too ambiguous, too illogical, totally unsatisfying

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 2012)

My main problem with Prometheus is that it doesn't follow the principles of evolution that the first two films stuck to. The nasties in Prometheus appear to morph within a generation, according to whatever is required to jump out at the victim.
From the first scene Ridley proffers up goop that breaks you down into little strands of DNA. If you are an Engineer on a waterfall then the process is immediate. And your DNA magically flows out into the world to make a new species. Not bad for a fairly unstable molecule. So right from the outset, we're encouraged to forget about evolution and instead believe that humans are engineered. There is even a line delivered by one of the disgruntled grunts on the space ship to this effect.
But if you're a human, then this disintegration is delayed overnight, long enough to pass on your semen and for nematodes to crawl out your eye. Meanwhile, the sperm will produce a daemonic squid embryo which will grow big enough, fast enough to tackle an Engineer. And if that giant squid gets you, then a proto-alien mysteriously arises from your remains.
But that't not all! The goop nematodes can grow into mealy worms that within hours can grow into albino snakes. I'm not sure what those had to do with the reanimated corpse that turned up outside the ship with it's legs over it shoulders, bent on murdering everything until burnt to death. Are we talking zombies from the tape worms?
So we have these randomly morphing entities that alter form within single generations. It's not clean, it's not tight, it's not believable. It's too X-Men. At least the X-Men premise is forgivable because, as nonsensical as it is, the premise of fantastical mutations within individuals is set up from the outset. Fine! Accept it or not, you know where the starting point is. But Alien didn't start with that. The thing that burst out of John Hurt remained more or less the same thing that burst out of everyone else, give or take some spare DNA from the host to ensure the newborn was adapted to the surroundings. So being asked to swallow a host of hokey morphings between (or even within) generations isn't part of the deal.
What is worse, is that it pre-empts any decent attempts to expand the Alien myth backwards from the first film. Alien and Aliens (and to a much lesser extent Alien 3) took their time to describe a new species and stayed true to that description. The lifecycle of the alien was tight enough for people to invest in. But Prometheus grabs at so many different ideas that it breaks that rigor down.
So that is my main problem, instead of being shown more of the Alien universe and how the Space Jockey's got tangled up in it, we're fobbed off with quasi-religious pseudo philosophical posturing about the meaning of sacrifice. Ridley nailed the way to philosophize about existence in Blade Runner, the nature of the soul and artificial intelligence.
But he didn't have to sacrifice the integrity of the physics in the Blade Runner universe in order to do it. The film was first and foremost a great Action SciFi film noir. The story was central. That has to be priority number one. But Prometheus wanders randomly, dragging ideas in, none of which feel vaguely original.
Compounding this is the sad fact that Prometheus as a movie is just plain bad. I found very little in it to generate suspense. The alien head reanimation was lifted from Alien and Aliens 3 where the android are similarly reanimated, but the techno babble in this case is thin and totally unconvincing. A giant needle to the head and magic dust. And to what effect? It appeared to be there for the sake of being there.
Characters acted inconsistently and illogically; No archaeologist would open a tomb at the risk of changing the atmospheric conditions. No xenobiologist would risk touching unknown substances. No ship's captain would open the ship to allow in potentially infected crew.
And as for that abortion scene?! How come a machine that is configured for men has forceps? And whatever that technology was that can staple her abdomen together and leave just a red line behind could have been used to serious effect on the Nostromo years later! Good job she knew precisely how to override the machine and get it set up for her needs, being an archaeologist and all. Once the cut and shut jobs been done to poor Noomi (who does an outstanding job of imbuing some integrity into this nonsensical thread) we descend into The Three Stooges slapstick as each scene now contrives to hit her in her wound.
The last reel is positively risible, both ladies dash ahead of a rolling Engineer ship (I was waiting for a nicely timed window to save Noomi) until finally she dives sideways, just for the gargantuan ship to fall sideways, but avoids crushing her because ... of a rock?!
All well and good that Ridly wanted to put in plenty of allegory into the film, but he lost site of making a story and dumped the Alien myth in the process. The one thing that still make me so angrily disappointed by this film is that now no one will have a chance to backfill and expand that story with something true to the spirit of the original. I can only hope that someone will buy the rights to Blade Runner to prevent him hosing that one down too.