It's hard to say whether Prometheus has landed or just crashed with style.

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2012)

No one can argue that Prometheus looks incredibly impressive. It has a convincing atmosphere and makes use of an old-school look of science fiction which still feels fresh and hits all the right nostalgic buttons. The film keeps creeping up in my mind, its vagueness making me wonder how everything fits together and its style bringing about a lot of nostalgia for the things I love about Alien, one of my all-time favorite films. This would be a bigger advantage if my recollections weren't a mixed bag of excitement and disappointment. It's hard to say whether Prometheus has landed or just crashed with style.
There are aspects of the plot that are genuinely interesting, where its vagueness benefits to make you ponder over posed questions. There is, for instance, an aspect of the relationship with your father (or your creator in general) that I quite like. Your father is inevitably superior in hierarchy and even though you might surpass him. He has to die in order for you to be fully independent. It is an engrained consequence of the Prometheus myth without being previously (to my knowledge) explored. But there are at least as many other questions where the possible answers show a definite lack of imagination or intelligence.
One such question is how the aliens created us. The opening scene shows, if I'm correct, an alien sacrificing himself to grant the components of life to the waters of the earth. Now, either life evolves separately on earth from these components. If that is the case, then the human organism evolved entirely separately on a different planet, over the course of thousands of chaotic years (including the dinosaurs losing dominance over smaller mammals due to environmental impacts), into practically the same creature as the aliens (with almost the exact same DNA-code, mind you). This would be highly and deeply unlikely. Or we didn't evolve, but were created; our DNA-code was granted to us by this alien creature. That begs the question of why there are so many animals on this planet with whom we share huge amounts of DNA with. This bothers me, really bothers me. If it's a question of suspension of disbelief then don't be so vague about it. Neither is it something small that can easily be ignored. I don't expect all the science to be completely plausible in science fiction, but this incident isn't just some fictional science; it is engrained in its themes and its central question. The entire film soothes with questions that feel intentional to make you think, so don't punish us for doing so. It adds up to something somewhat incoherent and can feel a little underwhelming.
The structure of the story is familiar; perhaps a little bit too familiar. At times it feels like it's going through the motions. Some of those motions are awkwardly uninspired, but more often they are obviously cared for and still manage to thrill and bring about a sense of awe. The creatures are better than almost any monster or alien these days and although it is a big budget blockbuster, it still understands that tension resides in mystery. The ending, however, feels a bit too rushed at times for tension to build to its peak.
Noomi Rapace brings a wonderful performance, but truth be told, Fassbender steals every scene he's in. David is the star of the film. Ironically, the robot is the most fleshed out character of the entire film. Almost every other character though, has no development, no third emotion (the second emotion for all, except David, being fear) and they tend to just be plain stupid. Their manner of thinking is much more akin to a typical character of horror-films than a scientist. Jumping to conclusion seems far more logical in terms of the plot-development than as part of any scientific method. The actors, however, do a good job of making these characters feel like real people even though they fit so perfectly and obviously in the required stereotypes.
Prometheus lies somewhere between a creature-feature and hard sci-fi. Although sadly it isn't the best of both worlds, but a clash of the charm and flaws of both. It has some wonderful spectacle, interesting creatures and it has some big existential questions, attention to detail and mysteries. But it also has idiotic characters, badly recycled structures, ideas and generally falls short thematically. It's too well made to hate, but too poor to love.