A sad day for Alien fans.

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2012)

I knew little of this film prior to viewing, only that it was intended to be related to "Alien" in such a way that newcomers to the Alien series would not be left bereft. I can honestly say I know less about Prometheus's identity post viewing.
The characters make little sense given the scenario; on what must be the most important mission ever undertaken by mankind, we are given a collection of faceless nobodies who seem to have no role other than to make numbers. I can only postulate that Scott wanted to recreate the effect of Alien with ordinary people facing a terrible situation, but this is simply not applicable here. This leads to one of the films main problems, character development; because the characters are not developed it is difficult to understand their actions: why the android has an ulterior motive is just one glaring example.
I can only describe the plot as lazy, there are so many obvious irregularities in the story it leaves you constantly asking the same question "How does that happen?". It seems the writers just wanted us to guess, or even worse, thought we would be too stupid to realise. Take the untimely death of the first two characters, they die because they get lost, yet as far as I was aware, one of them was the only one there with any kind of navigation system, yet when the others need to make a dramatic escape, they are out within seconds. Another scene involving surgery is simply laughable.
On top of this there is no direction, no flow, no pacing. It seems events happen almost at random and have no baring on the final outcome. I think the film was probably divided between Scott, wanting to make an Alien prequel, and Fox, who weren't sure what they wanted. Whats left is a mess.
I would have loved to have seen an Alien prequel, but I refuse to believe this is it, for proof of this one can recall from Alien that when the crew come the dead alien in the crashed ship, it is sitting in the big telescope, while in this film, what I presume is meant to be the same alien, is killed on a completely separate ship (maybe Scott forgot?).
Whats most sad is this film makes it almost impossible for a proper Alien prequel without admitting having made a mistake in making this film, which clearly isn't going to happen. I can only hope there is another hours worth of footage in the Blu-Ray release.