{"id":180589,"date":"2025-09-25T10:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T10:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/180589\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T10:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T10:23:09","slug":"one-of-the-most-controversial-sci-fi-movies-ever-is-a-streaming-hit-13-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/180589\/","title":{"rendered":"One Of The Most Controversial Sci-Fi Movies Ever Is A Streaming Hit 13 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/intro-1758740808.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1977874\/prometheus-controversial-sci-fi-movie-hbo-max-streaming-success\/\" data-post-id=\"1977874\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"One Of The Most Controversial Sci-Fi Movies Ever Is A Streaming Hit 13 Years Later: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Michael Fassbender as David studying a holographic image in Prometheus\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    20th Century Studios<\/p>\n<p>How long does it take for audiences to finally catch up on true, ahead-of-its-time greatness? Roughly 13 years, apparently. It almost feels quaint to look back now and remember, but director Ridley Scott first debuted 2012&#8217;s &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; at a time when the &#8220;Alien&#8221; franchise hadn&#8217;t seen a single new installment in over a decade and a half. (No, we&#8217;re not counting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1644756\/alien-vs-predator-minor-box-office-hit-came-major-cost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">either of those &#8220;Alien vs Predator&#8221; crossover experiments<\/a> in the mid-aughts, thank you very much.) Hype soon reached an all-time high as fans eagerly awaited this prequel film, which purported to explore the events leading up to those of Scott&#8217;s original 1979 horror\/sci-fi classic. What audiences received instead turned out to be a\u00a0very different and much more esoteric approach to the universe \u2014 one that invited some of the loudest, most vitriolic reactions we&#8217;d experienced to any blockbuster since the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; prequels.<\/p>\n<p>Funny how things change though, right? Or, to put it in the words of our favorite synthetic lifeform with a taste for murder:\u00a0&#8220;Big things have small beginnings.&#8221; &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; features an all-star cast including the likes of\u00a0Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth\u00a0Shaw,\u00a0Logan Marshall-Green as Charlie Holloway,\u00a0Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers,\u00a0Idris Elba as the ship&#8217;s pilot Janek, a pre-&#8220;Mission: Impossible&#8221;\u00a0Sean Harris as Fifield, Benedict Wong as Rivel, and even Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland (curiously saddled with old-age makeup, as opposed to an age-appropriate actor).\u00a0But\u00a0Scott&#8217;s divisive and controversial choice to place Michael Fassbender&#8217;s David in a position of such prominence \u2014 essentially making him responsible for all the Xenomorph mayhem that unfolds in the first &#8220;Alien&#8221; movie \u2014 was just one of many narrative swerves that contributed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/521459\/prometheus-review-ridley-scotts-overly-ambitious-entertaining-almostalien-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the less-than-stellar response to &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; upon its release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The last several years have seen something of a sea change, however. Both &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; and its direct sequel, &#8220;Alien: Covenant,&#8221; have since gained their share of vocal supporters. (For the record, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/551005\/in-defense-of-prometheus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\/Film has been ahead of the curve on &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; for some time now<\/a>.) And now, finally, it appears that streaming audiences have (re)discovered this ambitious, ungainly, and otherwise thoroughly fascinating artifact for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                Prometheus is killing it on HBO Max<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/prometheus-is-killing-it-on-hbo-max-1758740809.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1977874\/prometheus-controversial-sci-fi-movie-hbo-max-streaming-success\/\" data-post-id=\"1977874\" data-slide-num=\"1\" data-slide-title=\"One Of The Most Controversial Sci-Fi Movies Ever Is A Streaming Hit 13 Years Later: Prometheus is killing it on HBO Max\" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw staring in horror while covering her face in Prometheus\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    20th Century Studios<\/p>\n<p>Never underestimate humanity&#8217;s instinctive, primal need to discover more about where we came from \u2014 no matter the cost. Okay, I&#8217;m not saying that fully explains the love for &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; on streaming these days but, well, it can&#8217;t hurt! While far from a complete portrait for audiences as a whole, the viewing analytics on the latest roundup for HBO Max paint a pretty compelling picture. The third-party website <a href=\"https:\/\/flixpatrol.com\/top10\/hbo\/united-states\/2025-09-24\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">FlixPatrol<\/a>\u00a0has crunched the numbers, revealing that Scott&#8217;s ungainly passion project has cracked the streamer&#8217;s top 10 movies watched as of the day of publication. Is this a product of &#8220;Alien: Earth&#8221; humming along on FX and Hulu? Or a sign of reinvigorated interest following &#8220;Alien: Romulus&#8221; and the announcement of its upcoming sequel? The arc of the universe may be long, but we choose to believe that it has always been bending towards reclaiming &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; revisionism, folks!<\/p>\n<p>In all fairness, there are certainly many valid reasons why moviegoers didn&#8217;t gravitate towards this big-budget oddity in the early going. Even before all the behind-the-scenes drama came to light, revealing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/525572\/exclusive-damon-lindelof-explains-the-unglamorous-truth-behind-prometheus-2-rumors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">&#8220;Prometheus&#8221; underwent a somewhat tortured production process and heavy script revisions<\/a>, much of the film almost felt designed to alienate (pun only sort of intended) its own target demographic. A prequel movie that traded in the existential dread of the first &#8220;Alien&#8221; for a much more meditative, mythological, and almost spiritually inclined journey into the origin of our species was always going to be a hard sell for those looking forward to a conventional crowd-pleaser. Add on the retroactive additions to canon involving the mysterious and godlike Engineers, the Xenomorph as a biological weapon, and even the not-so-subtle allusions to the idea of space alien Jesus? Yeah, no wonder this stirred up a hornet&#8217;s nest of discourse back in the day.<\/p>\n<p>Are we in for a new era of &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; (and &#8220;Alien: Covenant&#8221;) appreciation? Maybe, maybe not. But let&#8217;s put it this way: All our proselytizing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1644193\/prometheus-crucial-to-ridley-scott-alien-franchise\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">&#8220;Prometheus&#8221; is actually a crucial and necessary part of the overall franchise<\/a>\u00a0no longer feels like the hottest of hot takes. In a few more years, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1364535\/alien-awakening-is-it-happening\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">if Scott ever gets around to finishing his trilogy with that proposed &#8220;Alien: Awakening&#8221; sequel<\/a>, perhaps long-suffering &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; defenders will find ourselves on the right side of cinematic history after all.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; 20th Century Studios How long does it take&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-180589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}