Trailer
The problems start with the trailer. What do we know after seeing this?- Scientists go to find their creator, or ancient humans.
- They find a deserted temple of some kind.
- It turns out that it isn't deserted after all - it is Space Jockeys' base! Space Jockeys are human and they created us for some purpose!
- There are alien eggs (or something) around there.
- Chaos ensues and people (presumably) die one by one.
- Humans' spaceship is destroyed in a collision with some other object (presumably trapping humans on the planet that they found).
- A circular object drops from the sky or is otherwise falling on the ground.
Even before any trailers, the director gave hints that the events in this movie happen in the Alien universe before the time of the first Alien movie, but there are no Xenomorphs in this one. Instead, this movie shall in some way explore what the Space Jockeys are.
It would be disappointing if those observations from the trailer would appear correct, wouldn't it?
Movie
I think the movie was pretty enjoyable with some suspense, though no humor or horror elements. Special effects were relatively entertaining, but they were also quite generic CGI.
Spoiler: All of the above observations from the trailer ended up being totally correct.
I'll list my principal problems with the movie here.
- General lack of motivation or sense of purpose. Things happen but there is no real reason for them to be happening. What triggered them? Ghost in the machine or some real mechanism that is supposed to be contained in the scenario?
- Talk about the lack of aliens. Of course there are aliens here, it was revealed right in the trailer. Maybe there were not exactly the same type of adult Xenomorphs that we saw in the previous movies but aliens anyway.
- Where do the baby aliens get all the biomass? How can they grow to fill a room in a day without eating anything?
- Why do the scientists remove the helmets? It should be in the basic training of field work that you shall not contaminate the place. Also, if the alien planet has the same kind of atmosphere (including pressure) that Earth has, same kind of bacteria can also live there. Why did they not think about this? (Granted, Shaw is pretty cute.)
- Shaw & co. went pretty far before seriously suspecting that there was something sinister in the company's motives behind funding this trip.
- Even though the human entourage is full of scientists, there is no scientific discussion about what is happening. Things are just noted and accepted without questions.
- When the captain notices that the cave forms a circle, he immediately knows that it is a spaceship and announces it. Everyone believes him. Why? In the Alien universe, spaceships do not look like circles. There is no apparent propulsion, crew areas, antigravitation, fuel, sophisticated control surfaces or other mechanisms that a spaceship would probably have.
- Even when this spaceship started to levitate, it should not have been apparent that it was a spaceship. In the Alien universe, spaceships do not levitate - they have motors.
- When they arrive at this planet, why does the ship accelerate towards the planet? Shouldn't they be decelerating at that point?
- It is difficult to conceive why the crew of Prometheus were so happy to kill themselves.
- Why does David think that he could fly one of those ships? Are they made for children to fly?
- Umm, why was the old guy on the ship?
- Why was this movie released in 3D?!
That's it. A clever science fiction flick that plays with mystery, cool effects and aliens. Extremely predictable, especially after seeing the trailer. Why?
