Prometheus was promoted as a non-prequel in the Alien universe. In a lot of ways I wish it was more like Alien. Ridley Scott followed more of a philosophical movie more than one with a believable story. Check that...better believable characters. This was the main problem I had with the movie.

(Warning - Spoilers Ahead) Weyland Industries just spent a trillion dollars to fund a trip to find our creators. After 2 years in cryo-sleep they arrive, but it's not quite the cradle of life they were looking for. Instead they find the leftovers of a dead race of aliens sitting on top of tons of biological type weapons. A couple of misplaced travelers make for alien fodder and the rest of the mission is about to be scrapped until they figure out the alien ship and it's deadly cargo is heading to earth.

The Good: Visually this movie is stunning. The spaceships and alien landscape was incredible. Michael Fassbender was awesome as the artificial person on board. Noomi Rapace was also very good as an actress. My favorite character was the captain played by Idris Elda. He was the most believable and honest person of the bunch.

The Bad: the reasons behind searching out the engineers were not very well thought out or conveyed onscreen. I suppose in the future people still think that meeting an alien is like meeting a god. Is there any chance that the alien you meet is just someone doing their job and not concerned with your "where do we come from" or "can you save me" questions? Either way, when a character is hurt or dies, we, the audience should feel something for them. We do not because we never get to know them and as soon as you might think you know them they do things out of character or die. When someone does die in some horrendous way, no one seems concerned or talk about it.

I had high hopes being a fan of the Alien series and was completely disappointed. Somewhere in this mess was a story we could have enjoyed but it was lost in the endless dialogue concerning faith, God and life after death that all seem to conflict. For those new to the Alien franchise might find the movie interesting. For those like me who had wondered for years who/what were the space jockey in Alien, this was not satisfying reveal.

As for the ending, again, I didn't really care that there might be a sequel. That is really bad for the movie goer and the studio. I'm starting to become cynical on prequel/sequels...dear Ridley Scott, maybe you should reconsider doing a Blade Runner sequel.

(My thoughts 5 years later - I think I could have plugged in 'Alien:Covenant' and basically recreate the review for this year's Alien movie failure. Now I can only hope that Ridley has not gone and and destroyed the Blade Runner world we are familiar with. Sorry to say, it may be time to take the keys away from Grandpa Scott and let some of the younger directors drive some of these films from now on.)