A rather suiting beginning to a series

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2012)

With all the negative reviews on this site seeing Prometheus had me worried that it would turn out to be a huge let down. Fortunately, it turned out to be well worth the watch. While the movie is not going to win any awards for an air tight plot; there is enough substance to make this movie worth at least one viewing.
The most common complaint I've seen here is that there are so many little plot holes that it ruins the movie. The problem is all of the plot holes being pointed out seem to be from people not paying attention to the movie. One example is that of someone asking how David could read and speak the alien language. Given the context of the movie it wasn't an alien language. David spent two years learning ancient earth languages and early on in the movie we are shown that David catches on very very quickly. Given that the movie tells us our language came from the alien language it is very likely that David, having two years of study, maybe more, of ancient human languages could have pieced together the alien language given his knowledge of past human language. Anyone who has ever learned a foreign language could tell you that words evolve from words in other languages and you can guess meanings from words in one language from ones you know in another language given that they have common roots (Which in the movie's case they do.) A bigger issue is how David knew what buttons to push in the control room of the spacecraft. (Before he sees the hologram)
Moving on from that little detail, we can move to the issue of the helmets. I think if they can create an advanced ship that can travel across the universe with stasis chambers it's pretty likely that they have reliable atmospheric scanners. Now ask yourself. Would you want to wear that stupid helmet? Neither would I. I sure as hell would take it off if those systems told me the air was breathable. Now the issue of contagions is another story but as I said this is not an air tight plot by any means.
A recent review also pointed out that the plot is rather childish and cliché which I found to be rather insulting as I feel that the reviewer did not see the deeper theme which wasn't so much the question "What created us?" but rather "Why were we created?" One of the strongest moments in the movie was the tense scene between David and Charlie at the pool table. They get on the topic as to why the alien civilization created humans to which David poses the question "Why did humans create me?" Charlie insultingly responds "Because we could" to which David asks "How would you feel if your creator said the same thing?" The issue clearly isn't so much as where we came from but more as to why we were created in the first place. Especially if our creators want to now destroy us. This parallels our world in many ways because if a god created us, why is it that we are inherently destroyed after we are created? The issue of humanity is lightly touched on when a character in the movie mentions the idea that David doesn't have a soul. I forget which character makes the statement but David is constantly devalued as a being throughout the movie which raises the question as to whether David is human or not. I believe this is the reason as to why David makes the decision to infect Charlie at the pool table. Because he could. It's a very simple reason but it is a very human like reason. There are many times people simply choose to do something because they can.
There's also the issue of the face huggers not being the traditional face huggers which we have seen in the past. This is such a small issue that I feel it shouldn't even be addressed but it shows that the aliens seen in the previous movies evolved from other organisms. It's ironic that such a threat to mankind in the "following" movies was created by us (Well David really but we created him and he wasn't exactly perfect)To me this issue in no way hurts the movie since it's not a giant leap to believe that aliens evolved from other organisms. The biggest leap of the movie has to be made when the audience is expected to believe that Shaw has a mutant baby which is something that almost never happens in evolution. While I didn't get to touch on all of the aspects which I wanted to with this review; I felt that some issues needed to be addressed which I think were rather trivial and unfairly scrutinized. Unfortunately there are many issues that do hurt the movie and keep it from being perfect and so I give it a score of 7.5 out of 10.