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Alien Inversion

33 years after the ground-breaking (and chest-bursting) "Alien", Ridley Scott returns with "Prometheus" to the place where no one can hear you scream. Though not a purebred prequel (Scott has cryptically referred to it as an "original mythology"), "Prometheus" shares enough DNA with "Alien" to show an obvious family resemblance.

The movie starts out in a different direction, going well into the Earth's past and the creation of humankind at the hands of a Prometheus-like being. Cut to 2089, and Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered diverse cave paintings that depict identical other-worldly markings. By 2093, they are traveling on board the ship Prometheus to meet their makers.

Shaw, Holloway, and the rest of the crew sleep through the 2+ year journey, while the android David (Michael Fassbender) minds the ship. He passes the time shooting hoops from a bicycle, learning all languages, and watching "Lawrence of Arabia." He retains something of Peter O'Toole's manner throughout the movie.

The first crew member to awake is no-nonsense Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron). As a corporate shill, she is, along with the android, a familiar character of the franchise. Captain Janek (Idris Elba) is no Dallas from "Alien". He doesn't leave the ship and is oddly detached from the crew, even when they are obviously in harm's way. Only at the end does he act like a captain. The rest of the crew is largely one-dimensional.

With an ambitious and promising setup, it's a shame that once the crew is exploring an unknown planet that things devolve into the stuff of typical horror cliché. It gets the plot moving along, but also distracts any moviegoer with valid questions like: "Why are you touching things? Why bring that back with you? Do you really want to separate?" These are supposed to be scientists, not stoned teenagers. It's not nice to compare family members, but the first "Alien" movie is the smarter one.

Noomi Rapace is believable as a believer, and pulls off the movie's most harrowing scene. Fortunately she never has to kick ass a la Ripley, because one feels she would get hers kicked. The movie is carried more by Michael Fassbender, whose nuanced android may ironically be the most human character of the bunch. Charlize Theron demonstrates again that she can seemingly do anything, this time embodying a bloodless bottom line-ness.

"Prometheus" answers some long-held questions (and poses new ones). Similar to the late "Star Trek" series, "Enterprise", the technology used on board the ship Prometheus is more advanced than that of the Nostromo from "Alien", even though it pre-dates the Nostromo by decades. For the most part it doesn't matter, though a few of the scientific innovations could have been toned down to make the digital divide a little less wide. And as is often the case, the use of 3D is unjustified, though a couple of scenes benefit from it.

"Prometheus" asks much larger questions than the rest of the franchise. It is more concerned with Evolution vs. Creationism than "Alien vs. Predator", but its religiosity is the most alien thing about it. Still, its suspense and scares do bear the mark of Ridley Scott, which is the only kind of divine intervention one can hope for.