Is It Really A Sequel/Prequel To Anything ?

Rating: 5/10 (27 May 2017)

I must be one of the few people who thoroughly enjoyed PROMETHEUS. It was a visually stunning film so much so that most of its flaws didn't matter. The only downside was that Scott and co seemed to forget it was a prequel to ALIEN and shoehorned that element into the narrative at a very late stage. Okay it led to more questions than answers but at least with ALIEN COVENANT some fundamental answers would be answered
!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!
The unforgivable thing about AC is that it effectively deletes PROMETHEUS as if it never existed in the first place . You want o know who the Engineers are ? You want to know why they hate the Human race ? Then you'll be none the wiser because of a very brief segment that writes them out of the story. Instead AC concentrates on being an ALIEN film of sorts . I say "of sorts" because it does feel like a fairly generic sci-fi action horror where the aliens could be any type of monsters killing a bunch of cardboard cut-outs
Characterisation is a problem. Plenty of people hated ALIEN 3 but even if the characters were all one note at least they still came across as real characters. Even with PROMETHEUS there was a relatively broad range of characters where as with AC we get a limited bunch of American characters. An early 22nd Century space expedition ? Shouldn't there be some Indians , Chinese and Brazilians present reflecting near future geo-politics. The story doesn't focus on development unless the character is an android. It's also a bitter fact that any surprises involving plot twists have been given away in the trailers
In short ALIEN COVENENT is a bitter disappointment . This disappointment is compounded by the fact that Hollywood has upped their game where action blockbusters are concerned . Both KONG SKULL ISLAND and LIFE I found to be fairly impressive. The fundamental problem with ALIEN CONVENANT is that it's cynically marketed. On its own it is a mildly diverting , visually impressive film in parts but as an ALIEN film in general and a sequel to PROMETHEUS in particular it falls short