There should only be one spoiler below and it was a big complaint of mine, so I can’t write this without it.

I’m a big fan of Ridley Scott. I was only six when the original Alien came out and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it until I was ten or better. And though I didn’t know it at the time, I was seeing a movie that was a genre unto itself. I’ve loved the entire franchise, the books, and even the tie-ins with the Predator universe. If I could just get Bruce Campbell playing Ash in Ash vs Aliens, my life would be complete.

I’m not sure Prometheus fits into that for me.

Like a lot of fans of the franchise, I’ve been looking forward to the movie since I first heard about it. A prequel to the Alien movie… hells yes. A movie delving into not just the Alien’s origin, but human kinds? Hell yes squared. A hard scifi movie in the Twilight age? You know I’m in.

But instead of a hard science fiction movie that carefully explored those issues, we get a sledgehammer of a flick that beats us over the head with it. There isn’t anything subtle in the movie, no carefully crafted clues leading to a big conclusion. There really isn’t a conclusion to the movie. The same questions it asks in the beginning are left at the end, as if Scott is purposely hoping to get another movie out of the deal. I’ll tell you in the next one… really, I promise.

It just wasn’t a good movie, to me. It wasn’t visually stunning and the characters were mostly boring. Charlene Thereon, who I dig much, blew chunks. Michael Fassbender was the one saving grace as the bad, bad robot, David. My son and I actually set next to each other saying just that the entire movie. Bad Robot! He was very entertaining and his storyline is at least interesting I wish had Scott used him more to explore the creator/child relationship. There were heavy handed hints at it, but it fell flat.

And then there was a zombie..

The one specific spoiler… A zombie? Why in the hell did they need a zombie? Where they sitting around, during a focus group or some such, and discussing how zombies are all the rage these days? Hello! You’re freaking Alien is still one of the scariest, most nasty creatures in the history of movies! You didn’t need a zombie!

I really dislike movies that the really, seriously die hard fans have to defend with “you just didn’t get it”. No, I didn’t get it and I’m not a dumb guy. It was two and a half hours of wasted time that sort of meandered around a good story and then just blew crap up with a zombie.

I had to watch the original when I got home just to clear my mind of the damage. You and me, Ripley. You and me.