Here's the thing...I really wanted this to be the deep intellectual exercise that challenged me to think about the nature of man and our relationship with God, the Universe, and Everything. I just don't think this is that movie. As I said before, it starts on this path, and in a very promising way. The gorgeous prehistoric landscapes, the mysterious hooded figure who sacrifices himself to initiate life, apparently on Earth. The introduction of David, and the arrival at the Alien outpost, all point toward the type of Fundamental Question Asking/Answering and thought-provoking you describe. I'm all about movies that challenge the audience with ideas or images that are totally unexplained or even unexplainable. 2001 is one of my favorite movies. More recently, Tree of Life, and the lesser-known but equally (in my opinion) fascinating The Fountain present the same type of existential questions with much less linearity and narrative grounding, and do so much more effectively. In fact, I think my biggest beef with this movie is that there is too much that is explained or squeezed into conventional plot structures that ends up forcing the audience to ask the kinds of questions that I presented earlier. For example, why keep having these jaunts back and forth into the Alien facility? Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if in 2001 Dave was shuttling back and forth between his escape pod and his little neo-classical alien apartment, picking up bits of information about his hosts each time? They use an army of hamster wheels to power the floor lights! They ship the tea in from Europa!
"I'm all about movies that challenge the audience with ideas or images that are totally unexplained or even unexplainable."
It would be much more mysterious and thought-provoking if the entire movie was structured around one trek into that place, and the horrible reality it presents slowly unfolding for us and the characters. That was what was so great about the first Alien film. This place that they had landed was so shrouded, literally in fog, and figuratively in mystery, and the ship itself is a complete cipher...there is nothing explained at all, except by visuals that the audience is forced to interpret for themselves. Then they bring back Kane with some creature attached to his face, and we basically have no idea what is going on until dinnertime. I can see how mirroring that amazing effect would be difficult in this film, because the filmmakers are dealing with an audience that is intimately familiar with the franchise and the basic biology of the creatures we are likely to encounter (hint: they are probably going to enter you in some painful way, and exit you in an even more painful way). For me they did so much winking at the audience with this fact that it totally betrays the absurd notion that this is not a prequel, but a better movie would have, in my opinion, used the audience's anticipation of Alien-y type incidents to greater effect. As presented, I feel a lot of it is wasted on the aforementioned biologist/Fifield stuff. Total nonsequitur: I had a fraternity brother in college who was also named Fifield, also redheaded (less so), and was super shady. Maybe my opinion on this is slightly affected by these ironies.
I think a lot of this boils down to a series of strange choices that individually, aren't fatal to the film, but collectively I simply couldn't ignore. I won't rehash all of the previous points of criticism, other than to ask a strangely personal but weirdly relevant question: did your wife have a C-section? Before you delete my email, hear me out. My wife has had 3 C-sections, and this must be my personal hang up, but after these procedures, she literally could not stand for something like twelve hours, much less prance about some alien planet, scaling spaceships, hauling droid carcasses (chassis?) around, etc. And I honestly believe that women watching this movie are going to have a similar reaction, that her abilities at the end of the movie are absurd. That magical technology that you mention? Staples. If we ever have kid #4 I'm going to tell her to suck it up like Noomi. Now, I concede the point that individually, these types of complaints seem like Olympic-caliber nitpicking. However, the film is full of so much of this stuff that it borders on satire. I've already mentioned Zombie Fifield, the Biologist, and the surgery, but here are some more...What is up with Vickers basically challenging the captain to sleep with her to prove that she is not an android? I could laugh this off as banter designed to aid in character development, but the movie sort of hints that they go through with it. A) She seems 100% serious. B) He immediately follows her out of the control room (bridge? was that just a Star Trek thing? Dietrich could answer that), and C) the fact that no one is monitoring the surveillance cameras sort of plays a role in the plot...but this incident is never mentioned again, and only served to confuse me. Did the Vice President of Weyland Corp. just sleep with the captain of a ship while on mission on a dare? Do they have a relationship?? Has she done this before??? This is pretty much the only character development Vickers gets, that she may or may not randomly shag crew members, other than the hackneyed daddy issues that come up at the end of the movie. I honestly think Vickers could have been played by a teenager and it would have made literally no difference in the plot. Isn't that kind of a problem? Lastly, her death...oh boy. Honestly, Josh, I laughed out loud in the theater when this happened. As soon as the ship began to fall back from liftoff I thought to myself that there was no way that they were going to do it...and yes they did...they killed her, Wile E. Coyote-style, crushed by an enormous rolling donut. Here's the thing. When my son was 4 and we would watch Looney Tunes, he would ask me why wouldn't the coyote just run to the side? So now I ask you: why wouldn't you just run to the side? In all seriousness, I think that Charlize Theron was criminally wasted in this movie, and it was just another nail in the coffin for me.
- Kevin Murray
I think a lot of this boils down to a series of strange choices that individually, aren't fatal to the film, but collectively I simply couldn't ignore. I won't rehash all of the previous points of criticism, other than to ask a strangely personal but weirdly relevant question: did your wife have a C-section? Before you delete my email, hear me out. My wife has had 3 C-sections, and this must be my personal hang up, but after these procedures, she literally could not stand for something like twelve hours, much less prance about some alien planet, scaling spaceships, hauling droid carcasses (chassis?) around, etc. And I honestly believe that women watching this movie are going to have a similar reaction, that her abilities at the end of the movie are absurd. That magical technology that you mention? Staples. If we ever have kid #4 I'm going to tell her to suck it up like Noomi. Now, I concede the point that individually, these types of complaints seem like Olympic-caliber nitpicking. However, the film is full of so much of this stuff that it borders on satire. I've already mentioned Zombie Fifield, the Biologist, and the surgery, but here are some more...What is up with Vickers basically challenging the captain to sleep with her to prove that she is not an android? I could laugh this off as banter designed to aid in character development, but the movie sort of hints that they go through with it. A) She seems 100% serious. B) He immediately follows her out of the control room (bridge? was that just a Star Trek thing? Dietrich could answer that), and C) the fact that no one is monitoring the surveillance cameras sort of plays a role in the plot...but this incident is never mentioned again, and only served to confuse me. Did the Vice President of Weyland Corp. just sleep with the captain of a ship while on mission on a dare? Do they have a relationship?? Has she done this before??? This is pretty much the only character development Vickers gets, that she may or may not randomly shag crew members, other than the hackneyed daddy issues that come up at the end of the movie. I honestly think Vickers could have been played by a teenager and it would have made literally no difference in the plot. Isn't that kind of a problem? Lastly, her death...oh boy. Honestly, Josh, I laughed out loud in the theater when this happened. As soon as the ship began to fall back from liftoff I thought to myself that there was no way that they were going to do it...and yes they did...they killed her, Wile E. Coyote-style, crushed by an enormous rolling donut. Here's the thing. When my son was 4 and we would watch Looney Tunes, he would ask me why wouldn't the coyote just run to the side? So now I ask you: why wouldn't you just run to the side? In all seriousness, I think that Charlize Theron was criminally wasted in this movie, and it was just another nail in the coffin for me.
- Kevin Murray