There’s a marketing misstep if ever I saw one. Summer 2012 is stacked with high-profile franchise releases including The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, and one of the more mysterious entries, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Set in the same universe as Scott’s classic Alien, it’s a prequel but not really—the events take place before those of Alien, but the story isn’t directly related. Or something like that. Everyone connected to the movie is very hush-hush about the plot. Which is why the first trailer should be a big deal—no one really knows what’s going on with this movie so every little reveal counts.
Or it should, but this week Fox decided it was a good idea to release the first teaser for Prometheus after The Dark Knight Rises. It’s really adorable that Fox thinks Alien = Batman… but it doesn’t. Alien is iconic, sure, but they’ve spent so much time telling us how Prometheus isn’t really Alien that it’s killed some of the urgency for the project. As it stands now, Prometheus is a slick-looking space/sci-fi flick with an egregiously beautiful cast. Based off the trailer just released, it doesn’t strike me as must-see cinema just yet.
That might be due to the fact that so far, the summer tent poles have either given us a clear look at the project—The Dark Knight Rises, Snow White and the Huntsman, Men in Black III, Jack the Giant Killer and Battleship have all turned out full trailers—or we’re still being teased with mere glimpses of images from the film, like with The Amazing Spider-Man and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Prometheus’ teaser is pretty, it’s well cut and appropriately spacey, but it doesn’t exactly get me excited. It actually kind of looks like any number of “things go wrong in space” movies—the genre lead by Alien—such as Event Horizon or Pandorum. It doesn’t say “fresh” so much as “space: still scary”.
What Prometheus does have going for it, though, is that ridiculously good looking cast. Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace and The Fassbender are featured in the trailer, but there’s also Idris Elba, Guy Pearce and Patrick Wilson to boot. Ridley Scott hasn’t had a slam-dunk hit since 2007’s American Gangster so he’s looking to score here. Stacking his cast like that is a good place to start—there’s something for everyone. Now he just needs to work out how to show us his movie without giving away whatever surprise he’s maintaining. After seeing this first effort, I’m afraid it will turn out to be that this is an elaborate episode of Ancient Aliens.
