20th Century Fox, Dune Entertainment, Scott Free Productions, Brandywine Productions

2087 AD. Romantically-involved scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, pictured above, center) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green, pictured above, left) find evidence that an alien race may have seeded the Earth and left directions to their homeworld.

2903 AD. The Weland Corporation ship Prometheus approaches the planet where the aliens live. On the ship are 17 humans.

Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) - Head corporate executive with overall command, supposedly.

David (Michael Fassbender, pictured above, right) - An android, "son" of Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). In charge of languages.

Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway - Head scientists in charge of the exploration.

Janek (Idris Elba) - Ship captain

Fifield (Sean Harris) - geologist

Millburn (Rafe Spall) - not sure, another scientist

Chance (Emun Elliott) - bridge officer

Ravel (Benedict Wong) - bridge officer

Ford (Kate Dickie) - biologist

Plus various mercenaries and special passengers.

The ship lands next to a huge alien-made mound. Explorations follow. Creepy stuff like what are all these vases? What happened to the aliens?

Then people start dying. David has a secret mission. Not all the aliens are dead. Can anybody make it out alive?...

Prometheus is roughly an Alien prequel plus reboot. You have a lot of Alien elements: Weyland Corporation, an android with secret orders, acidic sort-of-face-hugging monsters, alien growing inside a host body. You also have the alien ship seen in Alien plus the pilot, though this doesn't turn out to be the same ship in Alien (or it is the same ship and there is a reboot difference).

It's got spooky horror elements though not really that much. I like the science fiction mystery of "what were the aliens trying to do on this world?" and although there are answers, I'm not sure they're the right answers. Could be wrong interpretations by the humans based on too little evidence.

Graphics are really nice, seamless. 3D doesn't really help the film. IMAX might for a couple of scenes (there are a couple of scenes that would benefit from a really large screen).

There are a lot of edits that jump the story, or more like missing little scenes that would have helped. Enough to be noticeable but not really troubling. It was a bit of a logic leap to "this is what the aliens are doing". Also you never see about 5 of the crew. One character dies by running in the one bad direction that should have been obvious was the wrong direction.

Still, I did really like the film. It is in the Alien universe. It has a nice mystery. It has Charlize Theron. Although it sets up a sequel I don't feel like things were left out for the sequel, which is fortunate because the film is not doing sterlingly well.