"Recycling" is the key word here...

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2012)

I'd really, really like to blame the screenwriters for this atrocity but there is no doubt all the responsibility lies with the director/producer that hired them.
One must remember that by now Ridley Scott is very, very old. As most old people he becomes increasingly obsessed with two things: preaching to younger generations and making some capital masterpiece to leave as a lasting testament. That's the only way I can explain why every new film of his is a whole level more ambitious than the last one. The next story in line I think is about Moses. Surprise. Everything else with Scott keeps getting better and better but the stories he puts on the screen keep getting more ludicrous and sermon-like.
And just what does an old master of commercials and spectacles have to say to his audience? Well, nothing really clever and profound, as it appears, and "Prometheus" is a testament to that. Conceived as a prequel to "Alien", this is an odd combination of "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Avatar" and, of course, "Alien" itself. There is a clear ambition to use it as a vehicle for a great philosophical debate about the origin and purpose of life (an apt agenda for an aging author) - but all seriousness is down the drain as soon as one awakes the evil ghost of Erich von Daniken and attempts to explain life on Earth as some sort of extraterrestrial intervention. Just as in "2001", the story is founded on misconceptions about evolution, but what makes it worse, the only character that supports Darwinism (and actual science) is portrayed as a moron. Deliberately? I'm afraid so.
On the other hand, Scott puts two religious "scientists" in the spotlight and uses them to ask and answer all the questions that concern Scott as an author. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as far as I'm concerned), both of the actors portraying them are pretty unsympathetic and uninteresting. Logan Marshall-Green has zero screen presence and Noomi Rapace is just a cute face that is, towards the end of the film, supposed to walk in Sigourney Weaver's shoes. To be honest, they didn't have a decent script to work with either. Their dialog was disjointed, emotionless and unconvincing, saturated with religious and pseudo-scientific garbage, all to satisfy Scott's penchant for popcorn philosophy. Even if they did have something to say - "Alien" franchise was never about philosophy: it was about suspense and action.
Of course, they had to squeeze some action between philosophical sessions. So it's there and it's spectacular and it's well filmed. But it's also often nonsensical, self-serving and drawn-out. So is the said dialog and so is the motivation of all the main characters. The last film I sat through that was as nonsensical as this was "Avatar".
They also had to utilize every single cliché in the Hollywood Book of Clichés: token black guy, love story, blonde villains, two buddies with a special rapport, anti-corporate sentiment, last second escapes and what not. And there are, of course, ties with the original "Alien", but they are so weak and thrown in just for a good measure, that it doesn't feel like "Alien" franchise at all. It's just a movie with a famous "chest-burster".
All in all, the film opens more questions than it answers. But not of a "why are we here?" and "where do we go?" kind. It rather keeps one wondering about numerous plot-holes and inconsistencies and stupid characters. And, of course, it left me wondering who is "Prometheus" referring to in the first place. I'm versed enough in ancient mythologies to realize what Scott tried to do here - recycle and combine basic motives of mythological stories into a grand tale of life and death and ethos of sacrifice. He came up with a crappy sermon-movie that would have otherwise, by it's technical merit, been terrific. That it failed so miserably, despite the luxurious package, speaks volumes of the ideas it tried to sell.