Better than Prometheus but nothing great.

Rating: 7/10 (19 May 2017)

For Alien fanboys such as myself there was one big question surrounding this film. Was this going to be Prometheus 2 or an Alien reboot? The answer is yes to both. While Ridley Scott fancies this to be another deep drama about the origin of life, clearly the Hollywood money lenders let him know that if this didn't end in some serious Alien action he'd never make another film again. For me to consider this film successful it had to accomplish one thing. Make me feel less irritated about having spent two hours of my life sitting through Prometheus. While I think this film has the potential to be just as controversial amongst fans as Prometheus was, I'd say they gave me enough to satisfy the requirement. They definitely ended the Prometheus story. They didn't necessarily finish it, but they put it to rest. While Alien Covenant is probably the best film in the Alien franchise since Aliens (Alien 2) I felt it still came up a bit short because it doesn't really know what it wants to be. It felt like they had two scripts, Prometheus 2 and Alien reboot. They tried to smash them together into this weird Sci-fi/horror drama. The story dives into a classic theme of whether technology is good or evil. In this film that technology is creation itself. There was heavy emphasis on the concept that when something is created often something else has to die (a metaphor used all throughout the classic Alien films). To keep you from being bored to death by all this they shoved in some classic alien stalking the stupid human kind of action. Unlike prior films they didn't rely on camera and lighting tricks though. They actually showed off the monster in several forms. I give them props for that as it was kind of cool. All in all I'd say this was a decent movie that will probably appeal to the masses more so than the die-hard fans. Unlike Prometheus it doesn't leave you asking the question "What the hell just happened?" so I'd consider it worth watching but not worth raving about.