Pretty. Vacant.

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2012)

This movie is like Megan Fox: so stunningly good-looking that you want to fall to your knees in gratitude that you lived to see such a wonder. Then it opens its mouth, and the crushing disappointment sets in. At first you shrug it off -- no one is perfect (physical evidence to the contrary) -- but the dialogue only goes downhill.
Ridley Scott still makes a movie so gorgeous that it's emotionally moving. A lush soundtrack only heightens the emotions. But the script! Dan O'Bannon, you are sorely missed. The tight plot, authentic characterization, and closed-room mystery effects of the original "Alien" are all missing from this beautiful train wreck of a film.
In the beginning, characters are established. Some of them are intricate, subtle, and fascinating. None retains any consistency with the set-up. Plot likewise: bad science (not just implausible, but blatantly incorrect to anyone with a grammar school-level grasp of language) leads to stupid decisions which lead to illogical outcomes; it's an avalanche of nonsense, with no plot import or emotional impact. (It doesn't have to be accurate science, or even comprehensible; all it has to do is sound right, and this was easily disproved. So sad.) More questions were asked than answered. More plot threads were opened than tied off. Some really brilliant moves at the beginning of the movie were contradicted for unexplainable reasons, or simply and sadly abandoned. Great characters were built and left undeveloped, unchallenged, untransformed; later they were betrayed by dialogue at odds with their backstory. Unnecessary characters and subplots were added to the mix, muddying the plot and distracting from the (ever thinning, ever dwindling) story line.
And when, when did Ridley Scott start with the hamfisted moralizations? Scientists have a couple of lines in this film which are ludicrously inappropriate. Not impossible, but far from believable. Worse, they are carrying on an argument that is awkwardly nailed onto the story...and then, as is the pattern here, abandoned without resolution. This is not the place nor the time for characters to become radios for their makers' opinions, nor to go off on tangents unrelated to the thread.
The only reason I rated this as high as seven is that there is a solid skeleton underneath it all, and a beautiful facade on top. But the meat, the real substance of the movie -- plot, story, characters -- putrefy after the set up, with their delicious potential deliquescing before your very eyes.
(And if this sounds vague to the point of meaninglessness, full of symbols without referents, it's for the dual purpose of avoiding spoilers, and not going into exhaustive detail. This movie broke my heart in so many ways it would kill me to list even half of them.) That said...yeah, I'll still buy it on DVD, hope for an alternate cut to prop up the cruddy script, and cross my fingers that there will be a sequel. The same hopes I had for this movie.