Expectations are hard to overcome. They can often ruin great experiences or allow us to find new experiences that we would have never thought about. If you go watch a little indie movie you’ve never heard of before on Netflix Instant you’re probably going to be more forgiving than if you were highly anticipating something and it didn’t deliver.

And that’s Prometheus in a nutshell. Before the film came out, writer Damon Lindelof and director Ridley Scott continually insisted that it wasn’t really a prequel to Alien. Why? Well, because it isn’t. And because they probably wanted to get your mind as far away from that as possible.

If you go into this movie expecting Alien or anything like Alien you will be sorely disappointed. If you go in just to watch a beautiful science fiction movie you’ll be in for a fun ride. Now, that isn’t saying that Scott’s return to science fiction is perfect. It’s far from it, but it’s damned entertaining.

A group of scientist head to a planet after finding what they think is an invitation to meet their makers. Obviously, things don’t go as they’re planned. The story is fairly good but there are some huge holes that aren’t answered. You’ll probably have more questions about this movie when you come out of than when you entered.

You have characters hating each other, double crossing, characters making up and more. Some if it doesn’t have a backstory but it all feels pretty real because the cast is generally great. Michael Fassbender’s android is perfect, Charlize Theron proves once again she’s awesome at being a bitch and Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green are great as optimistic scientists.

This is a movie that’ll make you want to get some coffee afterwards with your friends to sit down and discuss, and sometimes that’s a great thing. It’s nice to come out of a movie and want to take that world with you and have it roll around your mind for a while. Sure, you could chalk up the holes as lazy writing but I think in a movie like Prometheus it works because the movie works so well, even with a late-film reveal that’s kind of … flat and uneccesary. Oh, and the worst old-person make up I’ve seen in a while.

Scott’s direction is pretty superb. Once everything is set up and the action gets going it’s pretty non-stop and it’s amazingly engrossing. There are three scenes that came to mind that had me glued to the screen, mouth open. One especially. Oh, yeah – there’s a scene that’s incredibly … uhh, messed up.

Now we just have to wait for the inevitable sequel.

prometheus