I needed a drink

Rating: 1/10 (14 June 2012)

Take an uninspired director, a writer with no imagination and throw in a composer out of his element and you have this: a below average commodity (this will not meet expectations of a ROI-consider the built-in audience for this) and a poor work of art.
Clearly, Mr. Scott is fat and happy and I'm watching a genius destroy his legacy with this one. Alien is one of the best films ever made (to say nothing of the numerous other impressive works he's created). This is one of the worst. That may sound like hyperbole but in my subjective view, the shoe fits. It's right up there with "Sleepaway Camp" in its awfulness. How this came to pass is confounding. We *know* few directors can bring it visually like Mr. Scott but that's all this film is-a pretty shell. I beseech you sir: watch something done by Refn, who is a visual master that brings something more. Perhaps this will light a fire for you. Then again, you probably don't give a toot at this point.
The score was corny and overwrought. From the beginning when the horns blare at jolly intervals I'm thinking to myself "What the bleep is going on here?" I felt like I was watching a National Geographic show. None of it seemed to fit except for the rumbling, ominous, synthesizer patch. Hardly an accomplishment of compositional skill. However, I know this composer has done some quality work so I'll say no more about it. As an aside, if my memory serves me right didn't Scott p-off the venerable Jerry Goldsmith by *not* including something he had written for the opening score of Alien, having instead the insight (correctly) of using the unsettling near-silence as the title appeared across the screen? I digress. That would be on the director.
I saved the worst for last. This *story* is nothing but a cobbled pastiche of plagiarism. The writer doesn't have the good sense to steal anything worth stealing. (It was like 1 part "Mission to Mars" combined with 1 part "Friday the 13th-part...whatever" with a helpful dose of pop blandness i.e. TV) No need for a point by point cover of all the ludicrous premises (they are all virtually the same in their inanity) that abound in this film, for that has been done in other reviews. ("Come here baby, oh you're beautiful!" What?!? At this point I was looking for something to shove through *my* hand much like the Rutger Hauer's character in "Blade Runner"). The whole thing is rife with stupidity and events which offer no explanation. Why? It's simple really: that would require an imagination, something the screenwriter clearly lacks. The characters act and speak like perfect idiots. This is amateur hour at it's finest. A F*N FLUTE?!? Good God man! The attempt to interject-via faith- philosophical overtones is worthy of a Jr. high student. Try reading a bit more. It will help. Perhaps he is a good writer. I haven't seen any evidence of it in his work.
I can't comment on the acting given what these poor souls had to work with.
I'm going to don my nerd hat and say; is it too much to ask that science-fiction have a bit of-I don't know-science to it? There's a promo-clip I have seen of Weyland doing a TED talk. Has the writer ever watched one? In less than a hundred years, technology will have solved the problem of traveling millions of miles in space while in a state of suspended animation. We will have created artificial gravity and near-to-human, synthetic, androids (btw, what's the symbolism behind having the androids getting their heads torn off in these films?). Extending life expectancy? Not so much. Maybe another 50 years of decrepit aging. And of course we will have originated from homogenized angry, giant, shiny-white-mute-brutes who play flutes to initiate command of their vehicles. I guess they can't whistle. Also, there's such a lack of visual *grit* in sci-fi films nowadays that made the older ones much more believable from an immersion standpoint. It's the analogue vibe that's getting lost. Things are just too shiny, too unreal, too digital. Methinks at the end of the rainbow we won't find the giant men. We'll find a box with a CPU.
I feel a bit of shame in doing this---joining the atomized masses (to steal a phrase) with my scathing critique but I needed the catharsis.
To sum it up I'll borrow a phrase from a Scott film I actually liked (which Rupert Murdoch called a bomb-which makes me like it even more):
"It gives you a blinding headache and makes you angry."