With Prometheus only just finishing up a successful box-office run, and soon coming to Blu-ray, an art book is a good home companion to the film.
The giant Prometheus: The Art of the Film celebrates well that part of the thriller flick which was well done, all those pretty visual effects. Weighing in at nearly 200 pages, and in high quality full-color print, the book leaves little to be desired, at least as far as coffee table art books go.
The book is divided into 22 sections, each going through the artistic process and prop creation for one element of the film. There is a small chapter, for example, about the ship itself, then another about the make-up that went into the Fifield monster, and so forth. Each section starts off with concept sketches, then goes to early mock-up, whether plasticine or digital, then final shots from the film showing where the process ultimately led.
This is combined with lots of great photographs of director Ridley Scott and other cast and crew on the set next to the actors in make-up and costume, which is always cool to see just how mundane a film looks when you notice that the director is standing around in a bubble-jacket featuring the logo of his favorite sports franchise right next to the lead actor in a crazy space-suit
Beside many images are insights into the creative or production process by Ridley Scott, Max Arthur and others, these go deeply into what it was like to work on the film, how things went on and off the set, and even, to an extent, delve into the lore of the film’s story world.
The book would be great on the coffee table of any fan of the film or any special effects buff. It’s a great look behind the scenes of a very controversially critiqued film, which science fiction fans will likely be debating for years.
A quick note on the quality of the book itself: It may just have been my copy, but the main binding at the spine of my copy seems loose, not torn or falling apart, just as if not quite enough glue was used to keep everything together. Otherwise it’s a great, high-quality hard binding.
Prometheus: The Art of the Film is available now from Titan Books
