With Alien: Romulus (watch the trailer!) out this week, and it feels like the most exciting Alien universe movie since this one – have a read of Nick’s feature on the footage screening he went to in London – I felt it was a great time to revisit, so let’s head back to 2012….

I originally published this on The Hollywood News in 2012 – The event took place under the arches near Tower Bridge.

If there was ever a film that split the lovers of Ridley Scott’s Alien universe, it seems to undoubtedly be Prometheus [ED: Although in 2024, there’s also the oddly bland Alien: Covenant so…. ) In reality, I personally figured returning to such a beloved creation was never necessarily going to run smoothly, especially after 33 years of build-up. I keep thinking they marketed it 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 a Science-fiction epic that really should be considered on its own merits. Don’t forget, Scott always said this wasn’t going to be the same film again, so what did people expect?

For the 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. Upon entering, we were soon in a blue-lit smoke-machine-filled room and around us, we were surrounded by those mysterious grey vases 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 rumbling of a train traveled overhead, it created a bizarre heartbeat-like sound that became, quite impressively, part of the entire show. For me, Prometheus is 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 in his best-ever role?) 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 then, 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’ Fifield who seems to be a 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, why not just cast an older actor who doesn’t look like they’re covered in prosthetics? Yet, for me, these are minor flaws in a film that 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 further 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 (ED in 2024: This was supposed to become Covenant but I’m not too sure if that’s actually what happened in the end).

Overall, from this particular screening, I’m still 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(d) they might be answered in the years ahead…

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

It’s available to stream and also you can pick up on 4K UHD or Blu-ray: https://amzn.to/3AlLsWt

 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

Originally published on THN right here!