In celebration of Alien Romulus, this week we will be looking back at each film in the Alien franchise. Today, Prometheus.

Prometheus in Greek mythology is the god of fire. In defiance of orders from the high Olympians, Prometheus brought fire to us mere mortals. Providing us with the greatest technological advancement man has ever known. An element we can use to create, to cure, and even to destroy.

Prometheus, the 2012 Ridley Scott film, is an Alien adjacent prequel film that is much more concerned with lofty ideas and heady themes than being an Alien film. The film isn’t bad. There are some very strong themes presented and then fully realized throughout the two-hour film. The acting from our leads; Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron, is tight and on-brand with the type of film Ridley Scott is trying to make. The plot unfolds in a neat twisty way that keeps the audience guessing but never leaves them in the dust. It’s just that the film is also so pretentious at times that it can feel alienating (no pun intended) to both newcomers and long-time fans of the series.

Pretension isn’t always a bad thing. We often view being pretentious as a cardinal sin but pretension can be justified with the realization of lofty themes. Prometheus does this but it fails to have any fun doing so which makes the pretension underlying the film feel all the worse.

Technically the film is rock solid. Ridley Scott is a master director and his work here is exactly what you’d expect from a director with his pedigree. Scott is fantastic when it comes to telling small contained stories in big epic worlds and that’s exactly what he does here. Marc Streitenfeld’s score is the only thing that feels a bit off, with an overutilization of high triumphant strings. His music will often give off a hero theme when we are clearly following the villain. This may be a deliberate choice as a way to either wrongfoot the audience or to signal the eventual triumph of the villains but it just feels slightly off. This is a small complaint though as the majority of the score is well-placed, adding tension and dread when needed. The biggest complaint I have with Prometheus is its story and how that story fits into the Alien universe.

Prometheus takes place about thirty years before the events of the original Alien. A rag-tag crew of misfit archeologists and engineers set a course for a far-off distant moon that has been depicted in cave drawings around the earth, thousands of years before space travel and long-distance communication were possible. The conclusion archeologists Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway come to is that this map must lead to our creators. The engineers who built and provided life for us humans. The mysterious Weyland corporation decides to fund this venture and sends along one of their newest products. An ultra-intelligent android that is nearly impossible to distinguish from a normal human. The crew eventually finds the moon and the remnants of an intelligent alien race. The engineers appear to all be dead, massacred by their own weapons. A biological weapon in the form, or some variation of, the titular alien of the series.

Already were getting some big concepts introduced into the alien universe. The concept that we were created by a superior species and that this species continued to create life until they ultimately created something they couldn’t control. It’s a high concept and one that’s mirrored through David, the android created by the Waylan corporation. David eventually turns on the humans, becoming the main villain of a film that’s set in a franchise with one of the all-time iconic on-screen villains. It’s not a bad concept for a film, and it’s not a bad film, but it is an odd choice. Setting Prometheus in the Alien franchise, a franchise that began with two incredible pieces of cinema before eventually turning into PG-13 CGI slugfests between the Alien and the Predator from the Predator series.

There are some big ideas here and while they do work, they don’t feel connected to the film’s shared universe. Prometheus feels like Ridley Scott trying to bring his franchise back to meaningful cinema. But he forgot that you can still create incredible films with a xenomorph. The absence of a real xenomorph feels glaring, especially since this was the first film in the franchise in fifteen years. I like what Ridley Scott is trying to do here. He’s providing a cautionary tale about the dangers of creating something we can’t control. A theme that becomes more and more relevant with each passing day. We have social media algorithms that aren’t fully known and AI technology that is slowly taking over every facet of life from driving our cars to answering our Google queries. There’s a real danger here and tying it back to ancient Greek mythology with a cool sci-fi aesthetic is smart and clever writing. Scott just forgot to have any fun with the movie.

David’s role in the film is meant to draw a straight line between the alien race that created the xenomorphs and us as humans. We see them create this beast that is both deadlier and more capable than their creator. David as an AI, is more intelligent and incapable of traditional death. Realizing this, David decides he is greater than his creator and turns heel deciding that he is the god because he is superior to his creator. This narrative again pulls back to the Greek mythology that the film so generously borrows from. In some ancient myths, Prometheus is credited with creating humans from clay. A process that requires fire and molding. That fire is then gifted to the humans and they choose to either destroy themselves or the gods with it. I truly enjoy this narrative and how the themes tie everything together. We get a high concept in a contained script that fully realizes each grandiose idea it’s presenting. This is all great but utilizing the setting of the Alien franchise throws out what made the original films so special and tries to turn the future of the franchise into something much closer to 2001: A Space Odyssey than a sci-fi horror film.

The Alien franchise has always dealt with high-concept themes. Alien is about isolation and terror while Aliens deals with motherhood and erasing gender norms. The difference is these films are also genuinely terrifying and fun. Prometheus loses all the fun, most of the horror, and focuses solely on its themes of creation. I like Prometheus as a film. I enjoy the narrative it’s created. I just didn’t have any fun with it. And if you’re going to be a creator, at least create something fun. I give Prometheus a 6 and would say while it is a good movie, it’s the easiest to skip in a rewatch of the series.