Visually stunning let down. More holes than a colander.

Rating: 3/10 (8 June 2012)

General consensus... confused, badly written with characters that do things that make very little sense and a plot that makes bold statements without anything to back it up.
For the most part the characters are horror movie cyphers put there to drive forward the flaccid and overblown plot. Fassbender and Rapace come out of it reasonably well due to their genuine acting chops but even they cant save the dire and often nonsensical dialog.
Very pretty but massively badly written and meandering. Avoid like the plague, wait for it come on TV. Yes its that bad. ___________________________________________________________________
Please don't read beyond here unless you've seen the film..
I'll set out some of the plot holes and also just generally stupid things that happen in this trite piece of rubbish. Strap in this might be quite long.
1. How did the Shaw and Holloway convince Weyland to launch a multi billion expedition on such flimsy basis? If your answer is "Wayland is obsessed", how come thousands of con men didn't convince him before?
2. If David is there to help Wayland achieve his goal, what is to be gained by dosing up a crew member with a biological contaminant that will have unknown consequences?
3. What was the purpose of David allowing an unknown creature grow inside Shaw's womb?
4. Holloway acting like a maudlin child about the fact that there were no live aliens to be found rather than excited because well "we found an alien civilization, here comes out noble prize" was just silly.
5. The part with everyone removing their helmets? That was just stupid. Have someone call him out for being an idiot, and have him reply that it's safe, none of the air samples they took had any micro-organisms.
6. How did the geologist who's responsible for mapping the whole thing and invented the system that did so got lost in the complex?
7. Why would a biologist and an already freaked out geologist react the way they did to the "snake" creatures rather than running away till they had appropriate gear to deal with the situation.
8. What was the purpose of infected Fifield turning up at the ship and killing people, other than a meaningless throwaway action scene? How did "infected Fifield" even remember where the ship was if he's no longer human and merely "zombie attack biological weapon Fifield"?
9. Why did the alien engineers have no defensive weaponry of any kind? To protect against the technological biological weapons they presumably created?
10. Why did the engineers decide that destroying humans/earth was a good idea? Even further why bother using a genetically engineered creature to do it? Why not just hit the earth with a plague? Or even nuke it to hell and back?
11. Why is Wayland and co. taking Shaw with them when they go meet the progenitor? What's the reason behind that? Why is she going along?
12. How the humans know that the Engineers were planning to come to Earth and wipe people out. There is a massive leap of non logic there. 13. Why would a superior intelligence and technologically advanced creatures pretty much instant reaction to being woken by the humans be to start beating them to death like some Saturday night creature feature monster of the week?
14. The two co pilots staying on the ship while Vickers escaped, both of who seem to gladly accept their need to die with a smile, thumbs up and quip about the lame who's going to "win that bet" ongoing non joke. I was WTF? Who accepts their death in such a silly and throwaway fashion? Terrible writing & execution right there. Kill the non characters by all means but at least make me believe they actually needed to be there on the ship to die.
15. Why would Shaw trust David after he had so obviously been responsible for most of the bad things that had just occurred?
Any time you answer "because otherwise the movie wouldn't happen", here's your plot hole.