Meh!

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2012)

I'm a huge fan of Alien, liked Aliens, and despite originally not liking the third movie, I actually have grown to really like Alien 3.
Prometheus had potential. But, like so many sequels and prequels nowadays, it's highly derivative, borrows situations and lines of dialogue from previous films, and is generally unimaginative.
The editing was too fast. Yes, they did a nice job on the ship interiors. But they were in too much of a rush to keep the pace up. There were shots of the interior of the company ship that were nice but too quick. Just as you were beginning to take in the atmosphere, they cut to the next scene. The soundtrack was complete rubbish; It pulled me out of the film repeatedly. The supporting actors were awful, reminding me of the bad moments of the fourth film combined with pretty much all of Aliens vs Predator. What is it with childish over-acting in so many films of this genre these days.
For characters, I felt that Vickers and the ship's captain were the two best. However, neither is really given the chance to fully develop in this film. As a fan of Alien (spoiler alert), I was pretty ticked off that the writers decided to change the ship's alien crew into humans. WTF!? Seriously, a group of ten-year-old children could come up with far more imaginative explanations of what the alien race was. So what if they biologically engineered humans. That doesn't mean that they themselves have to look like humans. Along with this particular gripe are the many seemingly random and unexplained scenes. One of the main characters of the film is infected with a 'virus' that makes him mutate slightly and wig out. Okay. Why? This along with a number of other short and definitely not sweet oddities make the film seem unfocused and scatterbrained. Finally, the lack of imagination of the presentation of the world that this series has tried to flesh out over the last number of decades is somewhat diffused by this film. It's ironic since the story actually attempts to broaden the Alien universe. Some things should never be explained, lest you ruin the mystique.
So, I give it a good rating for visual effects and for SOME of the acting.
I give it a thumbs down for the rest of the acting, the ripping off of elements from the first film, the crap soundtrack, and the general lack of tension. This movie has no real climax. Instead it has a bunch of half-baked mini-climaxes. Very unsatisfying.
Hence the final rating of "Meh!"
Advice to Hollywood: Unless a stellar writer, amazing composer, and awesome director of photography signs on, cancel any and all Blade Runner sequels now.