Directed by Ridley Scott

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron

Grade: C-

Prometheus is an underwhelming, conventional, two hour sci-fi film that exists solely for a thirty second scene at the end to make fan boys say “Oh, so that’s where Alien comes from! Cool!” This of course speaks to the problem of any film franchise, and that is being overly self-referential. Remember how in the Star Wars prequels they couldn’t stop reminding you, as heavy handed as possible, about the old movies? Aside from the shitty story, hollow dialogue, empty characters, awful directing, and wooden acting, it was the single worst part of those films. I don’t go to see new Terminator movies because I hope Schwarzenegger will pop up and say “I’ll be back,” I go because I want to see robots killing people, and people blowing up robots. Likewise, I don’t care if Prometheus is a prequel to Alien or not, I just want it to be a good movie where people I’ve grown to care about in some capacity die in really horrible and interesting ways. Is that so much to ask?

The story is this: Some scientists find a bunch of cave paintings in various parts of the world that are all kind of the same. They seem to hint that there is this cluster of planets and there are beings there that probably created us. How the scientists determine this is not really explained. Also, this is in the future so they can travel there and check it out for themselves. The android David (Michael Fassbender) watches over the badly assembled team as they sleep over the course of a two year long flight. I say badly assembled because it doesn’t really make much sense to embark on a mission of this magnitude that takes this much knowledge and skill, and not make sure in advance that the people involved like each other and can work together. Anyway, they get there and the place is a tomb. It turns out the aliens were building some weapons of mass destruction (ooh, political!) and killed themselves. This team of scientists and geologists and a security guy that nobody listens to, don’t get along at all and make really poor choices that leads to many unnecessary deaths. The corporation that funded the trip is represented on the journey by Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), who’s a real bitch for some reason, and at one point has sex with the pilot just to prove that she’s not an android like David.

Bubbling beneath the surface, Prometheus seems to want to wrestle with large questions, as any good sci-fi story should, questions about the nature of humanity, our capacity for destruction and our equal capacity for love, and whether we’ve squandered this gift of life or are just beginning to harness it. But ultimately, none of those questions add up to anything. We just get a monster movie where the monster isn’t even cool. Then at the end there’s some big, body-builder alien that wants to kill everybody, and never explains why. This isn’t being awesomely deceptive and ambiguous, it’s just a copout.

Ridley Scott has made far more bad and mediocre movies than great ones at this point in his career and is quickly losing his status as a “must see” director. I’m not saying Prometheus had to be some jaw-dropping, shake my entire worldview kind of movie, but it could’ve at least been fun and entertaining and maybe even a little bit terrifying. The worst thing a movie like this can ever do is be boring. A great deal of the running time, I was just hoping somebody else would hurry up and die. That’s probably not a sign of a great movie.

Buy this movie!

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