A complete mess

Rating: 3/10 (4 September 2013)

I borrowed "Prometheus" and the original "Alien" from the local library and watched them back-to-back.
It's striking how much "Prometheus" borrows from the original film. The lingering opening shots of the spacecraft, the on-screen data specifications, the waking from hibernation, crew members moving through poorly lit corridors, a mercenary android who loses his head but continues a conversation, aliens who delight in killing, the sole survivor a strong-willed woman - these are just some of the similarities.
Sadly though, because I expected more, much more, "Prometheus" fails on every level compared to "Alien". The script is very badly written and poorly acted by the majority of the cast. Noomi Rapace is particularly unconvincing and Guy Pearce is completely wasted acting an old man. The only actors I warmed to were paradoxically playing cold characters, Michael Fassbinder's David8 and Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers.
Obviously a lot of money was spent on sets and special effects, and it looks good. The explorer's spaceship looks far more technologically advanced despite being chronologically younger than the tatty old "Nostromo" with its cathode ray tube computer monitors and graphics- challenged screen displays, but as a believable space ship, the craft from "Alien" is so superior.
"Alien" worked well because Scott had learned a lot from Kubrick's "2001" about pacing and atmosphere. "Prometheus" again borrows from "2001" but without any sense of originality being put to good use, it simply makes "Prometheus" look derivative. A shared scene is an astronaut about to run out of air just making it into the airlock in time. This ended up as a completely ho-hum scene compared to Kubrick's similar take.
Thinking about "2001" merely adds to the dismay I feel about "Prometheus". Both films share very similar concepts - alien life acting as an evolutionary stimulant in the development of humanity and the attempt of a future generation to locate those aliens - but whereas "2001", despite its glacial pacing, enthralls me from beginning to end, "Prometheus" left me simply puzzled or uninvolved.
OK, so it's science fiction and I don't expect real science or even real philosophy but the shallowness evidenced throughout the film was breathtaking.
I did like the opening scene, some very Kubrickian aerial landscape shots, and the title music with its opening horn call, very Vaughan Williams (think 5th Symphony), is pleasing.
But overall, a complete mess.