Well, that was certainly an Alien film. Spoilers, obviously:
The Good Stuff:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
- Loved the additional world-building around Weyland-Yutani and their operations, in this case on the mining colony. Also, see bad stuff though.
- The set design was universally brilliant, so nice to see the aesthetic from the original movie so prevalent; the griminess, the monitors and technology, the Semiotic Standard.
- Decent performances from all of the humanoid characters, although with the exception of Andy, I can't say they really had an awful lot to do. The actor playing Andy was amazing.
- Pretty good storyline, with only one (admittedly giant) plot hole that I could really identify (see bad stuff)
- I liked the new 'lifecycle' stage between the chestburster and the adult Xeno
- Quality visual effects, especially the Impact Event that destroys the space station
- Interesting to see a new-but-old character in the form of Rook (again, see bad stuff)
- Nice to see how they connected it to the storyline of the original movie
The Bad Stuff:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
- As far as WY's operations go, I thought the 'the company have changed the quota and you can't leave for another 6 years' made them almost comically evil, and shouldn't be necessary
- Plot hole: It seems desperately unlikely that WY would have left the space station in that state after everything went to shit. They sent Colonial Marines to LV426 in Aliens, why wouldn't they send Colonial Marines to the Renaissance station?
- The CGI on Rook-but-actually-Ash was beyond terrible, and was again completely unnecessary. It looked worse than the de-aging CGI used in TRON: Legacy, and that takes some doing.
- I really wasn't sure about the Resurrection-style Newborn at the end, and despite adding the new lifecycle stage to explain how the tiny chestburster suddenly becomes the giant adult, they did away with it entirely for the newborn which seemed weird
- In general, wasn't keen on the callbacks and references to the original movies. Especially the 'Get away from her... you bitch' scene -- it makes no sense for this phrase to be said, by this specific character, at this specific point of the movie
- The pulse rifle in this movie seems more advanced than the M-41A that the USCM use later in the timeline. And again, unnecessary.
So, not quite perfect, but not bad by any stretch. I was also worried that
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
the movie would concentrate too much on being excessively gory and violent like most horror movies are these days, but it was surprisingly in-keeping with the gore levels from previous movies.