Prometheus reviewed by Mark Kermode

I think it's worth starting by saying I think I'm more positive about Prometheus than a lot of people that's not to say that Prometheus isn't without flaws but I went to see it uh having avoided the trailers having avoided the posters having avoided the you know the magazine features attempting really hard to know as little about it as possible um so many things and it is a mixed bag um I like the idea I mean all the best sci-fi is about ideas and also manages to match that with spectacle and sci-fi should engender moments of awe you're in same screening as I am and there are moments of a in in Prometheus or as in you go or you know like that like the old John Wayne you know shotte Sur the son can you do it with a bit more a oh surely this was the son of God I mean I like the fact that it's a big proper unashamed science fiction film which has the tarity to deal with big themes you know meeting our makers although of course the theme of meeting our makers is something which runs through sci-fi whether it's 2001 or whether it's Solaris or whether it's Star Trek because I mean bear in mind in the first Star Trek movie the whole thing with Vier is about you know meeting the next that's very very 2001 in fact Star Trek 5 they go to heaven William Shatner has a fight with God who turns out not to be God at all and in fact the score for Prometheus in which there's there's been a lot of talk about the score because obviously in the first film it was like this tiny minimalist score and this this has got a much bigger sort of romping score Kettle drums but there is a recurrent positive leap either you know major fourth or a major fifth which reminds me of Star Trek and there is some tness in this not necessarily in a bad way although funly I in tone the thing it's closest to is that Robert Z's film contact certainly it's close to that in as much as it's the kind of film mean remember contact was a film which actually had a courtroom scene in which people argued about the ethics of sending an atheist into space well there's an awful lot of that in Prometheus now the downside of that is and people say you shouldn't compare it with alien but clearly it is it is in the alien world in the same way in that Phantom Menace was in the same world as starting Phantom Menace was a prequel three back and if you if you think about how badly a film like Phantom Menace could have worked out you know with we are light years ahead I know that sounds get daming with faint praise but I'm just saying the last time somebody did a really eagerly awaited science fiction non-immediate prequel it was Phantom Menace and look what happened with that the downside of the fact that this has one foot in the contact universe is that in Alien the which had its roots in Dark Star obviously you had a characters characters who were like space truckers and what they did was they was full of mumbled conversations about not being paid and constantly talking across each other talking about the little picture rather than the big picture and that's what made it seem so real you believed in those people cuz they talk the way you believe that space truckers would this which has its roots I think much more in Star Trek or contact and I don't mean that as dismissively because actually I really really like contact has people constantly speechifying about the big picture constantly talking about you know it's about where we come from it's about our makers they're calling us that sort of thing you know it is people are constantly having those conversations the characters are also less well drawn than alien in the Lesser roles I mean there is actually some confusion as to who is what and where I have to confess that watch as I was watching the film there was one moment when I completely confused two characters and that never happened in Alien I mean the thing in Alien which is that when something happens to John Hurt it's completely unexpected because because it's John Hurt what this does have is a very fine sentr performance by num rasu I think is great and a better one by Michael Fender because Michael Fender is really the center of the movie and in fact it is clearly that Scott is less interested in making an Alien prequel than he is in building up to the ideas of Blade Runner Blade Runner being about what does it mean to be human if you are an Android what does it mean to be human that's the whole decad is an alien decad is the decad is a robot decad isn't so clearly I think here the F the the Android figure played by Michael Michael F Bender is influenced by Deca by the whole idea of replicants in Blade Runner and also by David from AI I mean right down to the point that whilst I was watching Fast Bender I started watching to see whether he was blinking because you remember the whole Central thing about Haley Joel osman's performance in AI in which he play the robot boy is whether he blinks and of because he doesn't blink and I started looking at Michael fb's performance and thinking I bet he's not blinking I think that's what's going on there's also obviously nods to Hal from 2001 there is one moment when he when he appears to say a line which actually is a line from 2001 and that's fine the only thing I'd urge everyone not to forget is just how fantastic Lance henriksson was in the Android rle in Aliens so I think fast Bender is great but I think let's not forget about Lance Hendrickson who is absolutely brilliant um crucially as Ridley Scott said there we're not on 426 we're on 223 so there is a distance remind us of the sign well that we're not on the planet that they land in at the beginning of alien and so and when we came out of the screening people were having an awful lot of arguments about how the thing matches up and as Ridley Scott said that it's it suggests towards alien but we're not there yet we we are at least two movies away um I mean and I I think that's fine I think that should put paid to a lot of the problems that some people have it does for me have moments of war in terms of the you know that you see the the Giga set designs are fantastic going through those cavernous things that look partly they look biomechanical part of them is real and of course I interviewed Giga in his mum in in Switzerland and I mean it is like some sort of seventh ring of you know infernal biotechnological hell and you do get the sense of that with this personally I don't like CGI I like everything to be physical I like everything to be gruy there is also a sort of return to the whole you know mother pregnancy thing which has always been something which is going on in the alien world and there is one set piece I'm not going to talk about specifically but just say there is one set piece in it which has a oh blimy I mean it's ridiculous and it's ludicrous but it's also really quite gry and sticky in a good way so gry gry yeah how are you spelling that I don't know how you spell it groy it's it's got lots of Gro in it grw I don't know but because I'm aware that this secondhand is coming so here's what my feeling is in the end it's 7.5 out of 10 it's not a three star movie it's just shy of a four-star movie and there is much to enjoy in it I think some people have been disappointed because they were expecting something else but I I mean I was gripped and engrossed the whole way through I think there are flaws in it yes undoubtedly but it was a big science fiction movie made by a sentient intelligent being and it had ideas and know they don't all work and know it's not quite what people expected but and we have to talk about the 3D because there was a very significant line in that thing but I think generally it's a waving thumbs up 7.5 out of 10

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 276,283

Keywords: Mark, Kermode, Simon, Mayo, 5Live, Prometheus, Ridley, Scott, 5live, review, Reviews

Id: 4jyxZBuWSXM

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2012