Alien(s) with magic flutes! IN SPACE!

Rating: 6/10 (13 June 2012)

Prometheus endeavors on a noble quest, striving to demystify the origins of the Human race. It touts a mighty fine cast, big production values, "the" Ridley Scott, Weyland Corp., 3D Aliens and aliens, sharp sticks and electronic ball breakers, but ends up asking even more questions and answering too few.
This film is largely the brainchild of cult director Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof. On the latter, suffice to say he is credited as the creator of the television show "Lost", best known for its cliffhanger galore as it seems to enjoy an either love it or have nothing to do with it vibe from viewers. Mr. Scott has been present at the inception of the Alien saga, as director of the film, fleshing out on the creature and mythos behind it with H.R. Geiger. Alien "bursted" into a multimillion dollar franchise with countless sequels, cross-overs (AvP), video-games and pretty much whatever else there is that you can bank on.
Prometheus opens with beautiful shots of what seems to be pre-historic Earth, and within the first few minutes we get a wide shot of an alien ship and a human looking alien, bowing and frolicking around a waterfall. Back to the future, it's 2080 something and we learn that these beings are called engineers" and deliberately left signs all over Earth for us to come and find them. Luckily, a future Richard Bronson in the person of Peter Weyland, an eccentric billionaire who owns a mega-corporation with his namesake, funds the mission.
And we're away! In space!
Mr. Scott manages to recreate every sci fi movie (including his own) about an expedition gone wrong, as the scientists and personnel go into a pyramid / temple. We can see things from the suit-cameras, of course, since Cameron did it in Aliens and even Scott dabbled about it in Alien. Suddenly, a nasty storm erupts, (yes, just like Alien, I will not mention this from now on), and a race ensues to get back to the ship. Needless to say, throughout the temple scenes tension is absolutely lacking, since we saw the engineer" at the first minute mark of the movie. When you show the audience what the protagonists are searching for before they actually find it, there is no more mystery, despite of what the film's score tries to tell us. The characters are lacking substance and completely forgettable, as even the movie tends to forget them from time to time. During the storm mentioned earlier, 2 of the crew are left unawares in the temple, even though they obviously heard what was going on through their suits. When the shot comes back to them, they seem to only serve the movie as to be the protagonists of some sort of "snake-rape". One of them survives, somehow, and emerges in zombie-fifield state and attacks the rest of the crew. Don't worry, he only kills nameless characters who didn't get even a frame before the money shot came.
"David", Michael Fassbender's character, spends half his time aboard the ship and half insider the temple, opening doors and pushing buttons. As he tries to learn how to manipulate the alien technology without success, a breakthrough comes in a form of a holographic replay of the previous occupants of the temple. So, we learn that with all their technology and gene-manipulation, the engineer race used a flute to turn on their machinery. Yes. Playing a flute will start up all the gadgets in the place, so David plays it exactly like in the holograph. How did he know which notes to play, you say? Nonsense. This is space flute playing at its best. IN SPACE!
Some more shocking revelations later, the (in)famous chestburster scene from Alien is avoided when Noomi Rapace's character, "Shaw" learns that she has a huge parasite baby living inside her and decides to perform surgery on herself. Yes, you read that right. On herself. Live. This is arguably the most memorable scene and ironically the anti-climax, as she is stitched back up and the extracted squid-like creature is left in stasis. Actually the rest of the movie she spends on her own two feet, running from all kinds of nasty. So, nothing bad happens, but ehmhorror? Nope, doesn't work that way, sorry.
The film ends with a cliffhanger a la Lost. We catch a glimpse of the proto-Alien and Shaw goes out to "get some answers" from the engineer homeworld on her own. Actually, she is not alone as she is sporting an android head in a duffelbag. Sequel away!