What ???

Rating: 1/10 (17 September 2012)

... This was the most frequent question that popped in my head while watching this... thing. It was meant as a horror movie, and succeeded : I was horrified.
Now rating this a 1 might be a little harsh ; like most other reviewers, I agree that, to its credit, the movie has awesome visuals. However ! not only do they not save this awful nonsense, you could also say that they are NOT adequate for an "Alien" movie. Super-wide vistas ??? What happened to the constant claustrophobia in the other Alien movies, even the terrible "Resurrection" ? And everything is so CLEAN...
So, if like me you aren't in love with the visuals, what's left ? Well, nothing at all. It's all an awful mess. It's not "New-Starwars-bad", not by a long shot (I would rate the so-called "SW 1-2-3" below a zero out of ten), but it's still awful.
I have to rant. I'll just do it. Here are my favorite reasons (although if you've read other "Hate-it" reviews, there probably won't be anything new here. Pass if you have.)
1. The crew is a bunch of schoolchildren. They have no sense of danger, of self-preservation, of discipline, of any vital priorities whatsoever. The only authority figure, Vickers, serves no purpose as everyone disregards her orders constantly, even to her face. Captain's orders are also ignored. It's not even chaos, because that would mean you can't expect how the characters will react : no, in this movie, you're certain that whatever shouldn't be done WILL BE. And this team is supposed to be made of pros ?
2. Contrary to other reviewers, I don't believe that the ship "finds immediately the straight lines". There's no clear sense of time during the entry scenes into the atmosphere. For all we know, they could have been searching for hours. But it's still unbelievable enough. That moon has the same gravity as Earth (exactly the same !!) so it's probably extremely big, even if it has a denser core. Yet they find the "facility" by chance. Would it have hurt to include some signal, like in "Alien", to explain how they find it so fast ?
3. The crew, as I said, is a bunch of morons. But worse : it's a bunch of morons who apparently haven't had a chance to get to know each other. What ??? A trillion dollar expedition without any preparation ?
4. The ship HAD to land FAR from the facility it had detected. It could have parked right outside, but that would have made impossible one or two scenes. For similar scenes, see "Pitch Black". But in PB, landing far from the base was unintentional. The "hurry back on your quads before the sh** hits the fan" was credible. Not so here.
5. Then we get to the REALLY good stuff. Upon finding an "Engineer" 2000-year-old dead body, two cretins freak out and leave. There was, at that point, no reason to get ANGRY (that was really my first big "WHAT ?????" in the movie) and leave the group ; that was contrived, that was LAME. Little did I know what I was about to see next.
6. So the two idiots obviously get lost. You can expect that in an unknown subterranean maze. BUT one of them is an expert at mapping corridors with his "pups" and still he has no feedback from them ? Worse : they have a working radio contact with the ship (where the captain has a great 3D map provided by the "pups") and STILL they don't ask for directions ???
7. And then, you all know this part : the captain leaves the two stranded morons (lost but still not asking for directions) on that note : "Oh, there appears to be something alive not too far from you" and then abandons his post at once for a sh*g with the creepy Vickers. So he doesn't get to know what happens next. Too bad, he really missed something epic.
8. The two idiots (well, one in particular) decide it's fun to try to pet an unknown alien species of snake which is clearly very pis*ed off and gives them every chance to back off. A dead Engineer's body : not fun ; a living, angry alien cobra : fun. Go figure. Anyway, carnage ensues. They deserved it. Were this movie a documentary on real events, those two imbeciles would make the top of the Darwin Awards of 2093. Numero Uno.
9. Then...
Ah, it's too hard. It's too long. I'm getting tired of this, and I've only covered half the movie.
I'll have to pass on some other great moments of sheer stupidity, like the ultra-high-tech med-pod that treats only males -- in what is a woman's lifeboat (????!!!), and the terrible, terrible scene where a spaceship rolls on the ground like a wheel (and everyone runs in the same direction instead of running left or right). The suicidal collision in the end is also stupid enough to be mentioned ; yes, okay, one pilot could sacrifice himself, but the REASON why the two others stay with him instead of going for the escape pods is the final nail in the coffin of a movie made for 6 year-olds.
All in all, there's, incredibly, no end to the list of absurdities in this movie. If you thought that looking endlessly for the cat in "Alien" was cretinous enough, know that you haven't seen cretinous if you haven't seen "Prometheus". It really, really challenges your idea of "nonsense". You'll never be the same after that. You'll reclassify "Alien Vs Predator" as "artsy". You probably already have, if you've seen "Prometheus".
Ridley, please leave "Blade Runner" alone. It needed you at the time, but not anymore. The "Alien" franchise didn't either, but that ship has unfortunately sailed.