"Prometheus" is a mesmerizing mix of fabulous special effects creating a fully-realized other world, outstanding acting by principals Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, and some intriguing ideas about human origins and our place in the universe. Rapace ("Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" original Swedish version) plays a tough, smart, tireless survivor in the mold of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in the original "Alien," of which this is a prequel. Fassbender plays a smart android, David, with his own secrets and motives, slowly revealed. His character and performance are a triumph."Prometheus" is unfortunately marred by the runny mess of those half-baked intriguing ideas, some of which directly contradict evolution and the fossil record on earth. Other gaps include an explanation for why clues on earth point to a distant planet in the anthropological record when that planet's contribution was long before. And finally, there is an unforgivable pointlessly shocking return from the grave that neither makes sense nor adds to the story. And how did we get to interstellar travel in suspended animation just 70 years from now?
Terrence Malick raised similar big questions in "Tree of Life," but was much more successful in keeping the questions serious, rather than at a comic book level. Ridley Scott here has given us a picture of a beautiful technological future and an alien tragedy, with some deflationary ideas about our origins. It's too bad it wasn't given more thought.
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