Always late to the party.  How long has this movie been in our collection? Since October?  Anyway, here goes.  Prometheus, the latest offering from director Ridley Scott, available at VPL on DVD and Blu-ray.  Another in the science-fiction/horror genre, this movie stars Charlize Theron, as the expedition leader, Guy Pearce, as a robot named David, who has a great liking for the movie Lawrence of Arabia, and Noomi Rapace, who recently co-starred in Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows, as one of the leading scientists.

A multi-national corporation sends a science expedition to visit a moon orbiting a distant planet in search of a race of beings they believe seeded human life on Earth tens of thousands of years before.  The scientists hope to meet their “engineers”, while the owner of the corporation, of course, has a different agenda.  They find something, but it is, of course, not what they were hoping for or expecting.  Mayhem ensues, everyone on the expedition dies, except one female crew member, and the robot in pieces.  Does this sound familiar?  It should, especially if you recognize the director’s name at the top of the page: Ridley Scott, director of, among other movies, Alien.

I’m going to use one word to describe the content of this movie (spoiler alert) … prequel.  The previews promised something epic.  But the best that can be said of this movie is that it’s mediocre.  OK action, decent technology, although their weapons seemed incongruously primitive, considering it was set in the year 2093.  If you paid to see this movie, too bad.  You wasted your money.  Better to do what I did, and wait until the library has had it for six months.  All it will cost is time.