Prometheus User Reviews

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Alien drinks liquid and dissolves himself for no reason.

Spaceship lands on a planet and finds an alien fortress.

Crew go into the fortress. They leave the fortress. Bad things happen.

Crew go into the fortress. They leave the fortress. Bad things happen.

Crew go into the fortress. Shaw leaves the fortress. Bad things happen.

Shaw flies away on an alien ship. The end.

The Prometheus crew is completely forgettable. You're just sitting there watching and waiting for them to get knocked off like red shirts, just like the silly crew in AvP. Good scifi movies make you care about the characters, but other then Shaw and Idris Elba, I couldn't have cared less. And then those two weren't great.

The opening exposition scene where they show murals from a dozen different civilizations all with the same design really reminded me of AvP's stupid exposition about Aztec, Cambodian, and Egyptian languages all combined into one on the temple. Anybody remember that? Yeah, it sure sounded dumb, didn't it?

Not to mention that there's no logical reason any of those civilizations would've gotten that mural. Where is the evidence that the Space Jockeys showed them this star cluster? The only thing we see is a Space Jockey drinking some liquid at the dawn of time, and dissolving away in an ocean, which presumably will lead to the beginning of human life. Then the Space Jockeys, having seeded Earth, leave in their spaceship. How the fuck does this lead to all those civilizations drawing murals of giants pointing to star clusters? Where did this shit come from? Something is missing to connect A to C, isn't it? I don't get it. Does anybody have an explanation for this? I'm fine with exposition at the beginning of the film to launch us off, but I'd like it if the exposition made sense.

Of course, it doesn't make any sense that the Alien DNA would match ours, since we don't look like 9 foot tall giants with bald heads. If it was an exact DNA match, then we'd be identical, right? If the glove does not fit, you must acquit.

Though the space jockeys in this movie didn't even resemble the space jockey in Alien. The one in Prometheus is about... 9 or 10 feet tall, I'd say? It looked big, but it still fit quite comfortably through the corridors of the lifeboat. The space jockey in the original Alien movie looked absolutely gigantic, like around 18-20 feet tall. 
 
Of course, we get the expected body horror scene with Shaw getting a caesarian section:
 
So she smacks two of the crew and they're completely incapacitated while she's running around the ship looking for the medical bay? Really? She's that strong?

Wouldn't you be completely disabled after going through such a traumatic experience? I know she kept jamming medical hypos into her leg, but come on!

And right after the whole procedure, everybody just seems to be cool. Nobody raises a fuss or anything. And of course, nobody goes into the medical bay to try and see what she just had pulled out of her? They don't care about the baby squid? It just gets to sit inside there until the very end of the movie? Really? They just take her word that it's been sterilized and everything's cool? Huh?

And of course, right afterwards... we get the conversation between her and Idris Elba where he suddenly out of nowhere declares that this is a WMD facility? Huh? It really felt like a scene in between was cut out. How did Elba come to this conclusion? He seems so gosh darn sure about it. 

Charlize Theron was totally wasted. You think there's something intriguing and secretive about this cold, heartless corporate executive woman, but then the end of the movie comes and... you find out nothing more about her. Well, except that Weyland's her father (either biologically or mechanically). Which just didn't do anything for me. I don't care. She ultimately just turns out to be this bitch. Where was the turn to her character? In Alien and Aliens, Ash and Burke had revelations about themselves. We found out that no, there's more here then meets the eye. Nothing with Vickers. Theron's given a nothing role.

Another problem I had was with the sacrifice by Idris Elba at the end. The whole thing just came off as sloppy and unemotional. Here are these guys deciding to commit suicide and crash into the alien spaceship to save Earth, but... I felt no real emotional weight. Plus, they were cracking jokes like "You're a shitty pilot, Capn" when they're about to die. Like, really? Would people giving their lives without any notice really behave like this? It felt shoddy and inconsequential and I just couldn't really buy it. Contrast this with the crew of the Icarus in Sunshine. There, you could feel the weight of sacrifice on them. They know they're going to die in order to save humanity, and you can feel the burden. Here, Idris Elba just decides in a split second after Shaw gives this hysterical plea... and they're off, and we get jokes. Is it really that easy to convince a Captain and his crew to commit suicide?