Ridley Scott forgot everything about great movies except for the craft

Rating: 3/10 (31 May 2012)

I'm really sorry, but this a major disappointment.
No, I didn't expect miracles or something close to the original Alien. I've been following Scott for 30 years - and it's clear that he has been on the decline since Gladiator and Black Hawk Down.
I liked a few of his later movies like A Good Year - but most have been rather flat and uninspired.
One thing I've noticed, is that he's gotten increasingly complacent with his own "point of view" in terms of historical facts and how things work in reality. It's like he has a complete disregard for plausible motivations or factual information about how things work.
Case in point - there's a scene in the movie where a certain character has to have an operation performed on her body - and it involves slicing directly through the skin and muscle-tissue of her abdomen. After the procedure, she's simply "stitched together" by metal clips in like 3 seconds - and with a bit of local anesthetic, she continues to move and jump about with some moaning. Ehm, you CAN'T have any kind of normal movement with your muscle tissue completely severed - and there was absolutely no healing involved. Just one of a series of ridiculous events.
The plot is entirely juvenile and cliché stuff with "profound" questions like who created us. For some reason, the beings who created us also want to kill us - and it seems to involve incredibly elaborate genetic engineering that also happened to kill most of them in their remote "lab facility". They're CLEARLY much more powerful than we are - and they could just bomb the hell out of us, or do it in a thousand simpler ways. But no, they seem to want to utilize excessively elaborate and dangerous genetic modification or infestation - that they can't even control.
They also like to record recent events with some kind of holographic recorder device that is unable to render clear images, only some cool ghostly images that I bet Scott loved to play with. But they're quite flexible in how they let you play recordings of their security procedure - so you can access their systems without effort.
Characters are void of personality and growth, they're REALLY stupid - and they like to freak out for no reason, and they like to stay calm and playful when there IS a reason - like when encountering a nasty looking cobra-worm - an alien - for the first time in history.
Among these faceless people - we have some willing to gleefully commit suicide by ramming an alien ship, because they like their captain, and they're required to do so because he "can't fly worth a damn" - despite him being the primary pilot hired by a billionaire to do nothing but fly the ship.
We have a religious scientist who concludes that she's found our creators, based on: "It's what I choose to believe".
Then we have the very same religious scientist look at an alien "head" they brought back - and she notices some strange growth on it. She then spends 2 seconds thinking and concludes that this is obviously some kind of "foreign cells" (impressive deduction, I must say) - and she decides to stimulate the cells with electricity - just to see what happens. No research - no caution - no nothing.
We have people who decide to open the door to their ship, seemingly with no thought process, despite having just faced complete chaos by extremely hostile alien forces - because one of their crew mates seems to be lying in front of the door. This while other crew mates have just been taken over by some kind of alien infestation.
Then we have the boyfriend of said religious scientist (a douche) who decides that the air in an alien environment is safe to breathe because his device tells him it is - and he immediately removes his helmet. A classic Hollywood scientist moment, and clearly there's no need to worry about biological contaminants in a place like that.
This movie is FULL of this kind of utterly implausible behavior and random decisions.
It has a couple of "for effect" gore scenes - but Scott manages to include ZERO tension along with them. As a result, they're mildly disgusting - but they have no lasting effect whatsoever.
The "aliens" that are a part of this movie all look like plastic - because of overly smooth and pale skin. They look like Lovecraft creatures without a much-needed paint-job.
We have a horribly predictable, pointless and wasted twist involving Guy Pearce and a certain other cast member.
We have an android, well-acted by Fassbender, who seems to be fully random in his decisions and motivations. Few actions made sense in any context - not to me anyway.
The music was overwrought and didn't fit with the mood of the film, and it seemed like one theme being repeated endlessly. A surprise, given Scott's usual flair for good music.
I think Lindelof is a complete and total hack - who only got the job because he was the "yes-man" who could match Scott's ego. This is pretty obvious in interviews - where Lindelof always manages to publicly kiss Scott's behind.
1 Star for Fassbender's performance.
1 Star for the amazingly detailed visuals.
1 Star for how the above combine to form the excellent beginning.
Now, it's just a matter of leaning back - musing over a thousand different people coming up with a thousand different explanations - each being the "correct" interpretation of this deep and thought-provoking masterpiece.
Going by the IMDb rating, I can do nothing but stay mesmerized by how efficient it is to rely on the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect and let hype do the rest. Stay real Scott, Lindelof and Hollywood.