What made the original Alien great and ground-breaking is that it was a horror film set in space. Instead of ghosts and haunted houses there were aliens and space ships. Alien was to Star Wars what the Rolling Stones were to the Beatles, an antidote of sorts to lightness and fluffiness (Star Wars even had teddy bears in it).
As a stand-alone sci-fi film inspired by Alien, Prometheus is pretty good. It lacks nearly all the darkness and tension of Alien but is still Alien-like (or perhaps Alien-lite). But despite Ridley Scott being quoted that the film should work stand-alone there are too many direct references to Alien, especially in regards to the reproductive habits of the aliens themselves. You can’t help but compare and contrast and draw the conclusion this is a genuine prequel and an attempt at answering some questions posed by the original.
At the very least, Prometheus is a prequel to itself, even Scott has admitted that he’s set up the sequel to the prequel in the very first scene (which begs the question why it didn’t come at the end of the film). So like any good sci-fi film it asks more questions than it answers. It certainly doesn’t answer the big question around which the film is based: Where did we come from?
For that we’ll have to wait for the prequel’s sequel. Or not.
Rating: Three and-a-half slimes
