Alien: Inconvenient (The Prequel No One Needed)

Rating: 5/10 (12 August 2017)

A team of astronauts on a colonization mission decide to take their chances on a newly found planet in hopes of making it their home. They quickly regret their decision, however, when coming face to face with an alien threat.
Oh god, where do I start? Unfortunately there's no way to sugar coat things so I'll just be straight with you guys. Alien: Covenant was a huge disappointment. While I can respect Ridley Scott's attempt at tying together Prometheus and the original Alien film, sadly his direction fell flatter than an old stale pancake at your local family restaurant. But what really takes the cake is the severe lack of character logic throughout. This makes a lot of the film's situations feel so forced that most of the outcomes feel way too predictable to get any genuine shock value out of them. This pretty much kills the higher quantity of sheer tension you'd hope to experience, which is pretty disappointing considering Ridley Scott directed this series' near-perfect original, Alien, back in the late '70s.
Alien: Covenant's only saving grace, or what you could call slightly redeeming qualities, are the beautiful locations, sets, cinematography, and clearly talented performances. But that isn't saying much since the most of the actors are barely given enough screen time to allow for any real character development before they're killed off. This makes them highly disposable and hard to connect with or really care for. Don't even get me started on James Franco's wasted potential and the missing prologue scenes that should have been included to strengthen the plot. Oh well, what can ya do? At least Covenant isn't the worst entry in the franchise, I suppose. Don't get me wrong; there actually were a few really great moments and pleasant surprises. At times I even caught myself getting genuinely excited! Sadly any momentum that built up was quickly obliterated by the film's own lack of intelligence.
I don't know how Ridley Scott figured he could convince audiences to buy into this convoluted mess filled with so many plot-holes and an awful computer-generated Xenomorph. Sure, it may have been created using motion capture with a real actor providing a foundation for the alien's movements. But mostly ditching the groundbreaking practical effects that made the alien so iconic was like a pointless attempt at fixing something that was never broken to begin with. This was almost as distracting as Ridley's decision to allow his characters to continuously ignore logical safety protocols. Or simply have them avoid using basic common sense altogether in embarrassingly obvious, potentially catastrophic situations, despite their training. I mean, it's not like they're astronauts with a lot to lose or anything? Let's just say that Alien: Covenant was like a perfect storm of mediocrity that simply couldn't hold the film's structure together and ultimately weakened the franchise's mythology as a whole. Mindless fun? Maybe, but if you were disappointed with Prometheus, you may as well stay far and clear from this one.