The 3rd best Alien movie, and 1st best Prometheus movie

Rating: 8/10 (8 June 2012)

Firstly, don't go into Prometheus like I did expecting a game-changing modern equivalent to the original Alien. Alien still gives me the creeps and jumps today despite me having seen it dozens of times. Prometheus, although very grim, unfortunately doesn't quite reach those heights of terror. Maybe it's too polished, maybe the soundtrack is too heavy-handed, maybe the script was a bit limp in places and the story was too convoluted. For better or worse, Ridley Scott isn't the same director he was in the late 70s. Alien almost seems like a dogme movie in comparison to this film However, Prometheus is still a solid modern sci-fi horror with some great concepts and some nasty sequences which are more than reminiscent of the first two films, albeit very different.
What I found most interesting about this film is the way that, without undermining anything, Scott & co have re-established the world of Alien through to Alien Resurrection as a mere branch off of a very nasty, nightmarish tree. As a teenager I used to draw my own 'Alien' comics and obsess over the Queen > Egg > Face-Hugger > Chest-Burster chain of events *MILD SPOILERS* But Prometheus depicts the mysterious Space Jockeys as 'engineers' of what could be described as weaponised DNA which infects/corrupts anything it comes into contact with. Suddenly everything from the human/egg making scene from Alien: The Directors Cut, to the weird Ripley/Baby monster from Resurrection make a lot more sense. In fact I was very surprised by just how much this film compliments the original and all of it's sequels, even the horrendous AVP instalments.
Don't expect any 'xenomorphs', and yes, this is not the same planet or alien ship seen in the first two films, so therefore anything goes. And yes, the crew of Prometheus have access to much more advanced/sleeker technology as it's Weyland directly funding the mission with, I quote, trillions of dollars. Other tools they use are evidently not so advanced, so yes, a space-born oil refinery filled with grey computers and red buttons could still very much exist in this world, even decades later.
The bottom line is, If you have any interest in these movies, Prometheus is definitely worth your time and money. It might not be as terrifying as Alien or action-packed as Aliens, but it is still much better than anything we've seen from this franchise in 20 years, and more importantly, the scope has now been widened to such a great extent that I hope we see a lot more from it in the years to come.