Scott drops the ball big time!

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2014)

Ridley Scott's highly anticipated film PROMETHEUS (2012) falls short of it's tremendous expectations. A prequel to Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece "Alien", "Prometheus" tries to be several things, and in doing so, really ends up about nothing. The film plays like an uneasy blend of 2001, Alien, and Aliens, with even a nod to Lawrence of Arabia. Of course it would contain elements of the latter two movies, as it occurs in the same universe as "Alien". It has philosophical and religious overtones, but they are presented in an extremely clunky way.
The film's plot is that in the late 21st century, archaeologists and lovers Shaw (Naomi Rapace) and Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover cave drawings that are indicative of the creator alien race of "Engineers" on the distant planet LV-223. The Weyland Corporation funds the mission, led by corporate bigwig Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) with her android sidekick David (Michael Fassbender) maintaining the ship while the crew is on life-support for the 2-year journey to the planet. The crew also includes the captain Janek (Idris Elba, sporting a weird accent), medic Ford (Kate Dickie), punker geologist Fifield (Sean Harris) and geeky biologist Millburn (Rafe Spall). Upon arrival, David brings the crew out of cryogenic stasis and they land on the planet to investigate.
The film doesn't work for a variety of reasons:
(1) The plot is paper thin, explaining away the origin of man too simplistically. The overarching theme of this film is stolen right from 2001. The Engineer at the film's start is basically the "monolith" from 2001, but with the added "bonus" of initiating life on Earth, not just providing basic knowledge, like the apes in 2001. The archaeologists who discovered the cave drawings are substitute for the moon expedition that discovered the monolith. The 4-year flash forward to the Prometheus-LV223 expedition? Same as the jump to the Discovery-Jupiter expedition in 2001!
(2) The viewer is "treated" to too many scenes of characters unconvincingly spouting off nonsense about creation and the meaning of life. The convos are incredibly forced and inorganic. The actors don't even seem to believe in the dialog! And there are WAY too many "confused look" moments where characters look clueless, and I guess WE are supposed to be curious or afraid along with them or trying to figure out what they're thinking, but I found myself frustrated because NOTHING was really happening.
(2) Except for ironically David, all the characters are incredibly one-dimensional and lifeless. Most of them don't even seem like scientists or explorers, except for perhaps Shaw, who at least exudes an aura of being a person of deep thought and reason (if you ignore the "hunch" part). Holloway comes across almost like an overbearing frat boy, who seems more interesting in consuming alcohol than in the mission itself; I didn't buy his character for a second. Plus, Shaw and Holloway are not convincing as lovers at all, possessing no chemistry. Vickers is essentially a watered-down female version of Burke from "Aliens", a company lady who only looks out for number one, except she actually has no ulterior motive. That "honor" belongs to android David, who seems to be a mixture of Ash from "Alien" and Burke/Bishop from "Aliens". Although well-played by Fassbender (in the film's ONLY good performance), David remains an enigma. The geologist-biologist duo Fifield and Millburn don't even seem to care about the mission at all, do NOT seem like men of science, and are literally useless! Fifield says he's in it for the money (didn't know research was THAT lucrative) and Millburn, for whatever reason, is content in being Fifield's best bud. You've just found the origins of life as we know it and you traveled for TWO YEARS to this point so you could blow it off and lay back on the ship doing nothing?
(3) After what happened to a couple of the characters upon being exposed to the alien DNA, why would Weyland STILL want to use it to try and cure him? The 2 crew members who were exposed went bonkers and ended up wreaking havoc, and their bodies could take it because they were young men. No way a man Weyland's age (he looked at least in his 90s!) could survive that!
(4)Characters just automatically believed each other's theories without any further debate or investigation. Character A makes a theory, then Characters B through Z believes them!
(5) The ending with Janek (the film's most frustrating character, mainly because of Elba's decision to use an odd Southern accent, but also he just acts weird throughout the whole film) and his borderline mute co-pilots was strange to say the least and ties into my point #4. No character in this movie has a discernible personality!
I found the setting of this movie to be incredibly dull, static, and uninteresting. Scott spent a lot of money and effort to create one of the most drab Hollywood sets I've ever seen. Most of the "action" takes place in that Engineer "cave", with characters just spouting off nonsense dialog and acting odd for much of the film's run.
Now, to the BEST part of this film: Figuring out how it ties into "Alien", because at the very least it's interesting picking out the "Alien" easter eggs (no pun intended!) that are throughout the film. It's at least fun comparing parts of this weak movie to an actual GOOD one! Of course the ending itself is a hoot, but overall this movie is 2 hours of nothing happening to get there. I think I give the film 1 star for David, 1 star for Shaw's body (you'll know what I mean when you see it!), 1 star for the easter eggs, and finally 1 star for the ending!