I'm actually a bit disappointed by this.
Guy Pearce basically did a poor James Mason impression and it's getting heralded as some sort of utopian canon-saving device?
I genuinely felt Lance Henriksen's interpretation was a lot better - more understated and reserved, but better for it. Contrast this with the speech thing he gives aboard the ship. The latter is superior.
And yes, I know this was meant to have been shot separately, but there's no reason to believe this isn't
precisely the same performance he's already been filmed doing in the main feature. A change in director won't have massively changed it.
Besides, the text feed in the background even states he's called 'Wayland', for crying out loud! Interpreting something hurriedly flung together for a Web site as 100% new canon? I'm going to wait and see... Nothing counts unless it's on screen in the actual movie, itself, so far as I'm concerned.
And if the feature's half as superficial as this felt, I fear it's going to repeat the same pattern which has been in operation since the late nineties... Namely, that the preceding entry in the series which was universally hated, somehow becomes the preferred choice: After '
Resurrection', people reassessed '
Alien 3' and preferred it. After '
Alien Versus Predator', people revised and felt they liked '
Resurrection' more.
Try not to get your hopes up too high, please.
There's a very real possibility that what we end up seeing might be so bad that there's a sudden groundswell of responses along the lines of, "Well, on the whole, it had it's flaws, but '
Requiem' was kind of better... Never thought I'd say that."
And if you don't believe me, go back and watch how people reacted to that film. Everyone was so hyped up with excitement and hatred for Anderson. There were entire magazine articles published around the 'at least it's not Anderson' meme. Then, when it came out, everyone decided they liked the first one more.