Ridley Scott does it again - destroys more of his legacy

Rating: 3/10 (19 May 2017)

This movie takes the Alien franchise in a direction no real Alien fan can appreciate. Prometheus should have been a side note in the history of Alien movies. As its title did not indicate any connection, you could perhaps see it forgotten in history. This, however, bears the title of Alien, while keeping the strange habit of naming a movie after a spaceship, alive. It is therefore extra sad, so see the horror and mystique of the original movie, and even the first two sequels, gone. As several other reviewers already have pointed out, the plot where the android David from Prometheus apparently is the creator of the xenomorphs as we know them, takes away so much of the horror and weight of the original story. If this is the best background story the producers can come up with, we would have been better off without it. The whole thing with some spores being the source of it, as told already in Prometheus was already a bad choice for an origin.
Michael Fassbender's work in this movie is good though. We have seen AI:s struggling with their self-awareness, concepts of life, rationality and creation in many movies before, but this part of Alien Covenant is at least a bit new for the franchise, as it is a synthetic, and not a human that is the main character. The first 30 minutes or so, of the movie are actually the most interesting. I would gladly have substituted the bad and reckless way this movie dealt with my beloved Alien franchise for a drama about the hardships of a spaceship on its colonizing mission. It felt more rewarding watching Danny McBride towing cables in space, than seeing the origin story of one of movie history's most terrifying creatures mutilated and reduced to the totally illogical genetic research by an android with creation complex.
It is sad to see the director of one of the greatest movies ever, succumb to making poor attempts at expanding the story. Attempts that, twice now, have come out as miserable failures.
Had this been a generic sci-fi horror movie without any claims on being tied to the Alien movies, it would have been a decent way to waste a couple of hours. But now it just feels like 20th Century Fox are pissing at the fan base while making money off of their hopes for a GOOD Alien movie. That Scott is supposed to make more prequel-sequels just feels depressing now.