I’m writing this review two weeks after I saw it, the feelings and images that pop up to the forefront of my mind when I remember this film are,
The people in the cinema waiting for the film to start – I don’t think anything beats a film you are about to watch, which is a horror action film.
The scene, where the crew are being chased by Aliens and they follow Michael Fasbender through some metal bars, running passed people that look like they have had volcanic ash spewed all over them.
The scene where the engineers look up and see Fasbender about to drop a payload on their heads and them all running as fast as they can only to be caught by the black mist of death.
The scene where Fasbender deactivates the other Fasbender, that was very unsettling. That’s all that sticks in your mind really. Even Fasbender kissing Fasbender isn’t something you remember.
All Alien films are the same, the crew get a distress call of some nature they go to investigate and they get picked off one by one by an Alien. This film is no different, the only change is the realisation that these Xenomorphs are not aliens really, they are an engineered product, created by an engineered product that humans created. In space it appears that everything is connected.
The film was at its best when it was teasing us with information about where we were and what might happen, but then when we were told and what might happen actually materialised it deflated everything. The Alien, could well have been Jason or Michael or Kruger, it was killing people in the coridoors, in the toilets, it even killed people who were having sex in the shower. The shower sex scene, seemed strange because surely these characters would not be in the mood, especially after three quarters of their friends had just been murdered.
I enjoyed Crudup, he seemed mentally unstable and his nervousness as the new captain was palpable, the Fantastic Beasts actress was pushed into becoming an action star in the last third of the film, which did not connect to anything that went on before and lastly Foot Fist Way guy, Tennessee was great, if anything he should be the star of the next Alien.
Fasbender is Fasbender, not a movie star, but a great actor. The Aliens looked better than ever, all they have to do now is figure out a way to do an Alien film, which doesn’t revolve around the blueprint that was set in the previous films.
3/5