A horror film wrapped in sci fi that fails in the sci fi genre

Rating: 5/10 (31 March 2013)

No sympathetic characters in the film , not even the placid robot who turns out to be sly (played well by Fassbinder). That was a very big mistake among many. I could not have cared less about any of the characters. The message of the film-well it is, don't bother looking for aliens as they'll turn out to be satanically nasty slime balls with teeth and will only want to kill you and destroy earth or take it over. The filmic references to Alien were deeply annoying. And it could have been so good if the storyline had been more philosophical and complete. OK this was not Star Wars (which was boring) or 2001 which was excellent but also incomplete. This started off as high concept with the idea of a trillion dollar mission looking for the 'engineer creators' of life on earth on a far off part of the universe. But the crew were idiots, not scientists or even plausible businessmen. The Mission is funded by a geriatric multi zillionaire head of a corporation who wants to meet his maker before he dies). The grand mythological Prometheus reference,and opening sequence with Promethean engineer character, led me to expect some philosophical centre to what turned out to be just a slime fest of gore. The CGI was of a quality and I am sure the budget was high, but the overall story result was just wholly inadequate. It left me with a sour taste in the mouth. It sinned on the story elements that make for good sci fi. It failed to resolve what it had set up at the beginning in any satisfactory way -which is fatal in sci fi. The film basically had no soul-just like the robot and everyone else in the film. Why oh why? Ridley Scott should be able to do so much better. Has he forgotten what story and characterisation is? I did not like Alien but I did like 2001 a space odyssey and First Contact. I yearn for a really good sci fi but Hollywood just does not seem able or want to produce .