Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Wolf3000 — 01 Jul 2017

Except for the scenes featuring David & Walter, the film is a convoluted mess. The script is astonishingly stupid, with an obvious half-assed attempt by Scott to link up Prometheus & Alien franchises, attempting to make it work somehow. In addition to the pathetic scenario, the film is essentially just sets of events which are clearly made to set up the story & ideology of David/Walter. The crew is expendable, and killed off in painstakingly too easy manner. The creatures don't make sense in their behaviour. The entire film can essentially be written off.

This is the problem with this film. It doesn't know what the hell it is. Scott obviously wanted to continue with some philosophising as in Prometheus, but gave the audience lots of sci-fi action "Alien" stuff so that profits could be made, sold the film on that point. What we are ultimately left with, is a 2/10 in the action-horror department (the way the action scenes happen make no sense). Prometheus and previous Aliens films did much better in that regard. And in the "philosophising"/scenario department, we have a very weird storyline. I personally think Scott went off the deep end trying to link the Alien & Prometheus franchise in such a cheap way (everybody knows how, its not even a spoiler as its so obvious, starting with the biblical name "David").

The problem is that the Alien & Prometheus franchises were amazing for different reasons, and Scott destroyed what made the two good, by mixing them up in such a way. We have a film that is not as "space-discovery" as Prometheus, and a film that is not as "action-horror" done as well as Alien & Aliens. And to top it off, the scenario itself is nonsensical.

And what is disappointing is that unlike many others, I thought the cast was really great in terms of chemistry. The prologue dvelved on that a little, but nothing was ultimately explored. They were just people to be killed off. And not only that, they didnt even die in ways that were satisfying. They just died, easily, not how human beings should die (slowly and with difficulty, like in Alien films).

Ultimately its an enjoyable film on the surface, but when you really look at it, you see an incredibly weak film on all fronts. I'd place Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 (assembly cut) higher than this film. Prometheus also.

I feel Scott started with a great base, which is: Great filming location, athmospheric location, colourful crew (different colors, different personalities, even a gay couple), new creatures...But then decided to make what is essentially a B-movie sci-fi flick. It feels extremely cheap throughout. Even the creatures themselves are terribly done CGI mess. To the point when they are hit by bullets, you get that cheap videogame blood effect, that looks astonishingly fake, and kills all suspension of disbelief.

I found myself laughing at the creatures more than fearing them. Because they obviously looked like cheap CGI, rather than the creatures that still scare the **** out of me from the Alien Franchise, and even Prometheus (the deacon at the end, the octopus alien thing, etc...were gruesome).