Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Bow D — 20 Aug 2017

Alien: Covenant is the sixth Alien film, or the second one as far as timeline goes and it stars a ton of people. It is directed by Ridley Scott, who directed the first Alien and Prometheus, which are my two favorite films from this feanchise; yes I like Prometheus more than Aliens, I know I'm in the minority on that, but I really found Prometheus to be an intelligent sci-fi film with a lot of interesting themes and questions which it didn't necessarily answer, so I was really excited at the end of Prometheus for a sequel to further develop theese themes and also get some answers.

When I saw the trailers for Alien: Covenant there was pretty much no sign of a Prometheus sequel anywhere to be found. And that had me wondering, is this film actually gonna be a sequel to Prometheus or is it just gonna a stand aloneÃ, Alien prequel; and the movie let's you know right off the bat with the first scene that yes, this is indeed a sequel to Prometheus and I got really excited to see how they are gonna tie in Prometheus andÃ, its themes into an Alien movie, and after seeing the film, I kinda wish the film had either been a straight up sequel to Prometheus or had just been another Alien prequel that had nothing to do with Prometheus, because this movie is not great, and that is mostly because it wants to be both an Alien movie and tie in all the Prometheus stuff, and in doing so, it ends up half passing both of them.

The Prometheus stuff are so tacked on and are such a left turn from all the setup from the first movie that it totally felt like there was a missing movie between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant that we just never got to see.

Also, all the Alien stuff with the ship crew that travels to another planet and people end up getting slaughtered one by one were so rushed to make room for the Prometheus tie in, that you don't ever get a chance to learn anything about any of these characters; I mean by god, everytime someone was being killed, my reaction instead of being "awhhh no! Not that character!" Was more like "wait who is that again?!" I mean they rush the first act so much that not only do you not get much character development, other than 3 or 4 of the characters, you almost never even get a single shot focused on any of these characters, let alone having dialogue and characterization.

Ã, This is an Alien movie, so it's not really a spoiler to say that most people are gonna bite it in the film, but by god not once did I feel any emotion when these characters died. Like for example, there is this one woman who gets killed by a creature, and of course I had no idea who the hell she was, and then it turns out she was the wife of Danny McBride's character,Ã, and when he is told that she died he getsÃ, sad and it's supposed to be this emotional moment where we feel for the dude and get behind him, but I find it very hard to care about his grief if we didn't even have one scene of him and his wife together; and that's not the only time this happens, peopleÃ, die left and right and almost everytime I had no idea who they were, what their story was, I didn't even know their name, so why should I be emotionally invested.

And yes btw, you can see all the deaths and scares coming from a mile away, the movie doesn't steer away of any of the horror film clichà (C)s like characters splitting up from the crowd and of course getting in trouble or characters making stupid decisions that no one in their right mind would ever make.

Now let's talk about the characters that got some characterization, Billy Crudup's character is the captain and he is a religious man... that's it, that's all you learn about him. Danny McBride put in really good performance, good on him, but again, there was barely anything to the character, and Katherine Waterson, she could have been the next Ripley,Ã, but she just isn't.

If you've noticed I 'be left off one person from the cast and that is Michael Fassbender asÃ, Walter the robot of the crew, and also another robot, hint hint! AndÃ, cow he knocked it outta the park, his performance was the saving grace of this film! There is even a scene where he has to kiss himselfÃ, and.

.. that was interesting! But seriously overall I really enjoyed following his story, even though there were a lot of stuff that I have no idea how theyÃ, evolved from the end of Prometheus into what they are in this film, but they were still interesting to see.

There is also a xenomorph in this film, and all I'll sayÃ, is, (yes!!!)(2 thumbs up) So overall, I didn't hate this film, eventhough it sounds like I did, it's just that I was very disappointed because of how much potential this movie had, but at the end of the day,Ã, I'd say there is enough fun to be had with this film and enough cool revelations about the origins of xenomorphs in particular that I would still recommend watching it if you are an Alien fan.

8/10.