The art of screenwriting is dead... Long live mediocrity

Rating: 5/10 (15 January 2018)

Alien: Covenant pretty much sums up what is wrong with Hollywood at the moment: it's a bankable franchise if you throw enough money at each movie, but it's also a dumping ground for weak story-telling. A younger Ridley Scott would have pored over each fault in the story-line/screenplay, discarding what doesn't seem logical but you can appreciate that those finer nuances of directing have gone the way of vitality. Who can blame him, really?
This film is not a result of bad directing, but film-goers who will accept each movie like a slow death, ensuring 20th Century Fox skip on anything like common sense or treating their audience with having any intelligence. The film is, quite simply, illogical and dumb. The SFX are brilliant as you would expect these days, the acting is passable given the awful lines they have to deliver, and the directing is dining out on a meagre offering, that if you wanted to discard what doesn't work, you'd have to rewrite the whole mess.
Is it entertaining? Well yes, but only if you leave your brain in a jar by the side of your bed and try not to think about it after. When you do it unravels. I mean, seriously? Aliens that turn from young to full adults in minutes? So many plot-holes you can drive a colony-ship through them. A crew that are so stupid, it makes the crew of the Nostromo look like Noble Peace Prize winners.
Another psycho android that might have been interesting if it had been explained better. Just another opportunity jettisoned for unnecessary profanity (I mean, for fxxksake how much swearing was there in this film, that didn't add anything to character or wit, or anything for that matter). Given the screen time for characters there was naff-all characterisation.
Even writing this, thinking about the movie, my head hurts. This is a film that contributes absolutely nothing to the series, to films in general, and I've reduced my stars from 6 to 5, because I'm being kind, and the soundtrack wasn't bad.
Meh.