How to make a Xenomorph

Prometheus: ****/*****, or 8/10

A tall, pale humanoid stands at the top of a towering waterfall and nearly ritualistically drinks a black liquid. Within seconds, his body starts to physically come apart in a most gruesome way, his cells literally unraveling and his physique disintegrating as he plunges himself into the roaring chasm and his DNA mixes with the water. And with this eerie opening the tone is set for Prometheus, the eagerly awaited latest science fiction blockbuster from Sir Ridley Scott, who with this film not only returns to his own roots but also to the roots of the much acclaimed and beloved Alien saga. And herein could lie a problem, since explaining some of the mysteries of his own original Alien film (1979) might hurt the franchise as a whole in terms of narrative continuity. The trick, however, is not minding that it hurts, especially given the fact Sir Ridley delivers a whole set of other intriguing questions in the process, building upon which may very well reinvigorate this franchise which until recently seemed milked dry completely.

-Warning! Here be spoilers!- When scientists and lovebirds Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) in the year 2089 make a connection between the depiction of a tall figure pointing at a set of ever identically proportioned dots on cave paintings and murals of various ancient cultures around the globe and a distant star system, the starship Prometheus is dispatched by the Weyland Corporation to investigate the pair's claims that humanity was spawned by a race of alien beings dubbed 'Engineers' which experimented with our DNA and left said dots as a message to come look for them in space. Upon arrival at the barren world of LV-223, a large artificial structure is found containing endless corridors, a decapitated alien corpse and a room containing a giant stone head and hundreds of odd cylinders containing black liquid. It seems the gods the Prometheus was send to find have died, but they left something behind...

So far the plot seems like a mix between Sir Ridley's own original Alien film, about a spaceship crew send to a deserted planet and encountering an age old lifeform, and the often maligned spin-off Alien VS Predator which revolves around the discovery humanity was kick-started by the extra-terrestrial Predators for their own shady purposes. Of course, Sir Ridley does not mean to copy either, his Prometheus just starts on familiar ground in order to have the plot turn in a whole different direction when we're settled in, at which point it quickly gets quite darker than we have known his work to be for the last few decades. Apparently the black liquid destroys lifeforms it comes into contact with by turning it into a different kind of lifeform: humanity was tricked into believing they would find its creators across the gulf of space and only found its apparent doom instead. And so the crew of the Prometheus must fight for their lives or face total destruction of all mankind. Problem is, the crew is divided into various camps all with their own goals, both selfless and selfish, and all with their own take as to just what the hell is going on. Given the somewhat erratic and hard to follow plot, the audience too must figure out for itself just what to make of things, since Sir Ridley has no intention to just hand us the answers on a platter, but wants us to work for them instead.

It has been a while since a decently philosophical blockbuster sci-fi film tormented the audience by conjuring up sometimes nigh unfathomable questions regarding Life, the Universe and Everything, so Sir Ridley's attempt at provoking the audience to use their brains a bit is certainly worthy of praise, but the plot makes it challenging to comprehend Prometheus' intentions. It's quite likely studio involvement is to blame, as is usually the case with Sir Ridley's films, since studio executives often feel his movies are too difficult to understand for general audiences which leads to them being edited to focus less on the deep issues addressed and more on the action. Already a Director's Cut has been announced that will hopefully make for a better structured narrative, but so far we can only speculate as to the Engineers' actual intentions by creating the black liquid and their apparent loss of interest for humanity's wellbeing.

So far, exploring the background of these Engineers, who we originally came to know as the Space Jockey from the first Alien film, does sadly demystify the awesome introduction of this species in Sir Ridley's breakthrough motion picture, by fleshing them out in more detail than we might have liked, and eventually even reducing them to more typical movie monsters as we watch the last of their kind alive go on a murderous rampage to kill the Prometheus' crew, just to be destroyed by its own lethal creation that was meant to be humanity's undoing instead, but not before duking it out with this monstrosity in a 'monster versus monster' battle of standard Hollywood procedure feeling (again, there's a touch of Alien VS Predator here, and not for the better). Which of course leads to the question that is first and foremost on everybody's mind since they learned this movie is more or less a prequel to Alien: just what is the Xenomorph's deal?

It's in regard to this matter that Prometheus remains the most vague, as if Ridley never really wanted to provide any actual answers. Suffice to say, Xenomorphs appear to be a a bio-weapon after all, which they were always hinted to be used for by the evil Company in the Alien films proper. It definitely seems open for debate (an offer I accepted when travelling home with a friend while returning from watching this film; we spend about an hour trying to wrap our brains around it, with plenty of questions still unanswered, mind you), but it seems to me the black liquid is this film's incarnation of the 'Genesis device', creating life on a barren world by mixing it with water (as the alien “Prometheus” did at the opening scene of the film), or replacing already existing life with such life. It's a complicated process for sure, and apparently it never works the same in this film: while a worm coming into contact with the black goo is turned into a Xenomorph like snake, a Prometheus crewmember that gets a full dose in his face simply turns into a prowling, deformed madman turning on his shipmates and viciously killing them, before being shot at, burned and run down by a truck. Of course the main question foremost on the fans' minds will be, 'is the traditional Xenomorph we've come to love in Prometheus?' Having given a nicely red coloured spoiler warning some paragraphs above, I will simply answer this question positively by stating that it is... sort of... The problem for me is not its appearance (which differs from what we've seen before), but its creation. In answer to the question cleverly hidden in this article's title, here's the recipe Prometheus gives for creating a genuine chestbursting Alien (don't try this at home!):

-Slip a small dose of black liquid into an unsuspecting male victim's drink

-Let the male victim have sex with a woman, even though she's sterile

-After successful (unsafe) love making, the woman will find herself pregnant within ten hours

-Soon afterwards, the squid like creature gestating inside her tummy will burst through her chest (unless she manages to remove it by performing an caesarean section on herself)

-The squid will rapidly grow in size from about 1 ft. long to a whopping 10 ft. long overnight

-Have the now full sized creature penetrate an Engineer's mouth with its ovipositor

-After several hours, a small Xenomorph will spring from the Engineer's chest, killing him in the process (as is Xenomorph tradition)

Say what you will about Prometheus' dubious and overly convoluted Xenomorph origins, it makes for some very effective and affective horror, as the above description makes clear. It's safe to say Sir Ridley hasn't added such overtly gory scenes to any of his films since the original Alien in 1979. Where he sticked to an occasional chestbursting scene and limited the gore to suggestive imagery in that movie, he certainly went all out here, resulting in a plethora of scenes featuring the likes of genetically decomposing, arm snapping, involuntary facial penetration, burning and general dismemberment, not to mention a certain explicit self-operation scene that had even me gasping for breath while firmly grasping my seat. To think the studio ever considered this movie susceptible for a PG-13 rating seems completely unrealistic, since Prometheus is largely the stuff only a hard R rating can do justice. It's good to know Sir Ridley still knows how to shock his audience convincingly, like he did with Alien at the start of his career.

Something else this accomplished director succeeds in perfectly is eliciting excellent performances from his cast. In fact, Rapace and Marshall-Green, though they do an adequate job for sure, are outclassed at every turn by their colleagues, with Michael Fassbender delivering the film's standout performance in the role of the android (wouldn't be an Alien film without one, eh?) David, balancing carefully and compellingly between the psychotic and the angelic, between a child asking his parents how and why he came to be and a slave eager to turn on his oppressors at the first opportunity, so you never know what his agenda is and whose side he's one (if anybody's). The film successfully draws parallells between his human masters searching for their supposed creators and David living amidst his own creators who he obviously finds flawed, in several all too short scenes of which we can only hope there's more where those came from on the expected Director's Cut. At the other end of the spectrum there's Charlize Theron in the role of Meredith Vickers, the mission leader whose apparent job it is to make sure the Weyland Corporation gets its money worth out of this excessively expensive space trip, though her plight is far more personal considering she's the actual daughter of Mr. Weyland himself, who preferred David's company over hers, since the android is the closest thing he ever had to a son. Theron plays the role on fire, shrewdly maneuvering between appearing as a coldhearted rich bitch simply out to make money and a wronged daughter aiming for revenge. And then there's the old man himself, being played by Guy Pearce in heavy make-up. Weyland was a secret passenger, like Prometheus was on a secret mission to make contact with the Engineers and ask them for the secret to immortality so the dying old man could yet be saved.

As the movie makes perfectly clear, human immortality is actually far from the Engineers' minds, which results in some solid action scenes, both those involving the Engineers and Xenomorphs as well as those without. Also laudable is the quality of the visual effects, which help remind the audience of the original Alien atmosphere in both human and extra-terrestrial sense, but also being uniquely Prometheus material instead of simply rehashing what was done before. In fact, this sums up the whole of the film, since as a supposed Alien prequel, it certainly stands on its own merits, only hinting at the events in that earlier film without giving the exact explanations as to what happened prior to the events in Alien, so there's still some mystery to enjoy in that regard. It does at time contradict the later entries into the franchise though: the role of the badass Alien Queen which drove much of the later Alien films' plots now seems under serious scrutiny. But considering Sir Ridley's involvement with the franchise ended then right after the first film, it's understandable he favours his own appraoch here above building on the work of others who took over his job in the past.

Overall, Ridley Scott proves he can still distill a good movie out of the dried up franchise he created, the result being both spectacular and thought provoking, but frustratingly feeling incomplete, something he has even gone so far as to admit it simply is. Prometheus is a thinking man's Sci-Fi horror rollercoaster, a rare thing to behold in the post-Avatar days where science fiction feels dumbed down a bit due to the focus on visual and 3-D effects and the lack of exploring philosophical themes as the genre used to do more often. Given the large number of new unsolved questions, a sequel feels both likely and desireable. Sir Ridley could leave it in the hands of a capable young director like he did last time (it was James Cameron then, it shouldn't be now), or he can save everyone three decades and just do it himself, instead of having to do some damage control in another 33 years time. Either way, the Pandora's Box opened by Prometheus certainly won't be closed just yet.

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/prometheus/