I went to see this movie by Ridley Scott, attempting to revive the "Alien" franchise with a cool, creepy "prequel." While I have to admit that visually, this was an engaging film, and would most likely have looked even better had I gone to the 3D version, I gotta say that the top-notch production values pretty well stopped at my retinas and eardrums.
The plot. meant to get at some basic questions about the origins of the alien, was rather thin and dull, IMO. The characters were mere cardboard cutouts, placeholders for the standard folks that inhabit such films. Not a one of them had a real personality written for them. It just does not cease to amaze me that the talent that created the first two films of this series has managed to misfire, rather badly, on the rest of the films.
As for some specific plot points that annoyed me (yeah... I"m writing spoilers from this point, though I seriously don't expect anyone to feel disappointed), there were a few.
1) Not only was I tired of seeing yet another "sinister robot" in this movie, but I was rather upset that his hostile actions went nearly completely unexplained. Oh, they tried to give a lame-ass explanation of how he had developed a misanthropic attitude toward all humans while wondering why he was created... but that really wasn't very sensible. And his change of heart toward the final human survivor made zero sense at all.
2) The explanation of "the engineers created humanity then turned out to hate humanity" should have been explained.
3) The many twists that they gave to the life cycle of these "biological weapons" were just confusing, more than frightening.
4) The plot point where the movie's main heroine endured an emergency, automated operation to remove a you-know-what from her uterus while staying awake AND directing the operation was stupid enough, but to see her stapled back together after being sliced pretty well in two, then going on to do her action-hero bit at the end... that REALLY pissed me off. Having endured a similar experience last year, and knowing the extreme pain that just a few TINY incisions through the abdominal wall result in, I could not suspend my disbelief to accept her actions for the rest of the film, I do not care WHAT dosage of PCP she might have had during the "operation."
So I'd have to say: yeah, there were a lot of very cool sights in the film. But if you want a story attached to it, one that hangs together reasonably well... you may as well forget it.
