Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Htgamer — 22 May 2017

Alien: Covenant is a hugely disappointing movie.

The Prometheus movie, despite its flaws, set a wonderful stage and asked great sci-fi questions concerning the origins of humanity. Sadly all of it has been scrapped with Alien: Covenant, and the "Alien" prefix tells you clearly that the studio execs want to get rid of Prometheus and its lore (it wasn't titled "Alien: Prometheus" after all).

At the end of Prometheus Dr. Ellen Shaw set course for the Engineers' homeworld with the android David, but sadly 1) the Engineers are absent from the new movie and 2) Noomi Rapace has been cast out of the sequel and her character has been replaced with a bunch of losers, who are nothing more than dog food for the Alien creature. It's rather convenient. Because I presume Prometheus lore has to disappear for some reason.

OK, I am salty about not getting the Prometheus sequel I was expecting. That would have been fine if this movie, after having cut all its ties with Prometheus, was great. Or at least good. It's not though. It's mostly pathetic. Michael Fassbender is awesome in his dual role of the two cloned androids (David and Walter), but he can't save the movie from being a disaster. The rest of the cast are, as in the words of the first Alien movie, "expendable". The story is full of laughable plotholes, illogical decisions, and brain-dead characters who just wait their time to be munched away by the Alien. At least the plot twist towards the end of the movie does the job of aligning the prequel movies more closely with the Alien mythos.

Alien: Covenant is really just a link to some future Alien movie which will please Alien fans. Prometheus and its high sci-fi concepts are dead.