A death-knell to the Alien series

Rating: 2/10 (29 August 2017)

I don't think I'm the only one who felt like they had a bad taste left in their mouth after watching Ridley Scott's much hyped and long-talked about Aliens series entry Prometheus.
A misguided, poorly scripted and genuinely disappointing big budget affair, that seemingly suggested to us all that Scott should leave the franchise he once started to live out a peaceful existence in our fond memories and not attempt to shine a light on the fearsome Xenomorph's creation or try and explain anything else about this universe that was originally so good because of its many mysteries and wonderful drawn up characters.
Sadly and unfortunately for all franchise fans, Scott decided he needed to once more explore the Alien landscape with Alien: Covenant, a film that we were told would be a return to its horror roots but what we get is against all the odds a film much worse than Prometheus (lacking even in that films visual splendour) and a film that rings the death knell for this series as we know it.
Covenant's muted reception and so-so box-office is evidence to a lacking word of mouth and while Scott and his Alien team promised this was but the first of many follow-ups and while Neill Blomkamp was attached to an exciting sounding yet now dead in the water Alien feature, Covenant's inability to succeed and it's disheartening treatment of the lore at its disposal really has put the Alien series under the water.
Scott directs the film with a disappointing lack of originality or flair, his cast can do little with their one dimensional roles and while this time around we get a double dose of Michael Fassbender synthetic action, when key scenes involve him playing a mini-flute or wearing legionnaire's hats, that's not exactly a good thing.
The film also looks tired and uninspired, something that has usually never been the case for this franchise. Even Scott's 1970's original with his dark space ship corridors had more visual enticement than Covenant, that's whole existence feels tired and below workmanlike.
Nothing's surprising in this film, even Scott's blood thirsty Alien led death's fail to get the blood pumping (squirting?) and as soon as the colonization ship Covenant sends a crew down to a planet sending out a distress signal, you can pretty much foresee how much of the film will play out and with our main human protagonist being Catherine Waterston's dulled down Ripley rip-off Daniel's, it's truly hard to care about anyone's survival and due to this, the film loses much of its potential tension and instead becomes a two hour slog through similar scenarios we've seen before and seen done a lot better.
Final Say –
Not only is Alien: Covenant one of the year's most disappointing high-profile releases, its one of the year's worst films period.
Quite possibly one of the worst films on Scott's esteemed C.V; Covenant wastes a big budget, a capable cast and a brilliant cinematic universe in a film that's so highly forgettable and lacking in energy that it's hard to understand why anyone involved in this project thought this trip to outer space was a good idea? 1 music lesson out of 5