A best-of of the Alien franchise that brings together the best elements of the series but never manages to resolve the franchise’s long-running identity crisis. Though I hated this when it came out, I’ve softened on it a lot and think it works well at building slow-burn tension, developing interesting characters, and pursuing some resonant themes around colonialism, imperialism, and genocide, creation and destruction, and fascism’s pursuit of imagined purity. However it falls down in its attempts to link to the other films in the franchise particularly PROMETHEUS and ALIEN and its position in the franchise canon as an explanation of the Xenomorphs’ origins is a fundamentally misguided and self-defeating endeavour. Better than I remembered but a film that should not exist.
Full review available on The Xenopod from 29th November 2023: https://takeonecinema.net/thexenopod/