Prometheus

Gets a meh.

It was watchable, and I enjoyed the android and his Lawrence of Arabia fetish. It was however far more predictable and illogical than Alien/s, where many actions are logical and still work out with horrifying consequence. Here actions are without logic and unsurprisingly work out rather badly. Which is the standard horror film plot for the last 50-60 years (and one of the reasons the Aliens franchise started out so well).

It was not, strictly speaking, very good at aligning itself with the Aliens lineage that it purported to relate to. Other than some plot points that are rather sloppily executed within the confines of the movie itself or dropped in as asides for those who are more than vaguely familiar with Alien/s movies. As spoilers, the Aliens themselves were apparently created as a weapon of mass destruction by the same aliens that apparently made us (and promptly were dangerous to them as well). And we can all go on with our lives with the accident wreckage safely behind us.

I did enjoy having Stringer Bell around on this little voyage. And I presume the moral of the story was either a) don't bring an idiot biologist along who will try to play with hideous snakes and immediately get killed or b) don't go on any expedition anywhere with rich people and their families, who will busy themselves trying to kill everyone for their sporting pleasures or c) don't go on any expedition about the supposed origins of mankind led by someone who "believes" it involves aliens but offers no proof of said hypothesis. I get a little tired of the repeated science fiction notions that somehow a bunch of upright apes couldn't have learned how to talk and farm and construct symbolic languages on their own in a nauseating way of replacing god as the simple but wrong answer to such questions.

But than Stringer and his musical tastes, I would not advise people to go see it out of some special loyalty to Ridley Scott and his vision. He's been on a down swing for a while now. American Gangster might be his only good-decent film since Black Hawk Down/Gladiator, both of which were over a decade ago. And then you're only looking at Blade Runner and Alien prior to that as resume feed, both classics I admit, but still.