if you're going to be a passive consumer you run the risk of going hungry

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2013)

It's got so that anyone daring to write anything positive here might be afraid of being lynched. This hateful atmosphere is far from being simple expression of people's having been underwhelmed by a film. People have come here especially to express large volumes of real vitriol. They're hurting, because the film didn't satisfy standard expectations, didn't conform to formulae that are considered to be tried and true.
Worst 'crimes';
-unhappy ending. God turns out not to be so sympathetic or kind.
-no neat wrap-ups. In film, unlike in real life, there have to be satisfying answers to all questions raised.
-answers are given, but not to questions people might have been aware were being asked, and the tinge is in the air that those answers are not 'yes'.
-stereotypes are not adhered to; characters act uncharacteristically. This is perceived as script deficiency rather than plot devices in the service of a fable.
-inversion of sympathies; 'Baddies' have right on their side, but we want to dislike them, and for us to dislike them, they need to be wrong, not right as in this film. 'Goodies' are ultimately seen to be misguided and via their representation the human species is seen as a mistake, as a child born monstrous (one review even attacks the film for anti-human 'propaganda'). The alien/proto-aliens are more sympathetic than the humans they menace.
The film needs to be twice the length it is. Well, a lot longer anyway. The strong impression I've gained is that it's been chopped to bits to cram it into 124 minutes, and that the lost footage contains much of the character development and symbolic references that were needed. The film should have been unfetteredly something that 124 minutes wasn't enough for it to be. It has been forced to try to be something a lot less ambitious, possibly with haste. So it's fallen between two destinations, perfectly attaining neither.
I don't care about any of this. I'm a complete fan. I hope the director will not be deterred by all these squeaks of protest and will sustain the grand vision. God knows the world needs imaginers, risk-takers, askers of big questions. Ridley Scott makes things with a lot of beauty in them. There is inevitably also in reality and in fiction great pain. So our makers were not God. They were incredibly beautiful anyway, thanks to Ridley Scott. Keep going, Ridley. You are doing wondrous work.
It seems mean spirited to bung a rating on the same scale for a film like this as is used for 'lampoons vacation' or whatever they are called. As others have put as close to zero as they could despite having acknowledged the stupendously spectacular effects and design, I'm going to ignore with a vengeance the damage done by forces that tried to smash this project and hastily reconstitute is as cheap entertainment. Ten out of ten for sheer elevation of the wonder of imagination, for profundity. My thanks to all involved for the excellent journey.