So about those shortcomings . . .

Commenting specifically on Prometheus' character development is futile, because so much of the story makes no rational sense.  As others have noted, the film's two hours don't comprise a plot as much as a lurching progression of scenes, each predicated on the convenient stupidity of its characters, each bearing little rational relationship to what preceded it. So here are a few instances that littered this film that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere.

First, a very easy one

Let's say you're a cocksure scientist on an interplanetary expedition and your hubris overwhelmed any reasonable utilization of personal protective gear and—lo and behold—you find yourself infected with a space bug. (Yes, ironically, it's not your taking off your helmet that did you in but your willingness to drink booze that just had a dirty robot's finger in it. But you're too dumb to consider that anyway.) This infection is not just a sniffle or a cough. It's serious. You're going to die, and you've realized the sooner, the better.

If you are ready to die, what's your preferred mode? Roasting in a spacesuit until the flames finally reach and incinerate your flesh, or . . . anything else? Like, oh I don't know, asking the Captain to get one of those shotguns and put a round in the back of your head? And while you're at it, since you are doing this for the good of the crew, why don't you take that business off the deck of their ship? You've already made the round trip to the ruin; you can stumble away for another twenty feet or so.

In that scene, notice how Vickers perceived Holloway as a threat--”Stay back!”--despite the fact that Holloway is clearly surrendering himself to her. The glaring contrivance of her misperception is a manipulation, attempting to justify the brutality of what Vickers does to Holloway. Oh, the melodrama of it all.

What is Shaw upset about?

Prometheus' mission only happened because Shaw and Holloway convinced Weyland that LV-223 is the source of human life. Indeed, the audience saw the Engineer consume the black goo to contribute his DNA to Earth's ecosystem. And after their first trip to the ruin, Shaw confirms that the Engineer's DNA matches ours. It looks like Shaw's hypothesis has been confirmed. So why does Shaw conclude the Engineers are out to destroy the Earth? Because Captain Janek told her the place is a weapons factory? He's just a pilot; Shaw is the archaeological expert who's spent twice as long at the site. Is it because of the bad outcomes with Fifield, Holloway, and her first shot at motherhood? If one went into any hospital on this planet and handled its materials with the carelessness of Shaw's team, one could experience similarly deadly outcomes. That doesn't mean the hospital is a bio-weapons facility. Shaw is supposed to be a character of conviction, yet she's not even willing to use logic to examine her central conviction which is the whole purpose for the mission and, thus, the film.

Sure, David made the veiled threat, “Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.” But there's a problem with that, too. Let's assume that David is perfectly fluent in the Engineer's language. (Though based on the reception he got the first time he spoke to a native speaker, maybe he's not quite as fluent as he'd have them believe.) Let's even assume David knows that, prior to going to sleep, the Engineer's intention was to go to Earth and release the black goo to wipe out life as we know it. Even if that's true, there's still a problem. That's because those plans are two thousand years old. And sleeping away two millennia has a way of making you reevaluate. David and certainly Shaw have no way of knowing the Engineer's intentions upon waking up. And there's no reason to think those intentions are the same as they were two thousand years ago, even in the unlikely event that David perfectly understood those intentions.

(Also, why are those Engineers in sleep chambers anyway? Sleep chambers on spaceships are meant to preserve resources on extremely long flights. But this ship hadn't left the ground. Were they just that sleepy?)

For the characters on Prometheus, Shaw's evidence and logic should seem far too weak to warrant their suicides, especially when they could radio Earth which, presumably, could deploy a fleet of warships to intercept the Engineer. For the audience, it appears that the only writing that establishes the Engineer's threat is the tag line on the movie poster, “The search for our beginning could lead to our end,” because the clarity of that threat certainly isn't established within the story itself.

Back and to the left

Once the Engineer's ship does take off, it moves in one direction, say, north. Shaw and Vickers are moving in the opposite direction, south for our purposes. As the Engineer's ship continues flying to the north, it is rammed by the Prometheus (flown by those jolly, suicidal copilots), which is also moving to the north at an even higher speed. Yet once the collision occurs, the engineer's ship does not follow a northerly trajectory. Instead, in complete defiance of Newton's laws of motion, the ship falls backwards, to the south, over Shaw and Vickers. (If you've ever been in a car that was rear-ended, you know that your car lurched forward, not backwards.) In this “science fiction” movie, the science is getting checked at the door.

And while we're talking about defying physics, I invite you to get a disk-shaped object, say a coin or a washer, and toss it in a random manner and see how many times it lands, rolling on edge, like the engineer's ship did. The answer will be practically zero.

Crafting credible characters requires exposing them to limitations. The world in which they live must seem realistic. The character's behavior should be plausible. Extreme behavior is possible, but the writer must earn the credibility of such behavior. (See Pulp Fiction's “The Gold Watch” for an example of a writer earning extreme behavior from his character.) In all of these matters, Prometheus failed completely, and what results is a genuine insult to the audience's intelligence.

Prometheus & Contemporary Science Fiction

When Ridley Scott debuted Alien in 1979, he did so in the waning period of what is widely regarded as a golden age of Hollywood films. The 70's had produced films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Chinatown and Bang the Drum Slowly, films that, while financially successful, were ultimately valued for their rich characterization and thoughtful examination of the human condition. Alien, despite its setting light years from Earth, shared the best humanist qualities with its earthbound predecessors by portraying compelling characters struggling to survive in a capitalist society. The 70's also sowed the seeds of this period's demise with the release of a number of unprecedented blockbusters, most notably Star Wars. For studios, Lucas' film served as a proof-of-concept for a new business model in which studios replaced aesthetic concerns with the cynical calculations of commodification. This new business model launched the era of the blockbuster, a period that shows no sign of abating.

Unfortunately, Ridley Scott's return to the science-fiction genre with Prometheus has provided another example of blockbuster filmmaking. Despite my notorious association with the film, it gives me no joy to note the film's failings. Indeed, nothing would have made me happier than to have left the theater rapt in some new mystery, swept along by a moving story. However, Prometheus only offers spectacle instead of suspense, caricatures rather than characters, artifice instead of art. Many (especially John Vick) have cited Prometheus' shortcomings, and I may point out a few, too. For now, though, I'd like to focus on one aspect of Prometheus' problems that seems to be an ongoing and unfortunate trend in cinematic science fiction.

Many producers of cinematic science fiction seem to conflate a story's having elements of scientific significance with the story itself being compelling or dramatic. That seems to be Prometheus' narrative strategy, suddenly making the latest Alien film into a human-origins tale. There are many other examples: the finale of Star Trek: the Next Generation, Mission to Mars (which also featured a giant face carved into rock), and the finale of Battlestar Galactica which regrettably stumbled after four seasons of great writing. The strategy seems twofold—that the audience should care more because the subject of human evolution is directly, though distantly, tied to their own lives, and that invoking something scientifically significant lends an air of philosophical significance.

Of course, such a strategy abandons what is at the core of good narrative writing—creating characters that engage the audience as deeply as possible. Consider a few great moments in cinematic history. The fact that “rosebud” referred to Charles Foster Kane's boyhood sled does not reflect some axiom of philosophy. The line—Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.—doesn't illuminate humanity's biological evolution. And even Roy Batty's waxing on about c-beams glittering off the shoulder of Orion offers no imaginative insight into the science that describes our existence. What's significant and powerful about those scenes is that the audiences witnessed something significant and powerful to the characters, characters they're invested in.

In the science fiction genre, 2001: A Space Odyssey still casts a long, monolithic shadow, largely due to the confluence of forces that produced it. While its characters are well drawn and have their own arcs, 2001 is a film of ideas exploring past, present and future human evolution, and in emphasizing this exploration over its characters, 2001 is the exception that proves the rule on character-driven stories. This atypical treatment worked, though, solely because it was executed by Stanley Kubrick, unquestionably one of cinema's greatest (in my opinion, the greatest) auteurs. A product of high concept in a master's hands, 2001 debuted at a time when most science fiction films had merely been B movies with rubber costumes and bad special effects. The film is a singular work of art that arrived when the public (despite its initial shock) was primed to receive it.

As noted, many filmmakers have tried to invoke 2001's greatness by handling its subject of human evolution. But art is not subject matter; it is treatment. Modern cinematic history is strewn with wrecks of science-fiction films whose treatments were not equal to their pretenses. If a filmmaker feels they must tackle the subject of evolution, or some other ponderous science, they must approach the subject as if for first time. Repetition is the death of art. (See Adaptation for an example of approaching the subject of evolution as if for the first time.)

What's particularly disappointing about Prometheus is that no filmmaker had seemed more cognizant of those hazards than Ridley Scott. By avoiding them, he produced his own truly great science fiction films, worthy peers of 2001. But he did so by inverting Kubrick's strategy. Rather than taking a high concept, Scott produced with Alien “a B movie with an A movie treatment.” The same is true for Blade Runner which is a hardboiled detective story. What is at the core of this A-movie treatment? Plausible, genuine characters who brought audiences into the drama Scott directed.

When credibly rendered, science fiction films portray characters' confronting the realities of new science and technology. Today, technology has driven us to the cusp of major evolutionary changes to our natural environment, societies and consciousness. For that reason, the relevance of science fiction has never been greater, and that will only increase. Like the ancient myths that preceded it, cinema at its best provides society a way to make sense of its world. But if future science fiction films are to be anything more than visually stimulating distractions, they must emphasize the characters and their humanity. It is simply enough to dramatize the challenges before characters like Ripley or Deckard without invoking other pretenses. We are, after all, only humans trying to find our way in a world ever more technically challenging and corporately ruled.