The new Alien film adds weak scares, keeps idiotic characters, and removes philosophical heft

Rating: 3/10 (23 May 2017)

After confusing a large portion of the audience with the nonsense-rich, Alien-scarce prequel film "Prometheus", Ridley Scott has caved to the complaints and pivoted the franchise in a different, horror-oriented direction with plenty of Alien creatures running around. Unfortunately, the dearth of Alien creatures was not the downfall of "Prometheus", as Scott apparently perceived. Instead, "Prometheus" failed on account of incredibly careless character decisions, frustratingly little plot elucidation, and implicitly assuring the audience that the sequel would fill in the missing parts. Guess what? All three of these flaws return and are perhaps even amplified in the prequel-sequel "Alien: Covenant".
In this addition to the franchise, a colonization ship called the Covenant is speeding towards an Earth-like planet that has been carefully vetted beforehand. The ship is carrying thousands of colonists and human embryos, as well as 15 crew members. On the way, a seemingly random stellar outburst halts the journey, and in the aftermath, a signal from a nearby, similarly Earth-like planet is recognized to be a John Denver song by one of the crew. Soon after, the crew nearly unanimously decides to abandon the primary mission of the original destination and instead visit the new planet on a whim. Why? Because then the movie wouldn't have happened. This marks the first infuriating folly of the universally stupid protagonists.
What follows is a rather impressive combination of both horror and science fiction clichés. First, the crew neglect waiting in orbit to inspect the planet in detail, but instead forge on during a raging hurricane and land in a random spot on the planet. Why? Because then the movie wouldn't have happened. Next, the colonists embark on an improvised trek across the surface without any helmets, armor, or precaution. Why? Because then the movie wouldn't have happened. After this the horror movie clichés roll in: man goes to "take a leak" and gets killed. Woman goes to "get cleaned up" and gets killed. De facto leader of the group takes a walk to "clear his thoughts" and gets killed. I know I'm paraphrasing but in the actual movie it's even more flagrant because the characters are both careless and dumb. It's impossible to convince me that the people chosen to helm a monumentally important expedition to an exoplanet are this uninterested in showing caution and exhibiting common sense. Worse yet, they never take the opportunity to clearly communicate to each other the graveness and deadliness of the Alien threat, which would have saved many of their lives and allowed for, in my opinion, more interesting subplots in which the humans have the upper hand.
When the bodies begin to pile up and the scares finally come, they are not unwelcome at first, since the gore effects and sound design of the movie are very good. However, there is no suspense and no real meaning behind the kills. The audience already knows and more importantly has already seen the biological wreckage that the Aliens can cause. It doesn't really matter how cool the kills are because the movie doesn't go above and beyond the original which came almost 40 years prior. It simply rehashes it.
Besides all this, the acting is good, and Michael Fassbender in particular is very good. His performance as both the suddenly evil David and the supposedly pure Walter is beautiful to watch. If you're a fan of his, please see this movie. If not, I can't find much else about the movie to recommend. The sequence in which the heroes escape back to the Covenant is actually very thrilling, but the final battle and the ultimate ending of the film is extremely rushed and is definitely the safest possible conclusion. There also exist a couple scenes that were very obviously shot just for the trailer and for some reason made it to final cut, which is bizarre, as films that Ridley Scott produces are usually well-edited.
The most mind-boggling thing about the movie by far, however, is how it relates to its predecessor. Although in hindsight I can see that there is not much that indicates a resolution to "Prometheus" in the trailers and pre-release publications, prospective viewers for the most part were hopeful for answers. Sadly, there are very few. Shaw, the protagonist of "Prometheus", doesn't make an appearance besides a photograph. There is a very pronounced thematic shift away from the ambitious "where did we come from?" question and towards the motif of the cycle of creation and destruction. These new themes aren't bad, but it's a little insulting to completely retcon elements of the first movie in order to have this movie, which finds itself bloated with half-hearted horror and missing philosophical intrigue.
All in all, "Alien: Covenant" was a triple disappointment. One, it failed to capitalize on the inclusion of more Alien scares by regressing back to familiar territory that we've already seen in many of the original films from last century. Two, the frustratingly incompetent and frankly stupid characters are still here from "Prometheus", and this time there are even more instances of illogical decisions. Three, Ridley Scott gave up trying to explain the previous film and took the easy way out, both alienating fans that wanted more of "Prometheus" and disappointing fans that just wanted something fresh.