On the Isle of Skye in Scotland two scientists discover some cave paintings dating back 30,000 years that depict humans worshipping some other giant lifeforms who point to five orbs in the sky. This discovery chimes with other, similar depictions from across the globe, and those five orbs seem to suggest a certain constellation.

The vessel Prometheus is sent to this destination, after a two year voyage in stasis, during which time the ship's robot David spends his time learning languages and watching Lawrence Of Arabia, the 16 other crew members are woken up and land on LV-223, to find out what it all might mean.

More importantly, this is a prequel to Alien, from that film's director Ridley Scott. It helps to know this, because otherwise the first half of the film is probably even more interminably dull than it already is.

Something is off about this picture almost from the word go. There's some lovely cinematography that leads us to a cloaked figure watching a ship disappear into the sky, but what happens next lacks weight and wonder. It's mangled, hurried and a tad dopey.

Similarly once we get onto the Prometheus there's a rather embarassing scene in which Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in rather terrible old man make-up) delivers a holographic speech to the crew. Worse than that, the crew are an assortment of cookie cutter cliches that for the most part aren't just badly drawn they're barely drawn. Their dialogue is peppered with terrible exchanges in place of actual characterisation, and it's very easy to sort out who is fodder and who is actually worth a damn.

Clearly Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) is our hero, she discovered the cave painting and longs to meet the creatures she believed created human life in order to ask them why. Her co-worker and lover Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) is there to give her someone to confide in occasionally, but, his actions are vague and baffling at the best of times. There's Captain Janek who is rendered memorable thanks only to Idris Elba's natural charisma, though they give him a tiny accordian to play in case that wasn't enough. Meanwhile, Charlize Theron takes on the role of the icy suit, played so brilliantly in James Cameron's Aliens by Paul Reiser, but his character was subtle in his duplicity and he showed some degree of warmth so his actions later were all the more infuriating for an audience. In contrast Theron's Meredith Vickers has a clunky scene early on where she basically says how very, very bad and cold she is. This scene takes place in a set filled with things that will clearly be important later - it's a terrible example of very poor script-writing.

Finally, there's Michael Fassbender as David, a performance that pays tribute to Anthony Daniels C3-PO but comes up short. David's role is very similar to Ash from the original Alien, and as things progress there are unintentional laughs a plenty in some of the supposedly sinister exchanges and actions. His character lacking the nuance brought by the likes of Ian Holm or Lance Henriksen in both early Alien films, and lumbered with some absolutely leaden lines, and scenes that should be underpinned with sinister intent but come across as goofy farce.

Whilst the visual effects are pristine, the sets, costumes and props all well made, it ultimately doesn't matter if there's nothing else there. Clearly 20th Century Fox have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars into this tentpole release, which is ironic as they pinched the pennies on both original Alien pictures.

What Prometheus seemed to promise was both an exploration of the origins of Alien and a film that dared to probe questions relating to the meaning of life, the existence of the soul, what it means to create life, etc. etc. Whilst the picture does mention these topics, it goes into as much depth on each point as a shopping list does. Instead the film goes through a number of copies of copies of itself. To begin with it's the film Sphere, then it's The Astronaut's Wife, then Sunshine, but rather than showing each of these films how it's done, it is this movie that pales in comparison.

Each set-piece is removed from tension or drama, not solely because the characters are so washily sketched, but because the film is in such a hurry, events happen as if the story was patchworked together from various drafts and the joins were never smoothed or explained. It's a film that seems to operate under the delusion that is has something to say, but it barely has a plot to speak of, veering perilously close to actually being a rehash of the risible Alien Vs. Predator prequel, and at least that had schlock value.

Prometheus is a surprisingly terrible movie, utterly lacking in character, drama, ideas and execution. There are plenty more awful things I could ramble on about, but even though I strongly encourage you not to see it (if you must, catch it on DVD), I don't want to 'spoil' what so-called twists and surprises the film may hold for you.

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