So, looks like I'm on the other side of the fence for once.
In the Euro's two day absence, I ventured out in my boredom to see this. It was worth the price of entry.
From the top: not a modern masterpiece. But, it's absolutely what RGC said, an enjoyable popcorn movie, and a cut above the regular I might add.
Several factors may be involved here that I have been contemplating since leaving the theatre:
First, that the standard of popcorn movies out of Hollywood has been so criminally low for so long, that this seemed fifty times better than most.
Second: I love sci-fi, and have been starved of decent genre material over the last decade. It's the best sci-fi movie I've seen since Sunshine and Moon.
Third: Everyone here slashed any expectation I had to absolute rock bottom. By skirting this thread to avoid spoilers, I also ascertained prior to viewing that I shouldn't be expecting exact ties, links or explanations to the Alien movies, nor should I be expecting an 'Alien' movie in the traditional sense. I can only assume this worked out for the better.
Starting with the bad: The casting was irregular. The scottish woman was so appallingly poor, so gratingly bad, that she even made Fyfield's awful overacting and relative insignificance as a character pale in comparison. She actually affected the quality of the entire movie with her presence - a massive faux pas for someone like Scott. I can only imagine her contract was not terminable after shooting had gotten underway. Regardless, casting has something to answer for.
Moving on to the next point: casting. It was a fuzzy job. Noomi Rapace, Theron, Fassbender, Guy Pearce, yes; Male companion of Rapace and Apone the captain, iffy; everyone else, substantially poor.
This wasn't helped by the scripting. The unnecessary exposition at certain points was irritating and should have been edited out. The failings of the script were not absolute, it just wavered from average to poor. Proof of this occurs with the opening twenty minutes being the most artistically striking because very little is said, and certain credibility begins to thaw at the exact same point as the cryo pods.
The good part is, everything else was on form. Visually, it was second to none, a beautiful looking movie that has one of the best uses of 3D I've seen. It also managed to either conceal or refrain from using CG unnecessarily, to its credit.
Although the actors were dodgy, Scott's direction was firm. He told the story very well, simple as it was, and it never flagged or ran out of pace or intrigue. I felt the movie's main commodity was just that: intrigue. It was hugely imaginative, a feast of ideas and unexplored concepts.
Now, I did notice the holes and even errors. Why Rapace states that the inscriptions at the beginning are 5000 years old and then announces during the briefing that they're 35,000 years old was fairly unusual. There are also plenty of odd or unexplainable things that I won't bother to list because they've already been mentioned here.
One thing that irks me is why the crewmen are retards. In the original Alien, the crew are professionals, bar the two mechanics. Here the geologist is a fucking retard and so is his hippie companion, who does little to nothing except die. In Aliens the marines were hardened grunts - superficial, but they could get away with it - everyone else was in control of their positions. I suppose the Alien franchise has always allowed an element of 'civilian' to mix up its casting, but it felt wrong here.
Anyway, all in all, I don't quite understand people's issues with it, unless you allowed yourself to be so bouyed by the hype machine that you were expecting the second coming of Gaijinpunch. I have a remedy for that: don't believe the hype, ever. You'll enjoy everything a lot more with lower expecations.
I could dissalow the obvious scientific problems because this is science fiction, not fact, and it provided plenty to chew on regarding the origin of the Alien and I very much appreciated its open-endedness. Sometimes it's much more preferable to be left with questions that spur the imagination than to be disappointed with all the answers.
8/10 from me, good fun.
, but I would argue that Prometheus is more nihilistic than Alien 1979. The dumb reaction of the living engineer of not bothering to converse with the humans & just OFF'ing them, plus Weyland's last words "There is nothing (croak)" are extremely nihilistic.
yeh, she was totally dire.
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