A monster tail of a moral tale

Rating: 9/10 (12 January 2020)

This sequel to Prometheus, prequel to Alien (the original) is bound to split its audience because it's a monster tail of a moral tale. Put simply: good and evil, where do they come from? If you don't like Ridley Scott's answer, you're sure to shy away from its message.
Most of our monsters are the monsters of our own imagining. Thus, the tale unfolds from the tip of its birth, [beware, here be monsters, sorry spoilers, just like little dragons on ancient maps] in the mind of an imperfect human, to his creation, not Adam, but David (would you Adam & Eve* it), an android who shares his maker's defects, to the terrible consequences that result.
Rather like a cartoon mouse before a sun, over a great enough distance, his creator's defects cast a gigantic shadow onto a distant planet's surface. It's really, deeply sad.
He wanted David to be perfect but uncreative, tame, in fact. David 'knows' all all the classic culture, from Adam to Beethoven and all the other letters, notes and numbers there are.
The problem is that 'perfection' isn't perfect. Einstein said that it's not knowledge that makes a genius, it's imagination. Which is the mother and father of all invention. The new android says, at one point, that one wrong note eventually unravels the whole symphony. Beethoven, oddly, said something different. To make one mistake, he said, is forgivable but to play without passion is not.
David grew his own imagination and, because a morally-bounded limit was not coded into his program, it turns out to be a very warped symphony indeed. It gives birth to the child of Prospero and Frankenstein - ALIEN(s)!!!
The "perfect" fighting machine survivalist, the alien has no morality, chained to a razor-sharp intelligence. It kills its organic (human, as it happens) host and then replicates and multiplies. If this sounds like too much of human history, you will find this realisation very uncomfortable. Too many humans believe in the Alien.
After all, we have magicked up Autonomous Killing Machines which have already killed a few people. Well, currently a few, but there's bound to be more on the way. A lot more. It's humanity, you see - we're survivalist killers who practise on each other.
Only real moral boundaries can save us now. The first step is the hardest - we make, create, heaven and/or hell, that's our choice. Thus spake Zoroaster. Or something.
Ridley Scott is a creator too. He's projected our mouse-sized maturity onto a vast canvas and its single question is: Are we big enough to take responsibility for our own thoughts, inventions and actions? Own up and then grow up. Or vice versa. Whatever, but do it today.
In the end he leaves us with the knowledge that the dragon is never slain forever and the price of liberty is therefore eternal vigilance.
I think he's done a terrific (both senses) job. I really enjoyed it. Furthermore, in the light of current events, its message is timely and ever more timely. Over time, I believe that this film will be seen as a classic. Not perfect, heaven forfend, but classic nevertheless.
Fair warning of foul weather, methinks.
*London, Cockney rhyming slang for "believe".