Oh dear...

Rating: 4/10 (3 June 2012)

I can see a lot of people buzzing about Prometheus... This saddens me even more than having to see all the simpering approval which went hand in hand with the release of Inception. It is a film without direction or heart, characters or soul. There is no majesty in its scope or wonderment in its mysteries, because it cannot see what is flatly in front of it and cannot perceive that it has asked no question of worth. It's plot can be crippled with but a mere utterance of truth and its characters motivations flail away in the pits of pointless parody as they dance in the service of Hollywood sensationalism leaving only hollow, tattered impressions of fay humanity in their wake.
Let's speak plainly... It's not clever, before anyone comes storming along saying that "I didn't understand" then can stop right there because there's nothing in this film which could be considered complex, subtle or intricate. The fact that the whole film centres around a series of archaeological finds which not only make no sense in the context of history (What ancient complex civilisation capable of basic linguistics and cave paintings were living on the island of Skye 35 thousands years ago? And what were they doing about the ice sheet?) but it doesn't even make any sense in the context of the film, just because you leave some biological material lying around doesn't mean people are going to be speaking your language and painting pictures of your local star charts.
Honestly I won't go into picking apart the plot any more, because that would spoil the film completely for anyone attempting to watch it and would take an age. I can stick the boot in to the characters though, although I have to ask, what characters? It's always a bad sign when your most human character isn't human, like day of the dead where the most sympathetic character by far was the zombie they keep locked up to experiment on. Michael Fassbender is incredibly watchable as the ships synthetic and for a while you're kind of along for the ride to see what he's about and what he's getting at; but like everything in this film there's no payoff for your interest as it transpires that there was no motivation for any of his action save advancing and tangling the plot. The two archaeologists, who are just so goddamn pretty that it makes you want to be sick in a bucket at the fact that Hollywood just won't allow you to look at normal people, and are essentially your primary protagonists, do, say and offer nothing of worth or value and their lack of appropriate behaviour in the face of grand discovery is truly astounding.
Bah, my word count is getting on so I'll rap this up quick. The crew are terrible, not even Idris Elba was any good and I'm a big fan; the whole idea that on a purpose built vessel of discovery intent on finding alien life you would have a skeleton crew of misfits, mercenaries and nothings who aren't really that interested and scantly know anything about the jobs they purport to do is quite frankly ludicrous and indeed that was when the warning lights started to flash. Looking for a former glory just a little too hard were you Ridley?
Oh and a last complaint but the most bizarre; there's a melodic hook, it features in almost every quiet, supposedly emotional scene and accounts for about 30% of the films score in total. Well... It's from Star Wars... I'm not being funny, it's actually from Star Wars. Maybe there's a note or two that's a semi tone different and maybe it's in a different key, but I challenge any person familiar with Star Wars not to make the connection when listening to it. The effect this has on the film is massive and awful. There's a scene for Idris, in which he is trying to make an impassioned speech, it's serious and is supposed to have wide reaching connotation for the rest of the film and you can see him manfully trying to deliver his not very good lines in as convincing a fashion as possible under the crushing yolk of oppression which is the awful American accent he's been asked to perform and bam! Star Wars in your ear, and the scene is dead.
Very, very pretty film with lots of lovely visual effects, set design, creature work etc. It makes me feel incredibly sorry for all the artists who worked to make this film, all their hard work be used for the purposes of trite, passionless guff.