Muddled, boring and lacking tension. (possible spoilers)
1/10
Author: kevinhayward from United Kingdom
1 June 2012

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I saw this at a midnight preview and I was really looking forward to it. I'm a big fan of Alien, but I was really disappointed; this is a bloated mess.

In Alien, the creature presented an abstract threat to earth but the plot centered on the immediate, physical threat to the crew. In Prometheus, the threat is purely abstract and while SOME bad stuff happens to the characters, they are all unsympathetic so it is difficult to care. Characters are established with simplistic dialog; this is the cool black guy, this is the incautious explorer, this is the obnoxious mercenary cyberpunk (who, for no reason, is also a scientist), this is the uptight corporate type.

The scientists don't behave like scientists, they don't talk like scientists. The nerdy biologist (who has to walk off to be monster fodder later), walks away from an alien corpse because it's not his field of interest. Huh? Archeologists suddenly turn into medical experts and people exploring an alien ecosystem for the first time remove helmets without regard for contamination of the environment or themselves. Often, the only justification for character actions seems to be to set up later plot points.

Alien worked because it focused on believable characters stuck in a terrible situation, without that believability the film would be greatly lessened. Prometheus, lacking that, is uninteresting. Prometheus puts me in mind of Avatar. The use of 3D is excellent and the art direction is amazing. However, as with Avatar, technical excellence cannot make up for a terrible plot, sub-standard characterisation and meaningless dialogue.