Although Prometheus had a pair of major issues that made the Alien prequel less enjoyable, both of these problems have since been solved by the series. The Alien movies vary in terms of quality and, when original Alien director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise in 2012, the series had reached a low point. The original Alien timeline, running from 1979’s Alien until 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, had lost the approval of critics and fans with its later outings.

While Alien and its 1986 sequel Aliens were well regarded, both 1990’s Alien 3 and 1997’s Alien: Resurrection were divisive failures. The Alien Vs Predator movies fared even worse, with 2004’s Alien Vs Predator garnering terrible reviews and 2007’s Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem somehow outdoing its predecessor. Within this context, the mixed reviews that met Prometheus were the best reception the franchise had enjoyed in decades. However, Prometheus still had major issues that both fans and reviewers were quick to note.

Prometheus Had 2 Major Problems That Made The Movie Difficult To Enjoy

Prometheus’ Cast Made Inexplicable Choices and Its Lore Was Impenetrably Dense

Prometheus had two major problems that stopped the Alien prequel from feeling like a classic entry into the series. The first was that the characters, a supposedly well-trained, professional team of scientists, engineers, and archaeologists, made some blatantly irresponsible decisions that the average viewer could call out as mindless. The second was that, with its focus on the Engineers and the Black Goo, Prometheus made the Xenomorph life cycle even more complicated than it seemed in earlier Alien movies.

Although Michael Fᴀssbender’s Prometheus character David was fascinating, his plans for the Black Goo and their links to the Xenomorph were impossible to discern. It wasn’t clear if Xenomorphs existed before Prometheus’s story began and David was trying to reverse-engineer their DNA, or if they did not exist yet . nd he was trying to create them as a bioweapon. Furthermore, it wasn’t clear how the Black Goo contributed to the creation of a Xenomorph, nor what link Xenomorphs had to the Engineers.

Fortunately, both these frustrating issues were well handled in 2024’s sequel Alien: Romulus. Although 2017’s direct Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant failed to make the life cycle of the Xenomorph any clearer, director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus offered a more straightforward piece of exposition that effectively clarified things. Alien: Romulus solved Prometheus’s biggest mystery by confirming that David was reverse-engineering an existing alien’s DNA, not inventing the first Xenomorph. Meanwhile, the bad decisions made by the movie’s heroes were much easier to excuse.

Alien: Romulus’ Young Cast Avoided Prometheus’ “Dumb Characters” Mistake

Alien: Romulus’ Inexperienced Heroes Had Every Reason To Screw Up

Not only was the cast of Alien: Romulus a lot younger than that of Prometheus, which made them seem more vulnerable and inexperienced, but they also weren’t experts in their field. Instead, Alien: Romulus’ young heroes were poverty-stricken colonists attempting to escape their miserable existence on a Weyland-Yutani mining planet by hitching a ride via the тιтular abandoned space station. The dumb choices made by Alien: Romulus’ protagonists were terrifyingly believable thanks to their inexperience, and this made them more likable and tragic rather than annoying.

The way that Alien: Romulus successfully solved Prometheus’s dumb character issue wasn’t by making the characters far smarter and more clear thinking, but by making them more inexperienced and hapless. It was hard to watch the young colonists be outsmarted by Xenomorphs and the ship’s surviving android Rook at every turn, but it was also thoroughly believable since they had barely any idea of life outside their hellish home world. Their fates were tragic but, critically, believable and rooted in their characterization.

Alien: Romulus Made The Xenomorph Lifecycle Less Confusing Than Prometheus

Rook Helpfully Outlined The Xenomorph’s Mysterious Life Cycle

Meanwhile, the confusing Xenomorph life cycle from Prometheus was fixed in the most direct way imaginable. A new spin on Ian Holm’s Alien character returned in Alien: Romulus to deliver an expository speech and cue up a video that demonstrated the way Weyland-Yutani was utilizing Xenomorph DNA. It turned out the company was trying to use the Black Goo to make super-workers who would be more resilient to the challenges of living in space, allowing the corporation to cut more corners and make more money.

Inevitably, this instead resulted in the creation of Alien: Romulus’s terrifying human/Xenomorph hybrid, a monster dubbed the Offspring. This monster’s existence explained where the experiments went wrong, but also gave a likely answer to why David did his strange Neomorph experiments from Alien: Covenant. It seems David was acting under the instructions of Weyland-Yutani, meaning Alien: Romulus retroactively made sense of David’s strange behavior in both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Like Rook, David was willing to dispᴀssionately sacrifice innumerable human lives to create the perfect organism.

Alien: Romulus Makes Prometheus A Better Movie In Retrospect

Prometheus’s Story Makes Much More Sense After Alien: Romulus

While 2025’s Alien: Earth will make Prometheus’s story even more central to the series in retrospect, Alien: Romulus was the movie that clarified its plot and made its place in the franchise clearer. By clarifying Weyland-Yutani’s role in David’s experiments, Alien: Romulus gave Prometheus a clearer place in the Alien franchise timeline. Technically, the movie was always set 30 years before Alien, but the plot links between them were tenuous.

Prometheus might have ended with a setup for Alien’s opening scene, but it wasn’t clear how the characters from the prequel were connected to the heroes of the original movie and how its events impacted the rest of the series. Alien: Romulus explained why Weyland-Yutani knew such a suspiciously large amount about the Xenomorph by Aliens, much like Prometheus provided the distress call that the Nostromo answers in the original movie. This gave the series a satisfying full-circle narrative.

Now that Prometheus’ place in the Alien franchise is clear, the series can continue without constantly needing to return to its prequels. It would be fun to see the story of Fᴀssbender’s David wrapped up in a future installment, but his role is no longer confusing and unclear. Similarly, Alien: Romulus’s understandably, tragically ill-equipped main characters offer a perfect blueprint for future outings. New movies in the Alien franchise can steer clear of the excessive ambiguity found in Prometheus, leaning instead into the effective monster movie thrills that made the series a hit in the first place while maintaining some mystery.