Uninspired ambition - with deeply flawed screenplay (mild spoilers)

Rating: 5/10 (4 June 2012)

This movie is ambitious, it looks great (excluding the unnecessary 3D) and the actors do mostly a good job. Especially Michael Fassbender's android David being memorable, even if his motives are not very clear. From that we get to the only real problem of the film, which is it's screenplay.
The first half of the movie is promising, even though there are some questions raised - which are unsatisfyingly not answered even by the end of the film - questions like that raised by the prologue, or just unbelievable things like why don't these astronauts know each other and why are they acting so stupid.
It sooner or later becomes clear that the film tries to be too many things at once, but failing to be any one of those things properly. Because most of the characters are not fleshed out very well and their motives are unclear or their actions seem unrealistic, the film lacks real tension and suspense. So it doesn't work as a very tense horror film or even very successfully as an action thriller either, even though it tries to be a bit of both.
The film deals with some serious deep themes like the origin of mankind and the relation of the maker and it's creation and patricide etc. But instead of developing these themes and considering them in any profound manner, the film just puts these questions and themes into the film and leaves it at that.
It's like the film doesn't know what it wants to be. It wants to be a kind of a prequel to Alien, but then again it wants to be it's own thing. It wants to raise serious questions even though it doesn't know how to deal with these questions. It wants to be sci-fi horror but it doesn't want to alienate too many people. And so on. In one word, it's a mess. Ambitious and good-looking mess with fine actors, but still a mess.
There are some plot twists and reveals that seem unnecessary and melodramatic (especially two "big" reveals concerning Guy Pearce's character) that seem to be there just to cover some of the illogical aspects of the plot.
One other complaint I have, comparing to the original Alien films, is that this one doesn't have the morbid genius of Giger's design. The creature design feels uninspired. Instead of the terrifying bio-mechanic and twistedly sexual creations of Giger, the creatures in Prometheus are more like monsters from Half-Life or some other computer game like that. The horrible otherness of the things is gone.
There's supposedly a sequel planned for this, but that doesn't excuse the shoddy plotting, underdeveloped characters or lack of real resolution. If you're making a film like it's a pilot episode to a TV- series you're doing it wrong. Every film needs to work on their own regardless of any planned sequels.
It's not a bad film. It's just hugely disappointing because the concept is really interesting combining Lovecraftian cosmic horror with themes raised by Scott's another early masterpiece Blade Runner. It's just the lazy scriptwriting that makes this a mediocre sci-fi action film instead of the ambitious masterpiece it had all the potential for.
Too bad.