Ridley's Worst Film

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2012)

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Before reading this brief analysis I should qualify my background, not that it has any more gravity than any other reviewer on here, though it may add some dimension to the heart sinking despair I felt upon leaving the cinema I'll be brief.
I run a Blog that champions the work of futurist artists & visionaries such as Scott, Cameron, Giger, Bannon, Cobb, Foss, Moebius and of course many more – though all the prior mentioned have of course been involved in creating two of Sci-Fi's most seminal movies.
I do not claim to be a fan boy or Scott aficionado, all I wanted with Prometheus was I presume the same as most of you. I was very much looking forward to a real film artist such as Scott returning to not just to Sci-Fi, but to develop one of his career defining best.
That's Ridley Scott, yes, not Michael Bay, not Paul Anderson, or McGee but Ridley Scott, visual creator of celluloid cyberpunk.
Fast forward to 2012.
Good god! An intelligent SF movie this is not.
So where to start. I'll summarise, and be as quick as can be bothered.
Plot: Is it a Prequel or a stand alone movie? I haven't a bloody clue. Its obvious the studio interfered, but still FFS. The plot is lifted straight out of Erik Von Daniken's best (worst) work, I found it telling how Mark Kermode could not take distain to it, since he being a supporter of the British Film Industry and therefore Scott brown-noser. Absolultely nothing wrong with this, we love Ridley as much of you Mark, and we understand politics
OK well, the unoriginal idea aside we climb aboard to ride with the quest But hang on, please! we are going to meet our extraterrestrial ancestors, to answer the biggest question of humankind, something that will nullify religion and redefine like nothing else could our place in the universe!! This is Kubrick type stock, but wait what do we get? Well amongst so many, many (many, many) glaring issues – and this struck me from the start – I present the crusty geologist, presumably our planets finest telling a fellow crew mate to basically f**k off, and hes only there because of the money!? A Vasquez moment, and fair enough if this guy was a Merc but he wasn't and when we see said Merc's in action they are literally armed only with peashooters anyway, brought my p*ss to the boil Anyway it's nonsense, complete nonsense and with a heavy heart I relay that this unfortunately is just the start
Plot holes: I have never seen a movie with more of them in, many glaring and terrible, but then double or triple that when you actually try to quantify how it all fitted together post film. To surmise the problem is, though you may notice many errors, this is just the beginning. Upon end credits (admist groans) myself and two companions left utterly bewildered., could Prometheus really be the prequel (all be abstracted) to one of the best designed films of all time? Could this really be the work of an academy award winning director??
Yes and sadly yes.
Characters: Pretty much awful, Fassbender as David puts in a performance, but really due to complete lack of suspense he's not a patch on Hendriksen or even Holm. Fassbender does give it his best, and the opening 10 minutes are very good. As for the rest of the cast they really have little to go with and are totally flawed by the films erratic internal logic they have to adhere to.
Effects: Yeah of course they are great, and that is why I will score the film relatively highly. Prometheus is visual saccharine for the Call of Duty, Twitter generation, what ever you might call that demographic. Essentially it's beautiful yet vacuous dumb-escapism, beaten down to the Transformers Micheal bay level, is it better than than that? well yes overall of course it is, it's a Ridley Scott movie, but in spirit and soul it is really little different.
Suspense/Tension: Zero, absolute ZERO. The film rarely gets out of first gear let alone 2nd . There's a point where certain background characters decide to go Hara-Kari, and I didn't actually grab this moment of supposed tension till the explosion and death of said crew mates.
Overall: Right to be honest I'm bored, I wasn't that bored watching the movie hence the rating, but Christ, I have never seen such a mess, all be it a pretty mess. A saving grace is, at least it wasn't pretentious, or if it was trying to be the plot was far to laughable to allow that
Make no doubt, this is Ridley Scotts worst film, and that has nothing to do with the of huge disappointment of him returning to his best work, It just stinks, and If you think otherwise, you've probably had a cerebral lobotomy.
A what?
Exactly.