Alien: Covenant (2017) for those who have been hiding from humanity is the prequel/sequel to Alien/Prometheus, depending on what way you look at it. I like a great many others went to the cinema to watch this movie. To get me into a cinema these days I have to be really motivated. I went into this movie really wanting to like it, I really did. It had so much good will, despite my reservations about Prometheus. Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to the hype, but much more annoying was that the movie was for want of a better term, awful.
(Spoiler Alert, rest of text has spoilers)
Whilst I sat in the cinema, happily eating popcorn before the movie actually began I was aware that the movie didn’t seem to have gripped people as there was hardly anyone watching it. Not to worry, I was sure I was going to watch something special. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed relatively soon. The opening scene is perhaps the best scene in the movie, and that basically takes place in a large white room with two actors. After that things started to drag, so much so that I was acutely aware of being bored, something that rarely happens when I watch a movie and certainly something that should not happen when watching the latest entry in the Alien franchise.
Whilst I might not have enjoyed Alien 3 or Alien Resurrection as much as I would have liked or expected they never bored me like Alien: Covenant. The trouble was the movie was basically a reboot (on the sly) of Prometheus in line with what some fans wanted. To sum up, a more Alien movie, with more Alien in it. Unfortunately, in the process what we got was a hodgepodge. For many fans of Alien there was too much Prometheus, and for fans of Prometheus their film was basically cast aside, with only the most quick and oblique of references to it. It was as if Ridley Scott had listened to the fans and their criticisms of Prometheus and tried to give them what they want. Let’s be honest, fans are just fans, they should be ignored (in my opinion) as you will never make them all happy all of the time.
Part of the trouble with Alien: Covenant is that it was far too similar to Prometheus in terms of plot. They both had large expensive spacecrafts on equally important missions and both crews were equally moronic! If anything, the crew on the Covenant were even more devoid of intelligence than the crew of the Prometheus. I can only presume that sometime in the future space travel will be so mundane that we will send people into space who would fail to get a job at the local McDonalds. I am not someone who gets too uptight about movies not sticking to what is scientifically proven or people making poor decisions but in Alien: Covenant it was so blatantly obvious that the stupid crazy decision making is simply to advance the plot, what little there was. My thoughts were this is really lazy writing. In the movie Prometheus the black goo basically did whatever the plot needed it to do, in Alien: Covenant the plot relied almost solely on dumb decision upon dumb decision.
I am not going to list every single stupid decision in the movie, that would take a lot more typing than I am prepared to do but put it this way: the captain of the Alien: Covenant wants to ditch his instructions to terraform the planet indicated and decides to go investigate on the strength of a John Denver song. Yes...as crazy as this sounds, that is what happens. Upon setting down on the new planet they emerge from the lander spacecraft with absolutely no protection, no helmets, no space suits, no anything, but they did bring guns. Phew! Promptly two members of the landing team are infected, my goodness! Now I know why no helmets, we are using stupidity to advance the plot, rarely has a movie relied upon such large amount of stupidity to advance a plot. So much so that we are taken out of the movie and made aware this is a movie, because people in real life in such situations would not behave the way they do in this movie.
Alongside the stupidity there are also lots of WTF moments. For example, David teaches Walter how to blow his flute, he even helps him with the fingering. Yes, this does really happen. In a similar manner they also exchange a kiss. I guess David loves himself, literally. Then we have the captain of the Covenant trusting David, who moments beforehand had been seen with his pet neomorph after it had beheaded one of his crew mates. David then proceeds to give a guided tour of his laboratory where he explains what all he has got up to, you know standard evil scientist stuff, over the years marooned with Dr Shaw. After that David shows him his egg collection and tells the captain to stick his head over it reassuring him it won’t hurt him. Of course, we all know what happens next. The captain wakes up, chest buster scene, followed by one of the biggest WTF moment when the Alien emerges small but fully formed and does almost a little dance, following the lead of its creator David. Ahhh so David is responsible for the creature, its not some ancient creature, some android with issues made it in a cave. Fair enough.
There is no doubting that the movie has great visuals, good cinematography, but really that is it, there is nothing else. It is hollow inside, pretty on the outside but inside is just space. The acting is generally speaking ok. People rave about Michael Fassbender, and indeed he is convincing as the evil camp android but with him playing the role of David and Walter there is in my opinion an overload, the film and the franchise is being dominated by one actor and the theme of artificial intelligence. Actors who could have made the movie more of a team effort, such as James Franco, are killed off extremely early. Indeed, what exactly was the point of James Franco even being in the film! Katherine Waterson is less than convincing in the Ripley role, all I could think was wtf is it with that hair style! She was the equivalent of painting a wall magnolia.
Will there be another prequel sequel? At this point does anyone care? On the plus side this movie has made me appreciate Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus and even AVP in a different light, they now seem almost cinematic gold compared to this.
2 out of 10… (I am being generous)