Two archeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), explore a prehistoric cave whose wall paintings suggest contact between early man and an alien visitor—a pattern the scientists (who are also a couple) have noticed in sites around the world. As they approach their destination, David begins to rouse his fellow crewmembers from their sleep pods: the ship’s laconic pilot, Janek (Idris Elba); an uptight representative of the Weyland Corp., Vickers (Charlize Theron); the archeologist couple; and a few other characters who (not to spoil anything) might not be worth getting overly invested in. Fassbender gets David's almost-but-not-quite human character exactly right and is especially good at conveying the can-he-be-trusted aspect that always comes with android territory.More hit and miss is Rapace (of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), who never quite connects with the tree-hugger aspects of Shaw's character but really comes into her own once things start to go south in a major way.For it will not come as a surprise to anyone that everything is not exactly sweetness and light on the planet where the Prometheans land in search of those creative aliens.
– Critics agree: The visuals in Ridley Scott's Prometheus are stunning. As for the story—about a space crew tracking the aliens who may have created us—it's a little too heavy for its own good. "Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn't strain so hard for weighty existential meaning," writes Dana Stevens at Slate. The film "is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart," though its design and effects are so "dazzling" you won't realize "that basic flaw until at least an hour in." Joe Morgenstern echoes Stevens in the Wall Street Journal. "This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder," he notes. Still, it's "worth seeing for the quality of its sci-fi sights." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan notes that the movie "pushes too hard for significance," which "contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting." For "its wizardly director, it's something of a disappointment." But at the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert raves that Prometheus is "a seamless blend of story, special effects, and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract." And Ebert finds it "all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers."