So so average - BIG SPOILERS

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2012)

As an Alien fan I was so excited to see a return to the beginning of the franchise. I wish they had left it alone! Now I have waited about a month before writing this because I wanted to analyse it first.
Within the first 30 seconds you have to question the film, seeing some over-sized blue humanoid with muscles popping out of his muscles, looking like some kind of blue bodybuilder and a musical score which felt more akin to the Scottish highlands than a sci-fi movie.
Once that scene is over we see our protagonist, echoing Ripley is Noomi Rapice who seems to have some kind of relationship with some guy, who is fleshed out enough to care about. Rapice herself plays it almost note for note like Ripley from Alien, its not a bad performance but a predictable one to the end and one of only two performances you will actually remember from this film.
After working out a map to "our" creators, its off to space with generic crew that no one cares about! The nerdy one, the tough one, the uptight by the book command one and a bunch of also alive at the moment ones but soon to be dead ones. Of course there is the android and possibly the best performance in the film comes from Michael Fassbender as David, he comes off as childlike, cold, calculating and creepy, adding a slightly different take on the androids in the alien universe and a welcome breath of something new.
Then just as you start to invest in the film, something happens where you either a) Laugh out loud or b) Start saying "really?" over and over again. Guy Pearce in old man prosthetics which are on par with someone sticking wet toilet paper on an actor and saying that they look 70 years older! but moving on...
They reach the planet to investigate, and to the films credit the visuals and special effects are gorgeous, only to be brought down by the new designs for the creatures and from here on out to the end of the film its a step by step script, following familiar points which everyone has seen a million times but with scenes so stupid and poorly executed that it seems more like a parody in some places.
In short: Crew are killed and or infected by alien goo penis snake, other crew who no one cares about because they have hardly any screen time or are just stereotypes are killed by zombie creature created by said snake, zombie creature is killed. another crew member is infected by android with different objectives to the crew. romantic interest crew member bonks leading lady... leading to squid baby abortion, romantic male interest sacrifices himself before turning into a zombie thing... Shock horror the Space Jockeys are evil... more shock horror old man is stowed away on the ship for no real reason other than to be a twist. Even more shock horror they have to stop the ship from leaving for earth to kill all humans. Space Jockey is infected with squid face hugger and utter shock horror it spawns the first alien at the very end of the movie making the entire film pointless because its set on the wrong planet!
The visuals make up for some of the flaws, but good direction and special effects do not fill the cracks in on a poorly written sci-fi script. It pretends to be deep and intelligent but the script is shallow and stupid.
I just hope that if the new Blade Runner (one of my all time favourite films) project gets off the ground and Ridley Scott directs it, that he thinks a bit more about the script.
Vermin