It's taken me much longer to write this than I intended (and even longer to post it), and part of this will be discussing why.
In all my time, I don't think I've ever seen a film polarize an audience the way Prometheus has. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground for this one. "Meh, it was okay..." just doesn't exist. There's the positives, the folks that me that really liked it, and then there's the negatives, the folks that flat-out hate it, that utterly despise it as one of the worst pieces of celluloid to come out of Hollywood in the last three decades. That sounds like overkill because it is, but those are the opinions I've seen.
From what I've seen, I think the Negative Nancys are actually the minority, although they pretend to be the majority. They're the most vocal, and the loudest by far, posting their opinions all over the internet, which gives them the appearance of being a much bigger presence than they really are. Those of us who like it tend to be quieter on the subject.
The overall problem, I believe, comes from the expectations that people had. They wanted another Alien, plain and simple. After all, it's the same sci-fi universe, an expansion of the same story, by the same director, even. It had to be the same, right? And it wasn't.. not even close. So they came out bawling about how horrible the film was. Despite the fact that the director, writers, cast, and crew had all been saying for years that it wasn't going to be the Alien film that people were expecting.
Now, let me say this before we get too much further: The film isn't perfect. In fact, if you read reviews and posts from the people that liked it, I'm pretty sure none of them are saying it's perfect, either. I'm not going to spend a lot of time "defending" the film, or trying to come up with explanations for the nitpicks that people didn't like about it. I acknowledge that the film has problems (what film doesn't?) but they don't impact my enjoyment of the film in any way, and that's the important part. Note that I'm not saying the problems don't exist.. I'm just ignoring them because frankly, I don't care.
The only point I'll make on that subject is in response to a post I read on a forum, where one of the Negative Nancys said something to the effect of "Since when has Hollywood had to resort to things like this?" They were referring specifically to the way the scientist characters behaved, doing "stupid things" for "no reason except to advance the plot".
My response was simple, straightforward, and accurate: "Since around 1910."
Seriously. Hollywood has always relied on characters' actions furthering the plot, whether they make sense or not. You could name practically any movie in existence, and I'll be able to find a part where a character does something silly, inane, or just plain stupid, that advances the plot in some way. And I can do that to movies that I (and others) consider great masterpieces and classics. The idea that somehow Prometheus did something that other movies don't is, itself, pretty stupid.
This is another example of the film being held to a different standard than other movies. While such "mistakes" can get by with other films, even other fantasy/sci-fi films, it's okay, but it's somehow a horrid blight on cinema when Prometheus does the same thing. Ridley Scott himself said "It's not a science class, it's a movie."
One part I find particularly amusing is how much of the blame is laid at the feet of Damon Lindelhof. I actually feel bad for the guy as to how much flak he's taking about this film. Aside from the fact that we don't actually know what was Lindelhof and what was John Spaihts (the original writer), the part I find funny is that people seem to think that Ridley Scott didn't notice all these "issues". That either Lindelhof was standing behind him with a gun to his head, forcing him to shoot the movie that he wrote, or that Ridley was too stupid to notice how "bad" the film was and simply shot what he was given. Neither of which could possibly be true. I know for a fact that the rolling-donut Juggernaut at the end of the film (if you've seen it, you know what I'm referring to) was Ridley's idea from the beginning, and even influenced the design of the ship itself to facilitate that scene (the original ship from Alien was not nearly as rounded, and would not have rolled half as well). The sad part of this is that Lindelhof is rumored to not be involved with the proposed sequel, and I wonder whether that decision is based solely on the public opinion that all of the flaws in Prometheus are "his fault", regardless of whether it's true.
People need to learn to have realistic expectations of films, and the ability accept a film for what it is instead of what we want it to be. I'll admit that Prometheus wasn't exactly the same as what I thought it would be, but it wasn't too far off, and it was overall just as good as I expected it to be.
Prometheus is not a perfect movie. If such a thing even exists, there are only a tiny handful of films that I would classify as such (I can only think of one offhand, with another as a close second). And none of them are directed by Ridley Scott.
