I was getting ready to post a long rant about my disappointment (both at myself for believing the hype, and the shoddy film, itself) but then I read James' post which says exactly how I feel about this film, so I hope he doesn't mind if I carve and add to what he has said.
The characters should have been halved in number. In stories, empathy with the characters is ultimate importance. They did not allow us time to develop any sense of care or intuition for the character. By intuition I mean this: You would know what Ripley or Burke would have done in similar situations early on in the movie
Alien or
Aliens because those characters are drawn so well,
so early that you know one is a pragmatic kick ass and the other is a cowardly manipulator. Therefore, you can intuit what their actions would be in any given situation.
Re:Characters
The Engineers: I exist, therefore I'm a villain.
The Converted Geologist: I've been infected, therefore I'm a villain.
David: I'm an Android, therefore I'm a villain (regardless of how sketchy his motives or character was).
Charlize: Point of her? Just to add some link to Weyland from the franchise canon?
Why do we keep seeing these boring hackneyed sci-fi tropes? (Not to mention
TheTomG's comment above about Vickers running away instead of to the side of the rolling ship. When Jar Jar runs down the hill at the Battle of Naboo to escape the rolling boomers we're like; 'Of course, it's cool, cos Jar Jar is a twit!'. But when the two most intelligent females in
Prometheus do the same thing there is cause for concern.)
Anyway, back to my best bits from James' post (my edits);
The problem with the film was that it tried to shoehorn about half a dozen different themes into one film and does none of them justice. Same with the characters. There are just too many, so none get the screen time to make them really deep and allow me to connect with them...Quite frankly there were too many of them put in front of you to give any time to develop fully...[I would recommend anyone who is not a visitor to the Aspiring Writers forum here to get thee hence and see how important this comment is]
...why did they decide to hole up in the room with the head and jars? Did they not think that hanging around in a previously sealed room with a bunch of vases that have black goo oozing out of them, that weren't oozing before (as was even pointed out by one of the characters at one point iirc) wasn't the greatest idea...
Then there's David...they never even question what he's doing, like why did he touch that alien machine when he can't possibly know what it'll do... What is his ultimate motivation anyway? Trying to justify himself as worthy of his creator? Or trying to find the true meaning of the human soul he apparently lacks? [And are we to believe he pilots the craft out of altruistic needs or to follow his initial directive - there is no evidence for a definitive answer in the movie]
Elisabeth is another confused character. The whole can't have kids thread is chucked in half baked [exactly!] Her cross and religious beliefs feel like they've been dropped in to somehow add a theological element to the story that really shouldn't be there...[we're bluetoothing now, James!]
And her husband/boyfriend. They are built up to be the core relationship around which the story revolves. Then half way through he is just randomly flamethrowered to death. Why is he drinking so heavily? He shows no sign of it before the ship sets off, then soon as they find the engineers he goes all out of character, slouching around with a bottle in his hand. [Exactly!].
The captain was reasonable, though quite why he was so happy to suicide kamakazi himself at the end was a bit out of character (same with the two pilots. [Why? Well because he is black and we all know black folk are happy-go-lucky singalong comedians who always get killed before the end of the movie? Notwithstanding the fact that Idris Elba was born down the road from me and has an English accent. It's just another example of racism in Hollywood.]
Engineers
[now for my biggest moan]
The engineers are a total cop-out. The original alien film had the pilot, who was never explained or really covered in any of the subsequent films. All we know is he's bizarre looking alien and fossilized and a victim of the (main) aliens. Part of the appeal is having some things that are never explained. So going back and saying 'oh he was just an advanced human in a suit' is quite frankly insulting.
[You've hit on the most iconic moment in Alien for me; when the away team in Alien find the Space Jockey I was intrigued and obsessed to a small degree of how/what/why it got there. Most clear in my childhood mind (I'm 40 now) were two things; 1, the fossilisation; 2, the hole in his chest. So where is this Space Jockey?]
Black Goo
[the only thing I have to say about this is that it was another concept introduced to muddy already conceptually over-populated and muddy waters]
The black goo stuff is another part of the alien lifecycle that wasn't in any of the previous films...
...Then again, for my favourite geologist, it just zombifies him, causing him to rage beat up a bunch of throwaway characters, whilst for the engineers, it causes their heads to explode. Inconsistent...
Deeper Meanings
The film starts off 'oh look, here are these aliens who were on ancient Earth.' Well that's gonna be a fairly fundamental turning point in human history and could probably take up a whole film in its own right.
...The archaeologists then make the unqualified assumption that these aliens created us somehow (as one character points out, throwing out centuries of established Darwinism). Again a whole film's worth of stuff at least right there...
[I love the idea of panspermia but it has to be consistent with our existing knowledge of the Theory of Evolution. To my knowledge it is accepted that what is now Eastern Africa - Tanzania etc was the crucible of humankind. I'm betting they did not look like huge white giants...or maybe the DNA exact match scene has me confused.]
Other Inconsistencies
The alien cut out of Elisabeth somehow grows enormous despite being locked in a room with nothing to eat. [I'm glad someone else was bothered by this.]
...The eponymous ship is nice and shiny, a (no doubt expensive) research vessel, yet the crew look like they were just picked randomly from a bunch of dock workers looking for casual employment. [And I also thought it anachronistic in terms of technology. it seemed way advanced to the stuff we see in the following movies. I'm not talking about the Nostromo hauler or the prison planet; I'm talking about the military tech in Aliens which (as we know from our own Military-Industrial Complex) should be far more advanced.]
Then at the end, flying off to ask the engineers some more questions? It may be a nice setup for a sequel, but after the response the engineer in stasis gave when woken up and queried, I wouldn't hold out much hope that any other engineers are going to give a more polite answer. In fact they might just blast Elisabeth's ship out of the sky... [And I hope they do, and that we don't need to suffer an extension of this rotting franchise. Alien died after Alien3 for me (possibly after Aliens), to use this morass of concepts and bad screenplay to groom us for future instalments is petrifying.]
...If it was a human beacon then the crew of the Nostromo would have immediately recognised it as such, not mistaken it for a distress beacon...[Indeed.]
Before I go I want someone to explain two things to me. I'm sure there is a reason for this which I missed as it is far too big an error to have made accidentally; In
Aliens we are told that the moon is
LV426 yet in
Prometheus we were shown
LV223. What happened/will happen?
Where is the fossilised Space Jockey with chest burster hole?
And finally, I know that this post may make me come across as a hater: I am not. I am not a fan of Aliens in the way that I am of, say
BSG or
Star Wars (and yes, I love the prequels
), but I just feel so let down by a movie I was looking forward to seeing.
pH
