Mixed Reactions

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 2012)

Immediately after viewing Ridley Scott's triumphant return to science fiction I found myself a divided house. On the one hand we have stunning visuals, some fantastic alien creatures, and a story that delves into deep themes about the creation and destruction of life. On the other hand however we have one-dimensional characters whose motivations are often dubious or whose actions are often inconsistent with aspects of their characters seen moments ago. We have a plot that wants to pretend it's all about seeking our creators, whoever or whatever they may be, which much also pay lip-service to Alien by having obligatory suspense and terror.
The film has been called related to Alien but not a prequel in and of itself, but this is just a clever marketing gimmick to skirt around the fact that the movie attempts to answer all the questions a fan of Alien might have about xenomorphs and what created them AND us, but then it falls short and answers none of them. The movie comes tantalizingly close to connecting the dots in a satisfactory way but then in the final act decides against bringing the story to an agreeable climax and instead opts to simply set up more sequels.
Presumably these sequels will also connect the dots further leading in to Alien. So while I enjoyed the film and absolutely love seeing Ridley play around in the visual sandbox that is the Alien universe again, I also feel very much cheated by the movie. It teases you with pseudo-explanations and leaves you filling in many of the blanks yourself while the dots it does connect with Alien only leave you with further questions. Had this movie only been tangentially related to Alien, but been a stand-alone story, it could have worked, but the movie instead seems to want to be half-prequel and half-original all while setting up for a sequel to the prequel. Honestly after feeling hoodwinked by this film I'm not sure I want to pay to see another two hour plus series of half-answers, when really deep down the xenomorphs themselves are more interesting than pseudo-philosophical musings on how and why they were created.
The movie is by no means bad, it has its flaws to be sure, but if the buzz so far is any indication I have a feeling it will be polarizing and leave many who had different expectations with a bad taste in their mouths. In the end it's hard to give it a rating on a scale of 1-10, parts of it are brilliant, stunning, and deep, other parts of it are shallow, pointless, and at times downright silly. Not bad, perhaps okay, but certainly not great.