Boring, overstuffed and unsatisfying

Rating: 6/10 (18 June 2017)

It was 5 years since I saw Prometheus in theaters. I remember really liking it, despite all the negative reviews. And so, I was looking forward to the sequel. Then it was changed to an Alien prequel. Okay. We've had a bit too many Alien movies, but it still could work. Some nods to Prometheus, then it tries to be its own movie.
Unfortunately, after watching it, I gotta say I was very disappointed.
If you want a good sequel to Prometheus, it doesn't work since it tries to be that in such a hackneyed way. If you want a good Alien movie, it doesn't work since it lacks suspense and on top of that is an incompetent prequel.
Let's go over the positives at first, which I'll be brief with. Danny McBride was very good in his role, and the only character you could root for in some way (even though he made his fair share of dumb choices). The scenery when the crew first landed on the planet looked gorgeous, like you really were in another world. Occasionally, the gore effects were pretty good. The build-up to the first alien about to burst is well-done. And finally, Michael Fassbender really tries. The script he was handed might have been flawed, but he did what he could with it.
Now... What went wrong? How about almost everything. The characters are so boring. Most of them are just throwaway alien bait, and Oram is such a dumb flipping character I was rolling my eyes and cringing in frustration. Katherine Waterson puts in a wooden performance as Daniels, a character which at first is annoyingly bland, then turns into a cheap copy of Ripley.
So, the story. Oh Jesus. They find David (the robot from the previous movie) on this mysterious planet, and decide to follow along with him (for some reason, they don't even question how he comes out of nowhere) to his cave, where we get to see some hilariously bad brother-to-brother bonding where they talk using big words and play flute. But here's where it gets really dumb: it turns out that the aliens who we have been fascinated by and scared of for years... WERE CREATED BY A FU''CKING ANDROID! There it is, folks. Once you find out you can't unhear it. Forget about the aliens being these cool creatures of the unknown, David the master robot built them. It's such a middle finger to the fans beyond words. Anyway. David has turned evil and got time to kill a crew member. YET, Orum doesn't react and decides to go with him when he's told to. Are all the people in this movie robots? Is nobody capable of free will or survival instincts? When David told him to look closer into the egg, I was laughing at how stupid he was. How many times do we have to see someone make the same stupid mistake? It's even dumber when he already knows David killed someone! As for the David/Walter conflict (the two brother Androids), it's kind of entertaining in a way but by that time the movie had already lost me. The crew (what's left of it anyway) gets back on the ship, the movie turns into a cheesy slasher flick, they thought they got Walter back with them but it turns out to be be David (PLOT TWIST!) and the movie ends.
Oh, and two more things...
The directing by Ridley Scott was sometimes baffling. Sometimes it wanted to be deep philosophical sci-fi, at other times a mindless stupid action movie, at other times gut-wrenching horror. None of this blended together which made this a tonally confusing mess. The camera work during intense scenes is terrible, it's so shaky that you can barely even see how the alien looks like. There is very little tension.
The special effects for the aliens themselves were godawful. The xenomorph looked okay at best, but the other aliens were so poorly animated I wondered if I was watching a cartoon.
I could bring up plenty of other problems (like why the fu''ck someone doesn't open up when the other person screams for help and there's a better chance of saving her right then and not by running after someone else), but I'm too tired. Too exhausted.
5.5/10 (Low 6)