So much promise, so little delivered.

Rating: 3/10 (2 October 2012)

Prometheus doesn't have the suspense of Alien. Nor does it have the action of Aliens. Everything after that smells of Hollywood milking the cash cow dry. I hoped that Ridley Scott's return would have helped steer the franchise back on course to what made the first two movies so great, but no. After watching Prometheus I can only guess that this was an attempt at the thinking man's Alien but the whole idea of the movie just seems fixated on getting as many people killed off as possible while leaving an abundance of unanswered questions behind.
First of all it's very difficult to feel any kind of emotional bond with the characters when their biggest discovery in the history of mankind - discovery of an alien civilization, is just shrugged off just like that. No champagne corks, no parties, not even a group photograph. Archimedes had his "Eureka" moment, Watson and Crick went down to the pub to announce they had discovered the structure of DNA. The USA cheered when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. The crew of Prometheus land on a planet, discover the first ever proof of extra-terrestrial life and the only excitement and celebration felt is because it's Christmas, and someone has put up a rather weedy Christmas tree in the ship. It is that underwhelming. No build-up, nothing. If it's that exciting to the characters, how would that excite the audience?
After that it becomes clichéd horror movie material. Despite advanced mapping technology, the guys in charge of mapping the area still manage to get lost, lose radio contact and get killed in easily avoidable circumstances. Then the whole plot just forces events on characters to make sure everyone and everything gets killed and throw in a plot twist to ensure they don't have time to simply pack up and leave.
Prometheus is a very pretty film to watch. But I didn't come out scared, excited, relieved or thinking, "Wasn't it awesome when ..." or "Wasn't it scary when ...". I came out thinking I should have watched Resident Evil instead.