Pretentious addition to the great sci-fi lineage

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2017)

"Alien Covenant" continues on from "Prometheus", as a new shipload of alien-bait (the crew of the 'The Covenant') is lured to an alien planet infested by the slimy, chest-rupturing, bi-mandibular horrors made famous in the original "Alien" (1979) and its outstanding sequel "Aliens"(1986). Unlike those two classics, or even the two weaker follow-ups (but like its antecedent "Prometheus"), "Alien Covenant" is pretentious and boring. The special effects are outstanding and the the crew of the 'The Covenant' (characters/actors) generally good but the story, which finds conniving Creator-obsessed android "David" (from Prometheus) seeding a planet with 'aliens' then luring the colony ship, presumably to promulgate the new species he has created, is neither interesting nor exiting. There is too much posturing from the urbane David and the plot relays on the insipid 'identical characters' device, which leads to an unimaginative and predictable 'twist' ending. Director Ridley Scott can make hard-driving action films (i.a. Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down) but in the two recent entries into the Alien canon, he seems to want to focus on the 'serious' (i.e. pretentious), rather than the trivial (i.e. fun) side of science-fiction. Perhaps he thinks he's rescuing the series from its downward trajectory into cartoon-like 'action movies" (such as Alien Resurrection and the "AVP" shtick) but the series would be better served by more heart-pounding action involving tough, well-armed space-marine grunts and less dull pseudo-metaphysics expounded by verbose androids with impeccable locution.