Prometheus: Critic Reviews

Prometheus elicits Alien memories for viewers who have them, but works on its own, too, as a model of a contemporary (and, as is the contempo mode, long-winded) sci-fi horror pic.

Mr. Scott's sense of visual scale, which has often produced hectic, hectoring grandiosity (are you not entertained?), achieves, especially in the first hour, something like genuine grandeur.

Ridley Scott has counter-evolved his 1979 classic Alien into something more grandiose, more elaborate - but less interesting.

When it comes to technical wizardry and sheer visual spectacle, Prometheus unequivocally delivers.

Visually impressive and featuring one or two breakout performances, this anticlimactic exercise too often plays as though it has been cobbled together from archetypes, imagery and tropes from countless other movies.

Watching "Prometheus" is like opening a deluxe gift box from Tiffany's to find a mug from the dollar store.

With this overreaching Prometheus, Scott seems a bit like David carefully arranging his hair in imitation of O'Toole's Lawrence. He can still mimic the appearance of an epic, noble, important movie -- but the appearance is all.

What resonates in Scott's graceful, grownup, pristine film is its majestic mind.

This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder.

If you have fond, 33-year-old memories of averting your young eyes from a propulsive parasite critter, Prometheus might just be your kind of return trip.

Much like Rutger Hauer's turn as a replicant in Scott's Blade Runner, Fassbender's performance may launch Prometheus into the cult stratosphere.

This is a remarkably scary and eye-popping headrush of a movie, an experience that offers a maximum adrenaline boost at the same time as it engages your intelligence. Don't miss it.

Prometheus tells a much bigger story and does it well, but it's missing what matters most. It's inorganic.

The movie may be a scare show that leaves many questions unanswered, but Scott's craft earns an exhausted kind of respect.

Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers.

God (or Alien) knows this movie is derivative. But as someone else once said, originality isn't everything.

The plot of this Alien prequel was a carefully guarded secret -- so carefully guarded, in fact, that not even the movie reveals it.

Narratively, it's a mess. There's a through-line Darwinism vs. creationism thing going on that ping-pongs big religious and philosophical ideas, but whiffs the return.

Scott delivers a visually exquisite, unmissable film that demands and deserves to be seen on the biggest screen available. It is also unforgivably stupid.

"Prometheus" is genuinely epic.

You're more likely to enjoy the film if you go in thinking less about "Alien" and more about Scott, with his emphasis on images, tone and atmosphere over -- sometimes at the expense of -- plot and story.

Remains earthbound in narrative terms, forever hinting at the existence of a higher intelligence without evincing much of its own.

With its creepy caves and yawning space, "Prometheus" is on one level a somber dialogue between man the aspirant and man the mortal.

Stripped to its visceral essentials, the franchise is meant to frighten us and gross us out, and Prometheus rises to that modest challenge.

Ridley Scott means to bring wonder and horror back to summertime spectacle, and Prometheus mostly succeeds in that regard. (Mostly.)