I had no idea this was out on digital platforms until I saw someone mention it on twitter yesterday.
I must say, I rather liked it. My third favorite film in the franchise. And I'm one of those weirdos who enjoys both 3 and 4. None of them touch the first two obviously.
I went in with low expectations as I always do with Ridley Scott, you just never know what you're gonna get with him. I have two main gripes: the dumb characters and the cgi Aliens. Nothing original there I guess based on this thread.
- I'm not one to really nitpick the logic of a sci-fi or fantasy film or to look for plot holes. But goddammit, just one line from Mother saying she had scanned the atmosphere and that she couldn't detect any viruses or micro-organisms in the air would have helped a whole lot. It's not as bad as it was in Prometheus tough, where the characters were nothing more than 80s slasher fodder. Here, despite their cluelessness, I rather liked them. From Danny McBride to Daniels and even the out-of-his-depth Captain, they felt like real humans, like a real crew.
- Ridley Scott was clearly not that interested in the Aliens themselves, which is nothing new considering the first Alien and Prometheus. It's a rather common trope in horror stories that the true danger comes from a different place than advertised. But the Xenomorphs just looked like over-animated cartoons. As if even Scott had gotten bored of them and didn't care about really capturing them with his greatest strength as a filmmaker: his incredible eye for shot composition. But in the end, they weren't much more than henchmen for David.
Which brings me to why I liked this movie so much. It felt like Ridley was having just as much fun with the material as Fassbender was. I mean, the flute scene + "I'll do the fingering" says it all. There was a dark humor bordering on nihilism throughout the whole film. A fuck you attitude from Ridley that permeated every scene. "Oh, you didn't like Prometheus except for Shaw? Well, she died in the most horrific way possible and the Engineers are dead too. Because fuck you, I'm Sir Ridley Scott."
It was just a fun and ambitious sci-fi horror film for me. It doesn't really go anywhere nor does it really constitute a good prequel to the Alien saga but on its own, it's a rather amusing remake of the Island of Doctor Moreau. With David and Ridley in the role of the good Doctor, eager to fuck with our expectations and introduce us to a new and unfamiliar bazaar of horrors.
Anyway, I understand why this movie is so divisise, but I had a good time. This is one of those cases where I even appreciate the movies' flaws as the strange and ambitious deviations that they are. I'd even watch a sequel with just David on the ship experimenting on all the poor colonists with a big hungry smile on his face. I imagine it would very much look like the failed Ripley clones scene in Resurrection but times a hundred and with more classical music and phallic imagery.
3/5
Alien > Aliens >>> Covenant > 3 > Prometheus > Resurrection
_/¯