Makes Prometheus better by default.

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2017)

Well, it certainly makes many apologies for Prometheus and fits it better into the franchise's universe... but I'm not convinced that this saves it from the glaring mediocrity that covers almost all of the film. No, this isn't the worst film of the franchise but it's far from the best... but that's just stating the obvious.
Not all aspects of this film are bad, but the parts that aren't I feel like I've seen before in the original series, i.e. the good films. Maybe these consistencies were the point? If so poor execution. The fight on the spaceship at the end is just a rehash of the original Alien and Aliens film. Once again maybe this is intentional, if so I can't understand why, rehashing beloved scenes never goes down well with fan bases that want to see something new. In this film I thought I would see something new and I didn't...
Fassbender absolutely solely powers this movie too in terms of character development, I really appreciate his part in it but the others not so much, we barely get to know most of them before they've almost all let themselves die (sometimes without the alien's help). Minus him, we see no character development... seems familiar? *cough cough Prometheus*...
Some of the visuals are good, it's clearly filmed in a beautiful part of the world but this doesn't save it, nor do some of the other messes. I knew that the Alien wouldn't be able to escape the CGI trap, that was clear even before the trailer was released but it doesn't mean it's not worth complaining about. I preferred it when the Alien relied on stealth primarily as a way of hunting, it made things more tense, but with CGI overkill in place the creature can just do whatever the hell it wants at next to no cost.
After writing this review I feel like the negatives outweigh the positives, I was in two minds before I started typing but now I'm less convinced about how this film holds up. It isn't as bad as say, AVP2... but that's hardly a compliment. It kept me relatively entertained, but it is not worthy of the franchise, it probably wouldn't attract so much hate if it was a separate film about a separate alien in a separate universe, lumping it in this universe just drives more disillusioned fans away.