Broken promise

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2017)

This is the second prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien and a sequel to Prometheus. Rumour was that Scott wanted to make a Prometheus follow up and a separate Alien movie but this seems to blend both projects again to the detriment of the Alien franchise.
The certificate (UK 15) should have been the give-away. This was never going to be a horror movie. There is one moment, where the android David comes face to face with a quivering pink creature that seems straight from a Del Toro movie but like all the other moments of terror, the director cuts away quickly before the horror can really be ramped up. A shower rape by Alien scene is scarcely longer in the film than it was in the trailer.
Other set ups resemble the structure of computer games in which specific threats must be confronted and overcome in specific settings before moving on to the next level. There's the escape the alien foetus back-buster in the quarantine room and the fight off the dog-like pink aliens in the Wheatfield field. Ah yes, chaff, the perfect metaphor for this movie.
Alien was once described as a giant Boo! In space but there are no real surprises here. Scott treats his subject matter with as if it were sacred scripts rather that the endlessly reworked and entirely predictable characteristic themes that define science fiction. Will we find that Man's creation will turn on the creator? Yes we will. Will we find that when two identical looking robots meant, one will replace the other? Of course, and although this feels like a massive spoiler it has actually been given away in trailer.
Some critics have seen this as a good half bad half movie but I did at least find it consistently engaging. I admit some of that was just sheer incredulity. I mean the first half, which critics like, is a stroke by stroke remake of Alien. That said, I watch the movie with a real Alien fan who bemoaned the departure from the time scale with which the Alien metamorphosizes from facehugger to adult alien. And CGI still doesn't deliver the extraordinary presence of mechanical effects, the Alien Queen (in Aliens) was a never to be repeated triumph of costume and puppetry.
It would probably be best if the Alien franchise ended here. Alien 3 was compromised rather than enhanced by the demands of Sigourney weaver's burgeoning sense of stardom, Alien 4 too cast and creatures into the realms of gurning French grotesquery and while The dark Horse comics were great , the Alien vs Predator stuff just did nothing that good.
What further moves could there be?Scott has endowed the creature with a soul and revealed its creator. I guess I'll have to go back to waiting to meet mine because I can't see this movie series going anywhere good.