Interesting but Schizophrenic Film

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2012)

I am pleased this film was made. I am glad I got to see it on opening day. It has given me things to think about. The selected cast members are all fine choices, and the performances are excellent and believable. The settings, vision, mechanics, and technology are cool. The core storyline is intriguing and several themes show promise and offer one a lot to consider.
Prometheus deals with the questions: "what are we?", "where did we come from?", and "what does it all mean?", in several layers. There is the main theme of seeking the potential "Engineers" of the human species to get answers from them. The film considers how autonomous and potentially human an android can be (soul/soullessness vs. programming vs. experience/choices) - the David character is really interesting and shows a sense of wonder, awe, and personal likes. It considers the life cycle of children who want to get on with living without their old hindering parents (Weyland/daughter). It considers creators not really being parents to their children, but perhaps creating for the sake of experimenting. It considers the belief in some higher power/sense of universal purpose, regardless of one's physical origins.
Unfortunately, the film feels schizophrenic because of common and unsupported monster-movie/science-goes-wrong/unnecessary nastiness happening to further scares. Bummer.
The film opens with an impressive-looking humanoid male standing near the top of a waterfall, watching a spaceship pulling away. He consumes something, which decomposes his body into the waterfall, presumably seeding new DNA building blocks into the water supply. This scene rubs one's nose into a substantial part of the plot that could have been much more breathtaking and effective had it unfolded solely through the crew's discovery/experience.
In 2093 on the planet Prometheus travels to, the Engineers' vessel appears to have a crew dead for 2000 years. Yet, it suddenly reacts to the presence of the inner-environment breathing human visitors by having a roomful of free-standing urns start leaking some black protoplasmic stuff. This stuff evolves by itself into some snaky/tentacled things that attack and kill two really unobservant crewmembers who seem to have been left behind so the movie could kill them.
The android David infects the archaeologist Holloway with some of this ooze (just to see what happens, I guess). After Holloway is "killed" by extreme flamethrower, he comes back to life stronger/more mutated and goes on a pointless rampage. He dispenses of extra cast members by throwing them around and crushing them. There is no satisfaction in solid character arcs coming to an end, but a sense of wiping out extra bodies.
Holloway impregnates an apparently barren Dr. Shaw (before symptoms of infection). The alienoid fetus develops to bursting in under one day. This plot point is presumably so that David, like Alien's Ash and Aliens' Burke, can get Shaw's infected body back to Earth in stasis. This is where stuff gets really far-fetched despite all the tech wonders that apparently exist in 2093. Shaw gets to a fully-automated surgical unit, and anesthetizes herself enough to survive being fully awake as the unit surgically removes the ready-to-burst-out fetus. It staples her abdomen up so she can get out of the machine in time for the alienoid to be sterilized/killed. Then Shaw manages unbelievable and Olympian feats of physical stamina, endurance, and calisthenics through the rest of the film.
It is very interesting and clever seeing Matrix-type visual recordings of what happened to the Engineers of this particular ship. Their motives are not apparent. The dwindling cast, because of the monstrousness they experience, assumes the unknown motives must be non-altruistic, possibly military, and disappointment in their human creations. They even assume the urn cargo must be bioweapons, rather than the various seeding DNA starter protoplasm units they likely are - meant for vastly different types of environments. David, who experiences/sees a "recording" of past Engineer crew members plotting a route to Earth, communicates an assumption that they intend to destroy Earth. This interpretation furthers when the last living Engineer awakens from stasis and goes on a rampage - killing Weyland and a couple of escorts, and tearing David apart. But is this anger/hate for the "creations", a response to trespassers on his seeding ship, or after-stasis shock?
Unfortunately, the film uses the old "alien monsters never die when killed, they just come back again" practice, like with Holloway. Shaw's fetus alienoid - that the medical unit "killed" - is presumably what is in the ejected/crashed Prometheus' shuttle. It has, within the few hours after birth, with no sustenance we know of, grown to the size of the squid things in the films Leviathan and Deepstar Six. The disappointing very end leaves us with the final Engineer, after crash-landing too, making it to the Prometheus' shuttle. The Engineer is attacked by this thing, some giant variation of the facehugger (hugs the whole body) and is later consumed from within by a proto Xenomorph being born. This feels tossed in, like the film was trying to satisfy the inevitable audience question: is this a prequel to Alien? Unnecessary and flimsy- feeling.
I know I'll be thinking about the interesting themes of this film for awhile. Partly because I entered the Alien universe when I was 14 and was forever affected by it. Partly because the core story and visuals offer such promise. That's why, I suppose, I am writing this - to figure out what I am feeling about a film I have been anticipating for ages. If pondering is its main goal, it has succeeded for me. As entertainment, it certainly is that. As a realistic posed answer to the questions about our evolution, well, I found the superfluous plot/monster film problems really get in the way. But, I'll see it again on cable, and think that folks who like science fiction will get interesting things from it.