Battle of the synthetics.

Rating: 7/10 (29 May 2017)

It was odd that the alien creatures in the movie did not make so many appearances. The trailers gave me the impression that there would be a lot of CGI with the monsters with a bunch of jump scares and such. But it turned out to be a fairly character-driven story without all that much action, and what action there was did not get executed that fabulously. The budget was used more on the technology of the ships and the world of the planet. The technology showcase shots were sort of pointless to me, but I liked the way that the setting of the eerie planet itself played into the story. The action and suspense sequences weren't that dramatic or suspenseful because of the expectations that the movie created. I knew that the movie wouldn't be afraid to kill characters off, but it wasn't hard to guess who would die and who would live based on the importance they had been given prior to that point.
The plot, though it was slow at times, was pretty good for a spectacle movie. The drama of the beginning scenes and how the crew eventually decided to land on the unknown planet was done pretty well and showed the crew's humanity. And the later decision for the people that stayed behind on the main ship to land on the planet felt justified even though it was obviously done as a plot device. Having the crew be made up of married couples added an interesting dynamic at a couple points, but I thought more could have been done with it. One thing I didn't like was that whenever something went wrong, things went downhill on all fronts which didn't really work for some reason. The climatic battle with the alien on board the ship was oddly the least violent action scene of all and wasn't that dramatically satisfying. The method of defeating the monster felt like it shouldn't have worked in much the same way as the dwarfs attempts to defeat Smaug in the second Hobbit movie. The twist at the very end was predictable but no worse for it and made perfect sense.
Despite the dark color scheme and subject matter, the movie had a relatively light feel to it. The demeanor of the human characters did not really match the mood of what was happening. I think part of the reason for this was that they all seemed to get over the deaths of their spouses a little too quickly. Yes, they grieve, but only for a scene or two. There was something about them that gave me the impression that they were in the wrong movie. The group as a whole felt more like a diverse marriage support group than a team of trained astronauts. What was much more interesting to watch was the drama between David and Walter as they each examined the other's limitations, intentions, and technological DNA. It certainly helped that Michael Fassbender gave both parts good but very different performances.
Overall, it was not what I expected and not what I came to see, but still decent. It seemed to me that the movie had a bit of an identity crisis. Stylistically, it wanted to be a sci-fi action movie, but the story itself felt more like a drama. In terms of ratings, I think it wanted to be a PG-13 movie but added in some gore and F-bombs to get an R rating like the previous Alien movies. Having not seen any other Alien movies, I can't say whether this was true to the originals, but I was okay with it as its own piece. Overall Rating: 8/10.