Bad Storytelling + Some decent Sci-Fi Elements

Rating: 5/10 (22 September 2012)

I finally got around to seeing Prometheus last night and after the first 10 minutes I was already confused at the choices made.
Perhaps my biggest gripe of all was how the movie opened, which contradicts others who were more upset with the ending.
The credits role over a panoramic fly-over of Northern Scotland. Then a saucher shaped spaceship appears... and a white alien (very humanoid by clearly alien) figure stands over a waterfall. He drinks some goo and proceeds to disintigrate into the waterall with the scene zooming in, to a molecular level, to show new? DNA forming in the water...
Hard cut to a cave being revealed in Scotland (near future to present day) and two scientists find a cave painting showing a black figure point to 5 dots above it. They confirm it is 35,000 years old and hug.
Hard cut to a spaceship (!!???) This whole period of 5-10 minutes completely baffled me. If you are telling the story of scientists searching for the creators of humanity why clearly show them in the first 5 minutes? Why show the scene with that particular cave painting? Once the crew of the ship is awoken from cryo-sleep they watch a holographic recording of everything they are trying to do and why... so why does the audience need the alien setup proving everything the scientists are trying to find out? Why has this trillion $ enterprise been staffed by some of the most incompetent scientists ever on film??? (example: the biologist who has no interest in studying the first dead alien body they find... or the geologist who is a lunatic).
Once the main actress has an alien squid surgically removed from her stomach why does no one care? Why does the android feed alien goo to the lead male scientist? It seems to serve no purpose to what the goal of the real leader is trying to accomplish...
Why do these super-advanced aliens need to create alien squids/goo to destroy humans? Can they not just destroy the atmoshpere of Earth? I can think of dozens of other ways they could kill humanity without the needless Aliens they created.
I feel VERY generous giving this movie a 5/10. I like Ridley Scott, for the most part, and the visuals are well done + the sci-fi elements could have been used to tell a much better story... hell I think i would have preferred everything just as a straight Alien prequel.
The film defeats what it sets out to accomplish in the first 10 minutes then proceeds to bumble along as a confusing mess before showing itself as an Alien prequel. Could have been better.