Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" (2012) follows a team of scientists who travel to the far reaches of space pursuing a star map discovered across ancient human cultures—a map they believe leads to the Engineers, the alien race they think created humanity. Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, the film stars Noomi Rapace as archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw, Michael Fassbender as the android David, Charlize Theron as the Weyland Corporation's representative Vickers, Logan Marshall-Green as Holloway, Guy Pearce as the elderly Weyland, and Idris Elba as ship captain Janek.
Pete and Andy both saw the film twice before recording and walked away with very different verdicts. That gap is the episode. Pete's frame is cognitive dissonance—a "high jump, low ceiling" problem where the film's philosophical ambitions (origin of life, creator and created, Engineers and humanity) and its genre mechanics (scientists doing stupid things, a script with too many characters and not enough time for any of them) collide in a way that makes every plot hole easier to pick at. Andy's counterargument is the quality of conversation the film generates: the Cavalorn essay, the Ridley Scott interview about space Jesus, the unanswered questions about the black goo. Those conversations, he argues, are the film's real achievement.
They work through what undeniably works—the visual craft of Dariusz Wolski's cinematography and Arthur Max's production design, including a ship reveal Pete compares to the Star Destroyer opening of "Star Wars"—and what undeniably doesn't: 17 crew members versus "Alien"'s seven, a geologist who gets lost in a cave he himself mapped, a biologist who tries to touch an alien snake, and an ending that Andy says collapses the film's more interesting questions into a franchise obligation. The centerpiece of the discussion is Michael Fassbender's David—the franchise's most intellectually interesting android, the film's one fully realized character, and the source of a question Pete and Andy spend considerable time on: why does David spike Holloway's drink, and what does it say about the nature of autonomous action?
🔓 The movie ends. The conversation goes further. Become a member of The Next Reel family.
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• Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and Movements | The Film Board | Movies We Like | The Next Reel | Sitting in the Dark

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