Great film, if you don't think about it too much.

Rating: 8/10 (7 June 2012)

I'll start with the good stuff. Design, visual effects sound and mood are amazing. Shooting on location did add a sense of scale to the long landscape shots which is harder to achieve with a matte-painting.
Michael Fassbender is amazing as David. His character is brilliantly acted, strangely motivated and enchanting. Definitely the most memorable character in this movie.
But aside from the fact that this was an enjoyable film, when I walked away I began thinking about what I had just watched, certain points came back into my mind which didn't sit right.
The biggest gripe I had with the film was the lack of development of incredible ideas. While watching the movie I thought they'd come back later on, but they didn't.
Spoilers -
Firstly, David could watch the dreams of the sleeping people. This could have been an excellent plot device, but it was only mentioned 3 times. I was sure they were going to use it to have David communicate directly with the sleeping Engineers.
Secondly, after the beautifully paced intro, everything happened too fast. All of a sudden they were at the planet (moon?), everyone was awake, they landed, they were inside, they saw the holographic aliens, David decoded the alien language and opened a door. It just all happened so quickly, there was no point at which they were really exploring the unknown.
It felt like the film was trying too hard to be an action movie, a sci-fi movie and a horror film. I found there to be a lack of suspense, and nothing hiding in the dark. Everything was so conveniently well lit. This may be the fault of being shot for 3d.
Then there were the plot holes; 1) This race of engineers had visited humanity first to mix their DNA with the primordial ooze. Then they came back to earth several times to show some of Earths earliest civilization's where, exactly, in space their top secret military bases were located. And apparently "invited" us to come visit.
2) The plot reveals were too obvious. If this had been a straight-out action movie, then I wouldn't have a problem with this. But Ridley Scott was attempting to tackle some heavy intellectual/religious issues. And if you're going to make a Movie like that then you would make your twists less obvious and more epic. The fact that Weyland was on the ship too obvious, and they foreshadowed it multiple times before revealing it. The pause before Charlize said "...father" was almost painful. I don't see how the mission would have changed much if Charlize had just said from the offset that the mission was funded by her father and he was on a quest for the holy grail. That wouldn't have affected the work that the scientists were doing at all.
3) The scientists were all stupid! No-one was following any sort of safety requirements or quarantine procedures. Dr Holloway taking his helmet off to test the air, yeah, I can believe that with his character. But the others only waited 5-seconds before removing their own helmets. None of them put their helmets back on AFTER seeing their first dead alien and opening a hermetically sealed chamber. They didn't know what diseases the alien was carrying. The botanist should have known better. But then, he was busy getting lost with the only guy who should have not been able to get lost. The geologist Fitfield. He had the laser mapping "Pups". He shouldn't have gotten lost! Milburn and Fitfield are idiots. They ran away from the decapitated Engineer, and the "Lifeform" detected by the pup, but when they see a completely unknown alien snake, Milburn attempts to pet it? As with most of the deaths in this film, it just made me think. "Well, to be honest, he did deserve that"
4) Why did the Engineer chase Elizabeth to try and kill her? And how did he get to her? They breathe the same air we do. So how did he make it to her ship without his spacesuit?
5) Confusing alien life-cycle - Too many steps: David smuggles the canister back to the ship and slips a bit of "alien" into Dr Holloway's drink. He is infected with the stuff that made the Engineers head explode. So then he has sex with Elizabeth and impregnated her with the next stage of the alien. There was very little time between the initial infection and the point at which his head was going to explode, and in this time the alien life-cycle depended on him having intercourse to pass on the bug. So, then the baby squid starts to gestate within Elizabeth, it grows really fast and she removes it, but essentially is a giant Facehugger. Which then ends up getting the Engineer and impregnates him, which then turns into a traditional Xenomorph - almost recognizable from the original movie (but probably different due to DNA differences in the Engineer.
Then we have the alien that attacks Fitfield and Milburn. They both get attacked by the same "Snakes". However, one is turned into a killer zombie and one was killed outright.
6) The film makers went to a lot of effort to recreate some of the major set pieces from the original Alien, however they were on the wrong planet. The amazing space ship crashing scene, which managed to land in effectively the same way as they found the ship in Alien, as well as a distress/warning signal and the Engineer's massive space telescope were all there. And yet it means nothing because it was not the same planet which the Nostromo lands on in Alien, 29 years later.
To sum up my feeling about this movie, I thought it was great. But I came in expecting a more intellectual and challenging film.