Alien...a lien

Rating: 3/10 (23 July 2017)

When I was 19 I went to see Alien at the Odeon Leicester Square. In fact I persuaded 10 work colleagues to see if with me as I was so excited about what I had read about the film and the limited visuals that I saw in the great but now dead publication Omni. The film dazzled me and still does. H.R. Giger's brilliance was magnified by the production team to create a true and enduring classic.
When I was 26 I took my wife of 2 years to see Aliens. One became many with the vile creatures doing their worst but losing to Ellen Ripley in the end. Aliens did what few sequels ever do match or exceed their creator. Aliens built on Alien and I was so captivated that we (with the full approval of my wife) named one of our two daughters Ellen.
Then came the plateau of Alien 3 and the inevitable nose dive of ideas and on screen potency. With each passing film they mean less and less to me. Yes some of the planet visuals look fantastic and yes the space ships in space look great but in an inverted manner as Aliens was more than Alien Alien Covenant is less than Prometheus and that is something that I never thought possible.
I have asked myself "is it my age and am I now less prepared to let go and engage with a story and to wind wonder and depth and value in a film". The answer to that is 100% "no". So no it is not my age but I am sure that I know what it is.
So here is what I suggest. That the millions of fans globally of Alien and Aliens take "a lien" out that prevents Ridley Scott and anyone attached to Prometheus and Covenant ever having any association with any Alien project again ever. To quote Ellen Ripley in Aliens "you don't see them f@@king each other over for a goddamn percentage".
Prometheus was bad but Covenant is worse because it is crass and lumpen and a pale and distant shadow of the two brilliant films that allowed such a travesty to occur. I watched Covenant once and I don't think that I will ever watch it again.
To paraphrase from the end of Alien "this is me, aged 58 signing off from the Alien franchise. I blew you out of the goddamn airlock and you are dead and lost forever". When you have lived longer than Ellen Ripley drifted through the core system in hyper-sleep you learn a thing or two. Let's stop this from ever happening again. Let's take a lien over Alien and nuke this franchise from orbit...it's the only way.