A visually stunning cautionary tale on human credulity and hubris.

Rating: 9/10 (6 April 2014)

A visually stunning semi-prequel to A L I E N by the master world builder Ridley Scott. Michael Fassbender is the standout as the morally ambiguous android 'David' and Noomi Rapace delivers a grueling performance as religious Archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw.
Now, I think it's imperative that we address the number one complaint that is leveled at this film ad nauseum and that is the behavior of the characters in the film. As for the dubious actions of the 'Scientists', I don't think it would follow that any respectable, credible Scientist would sign up to a years long journey into space without knowing why, the point was that it was a corporate funded farce spear headed by a superstitious megalomaniac... Plus I would think the only way to keep such a mission secret would be to hire people that no one would notice were gone thus if you hired all the best Scientific minds in their field the world would want to know why. Both Fifield and Milburn mock each other as far as their credibility is concerned; "Is that your professional opinion, huh? Mr. Biology?" And when Fifield fires his bong Milburn remarks, "I'm ashamed to count you among us, Fifield.", thus it's OBVIOUS they weren't the very best at all. Not even Janek had any idea when it came to the holograph mapping display, "I just fly the ship.", the whole thing was set up for disaster and thus all the character mistakes are perfectly deliberate.
If you think about all the well funded pseudo-scientific organizations today the way the 'Scientists' were portrayed is perfectly consistent with the premise of the plot, because if you have some trillionaire nut on death's door funding two Von-Daniken loving pseudo-scientists; one of which has to be schooled on what a 'thesis' is, who base their research on 'cave scribbles' and extrapolate from an arbitrary configuration of stars then you're going to have a bad time. Period. These blind squirrels just happened to chance upon a rather deadly nut; the space jockeys responsible for creating the universe's deadliest creature. Thus with the premise in mind I would automatically assume that whoever would be involved in such a foolhardy endeavor would be naive fools from the get-go and thus their outrageous behavior is exactly what I would expect. What doesn't follow is the expectation of credible, cautious scientists and this is why many viewers fundamentally missed the point as far as the crew's behavior was concerned. It's not stupid; it's a cautionary tale on human credulity and hubris. And they all payed the price for it.
Co-writer Damon Lindelof revealed in an interview that David was deliberately juxtaposed with 'morons' and in a deleted scene Vickers calls the crew 'idiots' thus it seems that the mistakes the characters make were all deliberately written that way. Of course the 'mapmaker' got lost. Of course the captain of the ship didn't know how to read the map display. Of course the 'xenobiologist' played cutesy with a dangerous organism under the cocksure assurance of his spacesuit. Of course Shaw and Holloway were wrong!
You could argue that this all still presents itself as lazy writing; where the premise gives free rein to use the idiot ball as much as you like, but when the characters make the same type of mistake and they're juxtaposed with a more sympathetic, 'inhuman' character, then it's a deliberate theme and satirical comment. And when the film goes to great lengths to subvert Christian myth by having a barren woman named Elizabeth miraculously give birth to some abominable squid on Christmas day, that's just gutsy (pun intended). And that's what happened 2,000 years ago and what wiped out the Engineers, NOT some Jesus engineer (Ridley was trolling), the film merely replays the event with the dormant mutagen re-activated. The movie is making a mockery of blind faith, stupidity and hubris and so for all the vitriolic venting over the lack of answers in the film, I think the film presents us with an essential dictum; it's not that there are things in the universe that man was not meant to know, it's that there are some men and women, indeed a great many, who don't have the capability to ever know and should they ever encounter them, only death will follow.
Scott has reinvigorated this franchise and I eagerly await the sequel.