Kurt Loder on Prometheus

Prometheus is not exactly a prequel to Alien, the 1979 game-changer in which director Ridley Scott scuffed up and pulped out the pristine techiness that had dominated sci-fi films over the decade since Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Instead, writes Kurt Loder, Prometheus is a return to the treacherous Alien universe—to what might be called the adolescence of the title monster—to tell a separate story, one not intended, in the George Lucas manner, to neatly butt up against the beginning of the earlier film.