The movie's biggest problem is that one of the main protagonists is a (maybe) nihilistic robot who (maybe) has no emotions, (maybe) no ethics and (maybe) no motives. Lot of "maybes" in that last sentence? That's because the movie doesn't answer any of them. Everything in this movie is a big mystery, except it's not the fun kind of mystery you like to solve, it's the shitty kind where your girlfriend stops talking to you and she says "nothing" when you ask her what's wrong. It makes me so fucking mad I want to puncture my ball sack with a pen. And unlike real life, you can't just dump her and bang her hotter friend, because her friend is Madagascar 3: fat and ugly.

The problem with making David a protagonist is that he's utterly unrelatable. Even as an antagonist he's utterly unrelatable because we don't know what his motives are, or even if he has any. It's like trying to make a toaster your lead character in a movie. Is the toaster good? Is it bad? What are its motives? Nothing, because it's a fucking toaster. It has one job to do: make toast. David's character is slightly less compelling than a toaster because we don't even know what his purpose is. At least a toaster was created for a reason. David was created to frustrate people who wanted to see a good movie.

Welcome to Prometheus, where everything happens without a reason.

I wanted to like this movie so much, but for every bite of sausage they gave you, there was an even bigger bite of horse-shit you had to swallow. Take for example the part where Captain Janek, a relatively minor character in the movie until the third act, inexplicably drops this bomb during a 5-minute conversation:

That's one of the biggest plot points in the movie, casually mentioned by a minor character without any explanation given for why he believed that. There's no evidence, no reason, no causation, nothing. Just a one-sentence blurb that changes the entire movie. Despite the fact that Dr. Shaw is a world-renowned archaeologist and has presumably been exposed to some form of education, she simply accepts this theory as fact, and becomes hysterical near the end of the movie when David tries to communicate with the humanoid. Here are a few other glaring problems with this movie:



Scientists suddenly become brave: Then there's the scene where the geologist and biologist are lost, scared and bumbling through the cave when they come across a penis-monster. Suddenly, instead of being scared and cowardly, they have a bout of braveness and curiosity, and start performing involuntary fellatio on cave slugs. This sudden change of character isn't explained. Of course, these are the same guys who minutes earlier were notified of life being detected to the West of their location, and they suddenly get their bearings and know to head East even though they got so disoriented that they got lost and missed the entrance to begin with. Weak.

Vickers is an incorrigible bitch: Then there's the uber-blonde ship-bitch, who looks like the end result of a millennium-long Eugenics experiment. She has sand in her vagina right from the beginning and wants to turn the ship around as soon as they got there, for no reason. The greatest discovery in human history doesn't faze her, and neither does Captain Janek's dong. She's emotionally monotonic and barely more human than David. No explanation given, she's just horny for angst.

Captain Janek is persuaded to kill himself with platitudes: In a 5-minute scene in the movie, we learn that Janek, a heretofore minor character in the movie, doesn't care about anything outside of piloting a ship. Shaw presses him with one line of dialogue to the effect of, "well there has to be something you care about." That one line of dialogue persuades him to kill himself to save humanity.

Janek's ship-mates kill themselves because fuck if I know: Even if we're to believe Shaw's sentence of persuasion was powerful enough to convince Janek to sacrifice himelf, it still doesn't explain his ship-mates who inexplicably decide to join him, without so much as the benefit of the same pep talk. Everyone just mysteriously knows what's at stake and is ready to lay it all out on the line like blissful idiots.

Zombies: I'm so sick and tired of zombies in pop-culture. I can't wait for another 5-10 years until this stupid zombie craze dies down and we can watch movies and news again where they don't try to ram-rod zombies into the story every chance they get. Some of the infected crew come back to life and have super-human strength, which again, isn't explained, original, or interesting.

Scientists in the future are idiots: We're expected to believe that world-renowned archaeologists don't know the dangers of removing their oxygen helmets in an alien environment, because apparently this is an alternate universe where bacterial infection isn't a concern. "Hey guys, this dome we found on a deserted moon around a gas giant in a solar system millions of miles away from Earth has oxygen! Time to take off our helmets." Even if they weren't aware of the threat of microbial infection, even someone with a basic knowledge of science knows that you also risk contaminating the alien world with your own bacteria, potentially wreaking havoc on their native life.

Cryogenic technology exists: Weyland tries to reverse his aging by asking the aliens for answers, even though cryogenic technology has safely maintained him. And he kept his presence on the ship secret for yet another unknown reason. No aliens: This might be the biggest bait and switch of the century.

Instead of explaining anything or answering any of these questions, the movie tries to be all coy and clever by making us guess what the director & writers were thinking. I'm so tired of movies and TV shows using this device in lieu of good story-telling. There has been a trend of movies and TV shows having "non-endings" since the season finale of "The Sopranos" popularized it. Writers and directors do this because there's too much pressure to create an ending that people will like, so they decide to make no ending at all. It's lazy, cop-out bullshit. If I wanted to write my own ending, I'd stay at home and have a lesbian orgy on a trampoline. But why stop there? If I'm going to imagine the end, I might as well imagine the beginning and the middle and just save $12. All these unexplained questions reek of a sequel I'm not paying to see. Throw us a bone here, or fuck off with your expensive-ass, 3D movie.

*Note on spoilers:

if you're the type of moron who clicks on a movie review and expects a warning about spoilers, it's time for you to climb a bridge and reflect on life and the decisions you've made. There's no such thing as a good movie review that doesn't contain spoilers. Also, what does it even mean to have a movie "spoiled?" Someone gave away the ending? Boo hoo! You watch a movie for the experience and story telling, nobody cares about you having some personal revelation about the plot the first time you see the movie. Everyone knows how every superhero movie ends (here's a spoiler: the superhero always wins--), yet billions of people still watch them. If spoiling a movie mattered, then people wouldn't own movies they've seen before. I will never list "spoiler alert" to placate you dipshits, so spare me your tearful pleas.