All grandeur, no substance and pushing the boundaries of suspension of disbelief

Rating: 1/10 (9 June 2012)

From the very opening sequence I knew something was wrong with the "Prometheus" storyline.
What if in the original "Alien" you were shown the warrior at The very beginning? In Prometheus there's a missed opportunity for a much better reveal of the space jockey later in the movie.
If the movie is about a quest to discover who created us or where we come from etc, it leaves the audience with no mystery from the outset. The audience should be going on the ride with the characters in the movie.
The opening sequence raises some serious questions.
We see the humanoid who clearly likes pumping iron in his spare time somehow spreading its DNA into a stream somewhere on earth thousands, if not millions of years ago, which suggests its by design to create a life form on earth similar to themselves?
We are then taken into the near future where a group of scientist/archaeologists find a cave drawing of our ancestors communicating with the same alien life forms, which also gives them the location of an alien port somewhere in deep space.
This suggests that the humanoids have been travelling back and forth to earth to keep an eye on human progress. So why would they give earthlings a map of how to find them if they could already travel through space themselves? And why did they create another race on another planet? And then when the other race do finally develop the technology to travel through space to find them they are extremely hostile towards them?
Here's a few key moments in "Prometheus" that are pointless or defy logic:
If the humanoid life forms that created the face huggers and Warriors are so intelligent surely they could have devised a better way of containing/controlling them?
The awful comic relief with the two unrealistic guys left behind in the alien craft only for one of them to appear later as some sort of crazed killing zombie? The holographic recording of the space jockey's trying to escape along with the alien head being briefly re-animated only to explode like a shot watermelon, these scenes were clearly just added to give a bit of spectacle during the slower moving parts of the movie.
The sub plot of the main protagonist "Elizabeth" a rather second rate Ripley and her inability to have children, only later to be secretly impregnated with some new form of face hugger, was a feeble attempt of giving the scene an emotional edge, and for her to have a good reason use that auto operational device that was introduced earlier.
How the android "David" can somehow decipher the alien language? He's a computer/machine, machines only work from what information humans have inputed. Up to this point the only communication humans had with the alien life forms where thousands of years ago, which at this point the English language or any language wasn't even developed?
The ageing and clearly ill Weyland hidden on board the ship with a team of experts, the two years in hypersleep almost killed the clearly healthy and young crew at the beginning? plus surely in reality he would not risk going out there until he got news that it was safe to do so, conveniently he is really old so he has nothing to lose I guess?
The wakening up of the humanoid after thousands of years of hypersleep and his immediate bursts from the cryo chamber in an energetic and aggressive rage, still with his muscular physique? I know he may be a little cranky after waking up an all but it takes me at least five minutes before I have the energy to take a pee never mind bursting into full on combat after sleeping for thousands of years.
The crew of "Prometheus" happily flying their ship into the Alien craft to stop it from heading to earth, absolutely no emotion or reality of any kind in that scene. Again why if the alien created us would it want to return to earth to destroy us? Then again he had witnessed how soulless and annoying we had all become ; )
The pointless battle between the new octopus face hugger and the space jockey and then the even more pointless chest buster scene, come on!! We all know the purpose of the face hugger.
Why did the android character "David" try to kill "Elizabeth" earlier and then decide to help her at the end? And the two of them flying off in the Alien craft? What the hell is she going to live on? Anyway Logic would say, lets fly this thing back to earth and warn everyone not to go anywhere near these creeps and get the Weyland corp to spend trillions on defending earth from this new found alien threat, not flying off with no weapons, supplies, recovering from a major operation and nothing but a talking head for Christ sake.
So I feel that "Prometheus" is just another reason for Hollywood to cash in on its past glories, knowing that there is a hunger for something new and exiting in the Alien series which this clearly failed to deliver, fortunately Ridley Scott's direction is the only thing that keeps you Stimulated for the duration.
Overall "Prometheus" fails with its poor script, massive plot holes and obvious plot devices,lack of tension, poor pacing/editing, its pointless need to add grandiose special effect sequences, along with its poorly developed characters and often cringe inducing dialogue, oh! and its rather generic music score.
Ultimately all this leaves me wondering how can a team of so called creative writers, producers and a class A director sit around a room and all decide that these are great ideas?