A genuinely tragic waste.

Rating: 3/10 (15 May 2017)

Never have two films filled me with such a sense of profound and deep ennui and disappointment as Prometheus and Covenant. They could have been science fiction for the ages, pieces of history which complete, or give beautiful background to arguably the best duo of horror/sci-fi films humanity ever created, in Alien and Aliens. Why is £100m been given to an 80yr old who very clearly cannot make decent films anymore?
It wouldn't, or shouldn't even have been that hard. Ridley Scott had the budget, the scenery, the CGI, the lead actor at the zenith of his career giving incredible performances in both films. Even after Prometheus, you senile old fool, even after making a mess out of that, after the own goal you kicked there - just learn from it and make something wonderful, something spellbinding. To take the same mistakes from Prometheus and stick them in AC is another level of dumb. Its dumber than the decision making of the characters in both films, which is borderline braindead.
Lets start with the good. The actual filming and scenery are incredible (as they were in Prometheus), the film looks amazing. Fassbender is brilliant. He's effectively doing both lead roles, which is almost a salvation, of sorts. The first segment of the movie, where the ship has difficulties and they lose the captain, are great.
The bad. In Prometheus, they went off on a multi-year, multi-trillion dollar mission because they found some chalk drawings in a cave. Surely some amoeba brained cretin will ensure such an event wont happen again
"Hey, someones playing a John Denver record from a world we didn't even know existed, shall we abandon our 7 year voyage and go live there instead? "Hey, lets land in some water. Not the dry land next to it. Not the vast alien city we seem to be within walking distance of that we didn't notice at all. Some water" "Hey guys. Shall we scientifically investigate this new alien planet or just send 80% of the crew down there wearing baseball caps?" "what shall we do with this guy who's clearly been infected with something terrible, quarantine him or bring him onboard?"
This carries on almost ad infinitum. The script/plot writers for this are an embarrassment not just to film, but to the human race.
Deary, deary, deary me. I spent half the film sighing as I imagined Ridley clapping as his actors, who you couldn't care less about, make these decisions which will result in their deaths in the very near future.
The scene where one of the supporting actors say they have to "go use the bathroom" and heads off to meet their inevitable fate defies belief. Then there is the nonsense about faith. Thankfully, Billy Crudup's character, who has all this faith, gets alien facehugger-killed, and I think everyone should be quite happy about that.
David. David, David. Is the Alien franchise ultimately based around an android who has a bit of a hissy fit and decides, for no clear reason, to commit genocide against the Engineers, and also plans to exterminate humanity in its entirety? Ridley, Ridley, Ridley, what have you done? What is this total mess?
These Engineers, who promised so much, are basically ignored as part of the plot. David just exterminates them and every living thing on their planet, despite them being a vastly intelligent race, by lobbing chemical weapons out of a cargo bay. Then, despite being in complete control of the spacecraft, Ol' Dave crash lands it in some nearby woods.
By this point, you're so demoralised you just hope something truly terrible happens in terms of bloodshed so its at least a mad slasher pic. But no, Davey boy shows his brother Walter how to play the flute.
We then find out Davey has been effectively living as a mad scientist, working in candlelight and with quills and paper drawings, genetically engineering loads of alien creatures, using Noomi Roopace's corpse, which somehow wasn't destroyed by the pathogens that destroyed every humanoid, or the unnecessary crash. So in an advanced, space-faring city, technology everywhere, a robot is using medieval techniques and devices to go about his mental work. What had Scott been drinking here?
Thankfully, after avoiding any more common sense, the remaining few characters end up back on the spaceship, one of them infected of course. Then after some more total failures of decision making, the alien manages to grow from inches long to a huge monster within a few minutes, (see also: Prometheus) and manages to murder two of the crew who got so horny watching everyone die in terrible ways they have a shag in a shower with such loud music playing the alarms about a monster coming to kill them aren't heard. Why have suspense when we can have Scream 3 in space? Why make a decent film when we can smear excrement on some paper and use that as the script? Why have character development if you can avoid it?
As per prior movies, the alien is lobbed out of the air lock, as they cant come up with a more creative way of killing it, and the identical android, who no-one bothered checking isn't the identical bad one, turns out to be the baddie, regurgitates two alien embryos(??) he'd been storing for a rainy day, plays some classical music, end credits roll.
I think I wanted Islamic State to attack the cinema by this time.
Ridley should be in a home wearing a nappy, not stealing a living with a plot written by someone who thinks CSI Miami is the peak of intelligent drama.
In all seriousness, I was genuinely saddened by both Prometheus and Covenant. Such a terrible waste of an incredible opportunity, gone forever into the mists of nothingness.