Technical effects--8, Story and characters--0

Rating: 1/10 (16 June 2012)

As a former Ridley Scott fan and a film reviewer with nearly thirty years of experience, this pathetic attempt to pander to the dumb-and-dumber contemporary film audience was simply appalling. As I watched, I was either stunned by the fateful attempts to create faux drama or driven to breakout laughter when chunks of dozens of old science-fiction classic films or scenes were cynically and mockishly linked together with bubble gum--for a bubble-gum viewer.
Amazingly, in this production we get random pieces of everything Ridley Scott ever directed or wished he'd directed (including the line, "He cut me off!" from "Top Gun"), as well as direct knock-offs from "Star Wars" and "Star Trek." (God, please-- "I'm your father, Luke"!!) These woeful derivatives actually encompass "Contact," "Little Big Man" and even "The X Files" (with that ol' black magic oil).
Even the "characters" are nearly all knock-offs. Several reviews have praised Fassbender; but he's merely trying to live up to the original cyborg from 1979, played by the great Ian Holm. All of these rather pristine primary elements have been tossed into the film marketer's blender and whipped into a witless, terrible glue. This is Hollywood techno-garbage entirely without shame, with no concern for the integrity of coherent plot or story or mythic narrative or character or anything necessary and decent. Yet in the theatre where I saw the film, it was fairly clear that virtually no one had any clear notion regarding what was actually occurring on screen.
I used to teach a course at Virginia Tech entitled "Religion and Science Fiction." At the time, there was nothing in existence like this in film that so tortured everything that great SF represents, even the older B films. When you get to select among "2001" or "Alien" or many other fine or interesting features for screening...and then barely manage to sit through this nonsense (which has only a marginal relationship with the mythic Greek Prometheus--except in the Romantic tradition), you know you're in a different cosmos.
Along with the recent "The Cabin in the Woods," this is one of the WORST 10 or 20 films I've ever seen. Every actor in this work should be ashamed of himself or herself, especially Theron and Pearce. In today's world of film making, actual integrity and the pursuit of high-quality story (and its production) are becoming increasingly marginal. Thanks to the advancing failure of our higher educational system, the average viewer can now be anesthetized with nothing more than technical fireworks.
Where is the next "Schindler's List" or "Momento" or "Good Will Hunting" or "The Departed" or "The Matrix"? There are so many great SF writers whose fiction remains unexplored, like Ursula K. Le Guin.