Prometheus

Prometheus is most of a good film.

Not "mostly a good film". There's an important difference.

All the staple ingredients of a good Alien film are there - a spaceship crew (not quite) alone in deep space; interesting, well-played characters; a creepy, seemingly-abandoned base; mysterious machinations by "the Company"; disturbing twists on human reproduction; a robot character with unclear motives; plenty of psychological horror and tension.

There's also enough twists on the familiar themes to keep it fresh and interesting. The difference is that this is a prequel, delving into the backstory of the race that built the crashed ship that the Nostromo crew found so many films ago - a race of which so far we had only seen one dead body. What's more, it turns out that this race has visited Earth, may have been instrumental in mankind's prehistory, and has more recently been developing biological weapons for reasons unknown.

So far, so promising. But there's something missing, and I think it's about a reel of the film.

The film builds up several mysteries - Why did this race visit us? What did they do? What have they been up to more recently and why? What is going on with the mysterious "infections" that plague some of the crew? What are the various crew members really up to? Where did the Aliens themselves come from? The plot seems to be leading to several big and exciting revelations. It seems to be building up to a good slice of traditional monster action. It seems to be dovetailing nicely into the first Alien film.

Then it does none of these things. It fails to answer any of the questions it raises. There's no Alien action to speak of. It introduces a lot of imagery from the first film, but doesn't make the narrative connections. It makes religious references and overtones but never says anything profound. Another separate niggle is that it also takes dramatic liberties too far. In an outer space monster movie I'm prepared to suspend disbelief a fair bit, but when the heroine carries out major abdominal surgery on herself and then immediately runs around corridors almost as if nothing had happened, then... no.

I had high hopes for Ridley Scott's return to the Alien universe, but ultimately this is just nonsensical and disappointing.