Not a Prequel, but a Damn Good Sci-Fi.

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2012)

I really have to suggest for anyone who has not see this movie, PLEASE do not read this review yet. Now then, as the title may suggest, I loved this movie. Now on to what I think has caused some distancing amongst sci-fi fans; the concept of prequel or spin off? In the traditional sense of the word, this is in no way an "Alien Prequel". Is it set in the same universe as "Alien", yes. Does it "share some of Alien's DNA", yes. But does it take place directly before the Alien and/or does it ruin some very important back story like certain other films (the Star Wars Prequels) have done, no. Calling this film a prequel just severely undercuts the film as a whole, and I think that's a chief reason why some people were a little disappointed with what they saw at the theater, but I'll get more into that later. For right now, I'm gonna talk about the film in it's entirety. The film takes place at the end of the 21st century, in the year 2093, I think. The scientific vessel Prometheus has been sent on a sanctioned journey by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, to a distant solar system to discover the origins of the Human Race. The exploration team is led by Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Repace) and her boyfriend Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and a host of other characters including Janek, played by Idris Elba, the android David played by Michael Fassbender, Peter Weyland played by Guy Pierce and Meredeth Vickers played by Charlize Theron among others. Once the crew arrive on the planet, LV-223 (Note: This is not the same as LV-426, the planet on which Alien and the sequel Aliens take place on.), needless to say things don't exactly go as planned with the scientific expedition turned survival mission and let the horror and the intensity ensue. Alright, let's talk what really worked for me; The direction by Ridley Scott is fantastic here. He really lets all of the important characters breath and flourish in a film that's really not necessarily about the characters, and each and every shot in the film is just so crisp and beautiful it's breathtaking, something that I think would have been sorely lacking if the film was directed by anybody else. The acting is mostly top notch; Noomi Repace, formerly of the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" fame, delivers whole heartedly in this movie, and continues the long line of strong female characters created by Ridley Scott. There's one scene in particular where she has to manually program and operate a machine to remove a parasitic life form in her body. That scene alone is more than enough to win you over to her side. Michael Fassbender is fantastic as the Android "David". He actually reminded me of Peter O'Tool in "Lawrence of Arabia" in his demeanor and diction. Idris Elba was excellent as Janek, the Captain of the Prometheus, was spot on. He offered some much needed comic relief in the film, and actually reminded me of Harry Dean-Stanton and Yaffit Koto in the original "Alien". There was really only one glaring problem for me in the acting department, and that was Logan Marshall-Green. He's more or less a 10 cent version of Tom Hardy. I hated him in this movie as a matter of fact. His delivery of every line was painful to watch. A lot of movie goers seem to really detest the writing of this movie and I really don't know why. The writing (in my opinion) was very good. It proposed questions that even it didn't have answers for. It keeps you very much interested and guessing the whole time, which is fitting since the writer of LOST, Damon Lindeloff, wrote the script. Now, back to what has divided a lot of people on this movie: The concept of it being a prequel or not. Here's my theory on how all of this ties into the "Alien Univeerse" and/or the Alien Films: I think that a Chest Burster in "Alien" could have mistakenly gotten onto the face of one of the "Engineers" on LV-426, (aka the Original "Space Jockey" on LV-426) centuries ago and once hatched; the Xenomorph killed the entire crew on that one ship and just died in a corner somewhere when its life cycle ran out. Then after centuries had gone by, the Company (having lost contact with Prometheus) tricks the crew of the Nostromo into showing up to find the Space Jockey "fossilized" as Tom Skeritt says, and well, we know the rest. I'm just thinking that the "Engineers" were using that whole solar system as a weapons manufacturing facility, with each planet manufacturing its own biological weapon. The Prometheus and its crew just happened to stumble onto this one planet at this point in time, totally independent of "Alien" or "Aliens". As for the creature at the end of Prometheus being a Xenomorph or not, I think it might be a version of a Xenomorph, but it's not a pure (what we would call) "Alien". Assuming my theory is correct, and that all of these planets in this solar system are manufacturing different biological weapons, it would make sense that all of these weapons would share the same basic biological material. Think of it like this: You have a Lego Kit. This Lego Kit can be used to make 3 different robots, all of which look different, and have their own specific defining physical traits and features. But even though they don't look similar, they all still have the same basic building blocks.
Overall though, I truly loved this movie. Just the bad acting by Logan Marshall-Green and some early pacing problems are what keep it from being a 10/10 for me. A good Sci-Fi movie hasn't come along like this since "Blade Runner", which Scott also directed, and I loved it. I'd even like to see a sequel.
9/10 easy.