Stylishly unsatisfying

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2012)

Let's start with the positives - the production design of this film is absolutely beautiful (as one expects in a Ridley Scott film) and the performances are generally very good. Theron is excellent as the corporate ice-woman, Fassbinder plays David (the robot crew member) with a nice sinister edge (though he's not nearly as worrying as Ian Holme's android in the original 'Alien') and Rapace works well as a far more sympathetic heroine than the one she played in 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo'. The first half/third of the film works well in building slowly and generating a good deal of eager anticipation in the audience, but in a way this is where the film's problem lies. The film's second half/two thirds lacks the careful pacing and development of its opening section and we veer from something that feels character driven, to a narrative that descends into frantic plot delivery. The 17 man/woman crew of the ship provides too many characters for significant or convincing development and pretty soon characters are making drastic decisions with little real sense of what motivates them. Theron's character is a good case in point - initially she seems an interesting mystery but there is little done to resolve the huge number of questions we might have about her; why is she so hardened? What is her relationship with the corporation? What lies behind her relationship with her father? How come she's so willing to burn a lead member of her crew to a crisp? All these questions are raised, yet none are answered in any convincing or satisfying way. Similar problems emerge with David (Fassbinder) - while Holm's android had a clear set of reasons for his actions in Alien, there is little real sense of this in 'Prometheus'. In short - characters do an awful lot in this film; but don't expect to be given much understanding as to why they do these things other than because the plot wouldn't move on if they didn't.
There's also a real problem with the rather unresolved plot-line which offers an explanation of where the aliens came from in the first place. Giant, albino humanoids apparently have created them as a biological weapon to destroy humanity, but quite why they have done this and how characters in the film arrive at this conclusion is difficult to discern. There's also a dangerously ludicrous ending to the film which may remind some viewers of the frankly ridiculous ending of 'Mission to Mars'.
It's worth checking this film out for the visuals alone, but its no 'Alien', or 'Aliens' for that matter. Personally I'd have preferred a far simpler plot which did not feel the need to explain where the aliens came from in the first place; after all the mystery surrounding their origin is one of the things that makes them frightening