Prometheus 2: 10 Lessons It Must Learn In Order To Succeed

4. Ease Up On The Copying

Besides reworking aspects from the Alien franchise, Prometheus also borrows elements from other sci-fi films - while it's inevitable that there's some signs of inspiration in a film of this kind, Prometheus demonstrates a few glaring examples which its sequel would do well to tone down. Did using a flamethrower on a mutating crew member remind anyone of John Carpenter's The Thing? Other comparisons relating to visual style, themes and characterisation can be made with sci-fi movies and franchises including Star Trek, Contact, Leviathan, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mission to Mars, A.I. and The X-Files, whether intentional or otherwise. By the same token it plays on genre conventions and tropes too often, and the culmination of this is a film that sometimes feels generic. A film like Cabin in the Woods succeeds because it's knowingly taking swipes at and subverts genre expectations and rules; Prometheus, with its ambitious origin of humanity scope and questions of faith versus reason, would have been far more effective if it were less derivative and knowingly referential, and instead focused on being more original.