Bad Storytelling

A few years ago one of my first Media Professors told my class that knowing how movies are made takes the magic out of them. I hate to say it, but she was right for the most part. Unless a movie captures my attention fairly quickly, I spend how ever long the flick is cataloging camera movements and editing techniques. Today the only way a movie can really capture my attention is through its plot. Prometheus (directed by Ridley Scott) is one of the most recent movies that I've seen, but it has one plot hole that makes no sense and another that stretches believability past the breaking point.

The first plot hole is found within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. It starts with a humanoid alien distributing aggressive DNA into the primordial ooze that humanity supposedly sprang from. He essentially disintegrates himself to do this, without ever leaving any physical mark of his presence on Earth. Flash forward several million years, and the audience views archeologists discovering a cave drawing of a certain cluster of stars in Scotland. The whole premise of the movie is that this drawing matches several others from unconnected ancient cultures, and a bunch of scientists goes out into space to see what's there.   

To reiterate the humanoid alien left no mark of his presence on Earth, and there were no humans around at the time to know about him or where he came from. So what inspired those ancient civilization to create the star pictures in the first place? This lack of connection makes the rest of the movie, the discovery of the planet, the encounter with the aliens, the big reveal of corporate espionage, null and void.

 This plot hole bugged me through most of the movie. Admittedly some of the characters were fairly likeable and interesting. The bits where the scientists were exploring the planet were good as well. However, another mark against the movie (and the second glaring plot hole) was the scientists first interaction with the aliens. The characters actions were just utterly and completely stupid! No scientist, (especially one that didn't work with animal biology) would get up close and personal with an unknown animal that they could barely see!!!

In conclusion, it was okay. Some parts of the movie were interesting, in other parts I was cataloging what was going on. Therefore I give this one five stars out of ten.