: Earth contain half the invention of Prometheus, audiences will be very lucky.