Story
The movie begins in a cave on the Isle of Skye in Scotland where archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Dr Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover ancient cave paintings. These paintings show the origins of an alien race called the ‘Engineers’, whom Shaw and Holloway believe are responsible for the creation of the human race.
We next see Shaw and Holloway in the year 2093, when they are on the Starship Prometheus approaching the distant moon identified in the paintings. They have just woken up after spending the past two years in cryogenic sleep. Among Prometheus’s crew of 17 are android David (Michael Fassbender), ageing zillionaire and project funder Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and project boss Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron). After landing, a small exploration team including Shaw, Holloway and David leave the safety of Prometheus to check out gigantic alien-made structures on the moon’s surface. While exploring these structures, Shaw and her team discover a chamber containing dozens of long dead giant alien bodies piled against a door. The door leads to a room with hundreds of vase-like cylinders all of which begin to ooze organic fluids when the door is opened. We learn later that the cylinders contain alien creatures created by the Engineers, which have been designed to either impregnate humans with alien fetuses or infect humans with a virus that turns them into mutated homicidal monsters.
An approaching storm forces the team to abandon their find and go back to Prometheus. Before they do, David steals one of the cylinders and sneaks it aboard. David’s actions have devastating consequences. Shaw is impregnated by an alien fetus and Holloway is infected with the virus. To make things worse, the crew of Prometheus learn that the real aim of the Engineers is to destroy the life they once created on Earth. The explorers are determined to stop that from happening.
Themes
Alien life forms and planets; genocide; weapons of mass destruction and biological weapons; androids; mutating viruses; pregnancy termination
Violence
This movie has intense sequences of violence and peril including some disturbing images of very brutal violence with realistic depictions of blood and gore. The movie also has a scene showing a highly intense and very realistic surgical procedure. For example:
Sexual references
This movie has some sexual references. For example:
- After losing their way and getting isolated from the rest of the crew, two male crew members are told by their male captain, ‘Try not to bugger each other’.
- A man says to a woman, ‘If you want to be laid you could just say, “Hey I want to be laid” ’. When the woman doesn’t look very impressed, the man asks if she is a robot. She says, ‘My room – 10 minutes’.
- After being medically examined, Shaw is told that she is pregnant. She is asked if she has had sex with Dr Holloway.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
This movie shows some use of substances. For example:
- The captain of Prometheus smokes a cigar.
- A couple of scenes show characters drinking vodka martinis and champagne.
- One scene shows a character smoking inside his space suit. Another man asks if it’s tobacco smoke inside the man’s helmet. The first man replies that it isn't. The man sucks on a tube inside his helmet. It’s obvious that he’s smoking cannabis.
- During and after a caesarean section operation, a woman injects herself with drugs, as well as taking some of tablets.
Nudity and sexual activity
This movie has some sexual activity. For example, a man and woman kiss passionately. The woman takes off the man’s top before the scene ends.
Product placement
None of concern
Coarse language
This movie has some coarse language.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Prometheus in 3D is a science fiction action movie, containing horror images and brutal violence. It is a prequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien and answers some of the unexplained questions from that movie.
The movie targets a wide-ranging audience from older teenagers to adults, but is completely unsuitable for younger audiences. You should know that it was originally rated MA15+ by the Australian Government Classification Board, but the rating was lowered to M by the Board after appeal by the distributors.
These are the movie’s main messages:
- Humans are always seeking knowledge about where they come from and what happens when they die.
- Curiosity can be fatal. The expedition’s thirst for hidden knowledge ultimately leads to their death.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include self-sacrifice. Throughout the movie, both humans and androids sacrifice their own safety to save others. At the end of the movie, several crew members willingly sacrifice their lives to stop the human race being destroyed.
This movie could also give you the chance to talk with your children about real-life issues such as the question of what makes us human. For example, the android David seems to have no emotions. He can’t understand happiness, love, greed and so on. But he often seems to be more human than the humans.