Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Tom D — 29 Jul 2017

On the good side, the cinematics are sometimes beautiful.

But the good news ends there for this space horror movie.

Persistent sloppiness in plausibility damages audience immersion for all but the most insensate viewers.

Things you learn from Alien Covenant:

1. When sending a multi-billion dollar colony ship into space, it's really important to crew it with geniuses who couldn't get hired to run the Teacup ride at Disneyworld.

2. When confronted with threats such as aggressive life forms or shipboard accidents, the appropriate crew protocol is to yell incoherently or bang on windows. Thankfully, no one told this to the crew of Apollo 13, or it would never have made it back to earth.

3. When your precious colonists are in hypersleep, you should hang them up like sides of beef in a meat locker so that, when the spaceship maneuvers or has an accident, they swing around wildly and bang onto the walls. Wheeee!

4. Hypersleep pods should be filled with explosive, volatile substances so that, at the first sign of trouble, they catch fire and immolate the sleeping crew member. Explosions are cool.

5. When you stand next to a fully firing rocket engine, don't stand closer than 18 inches away, or it might get warm. Outside 18 inches, you're totally okay.

6. When someone says "Look closely into this slimy creepy organic pod that's got something slithering around inside it", you should do it without question. Always.

7. Science is just a loose collection of long words that don't really mean anything. When making a movie about space and alien life forms, the best thing to do is forget physics and biology, or that you ever went to high school, and just make it up as you go along. Science is so stupid anyway.