Impetuous scientists race to another world to find the beings that made us. But as every Sci-fi junkie knows, aliens rarely play nice and deep space trips always go awry. Predictable and ripe with cliche's but it's still a pretty entertaining space flick. This is a good movie to see at the theaters on a huge screen and extremely loud.
Movie Stars: ★★★★☆
Full Review (SPOILER ALERT)
Ridley Scott, the man behind Aliens, has brought us a prequel to the Alien movies... kind of. But before I get the Alien connections, let me tell you what I found retarded.
My biggest complaint was the cliche and moronic scientists and crew. First of all, they were probably all far too young. Couldn't the insanely rich Weyland corporation afford the best of the best in each field? Then you get to each character individually and there are some serious flaws.
The geologist was a money hungry Neanderthal with tattoos all over his head. This totally makes sense because there are lot's of experts out there that look like they came out of Braveheart.He contributes by mapping out the area yet he still gets lost? The biologist was also a joke. When confronted with a new lifeform, he makes goo-goo noises at it until it attacks him. It reared up like a damn cobra and he wants to pet it? Worst. Scientist. Ever.
The rest of the crew just bumbled around making rash decisions and acting extremely unprofessional. Sex was rampant and everyone acted like they were on a trip to Hawaii. If I land on a uncharted planet, I'm going to assume everything is hostile and be on point at all times. Plus there was no security personnel on board. The owner of this insanely rich corporation is on the ship and he doesn't even bring a body guard? At least they had the forethought to bring a few flame throwers and guns.
Then you get to the robot David which didn't act like a robot at all. For a cybernetic organism that should have some sort of ingrained safety and scientific protocols built in, it sure did act without regard to itself and others quite often. It kept opening doors before the team was ready and touching potentially infected things. Then it kept smiling all the time, giddily played with the star chart and it dyed it's hair? Sorry Michael Fassbender, you sucked in this role and your character was lame.
Lastly, I want to bitch about the lead chick. She did fine in her role but they had her doing stupid and impossible stuff. Later in the film she has a cesarean to remove a squid baby while completely conscious. Immediately afterward she hops right up, goes running, jumps chasms and even gets slugged in the gut. Even if she could bypass the pain with drugs and sheer willpower, those staples would have ripped out. She would have bled to death in her space suit after her first space jog.
Our creators, The Engineers, were pretty cool though. I like that they never spoke. The only issue that I really had was that they used a freaking flute to start a star ship. That's just stupid. But they looked rad, were pretty bad-ass physically and their suits were cool and that leads me right into my connection with the Aliens movies.
The associations were there, just not exactly like it was in Aliens series. The bacteria pods looked like face-hugger eggs and there mural on the wall looked remarkable like a xenomorph from Aliens. The Engineers ship was almost just like the one they found on LV-426. For those that don't know, LV-426 was the planet where Sigourney Weaver first came into contact with the acid blooded creatures that we all know and love. Even the Engineers suit and control room was damn near identical to the one in Alien. Then of course the Weyland corporation has had their hand in all of the movies.
What I don't get is the bit about the zombie geologist that comes back to attack the ship. Everything else points that we are just hosts for killer creatures. The one infected guy coming back as a mindless juggernaut of death is out of place. Were the Engineers making us the bio-weapon to kill ourselves? Was the xenomorph a miscalculated side-effect? Ridley, get your shit straight.
This was still a very entertaining movie even with it's traditional Hollywood blunders. The effects and sets were awesome. The story wasn't super original and it was a little predictable though I very much enjoyed the whole "Where did we come from?" aspect. This movie just needed some tweaking.
The moral of the story was that dicks beget dicks so whoever made us must be flawed as well. Aliens are just as shitty as we are.
Poster Examination
This poster isn't bad but it doesn't say much. Are we looking for huge statues and if so, is this a futuristic Indiana Jones? I'm a fan of not giving away too much but this needs something else to let us know that it's space or alien related. Even the tag line could be misconstrued that we are searching for our cavemen ancestors. But the poster itself is well designed and looks neat so I have to rate it fairly high.
Poster Stars: ★★★★☆
Trailer Analysis
This trailer was freaking cool. The music was daunting, powerful and creepy. Then they showed enough outer space stuff and action scenes to get you interested yet they didn't reveal any of the aliens themselves. Best of all, they didn't use any stupid voice overs or cheesy lines. High five!
Trailer Stars: ★★★★★
Before I congratulate you on a great review, I'm going to slam you a bit. Ridley did not create ALIENS.... He created ALIEN. James Cameron headed up the sequel. Also it's Weyland, as in Weyland-Yutani corp. (((pushes glasses up on nose))).
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis of the movie. Surprisingly flawed characters and story progression for a Ridley Scott movie. Makes me wonder how much influence the studio had during filming. But every flaw and inconsistency blew right over me since I was so enamored with the visuals. They filmed the movie with 3D cameras (ala Avatar) and the sets and CGI is a huge improvement on the usual Hollywood standards. I was gazing down canyons and dark, ominous tunnels so real it was hard to blink.
I'll disagree with you on Fassbender, I thought he rocked that role. It was definitely a different take on androids than Ash or Bishop in the past, but he felt more unpredictable and ominous. Maybe some of the shit he did didn't quite make sense, but I felt it was acted terrifically.
The zombie thing was odd for me as well. But I tried to keep an open mind since this "goo" is a new unexplained entity. I'm still trying to reason through what caused the boyfriend to transform (before offing himself) and the zombie guy but not the chick. She was impregnated with the organism and it reacted completely different inside her than with the men. Interesting. I dug how the organism changed with each step of habitation until finally the very familiar shape it took in the end. If that is indeed the genesis of the 'xenomorph' than I hope they do complete it's maturity and evolution in a sequel.
Was it as ground breaking and timeless as Alien. Not at all. But it's the best movie to come out tapping into that universe since Aliens. And that's good enough for me.
I do agree that the characters seemed a bit too flawed, but then, that may have been the point. Scientists may be intelligent, but that does not make them wise...or non-asshole-y folks. In terms of some of the points you make: 1) WRT the geologist getting lost, geology is the study of rocks and minerals, not mapping - if he had been a cartographer and gotten lost, it would've been more glaring; 2) It's also possible that the 3D mapping tech required so much processing power as to be difficult (or impossible) to stream back to their suit computers, though the (presumably) larger and more robust one on the ship could easily handle the data flow...doesn't explain why they couldn't feed that info back to the suits once the map was generated, though; 3) WRT the biologist, it isn't clearly explained whether or not humans have encountered other life forms yet, so his glee at encountering a clearly alien life form is somewhat understandable - though his lack of an appropriate level of caution is also a little glaring; 4) related to the former, it is also important to note that our perceptions of life form reactions is heavily, if not entirely, based on our knowledge of terrestrial forms of life...this does not mean that alien life forms would react in the same ways; yes, the snake-thing did look like it was reacting as a cobra does, but that does not necessarily mean that its behavior was a threat display...subverted by the fact that, of course, it really was one and the biologist got hammered for that; 5) still trying to figure out the operative mechanism behind the alien goo, but OTOH, the life cycle of the xenomorph itself is much more convoluted than anything we know terrestrially, so maybe it just isn't supposed to make sense based on our understanding of biology; it's also important to note that it was created by a ridiculously advanced alien species; as Clarke notes, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic...I suspect something similar is at work here; 6) it is even possible that the goo is not a biological agent at all, but rather, some form of nanotech; this would explain why the xenomorphs have a decidedly mechanical appearance, despite being a notionally biological entity, in which case, the goo could be programmed to do a variety of things depending on conditions in which it finds itself; 7) WRT David, one must remember that his actions were progrmmed into him by his creator, who clearly wasn't averse to taking excessive risks to achieve his goals; while the "standard" model of a robot (e.g. Asimov's 3-Laws-compliant) tends to involve a high degree of self-preservation programming, this is still, at its core, programming - which can be altered to suit one's intentions for said machine...in this case, making contact with the Engineers at all costs; note also Ash's directive in the original film: while the narrative focuses on the "crew expendable" aspect of the order, it is also possible (or even likely) that Ash would have been required to sacrifice himself, if it would ensure the safe retrieval of the alien sample (remember, the order stated *all* other priorities rescinded).
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, even though it was fairly slow-paced. I think this helped build the ominous nature of the story. It was a little predictable, but given what *else* Hollywood produces today, at least it has a damn story, and not just a series of pointless dialogue snippets to fill the time between the various scenes. I also loved the design of the sets and the creature designs. I am curious to see where it evolves from here; the producers have already stated that if they do get the green light for a sequel it likely won't involve much more development of the connection to the xenos themselves, as they're more interested now in exploring the Engineers and their inscrutible ways. Should be interesting.