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| Yeah not so much |
Update: I saw this and found it to be both hilarious and accurate :)
So now that you know I didn't like it, I'll make sure it makes sense as to WHY. First, it wasn't because it was slow. I've heard some people say things like "you just wanted more action"... while it may be true that I love a good action movie, I can name plenty of movies that are "slow" that I have enjoyed completely (Magnolia, Schindler's List, No Country...) so I don't really think that was the problem. Maybe I'm an idiot but there were just a few things that seriously bothered me about the movie,as follows, in no particular order.
1. Why is David so hell bent on keeping Elizabeth Shaw pregnant? He's already experimented some with the black goo (on Holloway), not sure what result he's hoping to see by an impregnated Shaw delivering to term. This also leads to the scene where Elizabeth goes to use the fancy surgery machine and is told it's "configured for male only". I get that this is supposed to be a tip off about Weyland being on the ship, but is completely out of character for Meredith Vickers (surprised she's Weyland's daughter....no). She may not have been fully aware that her father was on the ship, but she was fully aware of this table and would clearly have had it configured for her use in an emergency as well. Now the machine could have not been set up to perform a C-section or an abortion, as Ms. Vickers was probably not expecting that particular surgery to be necessary, but that's not how it was written so it's lazy and stupid. Why would you throw up a completely ridiculous barrier in an attempt to create false tension, when 3 seconds of thought gives you a more reasonable one?
2. Why are Shaw & Holloway so surprised by the cave mapping equipment Fifield? Haven't these doctor's been exploring caves all over Earth looking for signs on the cave dwellers? In the initial scenes on Earth they are going in to a cave that appears to be largely unexplored, wouldn't this fancy ass tech be quite useful in their line of work? Even if they had never had the budget to afford it, they surely would have at least HEARD about it before.
3. While we are on the subject of mapping... So the guy not only has mapped out the cave (spaceship) completely, but also has a direct link back to their ship. When Fifeld & Millburn decide they are not sticking around for this nonsense they decide to leave the group and head back to the ship. This leads to them (predictably) getting lost. WTF? Seriously? They have mapping equipment & a direct link to the ship (who can also tell them exactly where they are) and they get lost? Oy Vey.
4. When they get lost, they wind up running in to the first of the live snake things in the black goo. Millburn (supposed expert in dealing with animals) decides it's a good idea to just go on up and pet it like a freaking 3 year old? Really? Wouldn't a SCIENTIST exhibit a little more caution and observation, rather than trying to freaking cuddle with a serpentine creature (which are frequently quite dangerous on Earth, where he presumably learned to be disgustingly incompetent)?
5. Getting back to David's poisoning of Holloway, why wasn't he more on top of what Holloway was up to overall? It seems to me that if you were really trying to test the goo and see if it was the secret to extending Weyland's life, you might keep a little more track of him. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but it just kinda seemed like odd behavior overall.
6. Why do the "Engineers" suddenly want to destroy humanity? One theory I've heard is that they were not pleased with their little "experiment" after we killed Jesus, who was apparently an exceptionally short engineer (this so doesn't hold up logically, but whatever). Going with that I can understand why they didn't just wipe us out on one of the earlier visits, but then why were all the cave drawings pointing to this particular planet? I have to assume that on these early visits the Engineers weren't pissed yet, so they were... what inviting us? To come to the planet where our complete destruction waits? That's just dumb. If the experiment was to see if they could create a species that would be able to find them, are they just leading us to a place to be slaughtered? If those are just precautionary measures, why not meet at another planet, then if it turns out we are hostile you haven't given away your secret weapon. Overall just seems really arbitrary.
7. This is somewhat of a minor point, but when Shaw & David's head decide to take the ship back to the Engineer's home planet, how exactly does Shaw plan to survive the trip? Did she bring a Star Trek replicator with her? It's likely not just around the corner (the Engineers had stasis pods) and David can't exactly put her in Stasis and bring her out again (no hands, remember?) So in a couple years (assuming this planet is 1/2 way between the Engineers and ours) her skeleton and David's head will show up to do absolutely nothing?
8. Why the hell did the two other crew members decide to just die with the captain? It seems like the 3 of them (Vickers & other two crew) should have been running to get that life boat fired up and try to get back to Earth to warn everyone. Three have a better chance of surviving (heck you could kill two and survive on their remains should all food sources run out). But no they decided to pointlessly ride along to their death because, loyalty?
So yeah, I guess in a nutshell I hated the movie. Not for being slow moving (it was) but because it just had too many holes in the plot. Too many things happened simply because they wanted to create some kind of tension, and they did a poor job of it. Most of these things felt arbitrary by nature, and the big "twist" of Weyland being alive was so shocking that I almost dozed off. By the end of the movie I was very tempted to go ask for my money back. Thankfully I didn't actually have to pay for it as we used movie passes from my brother-in-law.
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