I was actually kind of disappointed whenever there was a monster moment, since it cheapened a lot of the more intellectual elements by reminding me of the rest of the series, which in a lot of ways this movie had little to do with.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but it was just good where it could have been great. The part with the worm that broke the guy's arm and then forced itself into his mouth was awesome and creepy as hell, but when it first started it immediately changed the tone of the movie in a way that was off putting.

And the alien at the end was kind of bogus. With all of the smarty pants philosophy going on I was expecting at least some kind of profound hoozimawatsis, but instead I just got an angry alien killing machine without any emotional impact. I suppose they were trying to keep the movie ambiguous by not explaining just why the aliens wanted to destroy humanity, but I thought that was pretty obvious anyway: the aliens were scared of what they'd created so they wanted to purge the galaxy of all of their life creating experiments. Wondering about the details is interesting, but ultimately the "ambiguous" ending was kind of not so ambiguous.

But other than all that it was a pretty good sci fi experience. The visuals were great, the characters were fleshed out and believable, and the sets were moody where they needed to be and/or satisfyingly futuristic without being futuristic to the point of silliness.

And creaturey featurey though it may have been the giant, evil starfish at the end was far too awesome for me to complain. And when the Alien alien popped out of the alien guy at the very end it was pretty spectacular. It was rather cool revealing that the...what were they, "xenomorphs" I think? Yeah, it kicked some ass that the xenomorphs came from a mixture of alien and human DNA combined by a weaponized mutagen.

They also left some of the movie with a few plot holes because they are planning to fill them in a sequel followup. One would hope so. Similar to The Purge, I'm hoping that some of the unanswered questions get answered in the next film.

I've only watched it the once, but I missed these plot holes. Car to elaborate? I plan on watching it again just because I'll know exactly what to expect this time around so I'd like to know some things to watch for.

The main one that I remember off hand was specifically about her squid baby. Elizabeth’s squid-fetus, meanwhile, has grown to monstrous proportions despite being locked in a small room with no sources of food or other places for the additional mass to have come from.

I feel like I have to re-watch it now because I know there are other ones.

Also a lot of these little questions. Why did the Engineers show a star-map to their weapon facility instead of their home planet? Why were the Engineers running away from a threat to go inside the cargo room instead of another non-dead-end option? What happened to the other alien ships? Did the threat attack all the alien ships at the same time to make it impossible for one of them to escape? Why was there still one living Engineer inside the spaceship? Wouldn’t the threat kill him too? The alien spaceships have been underground for more than 2000 years; did no one back home want to see what happened? Why did Janek not care at all about the 2 scientists trapped inside the alien cave? What is the purpose of those random pixelated flashbacks of the Engineer crew running? Why was everyone so relaxed about finding out the biggest revelation of human history? And why, oh why was there a goddamn flute to activate the alien ship?

Another thing, I don't think it was so clear cut that they wanted to destroy their own creations because they were scared of what they created. It seems like there is some other reason behind them wanting to exterminate all life. I read an interview where the director said that most of the unanswered questions in the plot will be resolved in the sequel but he likes the way the film leaves certain questions unanswered because he wasn't completely sure if they would be approved for a sequel. The script for it is done though it was completed last year in Oct.

Ah. I noticed a few of those, like the alien ships still on the planet and the apparent lack of a response from the alien home world. And yeah, a lot of the pixel hologram bits were convenient plot devices, but they were meant to show that the aliens had lost control of their creations, which makes it pretty obvious why they would want to destroy humanity as well, since if the weaponized life forms (I'm guessing that whatever they used to create us was an unweaponized form of what created the creatures) turned on them then they couldn't be sure about us. I think this was made kind of explicit when the redhead scientist got so terrified of the alien fetus inside of her. Just like the aliens she had seen what the creatures were capable of and wanted to kill the thing inside of her for much the same reasons as the aliens wanted to kill us.

I think it may have actually been kind of a Noah's Ark thing. Maybe some sort of rebellion or somesuch, as if we had turned away from them like the humans supposedly did to God in the Bible, and so the aliens decided to purge humanity. If you remember the scene near the end when the spaceship crashes and it starts to roll on the ground, at one point the horse shoe ends of the ship point directly upward, and maybe I'm reaching but the ship had a very Ark-like appearance for a moment.

And I have no idea why the map showed the star system for the facility and not the alien home system. Again, convenient plot device.

Another thing that bothered me was the old guy. What exactly did it add to the story to have him still alive at the end? Seemed like just a convenient reason to have the android guy have a hidden agenda. Otherwise it was pointless.

I am definitely going to have to re-watch this tonight or at least tomorrow. Yeah the android guy testing the black goo on her bf. I don't know. If he wanted to test what reaction it would have on humans, why wouldn't he do it in a controlled environment on a sample of human tissue so he could learn from it instead of just poisoning her bf and letting him run rampant without caring about the results. Also those two guys getting lost in the alien cave just made me sigh so heavily. There is no way they should have gotten lost.

Yeah, the getting lost thing was pretty cringe worthy. Like I said, that whole scene, while having its moments, changed the tone of the movie for me. It went from cool sci fi movie to creature feature. And the way they did it was so SyFy Channel monster movie. Oh the two guys who nobody cared about, one of whom was a jerk and smoked weed, are lost? Gee, I wonder what's going to happen to them?

And the boyfriend who turns into the monster was probably the worst part of the movie. I was waiting for some kind of mind bending weirdness that would at least attempt to have me questioning life, the universe, and everything, but all I got was a cheesy monster fight scene.

Funny. I actually liked the movie and I here I am listing everything that sucked about it.