Come to Daddy

This is film for long-time observers of the 'Alien' series and its sometimes- astounding engagement with motherhood, other-hood, family ties, and the urge to destroy. I can't see it interesting anyone else apart from fans of retro-futurist spacewear and Dr-Who standard plot development. Scott presumably had a monster budget for this, and he certainly put the money on the screen; it's a real shame there was none left to hire decent scriptwriters (some of the dialogue is unforgivably hammy, and falls very flat without the (absent) character and relationship development that would have given it some meaning). Idris Elba is completely wasted as a rough-but-likeable ship captain; Michael Fassbender does his best with the robot but some of the humans around him are so unconvincing that he ends up looking awkward and artificial anyway; Charlize Theron equally manages woman-fully with a character so vacuous she could be written out of the movie and it would have made no difference at all. I ended up not caring who the Prometheans were or  how they had fallen foul of the Alien.