Ridley Scott, while making many other films during his almost 40-year career, is still most beloved for his work within the Sci-Fi genre with the original "Alien" and the neo-futuristic noir "Blade Runner". Ridley Scott's return to the Sci-Fi genre after a 30-year absence in "Prometheus" is fascinating.

I will never fault a film or its creators for thinking big, and that's definitely what's going on here. Written by master mindbender Damon Lindelof (co-creator of Lost) and Jon Spaihts (writer of the high-concept flop The Darkest Hour), we start with a mood-setting prologue presumably millions of years ago, and then jump to the year 2089 where we have Doctors Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace of the original Swedish Millenium trilogy) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green, who looks like a stringier Tom Hardy) discovering on Earth a pictographic pattern amongst great civilzations of the past separated by centuries and great distance.

They believe it to be a star map and present this to the old, dying trillionaire Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in convincing old-man makeup) and thus begins the adventure of discovering the origins of Earth's species in a two-year space flight in the massive ship dubbed "Prometheus" named for the Greek mythological figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Upon arrival at their destination they pulled from this star map which is a moon for the planet LV-223, all of the crew members are awoken from their cryogenic sleep by David (Michael Fassbender), the resident synthetic (or "artifical person", if you will). The crew, led by company woman Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and the ship's captain Janek (Idris Elba), set down on a moon in this far-flung galaxy. Once there, they start exploring a pyramid-like structure and, in true sci-fi horror fashion, the greatest discovery in scientific history may very well mark the end of our history.

The film works really well. The scenes of initial discovery are incredibly absorbing and the production design work by Arthur Max (designer of every Ridley Scott film since G.I. Jane as well as David Fincher's Se7eN) is stunning to behold. The cinematography of Dariusz Wolski (DP of all of the Pirates Of the Caribbean films, but one of the best work of his is Alex Proyas' underrated masterpiece Dark City) is crisp and moody, and the team at Weta Digital who did the effects work did some eye-popping work as well.

The philosophical/theological themes and ideas are handled in an intelligent and thought-provoking fashion, and when the suspense is really unleashed, it's far more effective than the large-scale set pieces. The show is essentially stolen right out from everyone else by the brilliant work by Michael (who I believe to be one of the hardest working men in the business right now), who is charming and eerie in his childlike fascination, and seems so eager to please, despite his true motives. His moments, even when he's done something truly terrible, are still done with such a benevolence that you know that everything terrible he's doing is not his responsibility, and he does play to a certain regret as he seems to grow throughout the film.

Marc Streitenfeld's (also all of Scott's films since "American Gangster") score is somewhat restrained, and that's unusual in a film like this, until the suspense racks up and we're flooded in sound and fury.

The people who complain that this doesn't answer all their questions are missing the point. In all cases of science, or anything for that matter, the answers you get do really lead only to more questions. The same way in Blade Runner (Director's Cut) where it ended with Deckard and Rachel leaving Deckard's apartment, reaching for a future together into the unknown, Prometheus leaves many things open for us to ponder and wonder at. That's what makes it a great piece of art.