over-complicated, uneven horrific reboot

Rating: 4/10 (9 June 2012)

It is with great sadness that I say this...Prometheus is one of the worst, most pointless films I have ever seen. Despite an excellent leading cast, terrific source material, and amazing design and effects, the story is so saturated in its violence and shock value that it fails to rise to the heights its premise could go.
From a gorgeous and disturbing beginning that adopts the panspermia theory of life's beginnings on Earth, comes a quickly drafted get-them- to-the-planet plot that immediately spirals into bad-things mode. The leading characters are drawn well, but eventually are converted into plot devices and horror props, including a man who decays from the inside, a woman who bears his alien child, the company representative who seems to have ulterior motives but really does nothing more than make idle threats, and the android who somehow misinterprets his inventor's instructions to bring him alien contact to mean, "Unleash the alien biological weapons on the crew."
Sound bad? It's worse. You have random terrifying moments that completely ignore the lessons of the original "Alien" as well as all classic horror films, that less is more, and our eyes are overburdened with gore and destruction worthy of a video game movie. All the pseudo- philosophical musing and mythological tie-ins the script includes casually, washes in comparison to the utter insanity of the various parasites, guts, ripped and charred flesh, and eventual creatures. The screenwriters also forget that you save the worst for the last part of the moment...and if they had, the film might have actually been compelling and satisfying.
By introducing an elemental parasite, eliminating several artifacts that are never relevant to the plot, having the parasite begin evolving with its creations (rather than having it appear disjointedly at random moments), and saving the lead character's horrific birth scene for the last act, we would have increasing levels of psychological terror, motivations for certain character's sacrifices and murders, and then an enemy capable of dispelling the mysterious "engineer," whose motivations should be explained first, in the chair wherein he is found in "Alien."
All in all, this was a good premise with an excellent heritage that got drowned in the lure of torture porn, awesome CGI, and twisty scripts common of today's sci-fi horror flicks. The ending is so vague and unmotivated, it seems a setup for a sequel...typical studio move. Studios, spare us another attempt unless you're willing to dial it way back and deliver a chilling, simple, thoughtful film that follows David's advice in "Prometheus": "Big things have small beginnings."