In this symphony, false notes are abundant

Rating: 5/10 (13 May 2017)

I have seen Alien and Aliens over a hundred times combined. To put it gently, I'm what you call "a fan". I was eleven years old when i first saw Alien, and it scared the living hell out of me. three years later i saw Aliens, and i could seriously not believe my own eyes, that's how good it was. There is no movie that has inspired me more than Aliens, and combined with the original, they are in my opinion the best dilogy ever made. Even better than The Godfather.
IMO Ridley made a masterpiece back in 1979. The film was originally a b-movie, but the acting, set pieces, camera work, effects, story, script, direction and so on, made it look and feel like a triple A production. It even holds up against today's productions, as it has aged extremely well.
One of the things that made Alien so great was the mystery, that we can't guess what comes next. It's scary beyond belief that we don't know exactly what the aliens are capable of, or where exactly they come from. And this is what James Cameron brilliantly built upon in Aliens, he added more, like the alien queen which was genius, but he didn't overdo anything, and he kept the mystery, which was essential. Aliens felt just right, and is widely considered to be one of the best movie sequels of all time.
Alien 3 and resurrection are movies i like to forget ever existed. Alien 3 was a mess, they started shooting even before the script was done, and David Fincher was brought in last minute, and almost gave up his movie career because of the mess it turned out to be. Resurrection was basically just a "Hey we run out of ideas". So no more mention of those films.
Then, after many years, Ridley states he is returning, and he is going to make an alien prequel. Oh my god, the chill down my spine when i read that. I just thought to myself: YES, finally!
And then... He made Prometheus. A beautifully shot film, with great acting from Fassbender, but that's also where Prometheus stops being amazing. The script was horrible, the story tried to tell too much, and worst of all, the mystery was gone, what made Alien so great, just vanished. And now Ridley has made a dent he cannot undo, he can now only try and make things better, and i personally gave him one last chance, it is really unforgiving that the man that started all this, can mess up so bad. Now i finally understand how important Dan O'Bannon was to the original film.
Like seriously. Why did they need to make the engineers our creators?. Why can't the aliens just be aliens? *sigh*
Anyways, so how did he do this time around?.. Not good, not good at all. Ridley seems to be lost at this point. As with Prometheus, this movie is carried solely by Fassbender in another amazing performance, rest of the cast is stereo types and boring individuals. This movie has poor character development, and combined with lots of flat acting, it leaves me totally careless of what happens to them, and to be clear, a lot of horrible things happen to many characters in this film.
Alien had truckers in space, Prometheus had stupid scientists in space, now we have stupid stereotype truckers in space. As with Prometheus the plot is vague and badly transformed to screen, there are however some truly amazing scenes to behold, but they are rare, and are dragged out by many slow pacing dialogue scenes, which could have been solved in so many clever ways. It's a Alien movie, it's suppose to have tension.
The ending for example, could have had such a powerful impact, if only the movie had been built properly, and had a more focused story. But instead, it feels anticlimactic, and since this film borrows scenes from both Alien and Aliens and have added a Ripley "look-a-like" as the heroine, most of the movie feels forced and unoriginal, this is NOT the way to do things. It's a shame, it really is. And combine this with the sad fact that Ridley throws too much into the pot, and you have a movie that simply isn't working. He needs to learn that less is more.
James Cameron added a queen, and it made all the difference, Ridley then ups the ante by adding thousands of possible creatures and forms, it's just plain ridiculous. Why even do this? What we have here is a predictable, boring, non scary, poorly orchestrated symphony, where not only one tone is off, but many. Oh the irony.
I think Ridley need to let this franchise go. He obviously have no clue what made the original movies great, it almost feels like he is trolling us at this point. This isn't good enough.
Alien Covenant is barely better than Prometheus and is the last Alien movie i will visit the cinema to see. I have lost all hope that this franchise will return to it's former glory. Alien Covenant is however, probably the third best film in the franchise, not really an achievement considering.
5/10 - Mediocre