Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Prometheus Part 2

Back for more are we? Well, you asked for it! As amazingly dumb as things were before, they somehow continue even though two of the biggest tards got burned, broken and deep throated. While Weird Hair Guy and Toady Glasses Idiot were getting annihilated in the Death Goo Chamber there was other kinds of idiocy taking place back on the ship.

Liz, Charlie and David don't seem to care in the least that two of their crew mates are missing, but I certainly can't blame them. I wouldn't care either. Without any sort of decontamination procedures or safety precautions Liz heads to one of the lab areas with the head she took in tow. Nameless European Doctor and her begin doing preliminary tests to get some info from the elephant faced thing while Charlie is watching from nearby.

Hey, remember in the first Alien movie when Kane was brought onto the Nostromo, and they took him to a sealed medical room while wearing masks, gloves and taking other sorts of caution and being extremely careful in their investigation of what was going on? Yeah, none of that happens here. They aren't wearing protective gear of any kind as they poke and prod the weird head. Sigh. Y'know, I shouldn't even be complaining about the lack of quarantine procedures here, because what follows next is so much more monumentally dumb.

After running a scan over the thing, the first sodding one the make in this darned movie, they discover that the elephant face is just a helmet and they cut that crap off, revealing a very albino human looking head. Fascinated, they then take pictures, video feed, scrape samples off, run more scans and the like because they are responsible scientists.

Ha! Hahahahaha! Whew, that's a good one! Nah, they don't do any of that. They find this weird black crap bubbling on the Engineer's scalp and Liz thinks "Hey, maybe if we electrocute the base of the brain we can trick it into thinking that it's still alive." No, I'm not kidding. This is utter bullcrap. I'd cut her some slack here if the body was fresh, but the thing is several thousand years old. The brain should be nothing more than a pile of mush by now! This is like if Indiana Jones tried talking to a mummy by hooking jumper cables up to its nipples and hitting it with a full powered blast.

So they literally stick this electric cattle prod spike thing into the head's spinal column and start shocking the heck out of it. The face then begins to have a silent spaz attack as its dead cells are shocked but the weird black goo begins oozing out at an unnerving rate. Realizing that this doesn't look good, they turn the spike off and pull it out. The head keeps making a face like its having diarrhea however, so they shove it underneath a transparent glass box.

Then it explodes.

Um, why did it explode? And why didn't you try taking samples or sodding pictures before hooking a car battery up to it? What the heck did you idiots expect to accomplish? I think they wanted it to talk or something, but I imagine that even if the Frankenstein therapy worked, talking would be difficult since it's just a head without any lungs attached! Good grief! Where did these idiots get their degrees from? Everyone kinda putters around for a few minutes after that, feeling really stupid for having blown up the alien had by accident, as they darned well should. I mean, the thing was half fossilized. How the heck did you make it blow up ten minutes after you got it? It was kind of frigging hilarious though.

In all seriousness, are we sure this isn't a scifi comedy? If it is then Ridley Scott is a genius, cuz he pulled the wool over everyone's eyes!

Charlie gets upset and runs off like a five year old to sulk while nursing a refrigerator full of vodka. Surprisingly not completely depressed by what's happened, Liz and European Doctor scrape some of the glowing green crap off of the sides of the glass like bugs off of a windshield and run a DNA scan over it.

Meanwhile, David presumably concludes that humanity is too idiotic to survive and decides to help the process of inevitable extinction along. He goes to a secluded area and takes out that metal canister he stashed. Popping it apart he dips his hand into the monster ooze and pulls out a weird green glowing crystal thing. What does he do then? Breaks the thing open and looks at some even more evil looking ooze inside and a close-up reveals that there are tiny things moving around inside. To be fair, since he's an android he is in no danger of infection himself, so he has no reason to fear. However, he runs the risk of infecting every other thing onboard the sodding ship.
Although just before this he was utilizing the dream reading thing again with some mysterious person still in a cryo tube. Told David to do something or other.

David then gets a tiny sample of the ooze on his finger and some alcohol, then finds Charlie moping in the corner and playing with billiard balls which for some reason are all chrome. The two have a conversation in which Charlie continues to be a complete jerk to poor David. Apparently Charlie is depressed because the alien head exploded and he didn't get to have a chat with it. Never mind that his entire thesis about alien life was entirely correct, they found an entire base that undeniably confirms the existence of aliens along with all kinds of cool evidence. But nah, he's all depressed and seems to be under the impression that they are all gone.

Okay, first off, you've explored less than ten square miles of this planet. How the heck do you know there aren't a hundred other bases with live specimens skulking around? And what's more, this was a space-faring species. This might not even be their homeworld. It's quite possible and even likely you'll find them elsewhere and that you just need to keep looking you moron. This would be like if aliens came to Earth, found an abandoned shack out in the desert and then lamented that they were too late to save the human race which is now extinct. Unless they sodding looking somewhere else.

So, David asks Charlie "What would you do to find out the answers you're looking for?" And Charlie replies "Anything and everything." Okay, this is just me, and although I engage in hyperbolic exaggerations all the time, when asked something like that I'm careful about my response. That is a very vague and somewhat frightening statement that could easily be taken to illogical extremes in addition to logical ones. In one of the very few scenes that has any sort of intelligence and subtlety David arcs an eyebrow ever so slightly at this response, pours Charlie a glass of vodka and dips his infected finger into the drink as he hands it to Charlie, who proceeds to down the whole thing. It's almost as if David were asking permission to infect the jerk which I can sorta give props to for being subtle. And I'd have done the same thing.

Now, hardcore Aliens fans like myself will wonder about the behavioral inhibitors that are in place to prevent androids from harming humans. This is one thing I will give a pass to, because David is a very early model it's entirely possible and actually quite likely that he doesn't have these. Given how this company works the inhibitors would have been programmed only much later on. Surprisingly one of the few things that I wasn't upset over.

Then again, this action could easily result in the next Black Plague or something since they have no idea what it is and no guinea pigs on hand to test it on. Aw screw it, chances are it can't be all that bad.
At the same time Liz and European Doctor scrape some of the crap off of the walls so they can run a DNA test which concludes that humans and Engineers have the same DNA, and are thus the same species.

Bull. Crap.
If the DNA matched up identically then they would be humans, yes? Not ten foot tall albinos? I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they just got two human samples by accident. Ya'll wanna rerun that test just in case? I mean, it might be smart to double check in the event someone screwed up the testing. But no, they run that one test and accept it as gospel. Nothing but the finest for Project Prometheus.

Then Liz and Charlie have intercourse over some stupid contrived reason cuz she can't have kids and thus can't create life, blah blah blah, and we cut to the next morning. Charlie feels like crap, probably because he drank a quarter of his own bodyweight in alcohol, and then looking in the mirror sees some sort of worm crawling across the surface of his frigging eye! That crap would freak me out and I'd find a doctor ASAP. Ah, but Charlie is too clever for that! He decides to just keep the knowledge that he has, at the very least, a parasitic infection in his system that could very well spread and mess with his health. Or, worse yet, he caught some kind of xenomorph infection by taking off his frigging helmet inside an alien structure!

So, with these scenarios in mind, he makes the brilliant choice to NOT TELL ANYONE. He is literally surrounded by doctors, medicine and a super duper medical suite and at no point does he even hint that he might not be feeling great. We get no line or even speculation as to why he keeps clammed up about this. What, is he frigging embarrassed to have worms in his system? My gosh this is stupid. Sigh. Well, worry not my friends, he shan't be a problem much longer. The Engineer bio-weapon is about to do the galaxy a big favor.

So half of the crew suits up to go into the structure to go scrape up what's left of Weird Hair Guy and Glasses Toady Idiot into a plastic bucket, although they adorably assume that the two are still alive. Just before they leave David asks Janek why a life sign keeps popping up periodically on the holomap, and Janek says it must be a glitch, as the life sign comes up every few minutes and then fades away. David thinks otherwise and when they drive off to the structure again he takes off by himself and turns of his camera so Vickers can't peek on what he's doing.

The rest head off into the vase chamber from before where Weird Hair Guy is nowhere to be seen and the albino xeno-cobra leaps out of Glasses's mouth, freaking everyone out. Huh, apparently none of them thought it was beautiful! At that point Charlie then begins breaking down and starts turning into some abomination from the stars. His skin, voice and eyes are all changing horribly and Liz only now realizes that things aren't going great for him. So they begin booking it back to the ship and Vickers sees what's happening, suits up and gets a flamethrower prepped. The convoy arrives without David who is still screwing around, and the idiots try to convince Vickers to let Charlie onboard. However, in a rare example of intelligence and prudence she says screw that. Charlie, who is three steps away from looking like that guy who got doused with toxins in Robo Cop, decides that it's time to cash in his chips and gets set on fire by Vickers.

Yaaaaaaay! Confetti time! Break out the non-alcoholic beverages and raise a toast to Survival of the Not Completely Idiotic! Wait, why are they playing sad, dramatic music during this scene? Why does everyone look horrified at Charlie's mutated corpse being incinerated in flame? Come on screenwriters, you have to know how to set the tone. This is supposed to be a scene that relieves tension, right? A horrible plague carrier who was nothing but a monumental problem the entire time he was sucking wind was just stopped from completely botching anything else and infecting the entire crew.

Weirdly enough, I think the director wanted this scene to carry some sort emotional weight besides joy. In fact, he may have actually intended for us to feel sadness that Charlie wasn't allowed back on the ship and died. Ha! Ahahahaha! Whew, yeah, nice job screwing that up. Yeah, that didn't work at all. You have to find a character likable, or at the very least, sympathetic in order to feel sadness at their passing. For me I took sadistic pleasure in seeing him roast and give Vickers a thumbs up for doing something intelligent. I mean, what else were they supposed to do? Let the freak show onboard the ship? Screw that. I'd have done the same thing in her position, and I'm a pretty nice guy.

Back at the base, David is screwing around in another part of the place and he manages to open up another door which leads to a curious room with obvious Engineer cryotubes and a strange desk. In a set of instructions that leave me absolutely baffled he engages another hologram, uses a flute to give some sort of command, presses a few buttons that look like baby chew toys and gets a galactic holomap all over the room. Folks, I have NO clue why the system worked like that. Why would an alien flute be used to help access a program? Why do the holograms seem to just come to life out of nowhere? I don't know! I mean, crap, I've analyzed Predator tech pretty intensively and have it pretty well figured out. This leaves me totally baffled.

David discovers that one of the cryopods has a living Engineer inside, and that the life sign they picked up came from his periodic heartbeat. Sort of interesting. I'm just wondering why the darned thing is letting him have a heartbeat when he's supposed to be a preserved popsicle dangit! I need some sugar...

David comes back to the ship to sorta tell the cryo figure about what he found but also helps in checking everyone out for signs of infection. Yay, something smart! They don't know how Charlie got infected, so they are for once being prudent and checking out everyone to make sure they aren't carrying any black oil. Liz however is found to have a very unexpected passenger. Ohhhhhh yeah. Guess who has a little biological horror growing inside her?

Liz is understandably horrified that there is a biological, parasitic monster growing inside of her womb, but David does a decent job of telling her that things can work out alright. He says that they'll just knock her out on eight syringes of pain killers and sedatives and put her into cryosleep, where they will remove the thing surgically when they get back to Earth. This... is actually one of the best case scenarios that she could possibly hope for. I mean, cryopods ready so she can get treatment later? And she's literally surrounded by medical personnel. This is actually a darned good situation for her all things considered.

She flips her lid however and hysterically demands that they remove the thing from her at that very instant. I myself would wait a bit to do some more research before pulling some alien abomination out of her, but I can understand her panic. But still, you've got a fool-proof plan here with the cryopods and crap. What's the problem lady? What in the world is wrong with this plan? Why do you have to remove the thing at this very moment? For the life of me I can't think of any reason why she absolutely has to have it taken out immediately.

Before she can harm herself David knocks her out with some meds and shortly thereafter that Euro doctor and another doctor come up, make sure she's out by asking her. Right. She doesn't answer and they assume she's down, who then somehow whups their tails and bolts from the med bay entirely and goes running through the ship. Dude! Stay with the sodding surgeons! Y'know, your best chances of staying alive? They don't even chase after her. She is also running a huge risk of again infecting everyone else in the ship. I don't believe she thought this plan through.

So she runs into Vickers's life boat and hops into that medical pod mentioned earlier and demands that it give her a C-section.
Oh boy, this is where it gets fun! The thing tells her that it is programmed to operate only on male patients. This is skipping ahead a little bit, but I don't care. Weyland is actually still alive and is on the ship, and this supposedly belongs to him along with the life boat. Bullcrap. He says he has about like 24 hours of life left. If that's the case, then that life pod ain't gonna help him too much and he won't have much use for that life boat. That's kinda like buying a new engine for a sinking raft. Best move onto one that's working y'know?

I must also examine the fact that inside his cryotube and the ability to communicate via the dream reading thing, he is in fact effectively immortal. Okay, true, it'd suck to be stuck in there for eternity, but this guy already blew a trillion of the company's money on this whole event. I think he'd be willing to pay that price. He could still be able to control his company and not have to worry about going to the bathroom, eat, or any other irritating stuff. But surely no one could effectively control anything while contained in cryosleep, right?

I love this game more than life itself.


Well, on with the stupid. Liz starts shoving needles into her leg and pumping some sort of painkillers into her system. What kind they are I have no idea, and jamming them into your thighs is kind of a bad idea cuz you might tag an artery. That would be kinda bad. Anyway, since the machine won't accept a C-section as an operation, she just babbles about manually extracting a foreign body which the machine accepts. Okay, so this advanced piece of hardware can't tell if she's a guy or not. Huh. Y'know Weyland, you should really ask for a refund.

Blah. So she hops into the machine and it whips her open with a laser scalpel without knocking her out or administering any sort of anesthetic. Sure, she punched some pain killers into her system, but does the machine know that? It can't tell if she's a girl or not, so my guess is it doesn't know. So yeah, she gets a front row seat to this thing with about eight tools total open her up like gutting a fish, reach in with a pair of tongs and pull out this nasty sack with her monster spawn inside. She then detaches herself from the thing by ripping her umbilical cord like a piece of wet licorice.

Good grief, I've seen more sound surgical techniques back in the mountain man days! Jedediah smith got better treatment when his scalp was pulled over his face by a grizzly. I can only imagine the internal damage she's received from this surgery and the machine just hilariously leaves the horror sack dangling above her as it literally staples her abdomen shut without patching up anything else inside. I'm sure she's fine. But wow, you'd think this expensive thing would have some kind of basket or tray to put that little monster inside. But no, it's just left up there and of course it decides at that point to wake up, thrashing out of its thin membrane and splashing Liz with xeno-placenta, right on her still gushing wound I might add, squirming around and squealing.

It looks like a crappy squid missing a few arms and has a weird head. Actually, now that I think about it...
It looks a little something like this. Being a Kaiju geek comes in handy on occasion.
Yeah, things don't look to good and Liz opens the pod, hops out, closes it again and hits a button that is apparently there to sterilize the interior with some kind of death spray. Why on earth would a surgical unit have a function to paste its occupant? Is that a common feature in the future? Good grief. Liz then just assumes that it dies and she runs around the ship without any apparent direction or guidance and purely by accident crashes into a room where Weyland is. He got busted out of his cryotube and is now getting ready to do the same to the Engineer that was discovered in hopes of extending his life. Also, apparently Liz was the only person on board who didn't know that Weyland was with them.

I cannot fathom why he kept this a secret from her and Charlie only. Really. Not one single thing comes to mind as to why this would help him. No one else at all seems surprised, so they must have known too. Your guess is as good as mine, man. Maybe he just wanted to screw around with her for giggles. Anyway, he informs her that an Engineer is still alive and he's going to go pay it a visit. Liz tells him that this is a pretty bad idea as the place is kinda nutso, but he doesn't seem to care and invites her along. Not even bothering to mention that she just had the very first xeno-abortion ever and that they should maybe check up on the thing to make sure it's dead she decides to join them, wanting to know why the Engineers created humanity and now why they want to wipe them out. I also find it hilarious how she's covered in yellowish-brown gunk, blood, has a wicked laser scar across her abdomen while in her underwear and nobody even blinks in surprise. No one goes "Holy crap! What the heck happened to you? I mean jeez! You there, check her blood pressure!" Nope. David gives her a blanket, but it astounds me at how casually everyone reacts to her when she looks like she just had a knife fight with Jason.

Janek comes to the conclusion that this is a bio-weapon development facility put there specifically so that if the biological agent got loose it wouldn't mess up the entire race. Now, he doesn't know this for sure but... I agree with him. All the facts they have available point to this conclusion and it makes sense, being one of the few things that doesn't bother me. And Liz has the desire to know why the Engineers want to kill humanity, which is a legit question that isn't immediately obvious. Now, we don't know if this facility was endorsed by the entire species or if it was a rogue group. We have no clue. I still debate the idea that the Engineers created humans, but this is the only point where I actually felt my brain cells getting some sort of workout.

So Weyland is getting prepped with a strange prosthetic suit along with David, Liz and a few other guys and head out for the facility and the cryotube. Before they leave though Vickers addresses Weyland as her father. This feels so tacked on. What does this serve? You could have cut that out entirely and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. Really. You could have saved us thirty seconds and we wouldn't have missed a thing.

The Scooby Gang putters off in the Monster Machine towards the structure while everyone else sits on the ship to watch the gore fest from the safety of their impregnable ship. Well, until they get a signal from Weird Hair Guy's helmet, showing that he's right in front of the ship. What do they do? They lower the ramp instead of going out of one of the side doors with weapons prepped and some guy walks right up to Weird Hair Guy, who's face-plate is broken, his face is a mask of mutated horror and his body is twisted and contorted so that his heels are on either side of his sodding head.

Anyone with any sense would have walked right back into the ship and closed the door. But no, the guy walks up, nudges the semi-corpse with his foot and turns his back to it to say something to his friend. This is a VERY easy thing to fix. Instead of having the body twisted over like a contortionist, have him laying face down with his arms and legs splayed a little bit. That way the guy coming out doesn't see the broken helmet or messed up face and can easily come to the conclusion that he crawled out of the structure and is in desperate need of medical attention, prompting him to turn and tell his compatriot that it's their pal and that he requires immediate help.

But no, had to make it painfully obvious that Weird Hair Guy is now a rabid mutation in such a way that no rational human being would approach him without an AA-12 loaded with buckshot handy and ready to go. So as soon as the guy turns his back Weird Hair Guy rises up and proceeds to lay waste to what little of the crew is still intact, murdering maybe six guys inside the hangar bay. Their pistols are pretty much useless, either not penetrating the armor plate or they just don't have the moxie to put him down. Man, it'd sure be nifty if they had some shotguns for this sorta situation! Who could have predicted some sort of need for weapons?

In fact, the guys in the bay are getting ripped apart with such efficiency that Janek and one of his co-pilots have to suit up, grab flamethrowers and run down there to try and put an end to the monster. Two of the guys still alive have the smarts to hide in one of the huge vehicles and run the monster over like a rabbit beneath a semi truck and Janek gets to finish it off. Holy crap these guys suck at their jobs. The sodding captain and one of the pilots had to go directly into harm's way to take care of business! What would have happened if those two guys got killed too? The ship is kinda boned, cuz everyone else with authority is over in the facility.

So they all tromp into the room with the Engineer and wake him up. Liz tries to have David ask him why they wanted to kill humanity while Weyland tries asking if it can give him more life. David asks Weyland's question and the Engineer responds by ripping his head off, killing the guards and smacking Weyland aside like a punching bag as Liz runs away. By the way, considering that she just injected a fistful of painkillers into her body and had about six pounds of alien torn out of her, shouldn't she be laying in a bed and doped to the gills on morphine? I consider myself a bit of a trooper, but I'd take five after an incident like that. The Engineer doesn't bother with her and activates a piloting system, revealing that part of the facility is actually a space ship identical to the one from Alien.

Liz bails from the U ship and tells Janek that the thing most likely plans to ace Earth by dropping those bio-weapons on it and turning everyone into monsters. While she technically doesn't know that for a fact, I'm inclined to agree with her given the very short exposure to this place and its occupants. So Janek decides that he's had enough of all this crap and prepares to kamikaze the Prometheus into the Engineer ship. Vickers doesn't like this idea and decides to bail.

Now, this is a part where I get confused. The Prometheus is going to launch itself at the Engineer ship in 40 seconds I think. Very little time. But she spends all of this time putting on a space suit and getting into a life pod which spurts from the Prometheus at the last moment. My question is why she didn't go to the life boat. Was it too far away and it would've taken more than 40 seconds to get there? Did she not think about it? I really don't know, and this just confuses me more than angers me. I just don't get it. They could have easily justified why she couldn't jump into the boat from the start, but they didn't. So I have no choice but to just throw up my hands and give up. Nothing makes sense for this part. It's not like she knew the squid monster was in there. Liz never mentioned it to anyone. I just... I don't... Oi, someone help me...

And this movie still isn't frikking over... So Janek and his two co-pilots go out in a blaze of glory and knock that Engineer ship right out of the sky, and we lose one of the very few cool characters that was actually enjoyable in this whole debacle. The life boat also is detached just before they rocket away. Vickers gets out of the pod just as the Engineer ship comes crashing down like a meteor. Liz and Vickers make a run for it as the thing rolls towards them like a wheel of doom. Even when I first saw this movie I wondered why they didn't just angle away slightly so that they could evade the falling ship. Literally fifteen feet in either direction and they're in the clear!

True, it's difficult to think clearly in such situations of mortal peril, I admit this. But there are also examples of these occasions where the human brain speeds up and goes into Super Mode, where you can analyze things at an extraordinary pace and come up with solutions in the blink of an eye. I've had this happen to myself on several occasions. It happens almost on instinct yet with the intelligent precision that you usually don't have when focusing on a crossword puzzle. This is common in fights. If you read about shooting incidents you can find cases of shooters identifying miniscule details or coming up with quick efficient plans before they can blink.

So either way you come down on it these people were just plain stupid. Vickers gets crushed, Liz gets lucky, and crawls back to the life boat with only a few seconds of air left to spare. Oh, remember that aborted alien? Apparently it has the morphing speed of that blue liquid in the movie Evolution if put beneath a heating lamp. The thing went from being the size of a rabbit to that of a deflated elephant! Liz grabs a futuristic fireaxe and prepares to rumble. While I don't think it would have any real function given how it's shaped, it does look kinda cool so I'll give it a pass and her a single thumbs up for having the presence of mind to actually grab a weapon before trying to explore her spawn.

Luckily the huge monstrosity seems unable to open the door. David is still alive, although I wouldn't give him much time to live, he informs Liz that the Engineer is still alive, a smidge peeved and on his way to get her. Well, it can't know that she's in there but personally I just rationalized that its own ship was screwed and that it needed to get into the nearest shelter it could find, that being the life boat where there is oxygen and an intact engine system. Makes sense to me.

So it busts in and tries to beat Liz's head against the wall but she hits the button to open the door and her kid pounces on the Engineer like a predatory starfish. Liz grabs her helmet, somehow gets her oxygen tanks refilled and gets the crap out of there. So, Engineer is having trouble fending off Viras, which grows tentacles, grabs his head and then... it... um...

Gamera movies can be strangely prophetic...
So yeah, Engineer gets infected and the 2,000 pound facehugger feels that it's job has been done. Thank Odin this movie is almost over... Liz sobs for a bit and David tells her that he's still alive and can help her get off of the planet since there are other ships hidden on the planet. How he knows this escapes me, but Liz takes his word for it and informs him that she's going to find more Engineers and find out why they planned to screw humans over, hinting at a sequel. Shortly thereafter the Engineer body twitches and writhes as a primitive xenomorph bursts from his chest and screeches in primal rage.

Then credits.

Finally. It's over. It's over! Sigh... This was a pretty painful movie. I'm honestly astounded when people actually try to say that it's thought provoking. It is not. It is a pretentious movie that thinks it is far smarter and thought out than it actually is. This is NOT on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Honestly, after awhile of thinking about it Prometheus is far more akin to a scifi comedy. Or a parody of the original Alien movie. The attempts at religious symbolism and theme in here are handled with the same grace and finesse as a three year old with a chainsaw. It really feels like this was a rough draft and that they hadn't ironed out the kinks.

I'm not saying that you can't have a movie where religion grates against science. That is actually interesting. But this isn't how you do it. It's just confusing, poorly executed and messy. I mean, there are a few good things. Fassbender as David is actually darned good. He nails the part wonderfully and is one of the few characters that I didn't want to beat with a piece of pipe. The effects are actually pretty good and the cinematography, which is not my forte, is admittedly excellent.

But for me that's like having a few intact planks on the bottom of a boat. Sure, you have a few good ones, but if you don't have the those other planks in place the entire thing will sink. The story, majority of the characters and themes are all so wretched and poorly handled that I am left in absolute awe that it was in fact made into a movie. Like I said before, this feels like a rough draft. Had this been handled better this could have been a pretty awesome movie.

Ironically, the only thing that really doesn't irritate me or seem completely stupid is the stuff involving the actual aliens. Before this movie came out I read almost every book, looked at every comic and played almost every game even relating to the Aliens franchise. I've examined them more than any person with any interest in a social life should. With that in mind we were never really shown for sure where the Xenos came from. There were two basic theories amongst the Aliens fanbase. One was that they were natural creatures that came from an extremely hostile and remote environment, and the other was that they were biologically engineered weapons for bio-warfare.

I always fell into the second camp. It just plain looked to me like they were designed to be weapons, to kill and spread in any and all environments they were exposed to. This movie supports this theory in a way that I can actually get behind. The monster goo itself honestly doesn't bother me. It actually makes sense. Shocking, considering how I just beat this movie to death with a cudgel with rusty nails rammed through it.

The idea of the goo being spread and infecting people in different ways with different horrific results is actually interesting and has potential for good horror. It's just that it was handled so poorly. I never thought I'd see the day where Kane in Alien seemed intelligent and cautious, but here it is. Now, I'm not trying to imply that this movie fits in perfectly with the pre-established Aliens material. Holy crap, reading almost every comic for Aliens in existence along with the cross-overs is enough to try anyone's sanity. Continuity is all over the place. There are so many leaps of logic, contradictions and the like in the comics that you get jaded pretty darned quickly.

Books can be messed up too. One of them has the unique honor of being the ONLY book that I have ever hated with such raw intensity that upon finishing it I mutilated it and threw it in the trash. I'm so not the type to throw books out, so this was quite unusual.

This movie wasn't quite the worst Aliens story I've ever seen. But if you've been as dedicated a fan as myself and read as much extended universe as I have you'll see what I mean. Even so, this movie is an amazing failure. The characters are what I'd expect from a Syfy Original Movie in terms of intelligence and the use of themes such as religion versus science is just insulting. It's so awfully delivered that I'm speechless and have difficulty conveying just how stupid it is.

In conclusion, this movie sucks. It is not an intellectual movie that explores deep and interesting ideas. It is a crappy, brainless horror movie that failed to even incite emotions remotely relating to fear or tension. It's pretentious head is stuck so far up its own backside that it can't tell how ridiculous the image of a head inserted into its own sphincter actually is. Those of you who think this movie is smart, you are wrong. You are just wrong.

Sigh. I'm going to go watch or read something more intellectually stimulating and interesting than this movie. Like Street Sharks. Or Spaceballs. 

Jawsome!

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