Last Saturday, in the first part of my review of the film we looked at Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and Dr. Charlie Holloway leading a crew to a habitable moon in another solar system. That moon may be the home of humanity’s makers.

What the crew finds in the alien temple

There they came across a stone structure, a temple . They realize that it is hollow and decide to go in and explore it.

Things play out pretty much as one would expect; as they enter the building, the plot holes stack up fast.

First of all, this building has a breathable atmosphere, even though the planet doesn’t have enough oxygen to sustain human life. Now, earlier in the movie, the doctors explain that the reason they chose this moon out of all the space objects they were looking at was that it was capable of sustaining human life. But if not, why would they conclude that their theoretical alien parents come from this moon? And if they’re not talking about large creatures like sentient alien life forms, what kind of life are they talking about?

Furthermore, even the rooms that contain breathable air inside this building have holes. The writers try to cover themselves by saying that it is terraforming. But terraforming what? The structure? The moon? We are not told.

At any rate, the crew eventually comes across the large body of one of the Engineers, and two crew members, Fifield and Milburn, freak out. They separate from the group, which means they’re going to die. Of course, a random storm appears, which forces the crew to return to their ship early.

However, before the storm arrives, Shaw manages to bring back the severed head of an engineer.

One too many for Holloway

David, the crew’s robot, takes one of the jars from a room inside the structure. This jar contains the black goo shown earlier in the film. One of the engineers drank it and disintegrated, so we know this goo is bad.

While on the ship, Dr. Shaw confirms that the engineers have the same DNA as humans. However, Dr. Holloway is dejected because it appears that none of the Engineers are left. He wanted to ask them about humanity’s origins, and now it looks like he’ll never get his chance. While he’s drinking. David removes the black jar, and after a contentious conversation with Dr. Holloway, he puts a drop of goo in the doctor’s alcohol:

The movie never really explains why David does this. And it makes no outward sense. The crew is afraid of contamination. To put it in context, I have to reveal a spoiler for the film: David’s secret boss Weyland, the man funding this mission, is alive and has hidden on the ship. He is elderly and hopes that the engineers can save his life.

Still, David doesn’t know what this goo will do, so by spiking the drink, he’s potentially infecting the whole ship and putting Weyland, at risk as well. And, because he’s a robot programmed to obey orders, this move is inconsistent with his character. Granted, he is resentful of humanity for some reason, but then how can a robot be resentful? Predictably, we are not offered an answer to this question.

A hidden horror emerges

The next day, the crew goes looking for Fifield and Milburn, who’d left them earlier. They’d gotten lost when the storm blew through and had to remain in the stone structure. And during the night, they did what all useless side characters do: tried to touch something they shouldn’t.

An alien snake (a hammerpede) pops up out of nowhere, and Milburn, a biologist by training tries to touch it…

Two hammerpedes attack, shooting acidic blood everywhere and they both die horribly.

It doesn’t take the crew long to find their fallen comrades—really, I’m surprised they remembered their names—but they don’t have time to ask questions because Dr. Holloway (remember the drink David served him?) becomes sick.

The crew rushes Dr. Holloway back to the Prometheus, but Meredith Vickers is there with a flamethrower. Dr. Holloway is not getting back on her ship. The other crew members protest, but Dr. Holloway sacrifices himself by goading Meredith into killing him.

Dr. Shaw is understandably devastated and must be sedated. When she wakes up, she finds David standing over her. He removes Dr. Shaw’s cross. I don’t think that the movie was taking a shot at faith. Dr. Shaw’s journey as a character is basically to hold onto her belief in God despite all the terrible things that are happening to her, which is really the only uplifting quality of this film.

Dark night of the soul

This moment when David removes the cross seems meant to show her low point, the dark night of the soul. Then David tells her that she’s pregnant.

Dr. Shaw can’t have children, so she becomes confused. It turns out that she and Dr. Holloway conceived this child the previous night… and the child is an alien. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work. In theory, if the goo essentially kills something and remakes it, then both doctors should’ve died, but anyway.

Dr. Shaw wants the alien removed because it is growing at a rapid rate, but David refuses. He wants to put her into cryosleep instead. He drugs Dr. Shaw, and the next scene shows two crewmembers about to put her into cryosleep. However, Dr. Shaw is awake and overpowers the doctors. How did she beat the drugs? I don’t know.

She runs to Meredith’s med-pod and has the alien removed, then freezes it inside the pod. Then she begins running around the ship. The writers tried to make this scene believable by showing Dr. Shaw in tremendous pain, but I didn’t buy it. What do you. think?:

Return of the zombie

At the same time, Fifield, the crew member who fell into the black disintegration goo during the hammerpede attack, returns… but now he’s a zombie… for some reason. I’m not sure how this goo is supposed to work. In one case, it disintegrates an alien; in the next case, it turns a man into a zombie.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to kill the zombie as it storms the hull of the ship, but I have to say one of the funniest moments in the movie happens during this scene. While the captain finishes the zombie off, a vehicle that had some of the crew members on it drives off the ship — and it never comes back! Are those crew members are still on that moon, driving around? We’ll cover what happens then next Saturday.

Here’s Part 1 (of 4) of my extended review: Sci-fi film explores idea that Earth’s life was seeded from space. Prometheus 2012 offers an intriguing premise: ancient civilizations were told in mysterious ways of a habitable moon in a distant galaxy (Part 1 of 4). But the corporation funding the mission to investigate the moon may have a different agenda from what the crew supposes.

The featured photo is a mysterious moonscape by NASA on Unsplash.