Prometheus Movie (2012): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Prometheus follows a scientific expedition in 2089 that travels to the moon LV-223 to find the beings its members believe created humanity. Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) find an ancient star map in Scotland that matches art from other unconnected cultures. They read it as an invitation from the Engineers, the name they give to humanity's creators.

The billionaire Peter Weyland pays for the trip aboard the ship Prometheus. The android David (Michael Fassbender) watches over the crew while they sleep through the long journey, and on arrival they land near a huge artificial structure and go in to explore.

Is it a prequel to the 1979 film? In setting, yes. Ridley Scott, who also directed alien 1979, places this story before the events of that film, and it sits first in the alien timeline. The writers did not set out to make a direct prequel, though, as the director and crew section explains. If you are new to the series, the alien movies in order guide shows where it fits, and the alien movies hub lists every film.

Prometheus tells its whole story across one expedition to LV-223, and everything below gives away the plot. The film begins on a barren world, where a towering alien drinks a dark liquid, breaks apart and lets its DNA drift into a waterfall. Years later, in 2089, the ship Prometheus carries Elizabeth Shaw, Charlie Holloway and a crew under Meredith Vickers and Captain Janek toward the moon the star map points to, while David tends the ship alone.

Inside the huge structure, the team finds stone cylinders, a giant carved head and a dead Engineer. David quietly pockets a cylinder of black liquid. Later he puts a drop of it into Holloway's drink, and Holloway sickens. Vickers will not let him back aboard, and at his own request she burns him.

Shaw then discovers she is pregnant, though she cannot have children. Using an automated surgical table, she cuts a squid-like creature out of her body. Another reveal follows: Peter Weyland, Vickers' father, has been hidden on the ship all along, hoping the Engineers can give him more life. A crewman who has mutated kills several colleagues before Janek puts him down.

Weyland and David wake the single living Engineer, who answers with violence and kills Weyland and most of the team. It then restarts its ship, which is meant to carry a deadly weapon to Earth. Janek and the last crew members ram the Prometheus into the Engineer's ship to stop it, and Vickers dies in the wreck. Shaw survives. The creature she removed has since grown enormous, and it overpowers the Engineer.

Prometheus had its world premiere on May 31, 2012 at the Empire in Leicester Square, London. Ridley Scott, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Guy Pearce attended, according to CBS News.

The film reached theaters almost immediately afterward. Box Office Mojo shows the earliest release in France and Belgium on May 30, 2012, then the UK on June 1, Australia on June 7 and the US on June 8, all as reported dates. In the US the film is rated R, in the UK 15 and in Australia MA 15+.

The ending of Prometheus leaves Shaw alive and heading for the Engineers' home world instead of Earth, with the central question of the film still unanswered. After the crash, Shaw recovers what is left of David, who helps her take another Engineer ship. She decides to fly to the Engineers' home world to ask why they wanted to destroy humanity.

In my opinion that choice matters more than the wreckage behind her, because it turns a survival story into an unfinished search. Earlier, the surviving Engineer had restarted its ship to carry a deadly weapon to Earth, and Janek's decision to crash the Prometheus into it is what stops that. Shaw is left with the motive, not the threat. The film never says why the Engineers turned on us, and it could be argued that the silence is deliberate. The opening scene supports that reading: an alien drinks a dark liquid and its DNA scatters into a waterfall, and the black liquid David later takes from the cylinder appears to echo it, though the film leaves the link unspoken.

The last shot is the clearest signal that the film belongs to the same world as the earlier entries. A new creature bursts from the dead Engineer's chest, and that creature points to the monster of the original Alien, leaving room for a sequel. That moment answers the chestburster of Alien (1979), but in reverse: there, the crew of the Nostromo answers a signal from a moon and finds a wrecked alien ship holding egg-like organisms, whereas here the birth comes from the Engineer, the very kind of being that left the wreck. Scott directed both films, so the echo is deliberate bookkeeping on the director's part, even though Damon Lindelof's rewrite of Jon Spaihts' first script was meant to be set in the Alien universe without being a direct prequel. That explains why the ending hints at the xenomorph instead of delivering one.

The scale of the production also shapes the ending. Prometheus cost $130 million, according to Box Office Mojo, and that larger canvas, shot in 3D, allows a story about origins to end on a question, where Alien (1979) and aliens 1986 end on escape. The film grossed about $403 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, which is the commercial context for the follow up. The next film in release order is Alien: Covenant, also directed by Scott, which has its own alien covenant page. It opens with a damaged colony ship in 2104 and brings back Fassbender, billed there as David / Walter, so David's survival at the end of Prometheus is the thread the series picks up. For the creature itself, see the xenomorph entry and the xenomorph life cycle guide.

Prometheus was filmed across England, Iceland, Spain and Jordan, with the main studio work done at Shepperton and Pinewood Studios in England. Iceland supplied the planet exteriors near Hekla and the Dettifoss waterfall.

In Alicante, Spain, the production used sets at the Ciudad de la Luz studio, and the desert landscapes were shot in Wadi Rum, Jordan. Pickup shoots in January 2012 took place on the Isle of Skye and in a Scottish cave.

Several production details explain how Prometheus came to sit where it does in the series.

• Jon Spaihts wrote the first script, and Damon Lindelof was brought in to rewrite it into a story set in the Alien universe but not a direct prequel.
• The film had its world premiere on May 31, 2012 at the Empire in Leicester Square, London, attended by Ridley Scott, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Guy Pearce.
• Box Office Mojo lists a production budget of $130 million.
• Box Office Mojo shows the film opening in France and Belgium on May 30, 2012, its earliest release, ahead of the UK on June 1 and the US on June 8.
• The score is by Marc Streitenfeld, and the film was shot in 3D.

The film earned $403 million worldwide on that $130 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. For the full series comparison, see the alien box office page.