I preferred AVP as a prequel.

Rating: 6/10 (24 June 2012)

To be honest I really do not know what to make of this movie. The special effects were brilliant, especially the landing sequence, but it was simply too much of a remake of Alien. In fact it was almost as if the writer had taken the script of Alien, make some changes to it, and called it Prometheus. Okay, it was probably less like Alien than that, but considering that the director of this film also directed Alien, and that the film was the long awaited prequel then I guess it is not surprising.
The film is supposed to be about the beginnings of the Wayland Corporation, the entity that, while not necessarily a bad guy, does cause numerous problems for Ripley in the later films. Basically some archaeologists have uncovered some patterns that appear among many of the ancient cultures around the wrong, wrongly conclude that it is an invitation (I though that scene sucked) and then go off on a spaceship to find out what is at that location.
I guess the movie is a philosophy of the origins of humanity though, once again, it seemed as if it was borrowed from Lovecraft. Humanity came about when a race known as the Engineers, released some DNA into the Earth's water supply with kickstarted the evolutionary process that resulted in humanity. However, unlike Lovecraft, the creation technically was not a mistake, it is just that humanity did not turn out the way that they expected it to.
There are hints that suggest that Christ was actually one of these Engineers that was sent to Earth to attempt to reform humanity, however humanity pretty much killed him, so it is suggested that the Engineers decided that humanity was not worth saving, however before they could go out to destroy them something happened and they ended up getting themselves all killed.
This idea, while quaint, I have to admit ignores a number of facts, such as the bible actually saying that Jesus had to die to be able to move humanity to that next level. Many people seem to misinterpret the biblical record to suggest that Jesus was more like Socrates in that his teaching rubbed one to many people up the wrong way. Well, it is true, his teaching did, and it is true that they went out of their way to look for a way to kill him, but I guess the whole free will and predestination idea ends complicating things to no end.