The search for our beginning is..hopefully the end of this franchise.

Rating: 3/10 (4 June 2012)

The hype surrounding this film was perhaps understandable. Aside of what must go down as one of the slickest – albeit spoiler ridden - viral marketing campaigns ever undertaken, this represented Ridley Scott much anticipated return to the genre he helped define. Throw in a cast of established actors (Fassbender, Theron, Elba), enigmatic emerging talent (Rapace) and set the story in a scary but familiar universe, what could possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately, the answer is quite a lot.
The film, like so many big budget science fiction films has a beautiful glossy appearance. The visual effects, the sets, costumes, cinematography, they really are all striking and in places they are simply brilliant. It also has lofty ambitions too, attempting to ask deep and meaningful philosophical questions about the origins of life on earth, mankind's place in the universe and our relationship with our creators, and creations.
However, once you scratch beneath the surface it quickly becomes apparent that this thin veneer covers a multitude of problems which are so fundamental that they destroy the film from within.
Firstly the plot. It's a patchwork of different ideas which seem to have been assembled expressly with the purpose of make a film lasting around two hours. Yes there are various sub-plots tagged in, but at no point was I convinced that there really was one really strong idea and story about the engineers which genuinely needed to be told. It's far from the "ground breaking mythology" we were promised.
This wouldn't be such a huge problem if the different sections were similar in tone, and joined together as neatly and effectively as Shaw's stomach post operation, but they are not. After the Prometheus lands, the tone set during the first 45 minutes, suddenly lurches into the kind of brainless set piece AvP stupidity that Scott suggested he was reclaiming the franchise from.
The characters though - they are good, right?
Well with the exception of David (Fassbender) I'm afraid to say not. There are lots of them, far too many in fact, and as a consequence none of them are properly developed, even the protagonist Shaw. This makes it difficult to build up tension or sustain threat when events take a turn for the worst.
While some of these are just your basic cannon fodder, even the more significant characters are just so horribly written that it's impossible to feel any empathy. They all share remarkably similar traits. They act illogically, and without regard for the job they have been hired to do. They make poor decisions; they have motivations which are not clear, they speak in clichés and they possess an ESP like ability to predict future events. The characters are in fact so unconvincing and driven by the plot that massive traumatic events like death, invasive surgery and discovery of intelligent life seemingly pass with barely a flicker of emotion, and have little effect on the characters.
Finally, the creatures. Like the plot and characters these just fail to deliver. The scenes with the exception of Shaw's much talked about medipod adventure just don't terrify in the way in which they would need to and many of the ideas have been done far better by those less capable than Scott.
It's almost like Scott is battling for originality in a genre which he created, and it ends up looking like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Alien.
The poor end sequence in which we see the emergence of some form of early Alien, is a strange, unsatisfying and unnecessary link. It's also perhaps the clearest sign that, despite the claim this film was unrelated to Alien and represented a new distinct mythology, there wasn't sufficient confidence in the films ideas to truly let it stand on its own merit.
"The king has his reign, and then he dies".
The question is why he has to die so publicly and in doing so, detract from what was, and will remain his very best work?