Review -- fighting back against the gods

[Note: This is an edited version of my review, with spoilers removed. The full review, with spoilers, is posted at my blog: http://infidel753.blogspot.com/2012/06/prometheus-fighting-back-against-gods.html] First, I'll get the film's one major flaw out of the way. The basic premise -- that the Engineers created humanity and that's why our genome is identical to theirs -- is impossible. The human genome shows us to be members in good standing of the Earthly biosphere of millions of species -- our genome differs only slightly from that of our fellow great apes, by a bit more from that of other primates, by a bit more from that of other mammals, etc. If, as the film implies, life on Earth was "seeded" by an alien visitor, the vicissitudes of natural selection would not, billions of years later, produce one species genetically identical to the original. Alien intervention in human evolution is a plausible SF premise, but humans being genetically identical to aliens is not. In fact, if we discovered extraterrestrials genetically identical to ourselves, the only possible conclusion would be that they were somehow an offshoot of Earthly humanity, not vice-versa. That being said, it's clear that this film, like the original [b]Alien[/b], can't be taken entirely literally. If you look at it as an exploration of mankind's relationship with its creator (assuming the existence of such a creator), it becomes much more interesting. The question the expedition sets out to answer is why the Engineers created us. The religious premise that, if a higher intelligence created us, it must have done so with benign intentions, is thoroughly eviscerated here. Shaw's religiosity didn't bother me because she never lets her superstition get in the way of her humanity and pragmatism. She's on her way to meet, for all practical purposes, God -- humanity's creators. But when she finds that those creators are militaristic brutes with a huge arsenal of thoroughly nasty weapons of mass destruction, she doesn't offer bovine pious acceptance, she declares "We were so wrong!" and starts fighting back. In the film's most gut-wrenching scene, she emphatically refuses to serve as Mother Mary to one of the nastier creations of the "god-like" Engineers. When the last surviving "god" sets out to bring Judgment Day to mankind, it's Shaw who urges Janek to thwart him. Indeed, the theme of humans fighting to the end for human survival repeatedly recurs. The Engineers are the real monsters here. They actually embody the ugly side of humans -- brutal and muscle-bound, cold and indifferent. It's not surprising that they set out to destroy humanity. It's more surprising that they created us in the first place, but the Engineer who did that might well have been a dissident from his own kind (recall that Prometheus was a god who brought down fire to humanity [i]in defiance of[/i] the other gods). Yes, there are some minor flaws. It's not clear how Shaw and Holloway deduced from the pictograms that the Engineers created humanity, as opposed to merely visiting. Some characters are oddly careless around nasty-looking alien creatures. The scientists don't really act or talk like scientists -- but movie scientists rarely do. Against that, there is great visual spectacle, real drama, and real ideas. [b]Prometheus[/b] has the spirit of [b]Alien[/b] and [b]Aliens[/b] in this sense -- our species is capable of greatness and beauty, but so far from seeking out a benign Heavenly father, we must struggle and sacrifice for survival in an ugly and hostile universe.