Questions Will Be Answered...With More Questions...

Rating: 6/10 (11 November 2012)

I was extraordinarily excited to see this movie when I first had gotten word about it and saw the trailers a couple of months before the release of the movie. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite directors of all time and so my expectations for this movie were really high.
"Prometheus" (2012) unfortunately, to me, did not live up to that expectation. There are a few reasons as to why I did not like the movie as much as I thought I would.
The first thing that irks me is creation of tension for the audience. This movie did not have real suspense or created any uneasiness which is supposed to be the backbone of the film. It's only element of tension is that you have no idea what is going on at all. Your curiosity is basically the only thing that gives you and weird or tingly feelings most would get in a suspense movie.
Second: the plot. The slogan for the movie stated that "Questions Will Be Answered". Unfortunately, this is not the case. The plot of this movie has so many questions that are left lingering throughout and at the end of the movie. As an example, in the movie, it is a established that an alien race from some remote part of the galaxy comes to Earth and ingrates their DNA into the environment, thus creating modern humans. Questions about this are as follows: Why did this alien race 2 to 3 light years away from Earth make such a long voyage to Earth to instill there DNA on the planet? What is there reasoning behind this? Are they a dying race? Are they only found on this one planet that the story takes place on? Why are they making these monsters in this facility? Why are humans the exception? Did one rebel against his race and wanted to "save their legacy" by having their DNA survive? Why did they suddenly want to destroy humans? Are there more intelligent creatures that they created? Do they plan to destroy them too? And the list goes on and on for a lot of other plot points in the movie. Your mind gets so frustrated because you have no idea what's going on.
The last thing that marred the film was what interested me the most: It's connection to the "Alien" franchise. Again, this raises more questions than answers and the only physical connection to Alien that you get is the Xenomorph at the end of the credits. Basically, the only reason that this movie had this connection (or lack thereof) was to create interest in it and have a greater viewing audience. I have a feeling that Ridley Scott had his own original movie in mind and someone higher up or possibly Scott himself decided to add this element to draw extra cash from the die-hard Alien nerds (which I am one of).
So why didn't I give this movie a worse rating? Well, the acting was great. Michael Fassbender as the android David was superb and I applaud his performance. Noomi Rapace was great in her role and Charlize Theron was pretty villainous. I try to think of this movie as it's own stand-alone project and that's the reason why I enjoyed more than most people. Forget about the Alien connection and the questions it raises and just focus on just the movie itself. Flawed? Yes. But still enjoyable? Yes. Of course though, sci-fi is my favorite genre of movies so I'm kind of biased here.
Overall, if you are just the general movie-goer, you will be very confused and may ultimately end up not liking the movie. Sci-fi fans will probably like it more for it's atmosphere, technology, and the experience of being on this planet with monsters picking off the crew of the Prometheus one by one. Whichever one you are, you now know what you will be getting into.