New film - 'Prometheus' (seen in 3D)

I went wanting to like this. I really did.  But what I got was disappointment.
Before getting down to specifics, I freely acknowledge that I am around two generations older than the target audience, so my perspective will inevitably be skewed from a direction the source at which the film makers are not aiming.

Okay, I've always got to grin and bear it when I see spacecraft audibly rumbling across the screen. (I believe that the only science fiction film which recognised that there is no sound in space was '2001: A Space Odyssey'. Surely, after over 40 years, it's more than high time that another film bit the bullet and attempted to depict reality?) But I tried to overlook this and not let it get in the way of my 'enjoyment'.
I found the first hour of this film, frankly, tedious. The dialogue alone was more than tedious, it was occasionally risible - and not just the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook. Even 'normal' conversation was bland and unimaginative.
  Then in the second hour we get a series of grisly, sometimes ingenious, deaths - accompanied by ear-splitting sound effects and crashing, distracting music - and all brought about with no purposeful progression.
   I am an admirer of the original 'Alien' film from 1979 - with the qualification that its most suspenseful section for me is the first 3/4 hour. As the alien creature metamorphosed into a larger being I found the scare factor proportionately decreasing. Even the final section with Ripley (plus cat) alone against the alien didn't compare with what preceded the iconic 'meal scene' and the scenes immediately following it. But what this original film did have throughout was a clear sense of direction and movement towards a climax. The plot was simple and easy to comprehend - and it had shape, which 'Prometheus' lacks.
      Now - splitting hairs again. If the crew of the spacecraft had woken up after being in cryo-sleep for over two years, where had been the starting point? Certainly not Earth. Even travelling at the speed of light it takes over four years to reach the nearest star - and their destination must, presumably, have been way beyond even that.  (Maybe there had been several intermediate stopovers, to enable them to wake up and return to hibernated state again?)
        And why do we hear later that they are 'half a billion miles' from Earth. That distance would hardly take us halfway out of our own Solar System - not even as far as Saturn when it's at its closest. Was it just a throwaway phrase which we weren't supposed to take literally? Then why say 'half a billion miles' ?- why not say 50 billion, which would certainly have been nearer to where this craft was supposed to have reached? Maybe I'm being too pernickety, but you'd have thought that with such a large budget to make 'Prometheus' they might have been able to afford an astro-scientist, even an amateur, to check on their facts.
    And, by the way, why is it that in all films set on another world, gravity is always at the force of precisely 1g? Well, I suppose that the real reason for this oddity is that it would be too much trouble and too costly to attempt to replicate smaller gravity forces. However, I do look forward to seeing the first film showing human space explorers  trying to get around subject to a gravity of, say, double that on earth. (Already a number of rock-giants in other star systems have been detected with masses several multiples that of Earth.) It shouldn't be too hard to show - and it would be interesting too, with these people getting tired out easily,  lumbering about painfully, where falling objects, which might have been harmless on earth, on a more massy world have become lethal in their velocity....and so on. There is such potential here for original situations . But I fear it could be a long wait to see it happening on screen.             
              Must say that I also look forward to the time when pre-and post operative analgesics, self-applied during continuous consciousness, are so effective as to enable one to function practically normally, even immediately after really major surgical procedure which has literally eviscerated one! The extra-strenuous physical efforts required to engage in a body fight with an alien creature wouldn't present a problem either. Pity I shan't be around to see it.
              The acting I found generally satisfactory or more. (Must admit I was for some time confused by the seeming non-appearance of the wonderful Guy Pearce - then the penny dropped!) I've not yet seen Michael Fassbender give anything less than a good, sometimes remarkable, performance - and this film continues his line of accomplishments. Charlize Theron, who, with her impeccable make-up in the far depths of space - where it's still so important to look stunningly attractive to the other members of her crew - didn't appear to have her heart in the role. (Maybe she too found it all a bit silly!). There was also a number of other names in the cast with which (apart from English Rafe Spall) I wasn't familiar. They were largely pretty good, I thought.
    
         I did start to derive some satisfaction from spotting the conspicuous nods to other films in the 'Alien' series, particularly the original. But after a while they became distractions that seemed to be grafted onto the screenplay to create an 'in-joke'.

       Overall then, I found 'Prometheus' a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, some not too bad, some just crackers - but the driving force of the film seemed to me to use it merely as a vehicle to show grotesqueries in non-human and part-human beings, and in manner of violence and death. All so passe! (Sorry, but how does one type an acute accent?)

                   Finally, my rating - and I'm going to be extra-generous here - a 4/10!