Imperfect, but misunderstood ***Spoilers***

Rating: 8/10 (8 June 2012)

I don't know how to properly review this movie without giving spoilers. It's like trying to describe the color yellow to a blind person. There will be spoilers in this review. Once more, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
From here read at your own risk: This film tries to deal (at times obliquely and at other times directly) with the creation of human life itself. It turns out we are the products of a science experiment gone wrong. Some unspecified time in the past, an Engineer, so they are called, popped by Earth and tried some special drug cocktail he'd made for himself. As we find results with other Engineer creations, it goes badly for him.. He dies, but not before leaving some of his DNA in our primordial soup for us to crawl from. Humanity develops, and the Engineers apparently find us worth hanging out with for a while, and even leave their contact info painted on cave walls, until about 2000 years ago, when they moved on to more interesting experiments. Aforesaid 2000 years later, a couple humans find the contact info and decide to pay a visit.
Meanwhile, humanity itself have become Engineers. We, too, have developed new life in our own image, just as the Engineers did. David, played impeccably by Michael Fassbender, is the "son he never had", as Peter Weyland, his creator says. Problem is, Weyland does have a child he doesn't consider worthy: a daughter, Meredith Vickers, played by Charlize Theron. This triptych of Weyland, David and Vickers really represents the core theme of the film: a creator trying to play God, and disavowing the life he's already created.
Our intrepid crew arrives at LV-233. (It's worth noting that this is not the same planet from Alien and Aliens. That was LV-426. So if you're expecting this movie to directly set up Alien, it won't.) There they find a hologram of Engineers fleeing something unobserved. We find a room filled with canisters that turn out to be a bio-weapons cache. And like a child with a new chemistry set, crew members become exposed to various elements, each reacting differently, yet always violently. Like an accelerated natural selection.
People begin to die. Nastily. Someone has an abortion. Nastily. Violent things happen to people we barely recognize. My main problem with the film is this aspect. There are 17 crew members on the ship. We get to really know 5. The rest are just cannon fodder. That and the final act requires some suspension of disbelief as far as how quickly people can recover from certain situations, like being knocked unconscious and having abortions. I felt like a good 20-30 minutes had been cut that could have made the film more complete.
The tie-in with the Alien films really is just the question of the nature of the Engineers. Like Weyland with David, the Engineers had moved on from their offspring and were ready to concentrate on a new life form. And like Meredith looking to her father for approval, the humans look to the Engineers to tell them why. Why did they move on? There, of course, is no answer. How could there be? The Engineers don't care. In fact they want to return to Earth and wipe out humanity, which they meant to do 2000 years ago, except apparently someone turned off their alarm clock. What we learn about the Engineers is that they like to experiment with biology, with creating life. And interacting with that new life can cause rapid permutations. At some point in their past, this caught up with them. Or, at least, with the ones at this location. And, of course, the one that crashed on LV-426. Apparently it's a recurring problem for them.
Thematically, Prometheus has more in common with 2001 than Alien. Imagine the Discovery had 15 crew members and the monolith turned 1/3 into monsters who tried to kill the rest until only one person was left.
I did like the film. I enjoyed it, and hope the blu ray has an extended cut. I think the film needs it. But it's best not to go in expecting anything like Alien, because it's not.