I will start by saying that I am a huge fan of Riddley Scott, as well as the Aliens universe. To this day both Alien and Aliens are two of my top five favorite movies and I can quote both line by line of character dialog.
Needless to say I had very high expectations for Prometheus. Unfortunately I was VERY disappointed. I was so disappointed that Prometheus became my lower threshold for movie quality. Nowadays when I see a bad movie I think “was it worse than Prometheus?” If the answer is no (it usually is) then the movie was not so bad.
Now I gave it a 04 out of 10 mainly for the computer graphics, the movie was beautiful. The ships appeared somewhat believable. If I had to rate the movie only by this it would merit a 09/10. However, contrary to what it is common belief in the movie business a a great image is not enough to save a movie.
The concept of the story was good. Archaeologists find clues that Earth was visited by aliens in the past and piece together a star map from cave paintings with a point in space where the aliens came from. But other then the concept everything falls apart. Lets do this in parts.
Characters: One dimensional characters who do stupid things. These where supposed to be the top scientists of Earth and I saw nothing that indicated that. Sure, you could argue that in the future IQs dropped way low, but anyway. None of the characters were memorable, some were confusing. We have a character that in the meal after waking up acts all violent and you think he was a security chief or something. This is backed up by the fact that he tries to take a gun in the expedition. Ten minutes later he yells that he is just a geologist and is scared. WTF?
Then there is the chief archaeologist, the guy just proved that there were aliens, they were intelligent and had a civilization. When he finds out they are all dead or gone he gets depressed. COME ON, the guy should be jumping in joy, even if ET is dead they left their toys, he has just found more that he could study in his life.
There are too many moments that annoyed me regarding characters, but the scene that made me give up on the movie was when discovering that there was oxygen inside these top scientists took their helmets off to smell the air. The idea of contamination of the ambient never crossed their minds, nor the possibility that there could be a virus or such that would be deadly to them.
After that it went all downhill and my mind ignored everything else. However, notable mentions include: two scientists getting lost in the caves, even though they mapped it and there was only one or two ways. Said scientists petting the alien snake before dying. The main character dropping the alien head before the storm and going back for it.
Story: There was no suspense or horror. Nothing that could compare even with alien ressurection. The movie was just a bunch of kids spend a night in a haunted house and they all die. The way some of them were acting I was expecting Jason to come out and kill them. The script and the dialog were terrible, lots of questions with no answers and no incentive to finding the answers. The engineers wanted to kill humanity some time ago, who cares? How did they all die? Again who cares?
Connection with the alien series: People wanted it to be connected and I even saw an article suggesting the details that should be changed for it to be really connected. I do not see the point, I don´t even understand why they simply did no say it was connected from the beginning instead of saying it wasn´t and then going through all the trouble to put hints and details that connect the movies.
It is a different world, however the atmosphere looked the same, the ship crashed similarly to the one in Alien, there was a chestburster even if the Engineer was not in the control chair.
In conclusion, this movie is a mess and Riddley Scott should be ashamed. They say it will be a trilogy, a part of me hopes that they get better, but another part of me remembers that after Prometheus I saw Alien again and found it to be a vastly superior movie. So how could they get better?
