When I first saw the promos for Prometheus, I got all excited. Normally I don’t go in for scary, sci-fi stuff but earlier in my film-going life, I was dragged to the original Alien and was super-impressed. While I still tend away from the horror-blood-gore genre, this is somehow different to me. From the original, I loved the scarily-beautiful Giger designs, was fascinated with the idea of acid blood and those pointy teeth, and can never forget the iconic moment when an Alien popped out of John Hurt’s stomach. Coool.

So, I was pretty excited about this movie, but I tried to stay calm and keep my expectations to a reasonable level. And I tried to teach my brain not to set out to compare. Nothing can compare to the original experience for me. But I’m sorry to admit that I failed.

I got myself caught up in the hype – something I try to avoid if I can. I saw the promos several times and was impressed with the tension, the cool sets, and so on. Net result: For me, this movie lacked some punch. Even in 3D. Most of the wow-factor scenes were actually in the promo, which really didn’t help.

The storyline had some similar elements to the original Alien, very much following the “Ten Little Indians” scenario, albeit trying to explain an earlier moment in time. From that perspective, there was little surprise. So you can see that I yet again failed by comparing it to the original, and therefore found it slightly lacking.

On the plus side, I did enjoy finding out how the Aliens came to be, and the movie prompted a little more philosophical contemplation than is normal for me on a Sunday evening.

I can’t really fault it exactly – it had all the classic components apart from maybe a slightly lame ending and a fairly unbelievable medipod/stapler machine scene. It had plenty of ooze, pop-up aliens (great in 3D if you like to jump in your chair), way cool human and alien technology, things that go “bing” and are “bling”, and enough back-story to stay reasonably engaged. Other SMExians quite enjoyed this movie; for me, it just seemed to lack that special spark.