Script expendable

Rating: 5/10 (25 February 2015)

For about twenty minutes, Prometheus promises to be the first worthy entry of the Alien franchise since decades: a Lovecraftian thing of awe and terror, a space version of At The Mountains of Madness, enriched by Scott's sumptuous style.
Unfortunately, crisp visuals cannot stop the script from collapsing under silliness and vapid characterization. Only Fassbender's David emerges as a compelling individual, while everyone else is either flat, inconsistent, or a moron: the biologist who runs away from a corpse but stops to pet an alien snake in full threat display mode is already a meme of horror movie idiocy. These lowbrow moments - see also the stoner geologist: it's amazing how much these minor characters hurt Prometheus - clash with the film's lofty ambitions of saying something meaningful about faith, religion and mankind's place in the universe. It's like a Jackass version of Rendezvous with Rama.
Oh, and I like Charlize Theron as much as the next guy, but what exactly was she doing here? How is her Vickers necessary to the plot? Waste of a fine thespian; and the same goes for Idris Elba as the captain and a prune-faced Guy Pearce in bad old man make-up.
Scott complained the Xenomorph was becoming mundane after years of overexposure and tried to shock audiences with new creatures - sadly, the results include a flexible space zombie and a brawl between a giant albino and an humongous squid. Less is more, Ridley.
I'll defend Prometheus on one point, though. Not explaining the Engineers' motivations has been criticized, but it's the ONE THING the script nailed. The moment you start exposing the thought process of a powerful alien race, sci-fi steers towards parody. It's one of the few ideas here worthy of an Alien prequel (sort of). Even Spielberg and Shyamalan, not exactly masters of subtlety, had the good sense of letting their aliens in War of the Worlds and Signs keep their mouths shut.
Not a total disaster, but a tragically missed occasion. Then again, while Scott's first three movies (The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner) are among my favorites, almost everything else he has done since has left me disappointed.
That trailer surely looked great though.
5,5/10