Rating of
3/4
One man's treasure is another man's trash.
memento_mori - wrote on 07/10/13
I guess I'm the only one who thinks this movie isn't spectacular, but hear me out.
The way the movie was put together made me question what kind of movie it was trying to be.
Once again, the pacing is off at the beginning of the film. Now, almost spanning an HOUR to get into things. Granted, Ripley's character is explored much more and the mother-daughter relationship is introduced between her and the girl Newt, but it always jumped back and forth from interesting to trying to be interesting.
Some of the characters in this film have been applauded and rewarded by fans and critics… They are some of the most annoying people I have ever seen. The colonial marines are plain smart-asses who only want to shoot everything that moves and don't even slightly resemble actual marines. The marine Vasquez was exceptionally annoying, who replaced her acting skills with macho expressions and gunfire.
I should not have been rooting for the alien, but if the marines are that stupid, it's hard not to want them to meet their match.
All of the characters are displayed so lazily and the things they do make them seem like idiots, so that Ellen Ripley could shine as the intelligent star. That's not clever. That's lousy filmmaking.
I am also very disappointed to have to admit, that the scenes in this movie that were supposed to come off as 'scary', were actually just gross. I don't know what genius said 'that's creepy' when an alien was driven over and unleashed a spew of acid. Gross.
The dialogue that is so widely praised is not that good at all either. A couple of swear words sounding like they're coming from a ten-year old's mouth do not excuse for dialogue!
Not even the set design was remotely interesting to me. It felt like another Hollywood backlot where a million other alien movies are filmed.
But, I do have humility. I found myself enjoying the moments leading up to it and the finale itself. Very suspenseful, very well-directed and acted. I like that this film, just like its predecessor, has a second climax. But I still wouldn't want to watch it all again just for the ending.
To me, this is just another action movie that tried to be too smart for its own good and didn't quite meet expectations, even when it had so much potential as a sequel, considering it had a brilliant claustrophobia sci-fi movie to work off of.