Prometheus Blu-ray Screening Review

Director: Ridley Scott

Running Time: 124 minutes

Certificate: 15

If there was ever a film that split the lovers of Ridley Scott’s ALIEN’S universe in opinion, it’s undoubtedly PROMETHEUS. However, like a lot of us, I figured returning to such a beloved creation was never necessarily going to run smoothly, especially after 33 years of build-up. I keep thinking that they marketed this a little incorrectly, yet cleverly, because that first major trailer mirrored the original ALIEN trailer in nearly every way, therefore indicating that PROMETHEUS would be shadowy, slow and terrifying when in fact, we got an epic Science-fiction film that really should be considered on its own merits. Don’t forget as well, that Scott always said this wasn’t going to be ALIEN, so what did we expect?

For our mid-week PROMETHEUS Blu-ray screening, complete with alternate beginnings and endings, we were treated to a fantastic venue buried in the arches of London Bridge. We entered into a blue-lit smoke-machine filled bar area, with those additional black vases that are found in the Ampule Room in the film. From there, we moved into the screening with the Blu-ray menu playing on a big screen and as the occasional train traveled overhead, it created a bizarre heartbeat-like sound that somehow became, quite impressively, part of the entire show. PROMETHEUS, for me, is Ridley Scott’s deep exploration into faith and belief in humanity rather than the later interest of the Xenomorph and an Alien-species. Although it touches on religious connotations for almost every character, there is also an undeniable lean towards the proof of science and the quite literal look at ‘who created us’.

The alternate beginning isn’t really that alternative and something you’ve already seen, if you’ve watched any TV advert recently or searched  for answers to your questions. There is still the sacrifice of the giant, luminous white ‘man’  but this time he’s given that mysterious cup of deathly liquid by a group of white-faced hoodies. His DNA crumbles and rips apart his existence as he tumbles piece-by-piece into the Icelandic/generic desolate landscape waterfall, thus indicating this is most definitely a sacrificial act to the hovering spacecraft above them. But this still raises the question, who are the ‘Gods’ above them?

From there, PROMETHEUS continues as it did in the cinema by opening with Noomi Rapace’s Dr Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discovering those ancient cave drawings that all have those same mysterious space craft shapes, right through human history. They make the conclusive assumption that we did not evolve in a Darwin-sense but instead, we were engineered by an Alien race from another planet and from here, in the words of Michael Fassbender’s David, the adventure begins.

The stand-out performances are with no doubts Fassbender’s robot David and Rapace’s Shaw. Both wholly encapsulated by the world they find themselves in and utterly convincing, from two different sides of science. In fact, the cast are what makes PROMETHEUS work for me, despite Sean Harris’s ‘Fifield’ who seems to be some kind of hardcore geologist who also instantaneously becomes a screaming, child-like wreck despite the fact he’s agreed to travel millions of miles to discover something that obviously isn’t based on Earth. My only other character problem is the aging of Guy Pearce and the pointlessness of it, why not just cast an older actor who doesn’t look like they’re covered in prosthetics? However, these are minor flaws in a film that truly wants to explore humanity with possible science-fiction beginnings.

The alternate end is also basically a re-working of what we’ve already seen with a few more extra lines, and in the room of the space jockey. It delves a little more into what the creature said to David before it goes out of control and tries to take off, and it comprehensively suggests there is something beyond now that Shaw wants to explore aka PARADISE. I’m still very eager to see where this can go and I find PROMETHEUS an incredibly immersive, epic experience on a scale that we’ve never seen before with so much success. Ridley Scott may have disappointed a few ALIEN die-hards but I also think he’s raised even more questions and I just hope they can be answered in a couple of years time, which has already been confirmed.

PROMETHEUS stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Alba, Logan-Marshall Green and Guy Pearce.

It’s available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD from October 8th and we have all the details of all the content below:

 Prometheus Blu-ray 3D Collector’s Edition

Disc 1

•       3D Theatrical Cut of Film

Disc 2

•       Commentary by Director/Producer Ridley Scott

•       Commentary by Writer Jon Spaihts and Writer/Executive Producer Damon Lindelof

•       The Peter Weyland Files

•       Deleted and Alternate Scenes that include an Alternate Opening / Ending

•       Prometheus: Weyland Corp Archive Second Screen App

•       The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus

•       Enhancement Pods

•       Weyland Corp Archives which includes Pre-Visualizations, Screen Tests and more

Disc 3

•       Blu-ray

•       Digital Copy

Prometheus Blu-ray

•       Theatrical Cut

•       Commentary by Director/Producer Ridley Scott

•       Commentary by Writer Jon Spaihts and Writer/Executive Producer Damon Lindelof

•       The Peter Weyland Files

•       Deleted and Alternate Scenes that include an Alternate Opening / Ending

•       Prometheus: Weyland Corp Archive Second Screen App

•       Digital Copy

Prometheus DVD

•       Deleted scenes