So, you hated Prometheus? Well, then this is what you get.

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2017)

Well, you know what haters? This is what you get for your reaction to Prometheus. That's right, I blame this disjointed, paper thin, lackluster film on those who moaned to no end about Prometheus, which I thought was a very good movie. Ridley Scott originally stated he wanted to move away from the original Alien with Prometheus, but when the public slammed him for such a thing he had a rethink and decided to try to give the public what they wanted. Problem is, he sorely misunderstood what that was.
In Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The story line is weak, the effects are destroyed by an overuse of CGI, there's lots of gore, and the disposable characters are all pretty dumb. He even throws in a pointless shower sex scene towards the end of the film that ends in predictable death. I have to wonder if he put that in with good intentions or if he thought "This is the crap that you want, here it is". But then there are other embarrassments about this movie. When a woman decides to give a man who is convulsing and bursting with blood a consoling hug, just seconds after beating on the door begging to be let out of the room, I literally burst into laughter. It was ludicrous. And as others have mentioned, there's nothing unpredictable about anything. You know exactly what's about to happen. The dangling carrots are right on screen: "Oh look an egg opened. Oh look, the guy is being lured to look into it. I wonder what will happen? Oh look, the creature jumped out and attached to his face. Oh look, an alien bursts from the man's chest soon after the creature comes off his face." Yes, it's all that predictable. And Ridley Scott seems to love the idea of crew members being made up of the occasional couples, and then killing one off fairly early so we can see how the remaining grieves prior to having to move it aside to continue with the issues at hand. And the ending reveal was not much of a revelation. It was pretty much set up from an earlier scene that was cut away from just at a crucial moment. Hmmm, I wonder what happened? Duh, it's pretty obvious.
But it's not a total disconnect from the previous movie. Alien: Covenant picks up 10 years after the events of Prometheus. Prometheus ended with Shaw and David's head blasting off to the planet of the Engineers to find out why they wanted to kill the human race. (Just watch the news on a daily basis and it will become quite clear). But apparently they decided less on finding a reason and more on revenge or an experiment. Basically, the ship arrives to the planet while the engineer species looks on, only to be doused in the alien producing germ that immediately destroys the entire population within minutes. OK, that was productive. And while we are initially led to believe that Shaw repaired David and then died on an alleged crash of their ship, it's eventually revealed that Shaw just became a vessel for another of David's alien experiments. That definitely cheapens the events of the previous film. The rest of the crew on this latest doomed ship is gradually killed off by various types of aliens. It's almost like a video game. And the familiar looking monster doesn't even appear until the end. Problem is when it does, it is not the sneaky bugger from the first film. It's a poorly animated replica that bounces around at the speed of light. But any potential terror was gone because the overall movements of the aliens looked to me like unnatural cartoon monkeys.
The opening of the film is the familiar intercepted signal from another planet that must be investigated. The signal this time was Shaw singing a John Denver song. No, seriously. David is the star of the movie, and he's become even nastier than he was the first time. And even though his "brother" Walter is a more modern model with greater capabilities of survival, he still gets bested by David in the end. So the bleak ending of this film is that David is viewing the colonists hibernating on this latest ship as more chances to perform further wonderfully pointless alien experiments. I do agree that this is a poor film, though perhaps not as bad as many would have you think. I just cannot wait to see what mess Mr. Scott comes up with next.
Prometheus was a very cerebral film, and I liked that layered element despite the flaws in that story. I personally would have preferred the alien really being what we originally thought, a life form native to another planet. Instead, it suddenly became the creation of yet another alien breed who was also responsible for the creation of humans. That definitely dilutes the original story in not the best way. But now the series has been painted into a corner and I cannot see a satisfying way of getting out. I think when/if Ridley Scott sees this to some sort of completion (which he better get on the ball because he's already in his seventies), I suspect he will look back and think he should have just left it all alone. But then the next hack will come in and take it back to the awful Freddie vs Facehugger vs Jason vs Alien territory, and won't that be a joy!