I'm sure that a ton of us have thought about the possibility of there being life beyond Earth.
Will we ever truly find out? None of us can say one way or another with one hundred percent certainty.
I'll tell you what, if they're out there and they're similar to the aliens in movies like Prometheus, we might be in trouble.
In this film, a group of explorers are hired to go through space to find out if there is life outside of Earth.
They're asked to perform this task in hopes of discovering the clues of mankind's creation.
When they land on a planet that they believe they might be able to make contact, they discover that they might not be alone.
If you go into Prometheus expecting some kind of sci-fi action flick, then you might be disappointed.
This is much closer to a movie based on drama than it is to action or anything else.
Now I'm not insinuating that it's all drama, I'm only pointing out that there isn't much action or anything to speak of.
As a matter of fact, the trailer might spoil a good portion of the action that you're going to get in the movie, because there's not much else.
I absolutely loved the trailers and based on those, I thought there would be at least the usual amount of action being delivered and that it would probably be at a frantic pace.
Did I think the action would be endless and all the way through? No.
That rarely happens in movies, so that certainly wasn't expected from my perspective.
I did however, think it would have much more than it actually did.
Instead of adding the thrills and action that they tease in the trailers, we get a flawed and fractured story in its place.
The screenwriters wanted to use the whole "meaning of life" angle as the backbone of the film, but they simply couldn't pull it off.
It's not handled very well at all and they left too many questions unanswered.
Some of the unanswered questions bothered me, because they're just pushed out there and are left dangling for the rest of the movie without even trying to develop some type of answer or resolution.
There's one instance of this that sticks out for me more than any other.
A certain character does something that might change mankind and they don't even give you any idea of why this person does it.
I understand the effect that it might have, but why did this person do it? There was literally no point for that particular person to even think about doing something like this.
I have to come to my own conclusion with this and if the reason for it is what I'm thinking, then that would make it even worse.
Some of what they did answer doesn't even make any sense and is almost as bad as whatever is left unresolved.
When it comes to things like how we as humans are created or figuring out if we're alone in the universe, I know that it would be impossible for them to give real answers to the questions they pose, but they could have gone out of their way to improve the fictionalized versions of the answers they attempted to dish out.
Their inability to add better quality to the script stands out because of this and it makes me believe that the writers might have been in over their heads with the ideas they are trying to use.
Because of the lack of action, we're forced to sit through this "big idea" stuff for long periods of time.
That hurts the movie even more, because they have to rely on the characters more than they should have.
I say this, because every single character is one-dimensional and there is never an attempt to have them branch out and develop into life-like human beings.
They're all just there and they do whatever it is that the limited script asks them to do.
It would have been nice to see them serve more of a purpose than that, since they are a crucial aspect of the movie.
Despite my overall negative view of this movie, I wouldn't be against a sequel to this prequel (Yes, it's a prequel).
If they include a smart script and throw in some action, I'd certainly be willing to give it another shot.
When analyzing Prometheus, I don't see a movie that's completely terrible.
I would describe this as being incomplete.
You have incomplete characters, an incomplete story and incomplete ideas that render some beautiful scenery and a good cast nearly useless.
It's a shame, because while watching it, I truly felt that it had some serious potential.
Like Idris Elba's character Janek says, "Prometheus has landed.
" Unfortunately, there wasn't a good script thrown on board before take off.
It's not as smart nor is it as deep as it wants to be and it never goes anywhere above average in any way.
It also failed to deliver on its most basic selling points, because there are no scares, no thrills and no moments of tension to speak of either.
Like its characters, Prometheus is shallow and serves no real purpose, even though it wanted to.
Score: 2/5 Rating: R Director: Ridley Scott Cast: Noomi Rapace Michael Fassbender Charlize Theron Idris Elba Guy Pearce Logan Marshall-Green Sean Harris Ben Foster Rafe Spall Film Length: 123 minutes Release Date: June 8, 2012 Distributor: 20th Century Fox