So for this little rant I'm just gonna go through my thoughts in a checklist-type fashion because I think it will be easier. The plot you say? Well, there's a bunch of misfits that board this mysterious abandoned ship. Whilst poking around they accidentally let facehuggers loose which leads to aliens and in the end the female and the synthetic are the heroes again, originality eh.
The original 'Alien' film was set in the year 2122 when the creature was presumably killed by getting toasted in the engines of the Nostromo escape shuttle and then drifting off into deep space. But low and behold in our current age where nothing is sacred we find out that the Xenomorph can actually survive in deep space by somehow cocooning itself and it didn't die after all! What kind of species would know how to evolve to survive in the cold radioactive vacuum of deep space? This one apparently. So does this mean there's an alien Queen cocooned out in deep space somewhere? Anyway, the evil Weyland-Yutani company manages to find it (did it not drift off into deep deep space then?), try to experiment on it again, and end up getting all their people killed. Thus leaving a ghost ship floating in space.
Said ghost ship manages to float right into the orbit of a planet with a Weyland-Yutani mining colony on it yet somehow not get detected at all...except by this bunch of misfits. Said bunch of misfits are yet again a perfectly balanced diverse team of young men and women of various ethnic backgrounds, just like reality. Oh and for some reason most of them are cockney's, why? Cos Scott is British I guess? I dunno.
We learn that our female lead character Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is very close to synthetic Andy (David Jonsson), Andy is her surrogate brother. But when Andy has to have an internal disc in his head exchanged for another synthetic he becomes a completely different android and sides with Weyland-Yuntani showing that he cannot really be trusted unless he has the correct disc in his head. Its not Andy, it's really just down to a specific disc in his head. All this should really tell Rain not to get overly connected to Andy, not to get so emotional over him because he is clearly just a machine. But she does, to the point where she risks her own life and others just to save Andy. This is the first time we see a synthetic in this universe switch in this fashion. Change the disc and they can go from kind to emotionless in the blink of an eye which makes them feel way more disposable in my opinion. Why would anyone care about them?
Also, why are these synthetics so super strong? And why do they have such super fast reactions? To the point that they can take out facehuggers mid-leap. I know we saw Bishop showcasing his super fast skills in 'Aliens' but I never really understood why they would be able to do this. They're just androids, not supermen.
We meet another synthetic called Rook who is the same model as Ash from the original film. This model is the rank of science officer and apparently way more untrustworthy and dedicated to Weyland-Yutani than Andy's model. Still not really sure why a company like Weyland-Yutani would have such wildly different looking synthetics for different roles. Like why is the Andy model Black and the others White? Unfortunately the character of Rook is an AWFUL CGI monstrosity which is supposed to look like Ian Holm. Was that the best they could do??
In this film we see how the alien's acidic blood melts its way through the entire hull of a ship with deadly results. This happens a few times. The question is why have we not seen this happen before in any other alien encounters in any other film? We also again see the ridiculous lack of continuity with the gestation period of the alien species. In the original film Scott had this process take time, building suspense. Well not anymore as it all happens within five minutes, yet again.
There's an action sequence where Rain fends off a swarm of aliens using a pulse rifle in zero gravity. Sounds cool right? Sure, but the reason for this was so the acidic alien blood turned into a gloopy substance floating around the corridors. This then enabled Rain and Andy to navigate their way through it more easily. Original? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes. There is no way that would have made it easier to get through the corridors as the blood would simply be everywhere after getting splattered with gunfire. No way they would have been able to avoid all that blood. This also leads me to a small moment where Andy leaps on top of an alien whilst blasting it to pieces with his pulse rifle. So now the acidic blood doesn't matter?? Sheesh!
To top it all off we have yet another horrendous alien newborn sequence (because we all wanted another repeat of that idea). And Rain then manages to kill off said newborn in virtually a beat for beat remake of the finale from the original 'Alien' film, bar a few changes obviously. So no one was bothered by all this? No deja vu??
I have so many thoughts here, it's really hard. This is by no means a bad film, and it's definitely not the worst in the 'Alien' franchise. In fact, I'd say this is actually one of the better 'Alien' films, definitely better than 'Alien Resurrection' and the 'AvP' movies. Being a Ridley Scott production everything looks incredible, like all his films. The attention to detail is phenomenal. This world looks lived in and just incredible. Highly authentic looking, everything looks like it could actually work or do something. All the small callbacks to previous films, the little touches on set details, computer screen readouts, vehicles, costumes etc...The film is set in between 'Alien' and 'Aliens', and visually, tech-wise, sound-wise, it's all absolutely spot on, perfect, faultless.
The problem comes with originality and the plot. The plot is as basic as it gets and offers nothing. The characters are all the same predictable types and having the last man standing be a female yet again is becoming a bit of a joke now. Yes it was unique with Sigourney Weaver and Ripley but that's been done now, it was also done in 'Prometheus' and 'Covenant', time for change methinks. But overall, despite this film looking terrific, once again it feels more like a greatest hits compilation in better definition and with new faces. There are SO many moments in this film that are simply taken from all the others its quite unbelievable. Essentially take bits from 'Alien', 'Aliens', 'Alien 3', the godawful newborn idea from 'Alien Resurrection', chuck in some black goo and voilà!
This film felt more like a necessity in order to sort out the convoluted mess left behind by the failed 'Prometheus' and 'Covenant' films. Hence why this films plot does link with the black goo in order to try and explain what the hell has been going on. But had those films actually made sense and done well I doubt this film would exist because there would be no need for it.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment