Director Ridley Scott returning to many of the Big Ideas swirling around in 2012’s Prometheus, but it grows increasingly confusing as to why he’s packaging those ideas in this particular cinematic world. Ten years after the events of Prometheus, a colonizing spacecraft discovers a distress signal, leading them to a planet where … let’s just say it’s not long before things are bursting out of people. The relationship between creator and created continues to be a central theme, with heady material on the impulses of creation and destruction. But of all the post-1979 Alien installments, this one feels most determined to mimic the formula of the original, for better and for worse. As creatively grotesque as it is, it feels almost like a trick—an attempt to reflect on mortality and hubris but sneak it past an audience by wrapping it in a familiar franchise package. Like the monster at its center, this franchise keeps changing shape, but like most mutations, that doesn’t mean it’s an improvement. By Scott Renshaw