The last 45 minutes or so were excrutiatingly painful. I would have left in disgust when the Ripley-era Alien tore through the Engineer’s body, if it wasn’t the end of the movie anyway.

This movie was a train wreck. For all the reasons stated above, and some.

“I go kill lone wounded female!”

I know I am going to be accused of hating, but this movie was seriously broken in terms of script, plot, story and remote plausibility.

And it really had a lot of promise.

I was not a fan of the original alien flicks, but at least they were halfway decently written and had a plausible story.

This was a wreck of enforced Deux Ex Machina idiocy for the sake of cheap cinematic thrills.

That’s why I really hated it.

That’s it in a nutshell. Everyone who was a teen or a young adult who saw 1979 ‘Alien’ was BLOWN Away by a truly SERIOUS, DETAILED and WELL-SCRIPTED Sci-Fi flick.

Those of us in that set were poised and waiting for the first Serious Sci-Fi Event of the 21st century. Visuals AND Storyline. Ridley had to KNOW that there are countless online wiki’s detailing the Alien Universe alone– so that means– You Can’t ‘F’ it up.

But Instead– we saw:
Pop goes the Helmets! Oooh, Let’s bring the dead alien head back in a canvas sack. Umm, Cap– we’re watching a video of aliens running for their lives, and OH! BTW we found whole piles of their bodies…and the Captain doesn’t even think to say: “Seal ALL the Airlocks, NOW!”

I sat in my theatre seat and I couldn’t help but replay in my mind the tense and believable fear on the NOSTROMO when Ripley refused to open the airlock: “Bring him inside and we’ll all be contaminated..NO.” THAT was Sci-Fi Cinema!

To go from that dramatic, level-headed electrifying script in 1979 and in 2012 to devolve down to:

“Oooh, look at this cute snakey fella!”

And considering the Theatre absconded with $15 of my money, I was sadly disappointed. Ridley Scott is Dead to me.

MY greatest ‘This Script is Broken’ moment? When David called Dr Shaw to tell her the Engineer was coming after her…I was like WHY?
Especially when later we learn there are more spaceships. WHY would this supposedly hyper intelligent alien rampage after a lone human in her wreck of a PRIMITIVE spacecraft?

Then it hit me– Oh yes– The Hollywood Rulebook says: Alien Monsters must ALWAYS chase after lone female humans, losing all rationality in the process.

That said– I WILL get the DVD– the technical Visuals WERE amazing. Plus, Both the Rise AND Fall of something great should be memorialized.

1. The most recent “map” they found of the star system indicated by the giants in the drawings was carved into rock some 10,000 years before. That’s 8,000 years before the engineer’s “change of heart.” But the conclusion reached by the heroine and the captain, presumably accurate, is that the planet they eventually visited was chosen specifically to create their evil alien WMDs “as far away from their population centers as possible.” So, if they, 2,000 years ago, decided to build these alien WMDs, then why were they, 35,000 years ago pointing to a spot in the sky that must have been nothing but an empty planet at that time?

2. It is clear from the cave drawings that as late as 10,000 years ago the “engineers” were still interacting with humanity. For them to know that something had happened 2,000 years ago to cause their “change of heart” they must still have been monitoring the Earth. If they then decided to destroy the Earth humans, why would they set up some sort of military genocidal program 35 light years away? First of all, why not just nuke the planet right then and there?

3. This “change of heart” is so deeply and profoundly evil that the engineers don’t simply nuke the human race, they design and implement at great personal risk to themselves a race of parasitic aliens with a taste for human flesh, rear them on a planet 35 light years away, build an entire fleet of WMD delivery vehicles and then put at least some of themselves into hibernation for an indeterminate period of time. Why is their hatred so profound that they have to devise a means to individually torture and kill every individual human being in the most horrible, painful and degrading means possible?

I won’t even go into the question of why they would create these alien parasitic genocidal monsters without any means whatsoever of protecting themselves from them, and then leave the means of initiating the generation of millions of the monsters open to casual visitors who just happen to open a single door?

Sigh… when I say the movie beggars belief, I’m not kidding. There are layers upon layers of incompetence and stupidity in this movie. It’s like a tour de force of idiocy at every turn.

But yeah, the graphics were awesome.

I won’t even address the difficulties inherent in any time line when having to travel and communicate across 35 light years…

When a sci-fi movie presents itself as thoughtful, profound, and most of all, important, I will hammer on its horrible failings too.

I have much lower standards for movies that present themselves as cartoons or comic books. This movie presented itself as the intellectual and artistic heir of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I hold such aspirations to higher standards.

I’ve seen the movie and I actually agree it is not Ridley Scott’s best effort. I wouldn’t even call it a good effort, but I don’t detest it the way you do. It had some nice cinematic moments, but in the final analysis it was disappointing.

BTW, you’ve neglected a critical component of the plot in your analysis: the ‘Engineers’ apparently changed their mind about the human race and the heroine of the story was keen on understanding why. The Engineers’ assumed change of heart/mind is actually, as I see it, the fundamental plot device of the movie.

Also, I will expect to see a similar scientific analysis, e.g. flying their main ship into the atmosphere, etc., of all scifi films you see in the future. It seems you’ve been willing to suspend disbelief for other films in the past, but not for this one.

Anyway, like I said I was disappointed in ‘Prometheus’ for some of the reasons you cite, e.g. astronauts getting lost, lack of discipline on an important scientific expedition, etc. Ultimately, this film is a missed opportunity by a director who’s done great work in the past.