'A King Has His Reign. And Then He Dies. It is Inevitable.'

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2012)

Before I begin, I should point out that I have been waiting for another legitimate release in the 'Alien' franchise, as have my fellow fans for many, many years, sure I was disappointed in 2009 when it was announced that it would not be a 'direct prequel' but I still had a good feeling about how the film would turn out on the whole. Giger was back, Scott was back, the Space Jockeys were back, it was always a spectacular recipe for a potentially spectacular movie.
As I walked into my local movie theatre, I was greeted in the lobby by one of the projectionists who spied my Wayland-Utani t-shirt and proceeded to tell me 'Ahh Prometheus. I saw it this morning. It was good, not great.' my heart sank and I began to worry. But I shouldn't have been worried because fortunately 'Prometheus' is exactly what I wanted it to be, an Alien movie, it answered some of the smaller questions , pieces of back story which had always fascinated me, but it also posed tonnes of new questions as well.
The film is beautiful, it's hands down the best use of 3D I have seen to date, it doesn't get in the way, it isn't dark (when it isn't supposed to be) and it does add something to the experience. The film is very well acted on the whole, however some of the characters are lacking in depth, while the script fails slightly here, more importantly it does not make any prequel Star Wars-esque lore atrocities (assuming 'Alien Vs Predator' is non-canon) and alludes CONSTANTLY to Alien, it is subtle and you have to look carefully but it creates a wonderful sense of tension and doesn't let up for a minute, my heart was literally in my mouth as the crew of the 'Prometheus' proceeded inside the bio-mechanical 'bone-ship' and the story plays really well with the expectations of the viewer.
In terms of mood I would say that it falls somewhere between 'Alien' and 'Aliens' but falling more towards 'Alien', it has dead silence, it has stillness and moments where you doubt what you are seeing, but it also has some very intense action towards the final act.
I am certain that there will be some fans who will be disappointed by the lack of answers, however in my humble opinion they are slightly missing the point, 'Alien' basically told us nothing, where are they from, where were they going, why is the Derelict on LV-426? To me half of the fun of this story is not knowing every little detail, that being said there are still some wonderful nuggets of lore which the fan-base can add to the canon.
Pros: The film is beautifully photographed, the soundtrack is pretty average although they did manage to sneak the theme of the original film into one scene which I thought was a nice touch. It continues to tell stories within the Alien universe and gives answers to some of the smaller questions whilst leaving a degree of ambiguity towards the end. For fans of the Alien franchise this is essential viewing, I can't stress that enough, it just might not be EVERYTHING you expected.
Cons: Some of the minor characters' personalities and motivations are more or less nonexistent which is a shame because this is something which the other films in the series have done very well and it probably isn't as epic as the trailers made it out to be, although I suppose that is rather the point.