Saw it and enjoyed it immensely. Honestly think people are expecting too much if they're expecting it to be a classic like the first two but think it fits in well into the series.
Spoiler
Only thing I didn't notice was what was it gave David away to Daniels at the end
I dont think its a case of letting expectations spoil whats on screen, for me at least I went in with barely any expectations at all after loathing Prometheus, I was completely open to whatever Ridley and co. had to offer.
Sadly, I didnt like it, and the more I think about it the more it begins to actively grate on me as a film, much like Prometheus did. There are good moments in it, some interesting things they are trying to explore and trying bold, weird stuff in films should always be celebrated, but for me those moments dont overall seem to serve the film theyre in, or the "franchise" as a whole.
Ill spoiler it because itll be giving away plot spoilers, but if youve not seen it, everything goes exactly where you expect it to go.
Spoiler
The entire thing seems to switch from styles of film and for me at least it felt jarring and all over the place. Starting with a slick white room with David and Mr Weyland, philosophising about creators and the creations and power and subservience and surpassing your creator and such, then the first solid meat of the film is an Alien retread with a crew, a planet, some mysterious creature fucking shit up, then to a full on Prometheus sequel where all of the questions everyone was saying would be explained in the next film are literally dropped out of a fucking spaceship, we get some more talk about creators and vision and about the humanity of the androids and David does some fingering. Then because of some absurdly dumb decisions we get the xenomorph we know and fear, because David murdered Shaw offscreen (mad), and then, as I took it anyway, used her reproductive system to help create the xenomorphs with the facehugger/egg system, and then we're back to a condensed Alien horror/thriller.
Look, I dont give a fuck about where the Aliens come from. Its not important. And the idea that we created an android, that created the xenomorphs because he had a god complex, that then somehow fuck up some engineer and crash on LV-426, which then fucks up the crew of the first Alien film is worse than no explanation. People often complain that new films retroactively harm existing ones in a franchise, and to be honest a lot of it is bollocks. But here, I genuinely feel that going back to Alien is made worse because of these films. By offering this mad scientist explanation to how the xenomorphs are around, you rob the original of its mystery. No longer is it just a terrifying, perfect creature that we were just unlucky enough to stumble across, thinking "oh god, what the fuck else is out there", its just that thing Dave made because he had too much time on his hands.
Not everything needs explaining. You dont have to do a prequel about Jaws. We dont have to get the backstory to Independence Day's aliens. Having a 3 film explanation of how the creatures in Tremors were created doesnt make anything better. While certainly not as bad, this is in the same vein as the Hobbit or Star Wars prequels, robbing the mystique of the originals by telling poor, clunky stories to try and close a loop on everything in the original, so its all connected. Alien didnt need anything connecting.
But while Im rambling about explaining, at least try and explain the film you made before this. Essentially, the whole of Prometheus can be binned off. We dont need any of it, and they sure as shit dont care about giving you any answers to it. "I wonder what theyll find" "I wonder why the engineers wanted to kill us" "what were those xenomorph carvings?" we'll never know, because this film doesnt care to explain it. We get a tiny flash back of David dropping a payload of goo onto them, and they all die (why, i dont know, because again the black goo is having different effects all the time) so thats that.
I just didnt like it at all. Maybe these just arent for me, maybe theres really only two stories you could do with this and they got it spot on in both goes and thats it.
For the sake of balance, I liked the look of it all, besides the cgi aliens which I thought all looked awful. The goldenly lit caverns David had were gorgeous, and while it all went on too long I think it is trying to explore something interesting in those sections, before it then goes off again.
The shower scene was good, but spoilt in the fucking trailers so it was robbed of all power.
James Franco being hired to die immediately was hilarious. Didnt watch any of the teaser stuff so didnt even know it was him until the video Daniels watched.
"Ill do the fingering" caused genuine sniggers in my showing, of which I was part of.
The "mad god complex android" stuff is actually pretty good at times, it just has no place in this franchise when it starts going into creating the entire thing territory.