An Epic masterpiece written by a 4 year old...

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2012)

Let me open with this: I went into this movie with such overwhelming optimism that it bordered on subjectivity and bias. I wanted to love this film, and I had the expectations that I would. Yet, here I sit.
The disappointment has actually taken a physical toll on my body. I loathed it. Not from an 'Alien' lover's perspective, but from the perspective of a true fan of cinema; one who appreciates a well-paced and thoughtfully written film. 'Prometheus' fails to deliver in these regards. My expectations of overwhelming suspense, sheer terror, and marvel which stemmed from the magical movie trailers were shattered by clunky and juvenile (optimists would say 'over ambitious') scriptwriting.
To start, we are introduced to the run-of-the-mill cast of two-dimensional characters. The blindly ambitious leaders, the corporate type, the apathetic expendables who exist solely to collect their pay, and the overly-analytic David, a robot crew member played genuinely well by Michael Fassbender. The feeling I got from watching these characters, and their interactions with one another, was that of sheer apathy. The motivations for their actions were silly for the most part, if they even existed at all, and they rarely interacted with each other on an intellectual level.
Next we have the script, which is so polluted by attempts at mind blowing that we as an audience forget that there was, at one point, a reason for undergoing the mission: not only discovering life outside of our solar system, but the very life forms responsible for our existence. At what is supposed to be a pivotal point in the film, the corpse of a non-Alien-alien is discovered, analyzed, and found to share human DNA, thus essentially proving that we were created by these beings. This moment, one which would be marvelous and poignant to a normal person, is brushed aside and moved on from within a matter of minutes. In another scene, Elizabeth Shaw must remove the unwanted alien fetus inside her (via Cesarian) using a state-of-the-art and highly ludicrous surgeon machine. Once the gruesome surgery is performed, the hideous being is extracted, and Shaw is stitched up and back on her way; never mentioning the atrocity again. The thought going through my head during these points was: "How am I supposed to feel awe or horror if the characters I'm watching - the very people experiencing these moments - are so unwilling to react appropriately?"
The sheer lack of fluidity in the script is what kills the film for me. Here, we are presented with the wonderful notion of discovering life, the life of our creators, and having them turn their backs on and annihilate us for a reason that could be picked from the 1000s of our society's flaws. Instead the 2 hours that Prometheus drags are cluttered with cool ideas that don't last long enough to actually be cool. We're not left with enough time for tension to build or emotions to flourish. Instead, we are presented with an idea, given enough time to say "Oh cool", and then forced to move on.