Kind of almost makes you wish this were Prometheus huh

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2017)

Kind of almost makes you wish this were Prometheus huh? I'm of two minds on this one, much like Ridley Scott seems to have been. He wanted to continue the origin story he started with Prometheus, continue to explore what the search for answers entails and the mysteries it has over us. But he also knew that this time around, he had to deliver the Alien goodness or audiences would get all pissy again and wouldn't understand the point of it all and blah blah blah (it wasn't called Alien: Prometheus for a reason).
So here we have a typical Alien type movie setup with a big spaceship and slumberers awakening from their cryo comas too early and then exploring some desolate planet where of course the crap hits all kinds of fan. Things gestate, parts burst, there's blood and violence. But the thing is, Scott's heart doesn't seem to be in these scenes. They almost feel as if they've been directed by someone else (perhaps Luke Scott, his son, the 2nd unit director)? They're almost mindless in their CGI flash-cut matter of factness (is there anything worse than CGI Xenomorph?). Nothing surprising or engaging or even remotely resembling the kind of terror on display in the original Alien - just flashiness and shininess and fastness.
But then there's this other movie all mixed up in it that's a more direct sequel in line with what Scott was doing in Prometheus. It involves David holed up on this world creating life, studying life, becoming a God. There's strange architecture from the Engineers (indelible), philosophizing and eroticism and genuine intrigue and mystery. It's about the creation of horror by a rejected and alienated creation trying to discover its place in the universe (turtles all the way down) and it's far more interesting than the generic space creature movie that keeps popping up.
It was a valiant attempt to blend the two but it doesn't work because you get the feeling this wasn't meant to be an Alien movie in the first place (we already have that/those) and Scott didn't really want to do that. But Scott is nothing if not smart about his business decisions - Fox funded it and audiences were interested again at first, more so than they would have been if it were Prometheus 2 - and he got to at least make part of a movie he was interested in. Let's hope for a third, one that audiences can engage with on its own terms.