Got back an hour and a half ago from it. Was going to write some lengthy review, but here's my short version instead:
"DAVID! WE ARE LEAVING!"
Said very much ala Hicks in
Aliens.
I was never looking forward to the idea of an
Alien prequel. I didn't see the point. Frankly, I still don't, all things considered. The answer to the question of "What's the Space Jockey" is, as David says of Shaw's question at the end of the movie, irrelevant. There is a big dead alien thing in a chair. Creepy. But the real star is what's in the hold; the Jockey, and its relation to the Alien, is entirely irrelevant to one's understanding or appreciation of Alien.
So to all those people calling those who were unimpressed, disappointed, even outright upset by how
Prometheus turned out, I have this to say:
Haters gonna make some good points.
Many of which I don't agree with.
f**k all y'all, I
enjoyed it. A classic? No.
Alien? Sheeeeit, no. A welcome big-budget antidote to
Avatar? Yes.
Its pace is awkward, it gets flabby in the middle,
Spoiler
why the f**k does no-one even think to look for what Shaw did with her squid baby, seriously, and no "They were waking up Weyland" is not a valid f**king reason to not look for the mutated alien spawn that David at least knew was somewhere and two other people were knocked out over
, and holy shit those last eight minutes were the dumbest f**king thing they could possibly have done to finish short of Nyan cat herself swooping in to whisk the survivor(s) off to Neverland, but it does not try to "out-epic" itself, there's only one real plot hole
Spoiler
SERIOUSLY, NO ONE EVEN LOOKED FOR THE THING? VICKERS NEVER WENT BACK TO HER POD? WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE?!
, there's exactly one unanswered question that the sequel needs to answer
Spoiler
Why did they change their minds?
and its visuals in 3D more than justify a trip to see it in theaters at least once.
The cinema fan in me liked it as an experience, and as a big-budget sci-fi that wasn't as useless as
Avatar. The sci-fi fan liked the pretty visuals. And the Alien fan somehow found it in himself to
get over the fact the Jockey is a dude in a suit. Honestly, that never bothered me while watching it, and thinking back, it
still doesn't.
I'll dislike it the more I watch it on DVD. It's inevitable; the film held up for its visuals and its spectacle. But it's not terrible. It's not
brilliant, when certainly it could have been, but f**k it:
It's better than
Alien Resurrection.
And a better movie than
Alien3, which isn't hard, production problems, yadda yadda.
Of the series, I'd rank it nowhere. It's not part of it. It's a spinoff, for me. It's its own thing. And it's just
dandy like that as far as I'm concerned.
