The review itself, which appeared in Italian, consists mainly of a bland plot summary. But a mere handful of sentences that softly criticize the film were spun in the English language media to give the impression that the Vatican was issuing an angry condemnation of the film.
Yet this is a pure fabrication. The Italian review didn’t contain any criticisms about the movie that haven’t already been aired elsewhere by secular movie reviewers: for example, that Ridley Scott didn’t live up to the expectations set by his other films; that the script tells a story that is too convoluted; it doesn’t have enough thrills and surprises; it needs more work where it is lacking in explanations; and so on.
Yet that didn’t stop Eric J. Lyman from inventing a story with his piece in The Hollywood Reporter. Lyman begins with this: “The Vatican’s official newspaper attacked Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, taking issue with the film’s premise about the origins of mankind and saying it is ‘a bad idea to defy the gods.’â€
Lyman makes it sound like the Vatican objects to the film’s theory that life on earth was started by aliens. But the review takes no such stance. The review just says that the story’s idea was not very well executed. It simply says that the film artistically “mishandles the delicate questions raised by†its premise.
Moreover, the phrase “a bad idea to defy the gods†is an English translation only of the headline given to the movie review in Italian.
Lyman distorts the fact that the review itself only uses this phrase to explain the movie’s title. The phrase describes only what the reference to the figure of Prometheus from Greek mythology means.
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1622/is_iprometheusi_on_the_index_of_forbidden_films.aspx