This is a movie that’s outstanding to watch, providing you don’t think. Because it just doesn’t make sense.  On so many levels. But visually, it’s one of the best in years. It has phenomenal production values.  It’s gloriously  gory.   So much a wow, it really doesn’t need the 3-D.  It takes an hour before we  see the first alien (hello!!) but  once they show up,  they’re as skeevy-scary as the ones in the  predecessors.

The acting is  game-worthy. Noomi Rapace is fiercer than “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and this time she gets to show some major emo.  Her Siri-enacted surgery will have you gripping  your  seat. Michael  Fassbender is a  blonded-up  android who is amazingly free-thinking, for an cyborg.  Charlize Theron gives her all as the corporate ice queen.

The problem is the story, which centers on the premise that humans were created by a alien nation that , for some reason turned on us.  All the “why’s”  are apparently  left for the next  film .  There’s so much  that makes no sense: what causes a major character to suddenly fall acutely ill; how on earth  Rapace’s character can stand much less run like a marathoner after surgery;  why a scientist would  try to befriend an alien  when he’s surrounded by bodies of the previously fallen.  That’s just the beginning. 

Charlize’s sex scene with Idris Elba ends up on the cutting room floor and their story line is abruptly dropped.  It’s not  just “current” storlines gone missing,  much of the back stories get lost.  Perhaps  because  one of the two writers of “Prometheus”  wrote much of the “Lost” tv series, and we know how much sense that show made.

Kudos to Ridley Scott for a stunning film.  But all visuals do not a movie  make.  With so many unanswered  questions,  I   get the feeling this  film was just a set-up for the next one.  I  was left feeling cheated and disappointed.  Despite the eye-gasm.

2-and-a-half stars