Why do people hate Prometheus so much?

1. Cast was ok David was brilliant Shaw was ok but no Ripley. The rest were ok but it's what they did that made them awful.

2 acting was ok to some was pretty bad but again David was a great character.

Well it's true there was a lot of people expecting something way better after all it's Ridley doing probably his best genre. 

3 the story idea was great but the execution was painful to watch. It was like watching Scooby and shaggy trying to work out the meaning of life as people liken it to...

4. Yes that is what we expected and that's good but there so many better ways again coming back to the Scooby show way of it playing out.

5. Yes but it needs to answer a few too...this is a big one as well it was spoilt buy the strange way it was all put together.

6.Ridley may have made some of the best films ever but that doesn't mean he can't drop a changer now and again or even constantly...he is very old now. I'm just amazed he can still handle these things. Almost always directors go off the boil as such is very rare to keep the bar so high...Anyway fingers crossed he's done a classic this time round.

"Edit: yeah i always wondered why they bothered making Guy Pearce old, it looked fake and crap, should've just hired actual old fella instead. "

The hired him to play young Weyland, then cut the young Weyland scenes.

1.The cast is well picked- some of the cast was well picked, but i wish the film had more or Elba and Captain Janek on screen, every second he was was golden. I feel that the casting of Charlize Theron was a waste as she didnt do much for the story besides be defiant and cast scorn on the mission, they should have used such an actress as her better. Milburn and Fifield and Holloway annoyed me as them and their dialog was awful, i would have like more believable characters. Fassbender as David is outstanding and Shaw was fine although her belief is fine but they could have tweeked how she displayed it, because at times she seemed child like and irrational in the face of everything, but she did ultimately prove very tough and a survivor which i enjoyed. Someone above i think indicated that there was no Ripley and they didn't like that absence. I feel that having Ripley shoehorned into another Alien film universe film would be awful. Alien Resurrection shoe horned her into the the "bag of trash" that was Resurrection. Im glad they left her out, shes over and done she should have been done after Aliens, having her is akin to Die Hard with Bruce Willis you can only do the same concept so many times with the same actor before people lose interest and the quality falls off, plus having her in again makes the story predictable and boring to me. Having all new cast is fresh and was the correct path to take although as i have stated earlier maybe they should have chose a couple of different actors for the roles and worked on the dialog a little in the screen play.

2.The acting was top notch- i liked it all except for Holloway, Fifield and Milburn...i felt they were not the best

3.The story itself was great- liked the story quite a bit and it did answer many of the questions a lot of people said it didnt, you just have to pay attention. The answers are explained through actions and scenes rather than someone's convenient exposition...simply stated people have to use their minds to infer and make conclusions, Ridley often treats his audience as if they are smart enough to figure it out without slowing the movie down to explain everything. I do feel like they could have had more of a sense of awe and bewilderment about finding this alien race...yes i know they went looking for them but at this point no one had ever found or encountered an alien race, i just felt that there should have been something more tonally akin to the scene from Alien when the Nostromo crew find the space jockey.....i mean holy hell you just found proof, corpses and evidence of aliens and another intelligent life form in the universe, where was the awe?? Plus i felt that first half of the movie was rushed i mean they went from finding cave paintings to offloading in the rovers from the Prometheus to the temple in a bout a five minute window, just seemed rushed is all

4.It made the Alien universe much larger...yes it did and i love Prometheus for that, 

5.A great movie is all ways supposed to leave you asking questions...agreed, thats why Alien has inspired and entertained us for decades because there were questions left to the audience, to leave us spell bound and wondering...not everything needs explained and tied up with a bow

6.The man himself Ridley Scott made it so put some respect on his name.

I like Prometheus alot and i find it very re watchable. It is a thinking persons film, and for those people unhappy that a true xeno didnt make an appearance, they clearly didnt pay attention to the interviews and materials and message boards leading up to Prometheus's release. It was made quite clear that Prometheus would not be a xeno movie but it would be obvious that is was set in the same cinematic universe and would be clearly tied to each other.

There were no promises of xeno's so i do not understand the backlash of all the people soooooooo unhappy they arent in the film. The film was designed to be a great sci fi movie that is has connective tissue to Alien and the xeno's without using them in the same movie, there is nothing wrong with that. 

far too many people just want to see explosions or kills in their movies and anything deeper than that is lost on them. I love good action and set peices but it makes it so much better when there are deep concepts at play, and that is why i like the movie Prometheus

I love the movie..it was a great set-up to the prequels.

Prometheus is the best film in the alien franchise

I don't hate it. I love it. It's the best ALIEN film (after the original) and I can't wait to see what Scott and co do with Covenant and onwards.

I only recognize Alien and Prometheus as canon.

I enjoyed the hell out of Prometheus, it was startling in certain ways and quite daring, I think. I also think that so hotly anticipated a film in the age of the Internet was gonna suffer no matter what.

There are already 2 parties, Alien and Aliens. This is not to say everyone falls into one or the other camp, but the camps do exist and reflect 2 different aesthetics. Now comes Prometheus which tried to steer away from both and in doing so created yet 2 more parties, like and dislike.

In the dislike party you have the few who are genuinely disappointed and the rest who will bash anything high profile, and whose hostility is empowered by the internet. I remember watching one reviewer that claimed the only reason he didn't 'walk out' of the theatre was knowing he had to review the film. Really? Was it that bad? Or was this your big chance to be cool?

Prometheus' marketing is partially to blame, almost every money shot was in the trailers, which were converted into GIFS over and over until everyone was able to decipher the storyline and memorize all the key elements. Dismay over the plot was prevalent long before the movie was released despite Ridley being quite clear (I thought) about the direction and intent of the movie.

Yes, it was originally marketed as a direct prequel, but this soon changed and Ridley was consistent with his message about what was happening. His one true downfall with the press was saying he wanted to  'scare the shit out of you', which he may have had more success with if the most disturbing moments hadn't been revealed in the trailers.

Other criticisms were slightly myopic, but people were looking for anything to condemn. SM has stated quite correctly that Shaw and Vickers did try to evade the rolling Juggernaut. Young Weyland was played by Pierce in the viral TED talk and was used for continuity in the movie. Maybe they could have found an elderly actor to play the part but I think Pierce did just fine.

Prometheus is not perfect, but it is unique, an arty post modernist Sci fi blockbuster. I'd rather have that as an addition to the Alien universe than say, a comedy, or a Predator crossover.

@Aorta 

As usual i fully agree with you, while i love the movie Aliens, sometimes choices have to be made, and this film universe works best and is better served  when you only consider Alien and Prometheus as canon. So now it will be Alien, Prometheus, Alien Covenant, and whatever else Ridley will cook up for us in prequels and sequels over the next few years.

I still love Aliens but many elements in it messed up the tone and storytelling of the universe hinted at by the original.

I dont like Alien 3, dont get me started on the pile of smoking caca that is Alien Resurrection, that is god awful and as bad as the AVP crossovers were AR is much much worse in my opinion, just a Ripley shoehorned, over the top cheesy scenes and dialog infested cash grab that i sleep better at night pretending it was never made lol.

yes there are a couple things that could be corrected with Prometheus but over all it is a deep and thinking movie, maybe that is why there is so much hate for it since it isnt just explosion and kills for the millenial masses that prefer to not think with their movies.

I think i will stick with Aorta on this and go with Alien and Prometheus as canon, while i still think Aliens is the 2nd best Aliens movie although i prefer it not be canon if that makes any sense.

 Id rather sacrifice it to save the tone and the cosmic horror hinted at by Alien which it sort of messed up with its story and making the Aliens just dangerous insects.

introducing the real Peter Weyland. Not Guy Pearce.

IRaptus

LOL

Good point! :D

I love the movie and watch it alot, I will agree there some plot holes but that is due to the rewrites. Other then that it is visually stunning. If not for Prometheus we would not have any new movies coming out.

BULL ALIEN

" If not for Prometheus we would not have any new movies coming out. "

GOOD point!! I guess PROMETHEUS should be consider R. Scott's 'warm-up' after having been away from the ALIENverse for so long??

I would say most people find it to be ok.

I'm with that crowd personally It's like my 3/4th favorite alien movie, but after the top 2 that's not much of an accolade. 

I loved the idea behind it, but there were many small issues I had with the film.

Not in any order as I'm remembering them as I type this.

Deleted scenes they should've left in.

1) The Engineer speaks.

Or doesn't, in the official release.

I loved the cut scene where he speaks, the deep angry voice really ramped up the intimidating tone.

They should've left that speaking scene in.

2) Mutated FiField #2

With a bit of work and polish, I think they should've gone for the heavily mutated FiField as seen in the deleted scene, that was one creepy mutated guy!

3) Milburn

Another two deleted scenes I think they should've kept, when he finds those slug/worm things and is all excited, you actually start to like the guy in that scene

When he finds the familiar alien skin on the ground, again another deleted scene

4) Stuff that doesn't make sense

Milburn trying to grab an obviously annoyed alien snake thing, why would you keep trying to grab it? You have no idea if it has fangs or venom (or bone breaking strength/acid for blood)

Shaw smacks the doctor lady over the head with the metal pole, but 20 minutes later, she's in the same room with her and it's like nothing happened.

Shaw has the alien squid thing removed, but nothing is said about it (Except in a deleted scene with Vickers and Weyland).

Two engineers enter the ampule room, none leave, so where are their bodies?

None of the writing in the temple was ever translated by David, it would've been cool if he had read aloud something from the writings.

Why didn't the scanner pick up the black goo stuff in the Engineers head? Wouldn't it register as an infectious agent or DNA manipulating virus or something?

Just small things for the most part, I enjoyed the film, but it felt rushed and could've been so much better.

Kinda reminds me of the Lost TV series in a way, a ton of questions and very few answers.

@Aorta "I only recognize Alien and Prometheus as canon."

Yep. And RS has said as such. He and Fox basically have taken over the franchise and righted the ship. No more BS pseudo-Action comedy Hollywood crap ("Aliens"), no more dark,pretentious, boring, brooding, near comic book fare ("Alien 3"), and THANK GOD, no more Alien NEWBORNS and NO MORE CLONED RIPLEY's! ("Alien Rez"). Thank god!

I wouldn't say I know of anyone who hates proetheus solely because its a bad movie. I think pormetheu is an excellent movie. the problem facing Prometheus is pure disappointment. ridley himself announced an ALIEN prequel and a script was written which was pretty bad ass, for an alien movie. then he changed it. that, as far as I can tell is the only real issue most have with Prometheus and so they look to pick the movie to pieces. when Prometheus is viewed with an open mind, its an excellent stand alone, jumpoff movie. yes some things in the movie were hard to take such as milburns idiotic calmness towards the hammerpede. but to him h had just discovered life bigger than a microbe. if u view Prometheus as what it was meant to be then it serves its purpose. there is going to be at 2 more after AC so what sense would it have made to give us all the answers in Prometheus??? wouldn't make any sense what so ever. Prometheus did what it was made to do. get the alien universe talking and speculating again, asking questions and looking for answers. tho there r holes in the movie, u can say the same about almost every other movie made. what goes against Prometheus more than anything else is what I said at the beginning, disappointment from fans who were, quite rightly, looking forward to the alien prequel ridley announced was coming but never got

1.The cast is well picked

Well, yes besides the Holloway actor.

2.The acting was top notch

Absolutely not or the directing sucks.
Because there is certainly a reason for such poor performance for some quite great actors whom the potential has been litteraly wasted.

3.The story itself was great

The previous drafts were significantly superior and way more interesting.
And stories about ancient astronaut theory or supposedly advanced species are almost always disapointing.
Because almost no director/writer is able to showcase such being in a realistic and entertaining way.
The closest was Stanley Kubrick with the monolith builders and JMS with the first ones of Babylon 5.

Let take the engineers.
A so called advanced race whom the sole survivor could have been easily accessed to and killed with close to no trouble by the Prometheus crew.
A so called superior being which can't do better than wipe out intruders with his bare hands.
Imagine if he has to face marines from aliens.
A so called superior being which doesn't even try to learn whatever happen during his sleep and to find out how more evolved/advanced are human beings to become an interstellar species in the last 2 thousands of years.
A so called superior technology which on several points is as primitive as human technology.
Their hibernating pod look quite primitive.
A so called superior ship which can't even avoid a less advanced ship, prevent any damage from it or simply destroy it before it becomes dangerous.
The scene where the Juggernaut is stopped and damaged by the Prometheus is one of the worse of all the movies.

No forgetting the stupidity of almost all the characters.
The characters seem for most of them stupid, unlikable and not relatable.
You see i strongly dislike stupid characters, and the more stupid they are, the more i dislike them.
I think that even in a horror movie, characters do not have to be stupid for shit to happen.
In Alien, the character were not stupid, even if some take stupid decisions, yet there is almost nothing they could do to survive the Xenomorph.
In predator, also the characters were not stupid yet they get wiped out beside Dutch who survives almost by luck.
Etc...
So no this story is not that great but had a lot of wasted potential !

4.It made the Alien universe much larger.

yes but at the same time it does close to nothing useful with this larger Universe.

5.A great movie is all ways supposed to leave you asking questions

Yes, but not to answer almost none of the questions, it is supposed to answer.

6.The man himself Ridley Scott made it so put some respect on his name.

Yes, he is a great director but he is not the best and has released some quite disapointing movies such as Exodus which sucks and off course Prometheus.

I loved Prometheus & will always want to see more about Engineers!

Plot holes, to me, are merely seen as ploy holes, because Sir Ridley was not ready to address everything in Prometheus.  That to me is good news to see what can be told over the next (2-3) sequel/prequels!

I am so ready for more!!

I was kind of looking foward to seeing another alien movie, until I just realised it was a sequel to Prometheus. So I am not going to see Alien Covenant, I'm going steer clear of it as far as possible, because I do hate Prometheus, I hate it with searing passion that I didn't think was possible at the time, and I didn't want to remember that drivel existed. But since the question was asked, now I'm going to answer it.

I realise xenomorphs have have been skrewed over countless spin-offs and movies, I was okay with that, because I thought I would always have the mystery aspect of the origins of the original alien movie preserved. Questions we could not have answer for, that fired up imaginations, in the endless cold outerspace. Well fuck that, am I right! The space Jockey, is now a generic human like alien, connected to humans which it created, the xenos are definetly bio weapons they designed, and any objective observer can see the alienverse shrinking to human proportions.

It's movie full of philosophical posturing, with junk science, in the face of sciencetific knowledge and contempt for skepticism, for vague non-sensical justification of faith. It has uncessary manufactured action movie scenes, with superhuman physique and performances, compared to the frailty of human experience in the actual alien movies. It's tips it's toes to ”hip” issues, like AI/transhumanism, but fumbles in execution compared to much better movies fully dedicated to such musing, as Blade Runner. The humans and protheans act and are really stupid in their planning and behaviour, well I suppose the movie is at least consistent in this regard. The Acting is at most tolerable, at worst really bad, but what can you expect in a movie script this bad. In short the questions that movie raised are not worth answering, but buried deep and forgotten till the end of time.

The Star Wars prequels were bad, but those movies just left me disappointed. Seeing Prometheus was like the time I watched Fantastic Four 2005, and came out truly despicing the time I spent watching the movie and regretting it. The sad thing is I have no real fondness of Fantastic Four so that movies existence is not a big deal, but did like the Alien franchise despite it's constantly declining quality. The Ridley Scott Alien prequels, are a permanent maligned parasite, that is killing any enjoyment I have for these movies. Maybe I'm wrong and things will improve with this movie, but I don't believe it or count on it or give it a chance, I'm out. Game over.

Sorry, about the long ranty answer. Now that I got that out off my system. Good luck to those who go see the Prometheus sequel, I do hope you enjoy it.

Okay, so I have been a big fan of the Alien franchise for quite a long time and I am super stoked about Alien: Covenant.  It should've came out in 2016!  Those son of a b1t$h3s decided to rewrite the script though.  Oh well, it is here and it looks stellar in the information released on it.  From all of this hype, I've been getting into reading a lot of theories people have for the story of the Engineers.  One thing that I like about Alien is the fact that it just has a realistic feel to it, but the story, to me, seems to lack realism at points.  I know that Alien takes place in an alternate universe besides our own, real one (to bad, I would have liked it to take place in ours), but I did at one time think we lived in the Alien universe with the original Alien movies (1-Resurrection).  Alien takes place in 2124 AD.  That could be enough time to have deep space travel (with a heavy acceleration in technology for sure).  The Prometheus story takes place in 2089 AD, which could allow for deep space travel to exist in our world.  It would be a stretch, but I think it could be possible in our universe at the time of the Prometheus expedition.  I love how even from the start, Alien took place so far ahead in time from where we live that it lets my imagination run wild because that techology could be possible by that time.  The Weyland TED talk in 2023 is purely fictional, but his personality does seem like it could fit our times in the up-and-coming 2023.  Sadly, that time is fast approaching, so it does take some realism away from the movie since Weyland will never actually exist.  Of course, I haven't seen the original Alien movies in some time, so maybe in my ramble I am overlooking some detail that takes away realism from the story possibly existing in our own universe, which would make it actually a 'true' story.  No one is going to remember Alien in 2124 AD, which almost makes the movie timeless since the story could never be proven to be wrong.

Okay, let me get on to why I made this post.

What do you think about this?

It's about the Prometheus story.  These 'scientists' go to a strange moon and land and start studying the first thing they see.  Shouldn't they have sent a satellite to the moon before they arrived?  If the Prometheus ship takes two years to get to LV-223, then a satellite should get there sooner since it is smaller and have time to make enough passes over the moon to get a nice satellite map of the moon.  From this, the 'scientists' could study and find out what is really on that rock.  I think it wasn't smart at all to just land a trillion dollar expedition with human lives at stake for the first structure these 'scientists' see.  They moved to quick, which resulted in the failed Prometheus mission.  I say failed because so many unnecessary lives died.  I guess Weyland's agenda was completed though.  If these 'scientists' had satellite data of LV-223, they would see that there would be more than one dome structure (which would mean there would be more than one ship) which would mean there is only one kind of architecture on this moon which would provide insight into the purpose of this structure and which could give the idea that there is no life on this moon, but lifeforms did exist on this moon at some time because there is architecture.  Once the large data is found, they would go and explore one of the structures knowing that they have a strong chance of being alone on LV-223.  Although, the satellite(s) would need enough time to prove that there is no movement on the surface and, if there is any life, they would be self-contained in the architecture.  If that is so, then why are they built so far apart.  Are they connected through underground tunnels?  That question would be answered quickly after Fifield releases his 'pups'.  Let the mapping do the work before you explore (at least with that kind of technology since if Magellan never explored, we wouldn't have advanced as a human race, but I am not a historian in any way).  From these 'pups', the Prometheus crew would have found out that there was a ship beneath the dome architecture.  From releasing 'pup's in the other domes, they would find that there would be more ships under the domes.  Eventually a ship would have to be explored.  I would image that a person would logically come to the conclusion that something left them here and that it would be safe to explore at the current moment since the satellite didn't pick up any movement on the surface for some time.  With finding some dead engineers in the dome and carbon dating their bodies, they would find that this place has been alone for a long time.  If the 'scientists' had the information from studying the moon slowly, they wouldn't have to rely on David for so much, which could have put the 'scientists' in control instead of David.  I think David took control of the mission because the 'scientists' are crippled by the fact that they don't know as much as they should know.  They're learning tons of information all at once because they didn't do proper research which puts David in control because he is applying his information gathered in the two year journey and learning from his application.  These 'scientists' are putting to much faith in David's two year studying from Holloway's thesis and not taking their time to learn from what is really there on the moon.  In the end, I guess David could still just eventually touch everything and eventually wake up the Engineer and the Prometheus crew could eventually all die, except for Shaw and David (unless the writers would have a different plan with the story).  Still, if the Prometheus crew had more information, would they have studied the ship which had Engineers in it or would they have studied an empty ship, which would have changed the ending completely.  

The story actually presented in Prometheus just doesn't seem to make sense at points from a scientific perspective.  The whole mission was rushed, not because of Weyland's time frame, but because the scientists just got excited (too excited for a trillion dollar mission far from any help with other lives than their own at stake).

One thing that I read in people's thoughts on Prometheus is that they didn't like how the 'scientists' took off their helmets when they found the air was safe.  I guess I could argue that technology in 2093 AD could detect diseases that could hurt humans besides just checking the elements that make up the air.  If not, the these 'scientists' are rushing themselves even more!

I still like Prometheus though, but I am curious what someone else thinks about this rush-of-the-story mentality.  I guess the writers just jumped to the fact that one of those ships are going to be explored in the end, so they just saved some time and made the movie even scarier while giving David control to create more horror in the film.

Any thoughts?

All this excitement from Alien: Covenant got me back into the Alien franchise.