I watch Prometheus so you don’t have to.

Don’t bother with this one, folks. Really.

Midway through Prometheus — possibly it was the scene where the biologist plays coochie-coo with a cobra-like alien that goes into a full threat display twice, and only kills him when he goes in for the third chin-tickle — I decided there was a niche for a review containing nothing but spoilers. Because surely there are folks in the world who would like to know what’s in this Alien prequel, but don’t want to waste their money.

If you’re part of that crowd, follow me below the fold.

— SCENE ONE — THE ORIGINS OF LIFE ON EARTH —

We’re feted with images of a beautiful but prebiotic Earth, something like 1 billion years ago. Buff humanoid alien lands, seeds earth with a cupful of DNA-based lifeforms, and takes off in his interstellar craft.

Naaaaaw. That would be too logical. Instead, he swallows a cupful of something really really nasty, but before he dissolves into DNA-rich cytoplasmic goo, he screams, THEY TOLD ME THIS WAS TANG!

— SCENE TWO — ARCHAEOLOGISTS ON A DIG —

Elizabeth and her hubs Charlie discover a 35,000-year-old cave painting with a configuration of planets identical to similar paintings throughout the world. Mysterious! How did ancient man know about a distant planetary system? And why are the planets always in that same configuration, given that planets, you know, move with respect to one another all the time? The world will never know. But it must be an invitation.

This scene alone would be worth a subscription to Mad magazine. Imagine a series of panels, none with captions. In the first, two 19th Century scientists shine their lights on a cave painting showing a pattern of smudges. In the second panel, two somewhat more modern-looking scientists shine their lights on a cave painting, only this time, there are little asterisk-like dashes drawing attention to the planets. In the third, the painting includes the graffito, “Over here, assholes!”

— SCENE THREE — THE PROMETHEUS — REQUISITE ANDROID FOO

David the Android loves David Lean movies, apparently, or at least he watches Lawrence of Arabia and styles himself after a Lawrencian Peter O’Toole. Okay, the android wants to be human — nothing trite about that. And yet they go nowhere with this idea. The humans dis David throughout the movie, but hey, he fucks their shit up pretty badly. So we’re even. And once dad dies (more on that in a moment), he’s free to be a good android.

For readers playing along with their Alien Bingo™ cards, count this as both “shipboard android, evil,” and “shipboard android, good.”

— SCENE FOUR — WAKE-UP CALL —

On your Alien Bingo™ card, mark off “buff hottie works out in her panties.” Everyone, meet Charlize Theron.

And while you’re at it, you can mark off “evil corporate minion who does his or her best to get everyone killed.”

— SCENES FIVE THROUGH WHATEVER — THE CREWMEN HAVE ISSUES —

Character development. Ooh, I’m just here to make money. Ooh, science is wonderful, I’ll risk anything to know yatta yatta. Ooh, you’re all gonna die because my boss wants to be immortal —

Whoops, no one heard that.

Guy Pearce as the big boss shows up under a ton of makeup. Apparently someone decided to do a remake of 2001, cast Pearce as “Old David Bowman,” and then dumped him on the set of Prometheus by accident. He’s here holographically to wish everyone Godspeed and good luck. Except that he’s also here corporeally, goal being to convince the “engineers” (that’s what they call the people who seeded Earth with their DNA) to make him young again.

He’s never seen an Alien movie, apparently, because if he had, he would understand that aliens do not make you young again. They kill you. But perhaps this is all an elaborate mode of euthanasia.

— SCENE WHATEVER PLUS ONE — FIRST CONTACT —

They land on the alien moon, find a domed structure that they all call a “pyramid,” dispatch an exploratory party. And then a bunch of scientists who really ought to know better take off their helmets, because hey, the air is good in here! Oddly, it’s not this particular bit of stupidity that gets them all killed.

They find a decapitated alien and, with little show of quarantine procedures, bring it back on board their ship. Subsequent analysis demonstrates human DNA, identical to ours!

So let me get this straight. They came to Earth a billion years ago. Seeded it with their DNA. Theirs and ours is identical — never mind that my DNA isn’t even identical to my son’s; amazingly, there has been no divergence whatsoever in the past billion years.

And does this mean that all lifeforms on Earth are descended . . . from us? They’re blowing my mind here!

And where did those cave paintings come from, anyway? Did the humanoid aliens come back?

— MIDDLE THREE-FIFTHS OF THE MOVIE — PEOPLE DO STUPID SHIT, GET KILLED FOR THEIR TROUBLES —

‘Nuff said.

I must say that the character named Fifield was initially the only smart one, ‘cuz he’s the one who wanted to get the hell out of the alien craft. He is, understandably, freaked out by all the dead humanoid corpses they’ve been seeing. The biologist joins him . . . they both bug out . . . and even though they get a head start on the remaining exploratory party, they still manage to get lost. Even though this ship is like one big bracelet and they have not obviously strayed from the central hallway. And even though they have some sort of GPS, inasmuch as they’re able to relay their coordinates back to the ship’s captain.

But no matter. They got lost. They’re stuck here for the night since there’s a big storm. They’re scared shitless. So what do they do?

They hunker down someplace safe.

Shit, no. They go exploring, and are the first to get themselves killed when the biologist plays coochie-coo with the cobra thingie.

— IN CONCLUSION —

You’ll need to punch your Alien Bingo™ card for “Android gets decapitated but keeps on talking,” “Alien lifeforms will kill you dead,” “flamethrowers,” and “annoying strobe light.”

Oh, and there’s some weird self-surgery, wherein the female archaeologist gets a baby face-hugger out of her belly, then forgets to tell everyone else about it. And no one asks, either, even though she prances around half-naked and everyone can see the staples on her gut.

This moon, by the way, is not the humanoid alien home planet; it’s a biological weapons facility. And guess what — after going to the bother of creating all life on Earth, they were intending to come back to Earth to destroy it with these nasty Black Oils and Hissing Cobras and Face-huggers — no explanation why — except the critters got loose, killed the humanoid aliens, who apparently forgot their intentions of sterilizing Earth. Or changed their mind. Or something.

So they wake up an alien pilot who is in suspended animation, and he’s Not Nice, and he’s planning on taking the monster-laden ship to Earth after all; and the captain, all he can do is crash his ship into the alien’s ship.

Somehow the archaeologist and Charlize Theron are the only ones on the planet when the alien craft crashes. It’s a bracelet-shaped thing, you dig, and it’s rolling a bit before falling onto its side. So what do these two women do? They run in the path of the bracelet. No one thinks to leap to the side or, you know, run in a slightly more angled direction.

Charlize gets smooshed. Archaeologist manages to get under something and survives.

And still this movie isn’t over. (You know you have a problem when you’re asking yourself, why isn’t this movie over?)

The alien pilot pipes up, “Not dead yet!” so archaeologist chick sics the face-hugger (delivered from her by emergency C-section) on him. SO here they went to all the bother to set up the dead, giant alien pilot in the first Alien, and he’s not even conveniently sitting in his pilot’s seat anymore. Nor is he an effing giant like in Alien. Whatever.

About Dad: he’s kinda sorta the android’s “father,” but he’s Charlize Theron’s literal father. Which is a good thing, because when she nuzzles Guy Pearce’s age-spotted hand, I was getting all kinds of the creeps. Plainly, she’s not a gerontophile. But who nuzzles her parent’s hand, once she’s older than two?

Archaeologist chick and android head take off in another alien craft to visit the alien home world. Not to fuck their shit up with a cargo-hold full of biological weapons, which they would arguably deserve, although the folks who intended that fate for Earth died out 2000 years ago. No, archaeologist chick wants to ask them “why they changed their minds.”

The end.

You know what would have made a great post script to this movie? She and android head show up . . . she asks them, “Why did you change your minds about exterminating all life on Earth?” The humanoid alien slaps his forehead and says, “Damn! I knew we’d forgotten something!”

D.