There is a sign in Dante's inferno that warns to abandon hope all who enter...
Can you tell what way this review is going?
Plot
The film takes place 10 years after the events of Prometheus. A colony ship is heading towards a new world when a mysterious signal is picked up and they head towards the source.
Cast
Michael Fassbender is the android, and there are a load of other people that if I never seen ever again then I wouldn’t be too upset, not one person in this film feels memorable, and I don’t know why they cast Danny McBride in it as one of the crew, he's a comedy actor known for Eastbound and Down, Vice Principals, and This is the End. He doesn’t feel right for the role.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Review
Where do I start, honestly where?
Okay I’ll do this as a shopping list (of torment)
- The ship looks fake. It’s like a bad model.
- The android doesn't have the sense to issue the one command that will stop the almost near disaster that could have wiped out the ship till the damage is done.
- It's filmed on digital so it looks like a bad 4K home movie. Put a grain filter on it, make it look like a film please.
- The characters are forgettable plot devices that moves the slightly incomprehensible plot forward.
- They decide it would be a great idea to check out a planet that they have done no research on.
- The crew spout out odd dialogue like "that's a really strong ionosphere" like it was a 12 year old wrote the script and wanted everyone to think he was really bright.
- One character leaves another character in a med bay locked in with a creature, but then runs back and opens the door once that other character has been butchered by what looks like an angry gnome. You could have drop kicked the bloody thing out of the way and walked away unscathed.
- They also seem to rip off the velociraptor wheat field scene in Jurassic Park 3 as well when the neomorph attacks the crew outside, even more yawn inducing, dont really care exposition.
- The neomorphs and the xenomorph get instantly huge, in Alien and Aliens they took a bit of time to grow, in this it’s like they are stretching up really tall with no intake of protein to help with that growth.
- Crew members put the whole ship at risk for no other reason than it might look good on screen that the ship is getting closer and closer to the big storm that would otherwise rip the ship apart.
- There is a scene where the xenomorph bursts out of someone's chest but then looks like he is about to dance about like a baby Groot, it makes no sense, the lifecycle of the xenomorph was egg, facehugger, chestbuster then terrifying killing machine. It honestly looks like they forgot about the chestbuster...
- David the android from Prometheus has turned into Hannibal Lecter, but one that can manipulate genes and with a bit of judicious breeding can bring about the creation of the universes only perfect killing machine with acid for blood. Who now seems to really, really hate mankind but only for vague reasons, like being forced to make his creator a cup of tea years ago, as motivations go, it’s a bit weak.
- David also wipes out an entire civilisation, we never find out why apart from he has went a bit zany in the head.
- We are then subjected to the most ridiculously obvious is it him or not, if you watch the film you will have the misfortune of knowing what I mean.
- In Alien Captain Dallas is forced into the ships ducting system to flush out the Alien, and we are treated to some of the finest moments of dread and tension ever committed to film, in this film it’s like a first person computer game as we see from the xenomorph perspective... It isn’t done very well.
- The shower slaughter scene is a joke, no tension or dread, in Alien the creature toys with Lambert and Parker, the xenomorph tail is used to horrible effect like its a character almost in it's own right, in this the tail looks like the start of a really bad sci-fi porn scene.
- It's a gory film, and every character seems to be married to someone, so they are either eviscerated, burned or bludgeoned to death, so the other half you would assume might get a "bit teary", they do, kind of, but then are mostly okay again and after a quick swig of bourbon are just about okay again and not really that upset, not one single character here feels real or acts in anything that even resembles a normal reaction.
- Also, if this seemingly, takes place before Alien why do they have more advanced tech like the tech that can tell exactly where the xenomorph is?
I could go on and on and on.
Verdict
It’s like Ridley Scott has tried to take all the best bits he can think of in the first two films, and throw a bit of Bladerunner in and try and, I don’t know, improve on it, by making it a pale reflection of what went before. The power and beauty of the xenomorph was always wondering at the origin of something so terrifying and relentlessly aggressive. We had the nightmarish and beautiful design of HR Giger for the visuals and a properly thought out life cycle of the Alien, who now isn’t really an Alien but the pet murder project of an Android who was harrowingly forced to make someone a cup of tea and is a metaphor for the subjugation of an android that again might have sounded good on some poorly thought out script draft but here just looks weak and tedious.
What really terrified me was that this is planned either as the middle film in a trilogy or the second film in a series of six, but after watching this I can honestly say as this series goes on they should change the tag line to "in space no one hear you yawn..."
(all images courtesy of google images)