Not bad, but disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2012)

I saw the movie some 7 hours ago in 3D. Where to begin? The 3D seemed remarkably natural, not forced onto the picture, and that was a real delight. I went to a topnotch theater in Paris, yet ghosting was present all the time. It did distract me often, but I adapted to it. The film is well-done, extremely well-acted by most but the script is a major letdown, and so are, to a lesser degree the sets. i'll focus on the script. First, there is essentially nothing new in it, and the whole feels like pieces of Alien, Star Wars, Star Trek, you name it sewn together simply to earn some extra bucks. Second, and perhaps worse than the rest, the movie is based, not on an extrapolation of what we now know about the appearance of species, but on an assumption which essentially brings us back to pre-Darwin days. The film is thus not science-fiction, but obscurantism-fiction. The writers try to confront the issue head-on, but it does not help much. There are other liberties taken with current scientific knowledge, but I could live with them, were the basic assumption not so blatantly stupid.
So, what are we left with? With a decent escapist movie, but certainly not with a masterpiece, by far. It's not even scary, there's only gore, not terror. Main culprit is the script, but who is more guilty, the guy who writes a bad script, or the director who directs it? I can understand Ridley's desire to revisit sci-fi and the alien franchise, but that was not the right way to do it. He had better left Alien stand alone as his seminal entry in the franchise.
As you may know, there are talks of a sequel to this prequel, and the ending will only confirm these talks are probably well founded.