Exactly the same as 'the original'

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2012)

During the mid and late 1970s, cinema took a giant leap forward in its capacity to deliver blockbusters for teenagers (or the teenager in spirit). Doubtless those raised on the cinema of earlier generations might wish to make a similar claim for the sweeping epics that drew in the crowds in the 50s and 60s, but when I went to see Star Wars, Close Encounters and Alien in consecutive years, I was sure that Hollywood could not previously have made audiences so entranced and convinced by the sci-fi experiences now being created.
Watching Alien in 1979 was, as one critic wrote at the time, a visceral experience: ghastly, scary, bloody, shocking and wholly believable. A full Odeon, Leicester Square was entranced as one.
So I suppose it was inevitable that watching Prometheus was never going to be the same kind of experience for me: cinema just hasn't made that much progress since, partly because what CGI can now give us is the extraordinary made ordinary. Doubtless there are still some teenagers who will be coming to Prometheus fairly fresh and ready to be as gripped as I was by Alien, but raised on computer games and DVDs, such a number must be very small. They won't be disappointed by the movie's visuals: much time and effort was spent on creating a new hyper-real landscape, and there are still one or two moments of grisly horror (though none that genuinely surprise or shock).
If only some time had been spent testing out the script's premise that a specially commissioned crew of experts in their fields would run around an alien landscape with no regard for their own or anyone else's personal safety, or for the success of their mission. Alien's miners could be forgiven for not knowing what they were getting into: these scientists have no excuse, yet Scott evidently decided that if he was to recreate the formula of the original, any such considerations would need to be set aside. They touch everything and seem afraid of nothing. Critics have described it as 'muddled', yet I would argue its worst crime was to attempt to revisit the same territory with an unconvincing script in the first place. The movie is, in basic structure and in a number of scenes, exactly the same as the original. (Perhaps it's me that's different.) Of the cast, only Theron, Rapace and Fassbender intrigue at all, and none matches up to the heroism of Ripley. Rapace fails to generate very much sympathy, despite her predicament - only Idris Elba offers much humanity or heroism, but he remains resolutely 2D.
Perhaps that's the point. In presenting us with a collection of distinctly unlovable and more or less disposable characters, Scott underlines the revelation about the Engineers, their purpose and their secret, and mankind's insignificant and unsavoury role in Creation. To say more would be to give away the only thought worth pondering in a movie burdened with an expectation that, for this viewer, was unfulfilled.