Needs to flesh-out characters

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2012)

I can't say I enjoyed this film with the main reason being the issue of character development, or more accurately the lack thereof.
The priority was to tell the basic story, OK, which answered questions re: Alien.
But an opportunity was missed. The film could have been 'humanized' (so to speak) with more emphasis on the personal relationship of the scientist-duo protagonists.
An opening scene could have had them at home attempting to conceive to the sounds of Chopin, and to get the time, edit out the unnecessary scientist-security guy lunchroom bit. (And that would have given the credits-music a pay-off.)
The characters are trotted out and portrayed one-dimensionally so who cares about them? Therefore the movie has no 'grip'.
Not that some of them don't have a degree of credibility: the trillionaire CEO isn't exactly the brightest fellow but this is not surprising as he has wasted his life focused on money-making so his fate fits. But the lack of storyline redemption for some of the others further adds to a sense of coldness-who cares about this project.
One of the shoot-em-up scenes is simply an irrational butcher shop.
3D would have helped at least in the visuality, which was OK, but the film needs anything in the way of elements to try to fill this void of characterization. With Creature of the Black Lagoon as the roots of 3D and with our greenies sliming about in the soup why not set it up for the glasses?
If you are an Alien devotee then you will likely make the effort to get out of the house to the theater to see this one, but for anyone else I don't see the point of doing so.