Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Ian P — 02 Jun 2017

Instead of alien 5 we have alien covenant, or more accurately the chronicles of David with a walk on cameo from something vaguely xenomorphic.

With Ridley Scott's return to the series we dared to hope for a return to the classic alien style but unfortunately mr Scott has decided he doesn't want to make alien films anymore instead he wants to explore the mysterious space jockeys and the origins of the xenomorphs.

Ignoring the books and comics and assorted media that has grown up around this franchise that already tell parts of this story (considerably better than he does) he launches into a story that takes all of the big questions asked in the last instalment and throws them all in the trash to be entirely ignored.

Want to know what happened to our injured heroine and davids severed head? Well keep wondering while davids reattachment is in a promo it doesn't make it into this film and as for the female lead from the last movie... well let's just say the movie deals with her ending entirely offscreen.

As for the space jockey/ engineers, they get maybe 5 seconds screen time before they to are removed from the series, all those big questions about our place in the universe yeah this movie ignores them entirely to focus on a moody android with daddy issues.

This brings me to the current cast of characters, a few sparks of potential character drowned in a sea of cardboard cutout development with no emotional attachment or connection at all. There was a setup scenario with the ships crew pre hyper sleep where we got to meet the crew and get to know about them... but that's not in this movie!

That was also only in a promo, they left the damn character introduction on the cutting room floor.

I could possibly deal with the frankly throwaway cast if it wasn't for the fact that they are literally the dumbest bunch of morons in the galaxy. Seriously, they are so dumb they deserve to be alien chow!

Basically you can boil the plot down to this...

Impossible 'shockwave in space' damages ship and wakes the idiot squad, they pick up an impossible message from an impossible planet and decide to go look. Despite being equipped with all the gear to colonise their new home they don't decide to wear helmets or survival gear on an unknown world with its own bloody biosphere, they get predictably infected and then panic and somehow mislay the guns they had five seconds ago leading to more pointless death screaming and firing a gun at high explosive stuff.

So the only lander for a freaking colony ship now toast the survivors get chewed on by another semi xeno thingy and meet david the emo android going through a lot of daddy issues.

The idiots on the ship somehow ignore the laws of physics and the structural integrity of their totally non aerodynamic space ship to drop a rescue vehicle that apparently could have landed without them nearly destroying the ship and go down to save the day while David reveals his evil scheme to get back at daddy and literally gets another idiot to follow him into a room full of eggs and stick their head over an open one for a closer look!

We finally get something vaguely like the classic alien for all of ten minutes before they defeat it Ignoring a half dozen things that should have snapped her in half or crashed them into the bargain. Then despite the broken window and the lack of suits they get back into space onboard their ship and get ready to get the hell out of there. Of course now that they know that there was this deadly pathogen they are going to all go to medical quarantine right? Nope, cue alien number 2 but hey don't worry this ones so dumb it only eats the couple having sex in the shower before our two remaining idiots trap it in an airlock.

Of course the fact that they have remote control of the airlock and can launch the thing into outer space isn't good enough, they have to let it out of the airlock into a hanger so they can get it to obligingly chase her into a truck cab which they will then launch out an even bigger airlock because err nope sorry I give up I have no idea why these idiots did this.

All is fine, enemies are defeated and their is just time for the enievitable reveal that David switched places with their robot on the planet which happens of course when she's trapped in a hyper sleep tube helpless, it's not like both robots are identical and their was a simple way to test which one they let back on board... oh wait yup there was.

So that was my review in a nutshell it's DUMB!

I give it 2 stars because it is very pretty with gorgeous visuals, alas its beauty and no brains.