Watched Prometheus - Not sure about it

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I finally saw this film on DVD. Cant say it was a bad film but I can't say it was good either.

I think on the whole it didn't make sense. As an explanation of the space jockey and the alien ship from Alien it was poor. As a film explaining the origins of humanity it was not clear what it was saying.

The robot, who everyone seemed to think was the best character, I disliked him. Especially seeing as he started the problems by giving one of the crew some infected drink.

I am glad I saw it but I don't think it will be as enduring as Alien. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years the whole film looks ridiculous.

I kind of like the notion that if people ever met superior alien life they would be way out of their league and confused more then finding answers. The absence of a solid revelation of what the Engineers were really about didn't bother me.

Also, I"m a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and thought there was some of his influence here. The explorers in the story At The Mountains of Madness only got glimpses of old civilizations and ancient evil but no concrete explanations of anything.


There are other parts of the movie I would nitpick on though. I though the guy essentially becoming a Space Zombie was weak. I also thought Vicker's character was kind of wasted.

Why someone with a 'trillion dollars' would want to launch this bunch of idiots in space I really don't know. If Jonesy the cat had been in this film (even though he wouldn't have been born yet, according to the film's timeline) he would have been the smartest character on the ship, for this lot were completely clueless. Using an older actor (such as Anthony Hopkins) for Weyland would have been so much better than Guy Peace in make-up, which was about as convincing as the plot itself.

I watched it again just to see if it made any better sense but sadly it annoyed me. The two characters who get lost in the cave were the most pointless characters seen in a movie. I think the scriptwriters and the editors didn't do it justice because I watched the deleted scenes and think they should have put them in the film.

It would have been much better if the film focused on the engineers only, and not bothered with the silly little creatures that didn't add any suspense for me. The makers of the film mixed too many things together and ended up with a meaningless pile of scenes that I don't think the editors knew what to do with.

But yes, the visuals were great. But Hollywood need to realize that something that looks good is not enough for a lot of viewers, if any. Avatar looked good, it had a story that one could follow (albeit predictable), but it was hard to follow Prometheus.

I also thought a lot of the characters did inconsitent things. Like the scientists taking off their helmets in the cave and acting like children on a days outing. The blonde woman in charge suddenly decides to burn the sick man after she had allowed the head of the alien to brought on board. They all went into the cave and started touching things, but kept telling the android not to touch anything! The android would have been the best character to touch anything because he couldn't have got infected!

I did not like the Noomi Rapace scene where she has an abortion. It reminded me too much of the girl in V who got pregnant to a visitor and had a little green monster baby.

Many characteristics of Prometheus aren't that different from ALIEN. I suppose one wants to hold scientists to a higher standard then space miners, but still the scientists worse traits come from blind ambition.

Also, people similar to Weyland did just as much damage in ALIEN, only they were not physically present. They put the crew in danger and also had Ash planted on board with the crew.

As for the old man makeup, I think that looked weird partly thanks to modern HD filming. That is the blessing and curse of HD cameras. They can reveal any flaws in makeup or artificial materials used for props. I'm not sure why Scott didn't just use an older actor.