Just watched the movie on DVD (we're a little slow over here).
I love the original Alien. Aliens was poor as a prequel but nonetheless a good action Sci-Fi movie. Alien3 and Alien - Resurrection also had their good moments (though nowhere close to the atmosphere and complexity of the first Alien).
But this movie - I am disappointed to say the least. The characters are shallow. I don't see any character development, they are all just walking and talking clichés. The story is hair-raisingly absurd and full of esoteric kitsch.
Just a few (out of many) annyoing examples: the very moment you land on an alien plant the first thing you do is drive into an unknown structure just like that and then take off your helmets? They did the same in Alien, but those were tough cowboys and not a bunch of milksop scientists. You'd reckon they had something like first contact protocls, security guidelines or at least some common sense (you should know that it's never a good idea to seperate from the main group.) Come on!
Couldn't they find a real old person to play Weyland? Why this ridicolous mask? Every elementary school drama group has better costumes. Talking about Weyland - why did they steal the Waylon Jennings logo?
The most striking question, however, is why a race of people, capable of traveling space and initializing new life on distant planets, has to sacrifice itself to get DNA into the water. Shouldn't technacilly advanced folks have other means? And why does it have to be that complicated? On a mountain top in the middle of a storm? Aren't there shores easier to access? Or is it just to get abstruse mystical and pseudo symbollic pictures? A good example for I meant when I said "esoteric kitsch".
And morever, if they wanted to create sapient life similar to themselves (and that's obviuously what they wanted, using their own DNA) why didn't they do so straight away? Why hassle with all these steps of eveolution and wait for protozoon, hagfish and Mesozoic mammals to turn into humans, just top destroy them once it has happened?
And if their DNA is completely identical with ours (they say a 100% in the movie) why the heck do they look different?
I want my 120 minutes back, Ridley Scott.
REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS