Still courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Film. 
 
 After you've seen Prometheus, come back and listen to our Spoiler Special: 
 
 
 
 Dana Stevens Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic. 
 
 Prometheus (20th Century Fox), Ridley Scott’s return to visionary science fiction three decades after Alien and Blade Runner, opens big, with an aerial 3-D camera sweeping low over panoramic landscapes so vast and bleak it’s as if the location scout actually visited outer space. (The sheer cliff drops and glacial expanses seen in this stunning opening sequence are in fact located in Iceland.) At the edge of a waterfall in this austere setting stands a humanoid creature whose marble-white skin and exaggerated muscle definition recall classical statuary. He ingests a small dish of what looks like bubbling caviar—then immediately and spectacularly crumbles to dust. As the organic material of his body washes away, we watch DNA-like structures twist and form in CSI-style micro-closeup. 
 
 This is a whiz-bang beginning for a movie, with its implicit suggestion that the origin of human life may have involved some form of alien self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, nothing that happens for the rest of Prometheus equals or, for that matter, explains its striking prologue. Co-scripted by Damon Lindelof of Lost, this film shares that series’ love for nested mythologies and involute philosophical riddles. Prometheus is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart, although the dazzling design and special effects keep you from noticing that basic flaw until at least an hour in. 
 
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 After Caviar Man takes his fateful dive, we move to Earth in 2089, a few decades before the beginning of Alien (to which this movie positions itself as a kind of prequel). Two archeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), explore a prehistoric cave whose wall paintings suggest contact between early man and an alien visitor—a pattern the scientists (who are also a couple) have noticed in sites around the world. On the strength of this pair’s crackpot-sounding theory, an ominous group known as the Weyland Corp. (Put it this way: The chairman is a dead man who appears only in the form of a pre-recorded hologram) agrees to underwrite an exploratory space mission to seek out the origin of human life. 
 
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 The titular ship (which, like many unwisely named sci-fi vessels, might as well be christened the USS Hubris) sets out for an Earth-like planet in a distant solar system, manned by a crew that’s placed in suspended animation for the bulk of the journey. The only creature minding the ship is David (Michael Fassbender), an unsettlingly lifelike android. He passes his time on the empty, silent vessel monitoring the ship’s progress and watching Lawrence of Arabia for tips on human behavior. As they approach their destination, David begins to rouse his fellow crewmembers from their sleep pods: the ship’s laconic pilot, Janek (Idris Elba); an uptight representative of the Weyland Corp., Vickers (Charlize Theron); the archeologist couple; and a few other characters who (not to spoil anything) might not be worth getting overly invested in. 
 
 Once the crew lands on the planet’s surface and begins exploring the huge ancient structure they find there, their mistakes pile up pretty quickly. It probably wasn’t a smart idea for Elizabeth to bag up the fossilized head of a dead alien they find in one chamber and bring it onboard the ship for examination. It definitely didn’t make sense for two disgruntled geologists (Rafe Spall and Sean Harris) to peel off from the main group and start back for the ship on their own. And if you’re stranded for the night in a vast, labyrinthine structure on another planet, you might think twice about approaching the gray-green phallic snake-thing that rises up suddenly from a puddle of black ooze and addressing it with a cajoling, “Hey, little guy.” 
 
 After the first round of redshirts meet their grisly ends, things really start to get weird aboard the Prometheus. Looking in the mirror, Charlie sees, or imagines he sees, a tiny worm peeking out of his eyeball (an effective moment of minimalist body horror that evokes David Cronenberg’s The Fly.) Later, David coolly informs Elizabeth that she’s pregnant with an alien life form, resulting in a gynecological horror scene that’s both the movie’s most memorable set piece and the mark of its irrevocable descent into implausibility. The last half hour is a blur of chases, explosions, and battles (man-on-man, monster-on-man, and monster-on-monster). 
 
 Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn’t strain so hard (especially in the final scenes) for weighty existential meaning. There’s an ongoing theological debate between the atheist android David—who, as a manmade being, resists the idea of a divine creator—and the Christian truth-seeker Elizabeth, who insists on wearing a cross under her spacesuit even as the evidence pours in that the creatures who engineered us are indifferent if not outright malevolent. “Where do we come from? What is our purpose? What happens when we die?” David asks a human character at one point, enumerating the questions that drive the ship’s mission. Thanks to Fassbender’s precise, witty performance—when he’s on screen, the movie snaps to attention—David sounds both mocking of human curiosity and wistfully envious of it. ||||| Prometheus 
 
 June 6, 2012 
 
 Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. It's in the classic tradition of golden age sci-fi, echoing Scott's "Alien" (1979), but creating a world of its own. I'm a pushover for material like this; it's a seamless blend of story, special effects and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract. 
 
 A scene at the outset shows a world with apparently only one animal being, a pale humanoid who stalks a high ridge surrounded by spectacular scenery. This person eats something that causes painful vomiting and rapid body decay. The vomit is followed into flowing water, where it seems to morph into living cellular structures. Where is this place? Is it Earth? Who is the being, and why is it alone and naked? Is the scene a visualization of the theory that life first arrived on Earth from outer space? 
 
 
 
 Cut to a human spaceship in the year 2093, qualifying "Prometheus" for a flash-forward spanning more years than the opening of "2001." The trillion-dollar ship Prometheus is en route to a distant world, which seems pointed to in prehistoric cave paintings. There's reason to believe human life may have originated there. It's an Earth-sized moon orbiting a giant planet, and at first it seems a disappointment: no growing things, unbreathable atmosphere. But the crew notices straight lines on the surface, and as we all know, nature makes no straight lines. 
 
 
 
 The lines lead to a vast dome or pyramid, and the film will mostly take place inside the dome and the Prometheus. But let's put the plot on hold and introduce two of the crew members: Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) wears a cross around her neck and believes life ultimately had a divine origin. Her boyfriend, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), accuses her, a scientist, of dismissing centuries of Darwinism. What they find in the pyramid leaves the question open. Alien humanoids, in suspended animation, incredibly have DNA that's a perfect match for our own. So they could somehow have brought life to Earth — but why? And from this moon where they slumber inside their pyramid, or from another planet around a distant star? Why did they stop here? What are they waiting for? 
 
 
 
 The film then develops horror scenes comparable to "Alien," although it depends more on action and weaponry than that film's use of shadows and silence. For me, the most spellbinding scenes involve the crew members exploring the passages and caverns inside the pyramid, obviously unvisited in aeons, and their experiences with some of the hibernating alien beings. One of the key members of this crew is David (Michael Fassbender), an android, who knows or can figure out more or less everything, even alien languages, and is sort of a walking, talking, utterly fearless HAL 9000. 
 
 
 
 The alien race in "Prometheus" shares a body characteristic that reminds me of "Alien" and countless films since: Elements can detach from them and enter into other bodies as hostile parasites. This leads to an astonishing sequence in which Elizabeth, alone on the ship, discovers she is pregnant with an alien Something and somehow finds the will to control a robot surgery device that removes it. Her later showdown with a waning oxygen supply shows equal resourcefulness; Noomi Rapace ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," 2009) continues here the tradition of awesome feminine strength begun by Sigourney Weaver in "Alien." 
 
 
 
 Another strong woman is on board, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a representative of the corporation that privately financed the Prometheus. She treats the others like her employees, which they are, and believes she always speaks for the company's wishes. The ship's captain, Janek (Idris Elba), makes no pretensions of scientific expertise like the others but is a no-nonsense working pilot. Janek has the most interesting evolution, from the irreverent hipster in his first scenes into a man with the ability to intuit the truth about what he's seeing. 
 
 
 
 The most tantalizing element is how it plays with the role of these DNA twins. Did they create life on Earth? The possibility of two identical DNAs as a coincidence is unthinkable. Charlie digs at Elizabeth, suggesting their existence disproves her beliefs. Her obvious response: Where did they come from? This puzzle is embedded in an adventure film that has staggering visuals, expert horror, mind-challenging ideas and enough unanswered questions to prime the inevitable sequel. ||||| Part philosophical treatise, part pulp fiction, part pure horror show, Ridley Scott 's "Prometheus" ends up with less to say than it thinks it does. Though more involving than much of this year's summer blockbuster competition, by the standards set by its wizardly director it's something of a disappointment.Scott's "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982) are two of the preeminent science fiction films, and so it was inevitable that "Prometheus" would be compared to them. But it's especially the case because "Prometheus" — starring Noomi Rapace Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron — shares, as Scott himself has said, some DNA strands with "Alien."Anyone who is unfamiliar with "Alien" need not worry — "Prometheus" stands on its own. But those with vivid memories of what happened to Ellen Ripley aboard the Nostromo 33 years ago will find several points of reference in common with this latest iteration.Aside from Scott's expert first-time use of 3-D, the main differences between "Prometheus" and those earlier films are that the new venture is more creepy than it is scary, and it's considerably more self-conscious about the ideas that lie beneath the action.Although the director remains a master creator of alternate worlds, "Prometheus," unlike its predecessors, does not wear its themes lightly. It pushes too hard for significance, which is dicey in and of itself for genre material and contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting.As written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof (co-creator of TV's "Lost"), "Prometheus" begins, after an arresting but baffling prologue, at a dig on Scotland's Isle of Skye in the year 2089.Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway ( Logan Marshall-Green ), a pair of romantically involved archaeologists, have made a startling discovery: a 35,000-year-old pictogram that shows humans worshiping an enormous figure who points to the stars.This same image has also been discovered in a number of far-flung sites all over the world, leading Shaw and Holloway to conclude (as an unacknowledged Erich von Daniken claimed in his 1968 book "Chariots of the Gods") that beings from outer space had a big hand in creating life on Earth.Messianically determined to find these aliens and answer once and for all big questions like "Where do we come from? What is our purpose?," the pair persuades the world's richest human, Peter Weyland of Weyland Industries ( Guy Pearce under a ton of makeup), to spend a trillion dollars, give or take, to fund a trip to outer space with the purpose of tracking those "engineers" down."Prometheus" proper begins on a spaceship ominously named after the character in Greek mythology who suffered greatly for challenging the gods. Though Janek (an excellent Idris Elba ) is the nominal captain, the ship is really run by Meredith Vickers (Theron), a Weyland Industries bigwig who is not shy about saying things like "my job is to make sure you do yours."Theron, who has clearly found her comfort zone with ice-cold roles, is strong here, but from the acting point of view "Prometheus" belongs to the protean Fassbender, who excels as David, the spaceship's resident android.Considered by Peter Weyland to be the closest thing to a son he has, albeit with the drawback of not having a soul, David (who watches "Lawrence of Arabia" for tips on being human) is smarter and more capable than anyone on the ship and very much knows it. Fassbender gets David's almost-but-not-quite human character exactly right and is especially good at conveying the can-he-be-trusted aspect that always comes with android territory.More hit and miss is Rapace (of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), who never quite connects with the tree-hugger aspects of Shaw's character but really comes into her own once things start to go south in a major way.For it will not come as a surprise to anyone that everything is not exactly sweetness and light on the planet where the Prometheans land in search of those creative aliens. All kinds of awful, increasingly grotesque and horrific stuff starts to happen, and having someone with Shaw's indomitability around turns out to be a major plus for mankind.(In an odd convergence, both "Prometheus" and the benighted "Battleship" share a press material reference to scientistStephen Hawking'swarning that intelligent life from other planets "might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." True story.)Making up for the expected nature of some of the film's plot twists is Arthur Max 's spooky, H.R. Giger-influenced production design, Dariusz Wolski 's fluid cinematography, as well as Scott's moment-to-moment storytelling skill. Though the thrills here are less visceral than "Alien" and the world imagined less mind-altering than "Blade Runner," those gifts continue to impress in any galaxy you care to mention.'Prometheus'R for sci-fi violence, including some intense images, and brief language2 hours, 4 minutesIn general release ||||| Photo by Giles Keyte. Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. 
 
 A few dozen days (or, as a rotation of the planet is referred to in NASA jargon, “sols”) into his lonely survival ordeal on Mars, the stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) delivers a kind of mission statement into the video log he’s recording for posterity. Faced with the challenge of finding or creating enough food and water to survive the four years until the next mission is scheduled to reach the red planet, Mark decides, with the beleaguered optimism of a born survivor, to “science the shit out of this.” 
 
 Dana Stevens Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic. 
 
 That was pretty much also the strategy of Andy Weir, who wrote the best-selling sci-fi novel on which The Martian is based. Weir, a software engineer and the son of a physicist, put in meticulous research to support his speculations about the viability of, say, indoor agriculture in a Mars habitat (Mark’s eventual, if temporary, solution to the what-to-eat problem). I couldn’t say to what degree Ridley Scott’s adaptation, in turn, sciences the shit out of Weir’s source material. But Scott has, against all odds, broken one of the most fundamental laws of physics: the tendency of systems toward entropy. Scott’s recent films, many of them grand-scale spectacles (Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings) have grown progressively longer, slower, and more ponderous. Now, suddenly, the director has changed course with a movie that, while certainly long—The Martian approaches 2½ hours—feels as bouncy and light as a beach ball. 
 
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 If that’s not the metaphor you prefer for your sci-fi blockbusters—if you like them on the more philosophically weighty side—then there are plenty of movies out there for you already. The Martian is a nerdy process film about outer space survival, with a boyish indifference to archetypal symbolism (cf. Gravity) or brooding debates about fate and free will (cf. Interstellar). Don’t bother asking Damon’s Mark Watney how he feels about being completely alone on a planet inhospitable to human life, where it’s very likely he’ll starve to death before help can reach him. He’ll simply throw a spade over his shoulder, repair a crack in his helmet with duct tape, and head out to shovel some more good red Mars dirt. 
 
 In that dirt—fertilized by the human waste left behind in vacuum-sealed packs by Mark and his former crewmates—he will grow enough potatoes to buy himself a few hundred more sols’ worth of food supply. Meanwhile the Hermes, the spaceship on which Mark was serving as team botanist, is on its way back to earth, its crew members still unaware that their colleague survived the dust storm that forced them to cut their mission short. 
 
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 The final hour of The Martian is pure hokum, albeit of the most satisfying kind. 
 
 As many observers have noted, The Martian isn’t Matt Damon’s first go-round as the sole inhabitant of a hostile alien world: Last year, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar landed the actor in a similar pickle. (Damon has also done his share of plodding through barren desertscapes here on Earth, in Gus Van Sant’s black-comic parable Gerry.) It’s easy to see why Damon would be your go-to stuck-on-a-planet actor. He’s Robinson Crusoe via the Hardy Boys, stalwart without being stolid and hopeful without being (thank God) chipper. And as written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Drew Goddard—whose touch with snappy dialogue is largely responsible for The Martian’s unexpected buoyancy—Mark Watney is funny, a quality too seldom exhibited by leading men in space. Mark’s ability to see the comic absurdity of his predicament even in moments of extreme peril comes to seem inseparable from his iron will to live, and Damon conveys that connection without ever straining for bathos. The early scenes have an austere one-man show element, with Damon interacting only with the video monitor where he records his log and the harsh Martian environment that constantly threatens to engulf him. (Many exteriors were filmed in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, a frequent movie stand-in for the fourth planet from the Sun.) 
 
 By about halfway through, though, the solar system of The Martian has gotten pretty crowded. In addition to a following the progress of the Hermes—captained by Jessica Chastain, with a crew that includes Michael Peña and Kate Mara—the audience is gradually introduced to a boatload of supporting characters at NASA’s Houston headquarters: Jeff Daniels as the PR-conscious head of the space program. Chiwetel Ejiofor as the mission director who presses him to prioritize Watney’s rescue once they realize the stranded botanist is still alive. Kristen Wiig as NASA’s snippy director of PR (who, confusingly, has the same first name as her Bridesmaids character, making you wonder how she went from cupcake entrepreneur to aerospace bureaucrat). Donald Glover as an entry-level astrodynamicist with a left-field idea about how to speed up the rescue mission. 
 
 The plan for Watney’s rescue may rely on solid science (even if some of the last-minute MacGyvering with tarps and duct tape seems a little sketchy). But dramatically, the final hour of The Martian is pure hokum, albeit of the most satisfying kind. Watney tinkers with the space junk at his encampment to engineer a solar-powered roving vehicle, all to the accompaniment of a left-behind playlist of vintage disco, ABBA, and David Bowie (no, not “Life on Mars,” but something almost as thematically apropos). Back on Earth, the Chinese and the Americans agree to collaborate on an unprecedented international mission to save the stranded astronaut.
– Critics agree: The visuals in Ridley Scott's Prometheus are stunning. As for the story—about a space crew tracking the aliens who may have created us—it's a little too heavy for its own good. "Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn't strain so hard for weighty existential meaning," writes Dana Stevens at Slate. The film "is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart," though its design and effects are so "dazzling" you won't realize "that basic flaw until at least an hour in." Joe Morgenstern echoes Stevens in the Wall Street Journal. "This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder," he notes. Still, it's "worth seeing for the quality of its sci-fi sights." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan notes that the movie "pushes too hard for significance," which "contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting." For "its wizardly director, it's something of a disappointment." But at the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert raves that Prometheus is "a seamless blend of story, special effects, and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract." And Ebert finds it "all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers."