I liked the film. There are a couple of caveats to this, but overall, this is definitely the best film in the Alien franchise in a long ass time. Way better, more thoughtful, and deliberate than Alien: Resurrection and better than Alien 3 (which although many fans have grown to appreciate more over the years, remains a seriously flawed, and underwhelming film and not the proper final piece of the trilogy that it was originally intended to be)
One thing was quite clear though, this film and all the Alien Prequels have a certain linchpin and that is the android, David. Although there were neomorphs and a couple proto-morphs (earliest protoype versions of the alien lacking the more biomechanical aspects and longer gestation cycle), they were not front and center, a.k.a not the main focus of the film. Instead everything gravitates around furthering and eventually completing David's story arc, and all the themes and philosophical questions that orbit his character's persona and motivations. (Creation, feeling superior to the inferior humans who created him, suffering from many of the flaws humanity has from his perspective etc., the desire to reach transcendence and leave a lasting legacy, acheive perfection in some way)
i found Michael Fassbender's performance as both David and the more benign, more robotic, Walter to be absolutely spellbinding. The scenes where they were both together were just enchanting, strange, and at times a bit humorous in a non-slap-stick kind of way. The fight scene between them was done much better than what I had read from reviews, and the kiss was not what was hinted at in many of the reviews, but rather a kiss of death, mafia style, which is delievered to Walter. (Before David stabs him in the neck with the flute)
The score was above average as well. The haunting music that played as the backburster neomorph emerged from its embryonic sac was just eerie, the use of the Prometheus theme, and the callback to one of the themes played in the the original Alien felt like welcome but not overdone/overused bits of nostalgia.
The neomorphs were cool as well, despite the obvious need to have them be complete cg nightmarish creatures. They didn't get much screen time but without making a film more like Aliens but with lots of neomorphs instead of xenomorphs, I don't know how that could have been avoided.(As people had guns, and there were only two of the beasties in the film)
After reading reviews and watching reviews on youtube, at least the non-spoiler ones, I went to see the film with low expectations of how good the cgi would be or how often it would be used. After having seen the film, I was pleasantly surprised. While on the one hand I prefer practical shots of the xenomorph on the big screen, there was nothing that stood out as being like a video game or just laughable like say a sy-fy channel original movie's use of cg. You could tell the alien was cg, but the design of the creature itself was better than what's been seen over the last 15 years or so. It looked as good if not better than what we last saw in Alien 3.(certainly far surpassing the disappointing design of the aliens in Resurrection)
All the acting was good, and the plot was more than serviceable. People do seem to notice/complain about the accelerated birth/lifecycle of the creatures, but I think it makes sense since they are still directly connected to the virus/black goo which produces abberations/hybrid creatures meant to be as deadly and efficient as possible. Once the xenomorphs become a creature onto their own, generations removed from those spawned by the engineers bioweapon, (and add a queen to the life cycle) it makes more sense that slower gestation rates would result. (that's my interpretation in any event)
The only things I really didn't like were that the iconic xenomorph(even if a protomorph iteration) was only in the film in the third act and even then, it was brief. The other thing was the chestburster that came out of Oram. It was just bizarre, a very thin but miniature version of an adult alien.(as opposed to say something like the "bambi burster" from Alien 3, which is more of what I expected after seeing the magazine scan of it)
In summary, I did like the film a lot. I would indeed say it was a little bit better than Prometheus, but obviously nowhere close to being as good or epic as the first two films in the franchise. (But if anyone expected that, then they'd have to be more than a little naive) I'd give this film a 7.5 out of 10.
