Roger Ebert has lost it long ago. My favorite movie of all time is Aliens and I want to say that I saw it at a midnight showing with a great crowd that was very quiet (You go Alamo Drafthouse!). Yes, this movie is very pretty with outstanding cinematography. But it's all about story and this one is just terrible. The story is disjointed, leaves too many unanswered questions in an attempt to be cerebral, and finally, is just downright boring. The atmosphere was not tense at all, their were no frights just unbelievable scenes. I don't want to give away any spoilers but just think about this review when you see Noomi's need for medical attention. It's one of the worst scenes I can think of in my last 20 years of watching movies.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Prometheus has a good premise, good ideas, good intentions, but it executes all of them wrong. In fact there are so many inconsistencies you could write an entire review just listing them, don't believe me? Well there you go:
-the scientists go from paintings on walls to "it's an invitation from our makers to go meet them on a remote planet", just like that, HUGE stretch there don't you think huh
-the old man that organized the whole expedition pretends to be dead, for no reason, only to show up at the end with no one giving a crap that he's actually alive; what was the point of pretending to be dead to begin with then???
-they hire completely incompetent and crazy people to conduct an expedition that cost billions and billions; those guys lost themselves in a cave when they have a 3D MAPS OF THE ENTIRE CAVE with gps, good god
-the android poisons a crew member for no reason whatsoever, the main character even finds out about it and still doesn't give a crap when it was her fiance he poisoned
-when the main character is impregnated with an alien they tell her they have no other option but to put her in hibernation when they have the best surgical machine available, which she then uses herself to get the thing out with no problem at all
-talking about the surgical machine, why was it programmed for a "male patient" when it was owned by Charlize Theron, does that mean that her character was a actually a man?
-why was the bald dude in hibernation for god knows how long when it was clearly stated he wanted to destroy mankind, or something, why was he just sleeping there if he had such an important mission to accomplish?
-why did he just attack the characters like a rabid bull if he's supposed to be so smart and superior to us, couldn't he outsmart the crew and try to manipulate them instead of just going Rambo on them and failing miserably?
-why the hell did such a terrible script get approved?… Expand

you know in horror movies where some teens are out in the woods and they see a house with severed heads outside, and they say 'hey let's go in there and ask for help' and the whole audience groans and also rubs its hands and waits for the monster to come and chop the idiots to pieces? well sadly transfer that level of idiocy to space, and substitute scientists for teenagers, and you've got Prometheus. There are SO MANY holes and 'WTF???' moments. From people pointing at a totally vague cave painting and deciding it's an accurate star map and an invite from aliens zillions of miles away, to approaching an obviously mad space snake, and petting it, (guess what happens next)... to opening the spaceship door to totally bonkers monster men just for the hell of it... oh you get the idea. Enjoy it, but for lords sake, don't take it seriously.… Expand

Not good. A hotch-potch of ideas that seemed chucked together with no real story or theme. Heavy-handed direction, paper thin characters and fan fiction style dialogue. Visually ok, but again it seemed caught up in its own sense of self importance. If you like Alien, don't watch this because like all prequels it ruins the mystery and of the original.

I wanted to like this movie so much. I am a huge fan of the Alien films (the first 2 at least) but I tried not to let that influence my take on this movie. Visually, this movie is great. The CGI with the ship is amazing and the rest of the effects make you feel like you are really on an alien planet. I will say that I was not particularly impressed with the creatures though; Aliens felt more real than this. The most glaring problem with this movie is its lack of development of the characters; Charlize Theron's the most. There was a lot of potential to explore so many interesting facets of the characters but most of them are ignored. You get nibbles of some great side-stories to some of the characters, but then it is never mentioned again. A lot of the scenes seem rushed and many times you are asking yourself what the motivation for some of the character's actions are only to be met with the end of the movie and no answer. Michael Fassbender does play the android character perfectly. For me, it all starts with the story. If the story is flawed then no amount of effects, great acting or other frills is going to make the movie great. I feel bad for Ridley Scott, as he has obviously fell into the same "modern film" hole as many of the other great directors (George Lucas, Steven Spielberg). If you want a decent sci-fi film with good visuals, rent this movie on DVD. If you are looking for a masterpiece, look elsewhere.… Expand

There isn't a frame of Prometheus which is suspenseful, mysterious or fresh. The narrative and logic get jumbled unnecessarily after the first 20 minutes or so, and then everything gets clunky and uninspiring. Who is the protagonist? Who is carrying this picture(Fassbender, Rapace or even Theron)? The film does answer this question only in the final 10 minutes, with an almost laughable ending. The movie has a great sequence and detail in the beginning where a character watches and emulates TE Lawrence(Peter O'Toole) from Lawrence of Arabia...it's a very cool piece to see David Lean's epic in 3-D. The rest is TV Material at best.… Expand

I went to the midnite showing, expecting to finally see a good alien movie like the original Alien. I was so wrong. It will always be a mystery how we got here or who made this place we live on. We all have are beliefs. This movie is rated in my book as one of the worst movies I have ever seen. That's 10.00 I will never get back and feel like a fool for going to see it. Over acting, under acting, it was a mess. There was about 65 people in the theater and I did not hear a peep from any of them and when the movie was over, I heard nothing but negative comments of disappointment. I had no compassion for any of the actors. Please take my word for it, it is not worth the gas to go to the theater. The best part of the movie was it ended and I could go home. No horror in this movie, just si-fi done wrong, action was weak and limited at best. I'm so pi**ed off I want my money back and will call the theater tomorrow and ask if I can have it back or a free movie pass. I feel sorry for the people who are going to waste there money Friday nite to see this B rated movie. I dont understand how anyone could give this movie more then a 1 rating. at least my slushy and nachos were good. I could go on but I wasted more then enough time warning people not to waste there money. But go for it. You WILL be sorry and say I should have listened to that bigfoot guy. I am a movie freak, and this movie suc**d big time. Maybe it got some good reviews cause they took something that altered there minds and dont even remember the movie, just the buzz they had.… Expand

What a disappointment. This flick has a generic, nonsense and plot hole driven hollywood-esque script and some of the worst acting i've seen this year (even from fassbender, who does a laughable gaybot impression; not that he had much to work with, since the dialog is atrocious). there were some genuinely beautiful shots (the nature vistas spring to mind), but some really, really terrible ones as well. the alien design is cringeworthy, with avataresque, muscle bound and retarded looking space jockeys, penis shaped water snakes and octopi topping the cake. do yourself a favor and don't waste good money to see this flop.… Expand

A monumental disappointment. Up there with the Star Wars prequels, the X-Files movie and, of course, Lost. It's not a spoiler to say that none of the fundamental questions posed by the trailer or marketing materials for Prometheus are answered. Worse, as an insult to the viewers, these questions are re-asked at the end of the film to entice them to spend their money on the next installment of a potential franchise. In the way that Lost became merely a commercial for itself (all tease, all promise, no pay-off), Prometheus shows reveals Lindelof's involvement by simply being a 2-hour commercial for a sequel. Lindelof is fundamentally an advertising genius posing as a storyteller. But it's not the lack of answers that hurt most. Early reviews prepared me to leave without resolution. What really hurt was its tone-deaf script, logical incoherence, lack of suspense, and sluggish feel. I thought, at the very least, I could get off on this movie aesthetically but it breaks no new ground there and feels oddly devoid of passion visually. There are a million choices that go into a movie to make it feel real, which will then make it interesting. But nothing that happens in Prometheus feels real (even by sci-fi standards). There aren't any real people in this film. The characters never come to life. The action barely arrives. Everything feels television-thin. There's no depth to soak in. Just hack work and expensive-looking cinematography.

There's something dangerous about artists who once had a traumatic experience in the industry in their earlier, art-film periods and lived to fight another day. George Lucas and both Scott brothers seem to almost resent their fans and the early, experimental years of their own legacies. All three now make bloodless work on a grand scale that seems to have forgotten the cadences of good, human storytelling.

And I wish Lindeloff would stop hurting my feelings.

In the end, Prometheus is a metaphor for itself. My friend and I who went both wished we had never gone and felt an urgent need to warn others not to make the same mistake. Rapace says it best: "WE WERE SO WRONG!"… Collapse

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I have a few questions to add to the list that everyone here seems to have covered already...why did the pasty giant alien guy drink oily ooze in the beginning anyway? What was the motivation there? Why did the captain leave the bridge with guys trapped ina storm on the planet to have sex with Charlize Theron? Why was she even in this movie?!?!? All she did was bark out husky commands that belied everything that was happening. Why did people who were infected with alien embryos turn into raging zombie creatures? Why did Charlize and the other chick keep running forward when the ship was rolling at them instead of to the side where they easily could have avoided it? Why does the big pasty guy "birth" the alien in the escape pod. According to the first Alien movie, he's in the pilot chair on his ship where it crashed. Nice job everybody. And my biggest question of all: where can I have surgery that opens up my entire abdomen, removes a substantial lifeform, staple me back up and then I can run, jump, hang from cliffs, barrel roll and only have to stop once in a while for a quick stabbing pain that seems more like explosive diarrhea than major surgery after effects. Wow. This movie sucked. Nice to see Ebert and company taking studio bribe money so they don't trash this pig **** of a film. They'd never recover the advertising loot if they did. Don't waste your time. Collapse… Expand

Though I dearly wanted to like Prometheus (I love Alien/Aliens, Blade Runner, and all the other classic scifis), I thought the film was just awful, driven by an absolutely terrible script. It's as though it's written by twelve-year olds for seven-year olds - full to bursting with cringeworthy dialogue, unresolved plot strands, and laughably bad characters. That this film was even allowed to be released in this form is a testament to so many of the things wrong with Hollywood today.

On the plus side, it's visually gorgeous - but that just ain't good enough.… Expand

This movie is so incredibly atrocious that it's hard to put into words just how bad it is!

The story is laughable, the character development is non-existent, the pseudo-science claptrap is intolerable. It is a hateful pastiche of the Alien films with other elements stolen from any recent sci fi you can think of. The dialogue is cringe-worthy in the extreme - just embarrassing. There is exposition delivered at every possible opportunity.

Going against evolution and having humans made by a creator means you're starting with by wiping out our knowledge of science, which strangely won't appeal to many sci-fi fans! Yet if you're going down this route, don't use DNA matching with the engineers as evidence, as it quickly begs the question, what about the DNA similarities with our evolutionary cousins? The man who wrote this tosh is clearly an ignoramus - best start with a basic understanding of science if you plan to write sci-fi!

I left the cinema feeling extremely disappointed and just plain angry that I wasted hours of my life watching such drivel. It makes me sick to see the great talents of the visual effects artists wasted - not to mention the gargantuan sums of money that it must have cost. I have lost all respect for Ridley Scott, and I hope this pile of offal fades quickly into the obscurity of failure and doesn't besmirch the incredible legacy of Alien and Aliens.

Read the Forbes review for a pretty spot-on summary of its failings:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/06/11/review-prometheus-is-a-visually-stunning-epic-failure/… Expand

This movie had such great potential, good actors, good special effects and cinematography and plenty of budget to work with. However the script let it down miserably, with a horrible predictable and unengaging story. From a sci fi fan perspective it was dull but with great cinematography and from a horror fan point of view the predictability combined with lack of suspense or anything at all to get you on the edge of your seat just made the whole thing fall flat. without a doubt the most disappointing movie of the year.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Who wrote this dribble?Scientists who remove their helmets on an alien world because the air seems fine.Scientists who try to take shelter from a storm by leaving cover to race it... to different cover.Scientists who refuse to investigate life signs,then attempt to pet the alien worm cobra emerging from the black ooze a few minutes later.The sissybot who,for no discernible reason,poisons a crew member,who then has sex,immediately impregnating his girl,to which she then performs her own abortion with the only side effects being some pain while running.Scientists who transport an alien head in a sandwich bag,only to destroy the head in the most unscientific way possible,lessmorelessmore Boom!.Let's include a razorhail storm that inflicts zero damage,the odd mutated human attacking humans for some reason(Braaaaains maybe?),waking a giant alien,who then proceeds to kill all humans(I call him Bender),some tentacles,a sissybot head that can fly an alien ship,some running and avoiding an alien ship crashing by rolling 3 feet to the right,more tentacles,a glimpse of a true ALIEN,and then finally the credits.It also had Biff from Back to the Future in it trying to find the secret of eternal life,but he is killed in 5 min flat so who cares.I'd talk about the story but The Cat in the Hat is far more coherent and entertaining.30 odd years waiting for this S..T!… Expand

Dreadful. Ridley Scott has harvested all the best bits from the previous Alien films and jumbled them all up together to make a clumsy hotchpotch of a film that tarnishes his record. Some of the dialogue is embarrassing. The action is tedious, I was bored after about 30 minutes. The story is infact quite dull. Wait til it's on TV one Christmas, see something else unless you enjoy disappointment.… Expand

There are so many plot holes in this film it's ridiculous. I have no problem with the mysterious relationship between aliens and humans, but it is littered with leaps in story that defy logical progression. Characters disappear and reappear whenever it is convenient for the writers. And for a seminal moment in the history of humanity, the voyageurs treat the trip with the nonchalance of a visit to the Grand Canyon. Please Mr. Scott, stay away from Blade Runner before you tarnish that film also.… Expand

It looks great, but it's a typical noisy 2012 filmunderneath that. The characters, script and plot are poorly set out. There is little tension, partly because the characters are continually stupid and unlikeable, and partly because the inappropriate soundtrack never shuts up. It needs more room to breathe, more silence, and some honest examination next time. And fire the writers, please.

Firstly, this review contains spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, not only are you lucky but also you probably don't want to read on. So here we go. First off how the hell does this film get even remotely positive reviews when it's so goddamn awful? Yes the special effects are great and Michael Fassbender is good but everything else about this film was quite frankly horrific. Such as:

The fact the â… Expand

Prometheus should be renamed to Prometheus a ship full of idiots. The simple truth about this movie is that the characters make incredibly idiotic decisions that lead directly to there death. Many scenes were like looking down the barrel of a gun then pulling the trigger to see if it's loaded, as if that's the way you do it. The choices that the characters made ranged from slightly odd to WTF did they do that for? This was more then a bad movie it was almost like no one read the entire script all the way through. I truly believe that someone like me.. Someone who has never made a movie, someone who doesn't know the intricacies of movie making would have said at some point during the making of the movie, " Hey man.. that doesn't make any sense and only an idiot with a death wish would do that"… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Warning, this is all spoilers

Wow, I was excited about Prometheus the moment I saw the first trailer. Aliens is arguably one of the best movies of all time IMO and Ridley Scott has made a bunch of really amazing movies. Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator wasnâ… Expand

I am a fan of the Alien films, but this movie is based on the old plot that gives sci-fi movies a bad name: Take a group of insane misaligned people, that no intelligent being would choose to go far away on a possibly dangerous mission, and watch them react their own misery against each other - they will break apart even without any alien help!
And while the good old aliens was understandable as a natural predator that simply does what a predator does, there is no understanding given to something that should be an intelligent species, but reacts like just another wounded animal.
In short: It is all very beautifully made, and has a new cool female lead role, but the story has been told too many times before without giving any new twists. But as a fan of Alien, you of course still need to see it, just to see the old spacecraft again :-)… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. What a spectacular disappointment. The pictures are pretty, but that's it. The characters are paper thin. Their motivations are never explored. Everyone does really stupid counter-intuitive things that leave the audience groaning in disbelief. It assaults any sense of disbelief by continually ejecting you from the movie with an incongruous plot device. Science fiction should be smart about science, there should be internal logic. This movie isn't scientifically fact checked at all (the half a billion miles from earth that Theron says they have travelled, puts them near Jupiter, not another solar system - which would have been an incredibly easy thing to check... but it isn't). And that's just the beginning of the disgrace (flamethrowers work without oxygen, a woman runs around after having her stomach muscles cut, medical machinery is gender specific, video camera's cannot record, there is no gps to find missing team members although they are wonderfully display in HD mapped holograms... and on and on... it seems to go out of its way to be stupid). Science is treated as magic and smart scientists as people with "faith - not facts" in science with wonderful responses like "I choose to believe" when asked for scientific evidence that begins a journey costing a trillion dollars. These are scientists... you know people who spend their whole life looking for facts. But in our story, the main scientist doesn't present facts, we the audience (and the Peter Weyland the financier) must just accept her word that she might be right because she has faith. Peter Weyland pays for everything, secretly wakes up on the ship, goes to meet his maker and is summarily killed. Wow... Guy Pearce has about as much screen time as the aliens do. Groan.The musical score is turgid, just doesn't fit and repeats far too often. All in all, it's the worst Scott movie I have seen by far and is most certainly the most expensive flop I've ever seen. Stick to the viral movies on youtube... they are far more interesting.… Expand

We have a contender for worst film of the year and its called Prometheus. I felt the movie struggled to identify itself. Is it a science fiction film? Horror? Adventure? A religious purgatory of some kind?? Who knows...who cares actually. I think the main focus of the film was to try and impress you with its special effects and sound and neglect the story completely. I was very angry and disappointed at the end of the film and felt like I should go to management and ask them for my money back. I feel this film is the equal to Star Wars the Phantom Menace minus the super annoying Jar Jar Binks. Just like Star Wars, there are moments in this film that I call WTF moments where you feel like throwing up your hands in the air and saying "ARE YOU KIDDING ME??" I HIGHLY recommending this film as a rental and don't see it in the theatre.
Again, all this film is, is bells and whistles and if you dive into the actual story and character development while watching this film, you'll realize how poor of a film it is and you'll leave the theatre angry and confused. I'm still shocked and sad this film is as bad as it is.… Expand

Ridley Scott essentially remade "Alien," this time without the suspense or intelligence. I could list off the top of my head 10 unnecessary plot elements, most of which are rendered poorly. While the visuals are, at times, striking, the movie was, overall, a crushing disappointment.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The dumbing down of science fiction films is prevalent throughout the entire genre. With Prometheus I was hoping to find salvation. What I did find however was shockingly poor.

A character list that I couldn't care less about launch themselves headfirst into a half baked search for the creators of humanity. Supposedly intelligent crew members of the Prometheus take every opportunity to stick fingers in alien goop and open doors to suspected infected shipmates without a second thought.

Questions that I am not really sure I had are now bugging me as the film does more to promote itself a sequel than pay dues to the Alien franchise that it basis itself on.

Praise is due for the geek squad who, like the 'photos of the fairies' believers at the turn of the century, go to great lengths to cover the tracks of Mr Scott and attempt to second guess the conveluted script and explain away some of the more gaping holes.

The only saving grace I can think of may well lie with the obvious sequel. If this second film delivers something truly original and sews together the Prometheus/Alien/Space Jockey stories so incredibly well as to produce something of an epiphany, then, and only then will these words be eaten. I think that I may well go hungry.… Expand

Some nice visuals and lots of symbolism, but the basic delivery of the plot is terrible. Characters act like complete idiots without any regard for even the most basic safety procedures (or even concepts) and the plot is driven more by their idiocy than anything else. Fails to even address the concept of the movie or the questions raised by that concept, instead opting to focus on a bunch of stupid people doing stupid things. Honestly at times it feels like a grindhouse slasher flick. Unrewarding, unentertaining and intellectually shallow. You can derive some enjoyment from the interpretation of symbolism and the stunning visuals, but this does little to make up for the very poor delivery of the narrative.… Expand

In an effort to prove that George Lucas isn't the only director who can ruin an iconic cultural force from the 70s and 80s, Ridley Scott has provided a series of moronic answers to all the questions you never asked about Alien.

This steaming pile manages to be filled alternately with both an offensive lack of nuance and subtlety and also such glaring plot holes that it makes me wonder which the writers hold in more contempt: The Alien franchise, or its fans?

Once you get past the cheesy opening scene, the film actually starts off fairly well, building a strong sense of growing terror on a foundation of naive hopefulness, but descends into a pointless mess in the third act. In those rare moments where it manages to be unpredictable, it is idiotic and nonsensical. Where the original Alien was a delicate tool which built a sense of dread by subtle implication and rare, quick glimpses of the creature, Prometheus is a club, smashing you in the head with overt and cartoonish monstrosities meant to appeal only to the dumbest humanity has to offer.

I will give it a couple of points for some beautiful cinematography and the compellingly creepy performance of Michael Fassbender, but those qualities aren't enough to outweigh its obvious and innumerable flaws.… Expand

A small crew explorers deep space financed by a corporation that has secret ambitions. The crew lands on an uncharted planet, discovers an alien species that hatches from pods, and inhabits the bodies of it's hosts. Everyone is killed except a sole surviving woman. Also there is an android on board who is emotionless and secret conspires with the agenda of the corporation. Name that movie? Alien - yes that's right. We would have also accepted 'Prometheus'. Seriously. I kept thinking that something original had to happen, but alas Hollywood has played me for the fool yet again by selling a movie that I have seen before but with better special effects. Prometheus is Alien with really impressive special effects, and thinly veiled sub plot, which is actually nothing more than posing questions which are never answered. Ironically they played a preview for 'Total Recall' before this movie. Apparently every original thought has been exhausted by Hollywood.… Expand