Sci Fi Mash up of Bits and Pieces of Alien, 2001

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 2012)

Made with a lot of attention to visual style and gross-out jump scares, Prometheus can provide a decent popcorn summer movie. Unfortunately, the movie suffers from poorly developed characters and a plot filled with non-nonsensical motivations.
Without going into any details of the plot, I will simply say that the more you think about how the story progresses, too many bold assertions are made by characters who are too stupid to make reasonable decisions. The plot jumps around from set piece to set piece, which are visual stunning but the movie does not take the time needed to have these set pieces fit into the story.
The characters are pretty much clichés of other sci-fi movies, the cold ice queen, the reckless lone wolf, the jokey technicians, etc. There are also a lot of lines pulled from other movies and many of these set piece moments are just reinterpretations from other movies like Alien, 2001 etc.
In fact, I just find the writing poor and this clearly ruins any chance of this movie reaching the epic, classic level that so many fans will be hoping the film to be. I only wish Ridley Scott had stuck to his promise to not make a sci-fi movie until he has a script worthy of the word he had so expertly crafted in Alien.
I have to feel that this script, much like Lost, is just a stylized mess of a story with no real thread that ties it together although it seems to imply one. So, perhaps the real problem with Prometheus lies in the script from Lost's writer Damon Lindelof.
So, while there are some rally cools scares late in the movie and the movie is visually stunning, thanks to Ridley Scott, it lacks the kind of magic that can happen when a great story and a great director get together.