Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Nairbyeldarb — 20 May 2017

Giving this movie a 4 because I liked several of the ideas the film presents and some of the plot twists are clever. However for the most part I was severely disappointed with it. I loved Prometheus for its mysterious tone and fresh take on science fiction- which this film completely abandons by the way, any questions about the black goo and origins of the xenomorph are swiftly and quickly explained during one scene in the movie- but one of the things I really did not like about Prometheus was how jaw droppingly stupid the characters were and how they walked right into every bad thing that happens to them.

I was hoping that Scott would hear these complaints because I know people were very vocal about it but I'm sad to say that it's even worse in this film. Without spoiling the script, I'll just say that the stupidity exhibited by the crew of the Covenant is astronomical.

Rather than being afraid or even in suspense during the movie, I spent most of the film being incredibly frustrated with the cast and their absolutely stereotypical and cliche missteps that continually get them in worse situations as the plot goes onward.

Every kill scene is walked right into and is a cliche directly taken from every slasher movie you have ever seen. Hey gotta go take a piss- and you can guess what happens next. The group keeps separating, people keep walking off by themselves, putting their faces in **** they shouldn't and it's just boring and infuriating.

I've seen all of it already. It made everything else about the film hard to get engaged with. They even rehashed some of these things from previous Alien films but instead of being fan service it simply did not work and had me facepalming instead.

Furthermore the film merely touches on the events that take place directly after Prometheus, and without spoiling anything, while David returns, we don't get to see Shaw again and the Engineers play a very small role in the plot, and are presented MUCH differently than they were in Prometheus, in a very brief scene, completely losing what made them awe inspiring in the previous film.

I'm curious as to what Ridley Scott's original idea for the sequel to Prometheus might have been like, as it seems like they told him, "nope people want another Alien film, give us an Alien movie," and they had to start over and we got a script written for stupid audiences that was produced in a rush.

Again no spoilers, but the final outcome of the film almost seems well deserved as it makes humans seem absolutely not worth saving as I found pleasure in watching every last of these idiots die (not saying everyone dies- nothing spoiled here- but many do).

The final twist is extremely predictable but I really like the story dynamics concerning the synthetics and how they end up playing an extremely important role in the overall turn of events. Honestly I can't think of much else good to say about it though.

Everything above is what killed it for me but add to all those complaints the fact that all the creatures in the film are CGI, there are little to no practical effects and the battle with the xenomorph is a gravity defying action heavy sequence that would literally be impossible and completely took away any sense of fear or dread, and we have a massive disappointment.

I love the original Alien trilogy, maybe I'm just old school and have nostalgia glasses on but this does not hold a torch to any of those movies in any way if you ask me. If you're a huge fan of the OG trilogy like me, maybe stay away from this.

I really liked the direction they went in with Prometheus- they should have kept going in that direction just with characters that were written more realistically- but they caved so people could have their xenomorph and wrote a script just to satisfy the masses, except they didn't even bother to write believable characters- double fail if you ask me.

I've watched it twice and it didn't get better the second time.