There's a great youtube video on how this game's story suffers from one of the worst localizations in modern gaming history that I think if more people watched, the common perception of the story would be changed.

That doesn't save the gameplay from being pretty subpar for Metroid. The platforming is snappy and the action is cool, but the overly cinematic nature of just about everything gets old quickly and the weird need to incorporate a first person mode to shoot missiles and scan things comes off as a sad attempt at riding Metroid Prime's coattails rather than a unique way to use the Wii remote.