Why Did Ridley Scott Choose to Make This Movie So Relentlessly Terrible?

Rating: 1/10 (6 September 2017)

So much is wrong with "Alien: Covenant" that I don't really know where to start.
So let's start with Ridley Scott, shall we? Seriously, what the f**k? How could the man who invented the Alien franchise screw it up this badly? The first Alien movie had no pretensions to be anything more than a really scary movie, and as a result it scared the sh*t out of everyone. But now Scott feels the need to fill in the saga with all of this backstory, explaining the origins of the alien species and making the whole thing the plot of a rogue android to do away with the human race (or something). Aaargh!! The aliens are scary precisely because they're mysterious. The first film seemed to suggest that if you poke around in the vast regions of space long enough, you're going to find some icky things there. Telling us too much about them ruins their mystique.
But not only is the story convoluted and dumb, the direction sucks as well, and this is perhaps the most surprising problem with "Alien: Covenant." Ridley Scott has never been one of my favorite directors, but the man usually knows how to direct a movie. Not so here. The movie begins with Michael Fassbender's android character roaming around an enormous ship all by his lonesome, and then after a run in with some sort of solar flare or something, BAM, there are suddenly other people running around as well. Who are these people, you ask? Oh hell if I know, since we're never introduced to them. They come out of malfunctioning sleeping pods, but we don't actually see them coming out of them, so the effect is disorienting. From then on, the rest of the movie follows suit, setting up set piece after set piece so quickly that we've barely grasped what is happening in one before we're being whisked away to another. What was the freaking hurry? Even the gestation period of the alien in this one is ridiculously short. A face hugger attaches itself to one character, and literally 30 seconds later a xenomorph is bursting out of his chest. Come on, at least stick to the rules you invented in the first place, crappy Alien movie.
The characters might have names. I honestly can't remember. I do know that almost all of them are married to each other, but you don't know who's married to who until one of them dies and the other one looks a little more sad than the rest of the crew. But everyone is killed off so quickly that no one really has to mourn for very long. During all of this, there is an alien running around, but you might miss it, since it's treated almost as an afterthought, a strange choice given that this movie is named....you know....ALIEN.
God, what a lousy movie. Much as I hate reboots, I would have preferred a simple re-do of the original with some new people and some spiffier special effects to this steaming pile.
Grade: F (You have no idea how much it pains me to give an Alien movie that score)