I saw “Prometheus” the other night and I thought it was mostly terrible. What exactly was supposed to be the theme or the moral of the movie? That aliens created us and then, for some inexplicable reason, they later wanted to destroy us with biological weapons, but for some reason they don’t know how to drive a spaceship or use proper containment for their biological weapons?
The theme couldn’t even be about the evils of technology or human fallibility -which is a common sci-fi theme- since human beings didn’t create Frankenstein’s monster. We were Frankenstein’s monster. It looked like someone wanted to tie it in to the search for meaning and purpose in life via religion, but that mostly just seemed like a fig leaf for the fact that the movie really didn’t have a point.
Leaving aside the fact that there seemed to be no philosophic or moral point to the movie, the plot was terrible. Characters would simply come into a scene and “declare” some conclusion that they had drawn. But, the movie never showed the evidence from which they had drawn this conclusion in sufficient detail to make it realistic, nor did the characters explain how they could have possibly reached that conclusion. For instance, at one point, the ship’s captain comes in and just announces to the main female character that the planet is a biological weapon’s depot. How did he draw that conclusion? From the fact that there were some cylinders with black ooze that seemed to turn into various strange creatures? It’s like he said: “All men are mortal…..Therefore Socrates is mortal” (Where the hell is the middle term connecting the major premise to the conclusion?)
People’s purpose’s seemed totally cryptic and were never explained. Why did the android infect the female lead’s love interest with a bio-weapon? In the original “Aliens” movie, the “evil corporate guy” wanted to infect Ripley with the Alien as an easy way to take it back to Earth and study it. But here, the old dude controlling the android wasn’t out for profit. He just wanted to find the aliens that created us to ask why they created us. So why infect anybody? Just to be evil? Seems rather melodramatic to me. The only good thing about “Prometheus” was the special effects. But, frankly, I would take a movie with bad special effects over one that was so devoid of a good plot, theme, or characters with believable motivations.