While not living up to my sky high expectations, it was a worthy Alien prequel.

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2012)

First of all, let me say my expectations for this film were probably way too high. I saw some expertly made and really interesting trailers (some of the best trailers I've seen in some time) and I got excited about this film (maybe a little too much). I'll be honest, it didn't quite live up to my expectations, but it was still a very good film. A team of explorers travel to a far away planet in hopes of discovering the origin of humanity. But what they find upon arrival isn't as friendly as they hoped; they then must fight to survive and prevent it from leaving to destroy earth.
I thought the film was very well acted and the cast was solid; two actors really stood out. Fassbender was great as a human like Android David. He had the right mannerisms, movements and expressions that made the character believable. And was responsible for many of more interesting parts of the film. Another great character was Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth (who for me, was the star of the show). I loved her in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies and she was equally good here. I felt she embraced the role as the strong Ellen Ripley type character had me pretty invested in her. I don't want to give too much away, but she had a great scene that was cringe worthy and gruesome; and of course, I was riveted and couldn't take my eyes off it. It was definitely worthy of the franchise.
There are some fantastic special effects in this film and they are what makes this worth seeing in the theatre (IMAX recommended if possible). I loved the futuristic outfits, ships, vehicles and the aliens. It surprisingly didn't really have as much action as I thought it would (as there was a somewhat slow build up, understandably). So the trailer did oversell the film a bit there. But the action scenes that were there were fairly decent and had the right mix of horror and action.
Now for my beef with the film. What many viewers may find frustrating is that they are presented with a lot of questions and not many answers; and I found a number of scenes didn't really make sense. Some may feel a film that requires discussion after seeing it is great, others may disagree. Given this was touted as an Alien prequel, I was hoping for some clarity on origins of the franchise. While there were some interesting revelations, to a larger extent, this didn't happen and left me with more questions than I would've liked.
Why make this prequel if you're not willing to answer most of the obvious questions? That seems a bit ingenuous to me. Unlike Inception, where I also had many questions, the film wasn't really interesting enough throughout to overcome them. I really wanted to love this film, but will just have to settle with liking it. So while it didn't quite deliver as promised, it's still worth seeing for it's fantastic visuals and very good performances.
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