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Movie Review: Prometheus

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment

Prometheus is a movie many would compare to 1979 Alien, and tightly so. It’s intended to be a prequel to the Alien series despite being released 33 years after and directed by Alien director Ridley Scott. But does it succeed both on its own and as a prequel?

The movie begins with an alien disintegrating after drinking a liquid. A biogenetic reaction occurs as his remains fall into a waterfall. In the meantime a trip to a distant moon is planned after an archeological discovery in Scotland of a star map connecting several unconnected ancient cultures. The archeologists, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, interpret it as humanity’s ‘forerunners’ or ‘engineers’. The trip to that moon is a four-year trip via a spacecraft called ‘The Prometheus’ though Weyland Corporations monitored by a human-like android named David and instructed to find and study ‘the Engineers’.

Upon arriving on the moon they find many key artifacts as well as alien bodies and assume the alien Engineers are extinct. One of the artifacts, cylinders, leaks a dark liquid which David and Holloway later drink. Meanwhile a storm causes many to return to the stranded ship and Millburn and Fifield stranded in the structure the ship is resting by. Meanwhile in the structure, snake-like creatures start acting up, killing Millburn and melting Fifield’s helmet. After the others discover Fifield and Millburn’s body, David finds a control room with evidence of a surviving Engineer and a star map highlighting Earth. The black liquid Holloway drank now starts to attack his body badly enough for mission director Vickers to refuse him back on the ship and has his body burned. Shaw discovers she’s pregnant with an alien baby and attempts to abort it herself.

As the elder Weyland prepares to depart the planet on his craft, a mutated Fifield attacks and kills several crew members before he himself is killed. We learn the structure was part of a base that lost control because of the dark liquid. After learning the structure is part of a spacecraft, the crew run to an Engineer for help only for the Engineer to kill crew members, decapitate David and take control of the spaceship only to crash it. The crash prevents the Engineer from releasing any of the liquid on Earth. Even as Shaw gets away in a lifeboat, she learns that the Engineer survived the crash and her aborted alien baby is alive and grew to full-size. The departure of Shaw and David, whose head is still active after decapitation, won’t come without a fight and it leaves an ending that either sets up for a prequel or sets up for the actual Alien.

What should be noted is that Scott had planned as far back as 2002 in creating a prequel to Alien. However it was sidelined as Alien vs. Predator came up and would be released in 2004. Interest in this wouldn’t resume until 2009. One of the risks of prequels is that those who are familiar with the movie series will have expectations of it. Also there are those moviegoers who are unfamiliar with the series and just see the movie for what it is. Prometheus won’t answer all the big questions Alien fans will give but it will give some satisfaction to fans of Alien as well as thrill the unfamiliar moviegoers. Ridley Scott had a big task on his hand when he was to make a prequel to his famous Alien movie. He may not have succeeded completely but he did a respectable job of his own in this project.

Although the acting was mostly unspectacular as is to be expected in a SciFi movie, it was Michael Fassbender’s performance of android David that stood out as the best effort. Noomi Rapace may have given a good acting performance, if not great, but gave a good job at delivering a strong and determined, albeit vulnerable, heroine. The script was good but it still had a lot of predictable and unresolved plot elements and as I said before, it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered to fans of Alien. As expected in a SciFi movie, its best qualities were the visual effects and the set designs. It did an excellent job of recreating a fictional planet with excellent special effects, especially the alien effects. The score by Marc Streitenfeld also added to the drama of the movie.

Prometheus did have a lot of expectations put on it. Although it didn’t succeed at achieving them all, it still made for a good thriller of a movie. Whether there will be another prequel or not still remains in question.

Movie Review – Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment

Okay, this is one of my delayed movie reviews. There will be three more to come. I saw it weeks before but I’m sure many of you could now see it in a second-run theatre before you can get the DVD or Netflix file.

Those of you who have seen the first Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. only received one part of the story. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows picks up where it left off. It’s not an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes novel but an independent story of Sherlock Holmes that is able to entertain.

The movie is full of tricks, foiled killings and even successful incidents that lead Holmes to solve his next mystery. A bomb meant for Dr. Hoffmanstahl from Professor Moriarty is detonated. Adler is murdered by Moriarty who thinks she did it out of a love for Holmes. The murders and bombings surrounding Moriarty is part of Holmes’ next case.

Even Watson and his wife become part of this when Moriarty tells Holmes he killed Adler and the couple will be next if Holmes doesn’t stop. The couple is even attacked on a train by Moriarty’s men but Holmes, who followed them for protection, is able to foil the attackers and successfully protect the two. The two head to Paris to contact a gypsy who was to receive a letter from Adler. She becomes part of the detective team and leads them to an anarchist group she once belonged to only to learn of a plan to assassinate Moriarty via explosion. One search for a bomb lead to the wrong place. The bomb kills one of Moriarty’s business associates, allowing ownership to Moriarty of the businessman’s weapons factory in Germany.

Each clue leads the three-Sherlock, Watson and the gypsy- to the factory. There they are tortured by Moriarty and his men and learn of his plan to own weapons factories to profit out of a World War he plans to start. They’re able to break free thanks to Watson and flee onto a moving train. However Holmes senses that Moriarty may be planning an incident at a peace summit in Switzerland to cause an international uproar. At the summit, Holmes learns of the true assassin who is disguised as an ambassador. Both Holmes and Moriarty go outside to discuss to their associates their plans. Both Watson and the gypsy are able to stop one of Moriarty’s men from assassinating. Holmes later revealed he replaced Moriarty’s diary with the plans and able to get Watson’s wife to decrypt the code of Moriarty’s. Mary forwards the information to an Inspector who’s able to claim the bulk of Moriarty’s assets. This would lead to a physical confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty over a waterfall, which leads to a surprise ending.

A Game Of Shadows is partially influenced by A Final Problem, which is part of Arthur Conan Doyle’s series The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes but has been tailor made for the movie with a lot of twists and turns. It’s not necessary part of a chronological series but another story based on the characters. In fact the filmmakers intended for A Game Of Shadows to be a stand-alone film that did not require knowledge of the previous movie. The movie retains a lot of the charms of the first one but doesn’t seem to deliver the same thrills as the first. It does however maintain the same energy of humor as the first. Robert Downey Jr. is again able to keep the humor moviegoers will remember from the first. Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Eddie Marsan also reprise their respective roles well too albeit for their brief time. The biggest new edition was Noomi Rapace as Simza the gypsy and she does a good job of her own at stealing scenes. The Mulroneys, Kieran and Michelle, did a good job in creating a humorous adventure with a lot of familiar thrills as the first but often felt like a maze that was confusing at times. Guy Ritchie did a good job in directing, if not the directing that stands out. Technically the sets and costumes were excellent in fitting the times. Even the guises worked well. And Hans Zimmer returned with a score that included parts of the original as well as some new material that fit the movie’s adventurous and humorous tone.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows faced the same pressures as any sequel. In the end, the movie lacked the same level as the first in terms of its best qualities. One thing is while most sequels or follow up movies often lose the first movie’s best qualities A Game Of Shadows was still able to keep the original’s best qualities, if not match the original’s same level. Fans of the first will appreciate A Game Of Shadows and movie goers in general will find it a good relaxing time at the movies.