A scene from Prometheus © Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.
I confess to feeling some trepidation before seeing this new sci-fi saga from Ridley Scott, which he admitted takes place in the same film as his classic film Alien. But that was three decades ago, and apart from that Nasty Thing emerging from John Hurt's stomach on the spacecraft, I can;'t recall much about Alien. It was, after all, three decades ago.
But in fact you can get away with knowing nothing at all about it: Prometheus stands in its own right, a spectacular, over-the-top, visually arresting experience. Again, it's about a crew of astronauts: this time they are journeying to a moon of a distant constellation to see if life exists - as some recently discovered cave paintings on Earth suggest it might.
The storyline is just vague enough to be intriguing but not quite vague enough to be irritating. The standout performance here is from the great Michael Fassbender, who plays a fey robot named David. Noomi Rapace (from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series) does enough to suggest a glowing future.
It's all impeccably shot and presented, though with a blisteringly loud score. I liked it well enough, though it doesn't quite stack up to all the pre-release hype. And those who found that scene involving Hurt in Alien too much to take, beware - a number of scenes in Prometheus are at least equally queasy.