Drinky Wrote:
Saw this last night in IMAX 3D. If you're going to commit 2-and-a-half hours or your time and any of your money to seeing this, you might as well get the full experience.
It's visually excellent. Every single visual aspect of this movie was perfect except for one thing: Guy Pearce made up to look like an extremely old man. I cannot figure that one out.
There was a lot of this move that I couldn't figure out but not because it was confusing or convoluted or overly dense or anything like that. There were just some perplexing choices made in terms of character behavior and motivations and the general underlying themes. It was weirdly anti-science for a sci-fi movie. A lot of vague pseudo-spirituality which I guess can probably be blamed on Lindelof. The moral of this movie seemed to be that evolution is bullshit AND there is no god. I mean, I realize it's just fleshing out and further building up a make-believe universe, and reading too much into it is silly. It just struck a really strange tone, and it sort of seemed to be inviting analysis of those pseudo-religious themes and ham-fisted "big questions" when it really shouldn't.
I had a good time, though. A movie like this doesn't need character development (sorry, but I don't think about Alien or Aliens in terms of their character arcs), and I thought there was enough suspense and momentum to carry it through. I was a little detached from the fate of the characters, sure, but I also found several of them plenty likable. Fassbender was excellent, as everyone has said, and I found myself kind of rooting for him to keep things interesting, which he did. (Like it almost felt like the audience should want him to cause trouble and be a dick, just to make something happen.) Idris Elba was great, but his character was almost sadly stereotypical. I actually really liked Charlize Theron in this, too.
Full of flaws, but worth seeing for the visuals, Fassbender, and the connections with the Aliens movies.
Guy Pearce was an old man to fit into the Weyland timeline. You need to see the viral TED video of the younger man (Weyland) who is building the initial stages of a space faring human race, and including, terraforming. He was desperate to maintain his life, and his power.