Problemetheus

Rating: 3/10 (27 May 2016)

I think if Prometheus were a real-life figure, he'd be embarrassed to have his name associated with this movie. Honestly, how can this have scored 7.0?
Practically everything about it is wrong. Nothing seems to happen for any good reason, not even story reasons. Other reviews have already mentioned the most prominent problems with the movie, but maybe I can touch on some that haven't been discussed as much.
Let's start with the (more or less) trifling stuff such as: Shaw, the protagonist of the story is British, as we see from flashbacks (scene as dreams) to her childhood. Yet, her adult accent is as poor an approximation of a British accent as I've ever heard. It doesn't seem as if she's even trying. What's the point? Why establish that she's British if you don't follow through? In her flashback dreams, her father is played by Patrick Wilson, who does a decent British accent (as far as I can tell). But, again, I have to wonder what's the point? Would it make any difference if a real British actor played such a minor role? Along the same vein, Guy Pearce, who is unrecognizable albeit under a very bad makeup job plays an old guy. Why? You might think it means he's going to regain his youth later on in the movie. But no, he just dies later on. It almost feels like the film is trying to trick the audience here.
Poor characterizations: when you're not even 20 minutes into the movie and you already want everybody to die, it's not a good sign. I had to wonder why some of those people are even there. For instance, they take the time to establish Fifield (a geologist, who does very little geology) as this incredibly surly fellow, who's only there to "make money" no to make friends, as he tells Millburn, a biologist (like Fifield, his skills don't come much into the story). The pair become buddy-buddy anyway, when both become lost in an alien spaceship (despite the fact that it was mapped out by Fifield's nifty flying mapping devices). What's the point of the earlier scene? Is it supposed to warm our hearts that they become chummy later and feel saddened by their eventual deaths. Sorry, no sale. Nobody cares that they die.
Flagrant plot devices: In one scene, there is an exchange between Vickers and Janek, and the latter assumes the other is flirting and wants to "get laid." She tells him she's not interested, to which he asks her if she's a robot. Her response is to invite him to her cabin for sex. To prove she's not a robot, I guess! Utterly laughable. This is just to set up the scene where Fifield and Millburn both die, of course; where no one is there to hear their agonizing screams as they are killed by aliens. The scene happens completely off-camera; we don't even see Janek entering Vickers' cabin. A sex scene between Idris Elba and Charlize Theron is not something I'm eager to see here, but the lack of such a scene underlines the sheer egregiousness of the reason for their having sex.
The squid-alien that Shaw "aborts". I put that word in quotation marks because although she has it removed from her body, it doesn't die. In fact, it later grows to an an enormous size, despite being locked up in a lab with absolutely nothing to eat.
Effects: they're very good but they don't help the movie. They only serve to emphasize how incredibly stupid it is.