4/10
About two years before this movie was released I heard rumours in the media that a prequel to Alien was being planned. This quite excited me because the story arc has always been wide open for creative development and the story universe is well enough defined that the studios had a chance to produce a really interesting and exciting movie.
About a year later I heard that due to "creative differences" between the executives and the producers, the movie was no longer an Alien prequel, but a related story set in a similar universe which would borrow from the Alien mythology.
At that point I abandoned all hope for the movie.
Well, I went to see it on the big screen anyway when it came out, despite all the hype and marketing. I was mainly lured by some of the scenes in the promos that looked quite edgy and exciting, like the crash and roll of the gigantic alien ship. Some of the promo scenes looked like really big scale hard-edge science fiction.
My fears about executive interference and rewrites of the originally planned movie turned out to be perfectly true ... Prometheus is a stinking jumbled mess. A few months ago while paralysed with boredom I thought I'd watch it again at home, mainly to see the few exciting and sensible bits that I vaguely recalled as being scattered throughout its 124 minute running time. As a result I estimate that about 15 minutes of the movie is really good, the rest is just forgettable padding piffle.
The opening scene with the gigantic flying saucer departing with a vertical roll up through the clouds is fabulous. But then the impressive looking blue humanoid drinks the goop and dies and disintegrates, thereby seeding the Earth we presume. Did he really have to do that?! Surely a race with their technology could spread some DNA without the need for a brutal sacrifice.
So ... black goop, someone is poisoned for no apparent reason, lost underground, alien ghosts running into rooms that contain the threat, dust storms, run back to the ship, drive away from the ship, "cute" alien face-hugs stupid crewmember, flame-throwers, rapid mutations, heroine gets pregnant, aborted alien, stitched-up abdomen, Charlize Theron wanders around for no apparent reason, Guy Pearce suddenly, turns up with pathetic old-man make-up (they could have used a real elderly actor), "advanced" alien kills everyone around and rips heads off, unbelievable mid-air sacrifice and crash of alien ship, running out of oxygen, alien battle, severed android head, and they fly off into a sequel.
What a stinking jumbled mess!
Some of the scenes in the movie contain attractive and thoughtful science fiction concepts, but it's all lost in the jumble of pointless underdeveloped characters and preposterous plot twists. Prometheus is a classic example of what happens when a movie is made by a committee.
The sequel is being planned as I write this, so pray they learn from the critical and often mocking reviews of Prometheus and try harder for the next one
P.S. The sequel has been released, see my review of Alien: Covenant).
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