Hey OJ  ......its actually MORE that just references to Alien .......I said it that way in my post so that I wouldn't put any 'spoilers' in for anyone.

I think if you saw Alien ( the original ) as a 12-15 YO kid you would like it ( maybe you did and still didnt like it   ).......all the sequels are just rubbish IMO , and ......to watch the original Alien these days( like any old film ) well it isnt as scary and mind blowing as it WAS then - however.......What Prometheus does is have loads of stuff in it that are ALL identical to some of the things in Alien ( the ship, the caverns, the elephant looking alien monster things , the look of the sets etc etc ) .......on top of this it ties ( I think ) this story of 'where we may have come from' directly into the Alien movie, and it does it really well WITHOUT making 'another Aliens' movie from the 'franchise'.

I must admit that I personally went into it with a mindset NOT to watch this as an Alien 'pre-quel' - it is hard NOT to do that at times as your mind WILL relate things back to Alien. I think if you were someone that had never seen Alien , then this would still be a VERY good movie  

Hey did anyone realise that Guy Pearce plays the old selfish dude  

Yep...Pearce plays Peter Weyland the head of the Weyland group. Fans of the original Alien will remember the name Weyland and it's signifigance to the story.