Saw this last night in Imax 3D. Really enjoyed it, although I'm going to go back to watch it in 2D because I think the beautiful cinematography warrants seeing it as a "regular film" (and plus I just want to watch it again). I've read some very mixed and confused reviews about Prometheus, and after reflecting on it although there are some inconsistencies (mainly to do with the obvious cutting, it should have been at least 30 minutes longer) it is a superb film and well worthy of the Alien canon.
SPOILERS GALORE BELOW THIS POINT
So, firstly my take on the plot. The engineer at the beginning of the film ("Adam") is seeding the Earth with engineer DNA. He takes the black goo, which disintegrates his DNA and allows it to propagate on Earth. The engineers return to Earth at various points to check up on the progress of their seed. This is pretty well established, and follows on from various interviews I've read with Ridley Scott talking about "Chariot of the Gods", the Erich Von Daniken book from the 70s about how humans are descended from a space faring race.
Flash forward to the future and Weyland Tech is subsidising a trip to LV-223 to investigate what the star maps are pointing to. Clearly this is so that Weyland himself has one last roll of the dice to try and extend his life (one of the many Blade Runner references throughout: "I want more life, fucker"). Quite a few people seemed to be confused about why the medical-pod was setup for a male rather than female, obviously it's been brought along for Weyland, as has Vickers' escape pod. They land, find the goo and get back to the ship just before the storm (awesome scene). This brings us to the bit that most people seem to struggle with, what is the black goo?
My take is that the goo is a catalyst for life, and death. Adam uses it at the beginning to create life, but the outpost on LV-233 is a cache / research centre to develop the goo as a biological weapon. The goo changes the host into something else, a killer, and the way it changes the host depends on how they are infected. Look at the evidence: Fifield is infected from direct contact with the goo, goes insane and is killed. Holloway is fed the goo by David (on the orders of Weyland) and becomes infected from within, after impregnating Shaw. She incubates the seed inside her and pulls it out as it's gestating. This then impregnates the last engineer in the standard Alien way (seed down throat) which creates the proto-xenomorph that we see at the end. So, the goo is a weapon and we have been seeded on Earth to be the hosts of that weapon, hence the reason that the engineers are sending the ship back full of it.
I thought the subtext to the storyline was subtly brilliant in many ways. The main themes are to do with creation, parenthood and, as with Blade Runner, what it means to be human. Taking creation first, the engineers created us and we created David. This sets up an ongoing theme throughout the film about what it is to be "human". There are many examples of this - the conversations David has with the crew, specifically Holloway, the exchange between Vickers and Janek when he "just wants to know if she's a robot". Just like the replicants in Blade Runner, David is actually "more human than human", he shows more emotional depth than the rest of the crew- look at the way he stares reverentially at Weyland, his “father”. If we know that we are not a form of pure evolutionary Darwinism ("You want to throw three centuries of Darwinism out of the window?") and in fact we are another being's creation (just like David) then how different is our existence to his? The engineers created us and we created David and just like the replicants, how much "more human" are we than our creations? In many ways LV-223 is our Voight-Kampff, and we fail the test.
The mission Prometheus is on is also a quest for our parents, or more specifically, our fathers. Just as the first Alien films are about motherhood and birth (the Queen alien, the aliens gestating inside the hosts) Prometheus is about fatherhood. This goes right down to the way the engineers look, they are huge, muscular, silent creatures, just as many children see their fathers . Fatherhood in Prometheus is about creating something in your image that becomes something else (just as the goo changes its host into something different) and in the end becomes a threat that has to be destroyed; “A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable.” Ridley Scott is saying, if god can be killed, then god is dead.
For me Prometheus shows Ridley Scott is still a wonderful sci-fi director. He picks up the big themes and creates films that entertain as much as they make you think. I think Prometheus will be looked back upon as a classic, I already consider it one.
