I was greatly disappointed in the film when I first saw it and not because I thought was bad....Quite the contrary. I thought it was a good film that could have and most certainly should have been great, but it fell far short of that. At first I was very confused by this mixed reaction. I saw it in the theater twice more and felt much the same. I detailed that initial reaction on this very site [url=http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/community/forums/topic/20200]here...[/url].
At that time, I felt the film was incomplete. My instincts told me the film was lost in the cut and my suspicions were confirmed when I was able to see the deleted scenes last October. I believe there is a much better story there given the context of these deleted scenes. For me, that's the tragedy of this film. There's a good story there and they mucked it up in the editing process.
What it comes down to is that this film's theatrical cut has many things wrong with it, but a few in particular that really handicap its potential.
- Inconsistency in character. The way this film was originally cut forced a number of characters to behave not only implausibly, but in ways that contradict themselves. Holloway, for one, is an archaeologist with a P.h.D. and yet he behaves like a six year old who's been at Disney World for merely six hours or so and throws a tantrum because he hasn't spoken to Mickey Mouse YET. I emphasize 'yet' because he would have had he been patient. My issue with that is that it's not believable. This team has made the greatest scientific discovery in history and he behaves like a child because he couldn't talk to them. Oh boohoo. You're an archaeologist for crying out loud. You're entire career revolves around unearthing and studying dead cultures. Deal with it. The deleted scenes play up the fact that he drinks himself stupid. Now this does not justify or excuse his behavior, but it makes it plausible, believable and yet they down played the drinking and the more extreme version of his conversation with Shaw to make him more 'sympathetic'. All that succeeded in doing was make him come off as pathetic. Ultimately, we don't care about him because we don't respect him.
And that's just one example.
I could go on, but I feel I'd just be rambling. At the end of the day, what I really want to express to my fellow fans is a notion that this film, as it was theatrically released, fell far short of the movie it ought to have been. I have never seen an example of a film with as much potential as [i]Prometheus[/i] only to learn that it was lost to us in the post production stage.
One year later, [i]Prometheus[/i] is not a lost cause by any means, but in no way should we consider it a masterpiece.