better enjoyed if not viewed as a direct prequel to Alien

Rating: 8/10 (25 June 2012)

Prometheus is not an Alien prequel and so does not explain everything in Alien, although it does reveal the larger back story to it
The most important difference is that Prometheus takes place on LV223, not LV426 of Alien/s (apparently these are in the same star system but orbit different suns) and so in Prometheus we are not seeing the craft filled with eggs and pilot from Alien, which confused me somewhat on first viewing. What happens is this..
At the start we see our creators spreading their genetic code, via the ingestion of a mysterious compound, to earth-like planets in the long distant past (This would have benefited from a longer sequence showing the humanoid actually being dropped off)
Fast forward to 2089 and archaeologists, including Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her profoundly annoying boyfriend find cave drawings in Scotland showing a star system that we believe to be our origin planet (it appears our creators visited us again at some point, giving this info to multiple civilisations on earth). We jump, rather quickly, from the Isle of Skye to a huge space craft named Prometheus heading to this apparent origin planet with our archaeologists on board
They arrive and find pyramid-like structures with craft and dead pilots inside like those in Alien. But instead of eggs there are vials of goo (the primordial goo that presumably came before, or maybe after, the egg? and is probably the same thing the gene spreader ingested at the start of the film, or some more sinister derivative designed to do harm). These pilot humanoids, for reasons yet unknown, are about to undo the gene spreading activities that gave birth to mankind, probably this is because we did not turn out as intended (see next movie). Before they could blast off though something went wrong.. the primordial goo somehow escaped and wiped them out
etc..
With science fiction while the larger story can be quite fantastical it needs to be held together by believable character actions, and this is the glue that holds it together. In the case of Alien the glue was super glue, but in the case of Prometheus it is more like pritt stick
Silly things happen and their scientific expedition is like a badly supervised school trip
Eg., immediately after arriving at their destination about half the crew take a trip to one of the structures without analysing the atmosphere in detail like they do in Alien. Once they realise the air inside is breathable off come the helmets with no regard for safety against contaminants in the air? This disregard towards safety continues as they touch the black goo with their fingers, perform uncontained ancient head autopsies, sleep with goo, play with snake like creatures which clearly look dangerous and ready to bite, open doors to let contaminated zombie people in exorcist style spider positions back onto the ship etc (again completely unrealistic next to Alien where Ripley was not going to allow Brett back onto the ship at all). Also not one, but three people decide to perform a kamikaze manoeuvre on the say so of Shaw
there are good performances in the movie especially Fassbender and Rapace. some really nice visual effects and sound, especially the Prometheus movement and landing. The main score theme is ill fitting though and sounds like something out of Brokeback Mountain
there are some ridiculous scenes though like those described.. in Alien we can forgive the Nostromo crew being a bit stupid because they are a mining vessel sidetracked to deal with something they are not trained for, but here we have scientists playing with alien snakes and removing their helmets just because the air is breathable
overall though I enjoyed Prometheus, the plot is difficult to understand and I am sure the average non Alien fan would not have had a clue what was going on but I'm sure it will all be tied up in the sequel