I recently watched the big-budget sci-fi movie Prometheus, the first sci-fi film directed by Ridley Scott in 30 years. It is a prequel to Alien, which Mr. Scott also directed, and was released in 1979. I was too young to see Alien at a movie theatre, but I watched it on video and liked it.

I was excited at the prospect of seeing Prometheus. It was the first Hollywood film I’d been to see in years, and the first film I’d really wanted to see in recent memory. Unfortunately, it is spoiled by even more than the usual Hollywood anti-white stereotyping.

Prometheus is the story of a vessel of the same name that has been chartered to travel to the far reaches of the galaxy to a star system that matches cave paintings from ancient cultures on earth. The crew consists of geologists, scientists, company staff, and a robot.

Early in the movie there is an exchange between a geologist and his colleague that sets the racial tone. They are the whitest men on the crew: one with red hair, the other blond. When they wake up after two years of space-travel hibernation, one tried to make friends, but the other hisses “I’m not here to make friends; I’m here to make money!”

My heart sank. One white man is a money-hungry lowlife, and the other a cowardly fool. It reminded me of the old Star Trek series, in which you always knew at the start of an episode which was the unattractive, expendable character who would die soon.

I was right. The two whites are both shown to be cowards as they die horrific deaths early in the film. I thought Ridley Scott was above a lot of this type of cheap filmmaking, but we are left with a black captain, an Asian pilot, two scientists, and Charlize Theron. She is the head of the expedition, but continues the theme of blonde characters who must be calculating and evil. At one point a crew member contracts a virus. She burns him to death with a flamethrower while the black captain shows his virtue by demanding that the man be saved.

We continue to a scene in which Charlize Theron is looking at a map, not realizing that the black captain is also in the room also. He bluntly suggests they have sex, and she replies, “My room, ten minutes.” There has been no flirting previously in the film. The beautiful blonde woman immediately decides to have sex with a black man after a grunted pickup line. This scene seems to have been planted in the movie simply to promote miscegenation.

There is a scene reminiscent of the first Alien film, with a female character in her underwear running for her life from an alien. Eventually, we are left with the Charlize Theron, the black captain, the Asian pilot, and another character who hardly had a speaking part in the film. Their only options are to flee the planet or kill themselves in an effort to take down the alien vessel and save planet Earth. Charlize Theron, being blonde, obviously chooses to flee, and urges the black and Asian to do the same. They are far too heroic and refuse. Charlize Theron rushes to an escape pod and is killed soon after. The black captain and Asian pilot then kill themselves in a heroic act that saves humanity.

I was left wondering whether Ridley Scott really thinks this way or just had to satisfy the PC police. There is nothing really wrong with the script; just ridiculous casting choices. It’s almost as if Mr. Scott purposely chose the most unlikely option for each character in order to break stereotypes. Non-whites are always brave and honorable; whites are always craven and selfish.

Prometheus may be worth seeing for the special effects alone, but I wonder if the era of decent film making is over. Is this entertainment? Or is it simply propaganda?