- I thought the opening sequence was actually quite beautiful. I love a volatile and barren landscape, I really do.
- Obnoxious characters should always die first.
- I’m not really a fan of overly religious movies and this rubbed me the wrong way in that regard. It was all the intelligent design stuff, what with the human DNA 100% matching that of the aliens found on the planet. Because… no. I feel like it’s a huge mental leap to go from “Hey, there are lots of ancient artistic expressions featuring these five planets” to “Obviously our creators are calling us into space?” Of course an old white gazillionaire would fund this project; I’m willing to bet this guy is upset by how much income tax he pays and is overly concerned with what women do with their uteruses.
- I feel like evil robots are usually more subtle in their various methods of sabotage, so I liked that David was often very blatant about pursuing his own agenda regardless of what everyone else was doing (“NO TOUCHING!”). I also enjoyed that he creeped everyone out and that his attempts to be creepy were undercut by the squelch of the flip-flops he was inexplicably wearing.
- Michael Fassbender is a good actor. He had some nice moments every time someone said “Pinocchio, you are not a real boy” to him.
- It’s nice that Trey Atwood grew up and got his PhD. The Cohens must be so proud.
- Vagina kraken monsters really, really bore me and when used in a movie about creation, I hate it even more.
- There’s this scene in The Aviator where Senator Alan Alda wants to torture the hell out of Howard Hughes so when he invites him to lunch he purposely puts a fingerprint on Hughes’ water glass, knowing that Hughes’ obsession with cleanliness would kick into overdrive at the sight of said fingerprint. Cue me losing my mind when David decides to stick his finger in the glass of booze he pours for Charlie because oh my god, no matter how drunk you are, you do not drink from something someone has had their finger in.
- I kept hoping that the old dude would actually be Peter O’Toole in disguise because I forgot Guy Pearce was in this.
- I’m thrilled that in 2093, you can engineer a medical pod that can perform surgery on you sans doctor but it’s still programmed by default for male anatomy only. Really? Does having a
CTRL + Caesareanbutton on this machine really take away from the horrific things that happen next to Shaw? Do we hate her so much that in addition to forcing her to spawn an alien life form, we have to make her find some sort of alternative Manly Abdominal Surgery™ option in the machine to remove the squid? It seems like a small, insignificant thing but it really bothered me. - Stephen Stills references are really, really dated in 2012; how dated are they going to be in 2093? Hence Vickers’ reaction, of course. I found that whole bit really odd and assume it must have much more symbolic meaning for Ridley Scott than it does when taken literally by the characters in the film.
- I’ve never seen the Alien films, but I suspect that doesn’t matter. Now I can watch these in order, like kids can do now with the Star Wars movies. Believe me. The first Star Wars movie I ever saw was The Empire Strikes Back; it is unbelievably underwhelming to find out that Vader is Luke’s father if you haven’t seen A New Hope.
Categories: 3 Stars
With respect to #10: I just assumed that machine was set to male by default because the old dude actually owned it and kept it hidden for his personal use, so he would never have need to use a female setting.
That being said, I thought you were pretty generous with your review. I found myself coming out of the movie with way too many unanswered questions about the motives of the characters and the whole plot in general.
Motives went out the window for me the second they made the huge mental leap from “Cool, cave drawings!” to “Our alien creators want us to build a ship and come see them on a distant planet, yay!”