Not quite the Alien movie we longed for

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2017)

ALIEN: COVENANT follows a space mission that's planned to populate new worlds with humans. The crew of the colony ship 'Covenant' intersects an unknown signal coming from a habitable planet. As we come to expect from any movie of the franchise, diverting the colonization mission to the source of the signal may not have been the best of ideas...
I consider myself a hardcore fan of the franchise. And I liked the beginning of the movie, especially when everything devolves into visceral madness in a way that is quite uncompromising .... but then, after starting with a massive bang, ALIEN: COVENANT slows down and just becomes utterly boring, filled with pseudo-gibberish about creation and perfection.
There are aspects of the plot whose predictability are almost insulting to the audience. The pacing is off, with sometimes too much talk and sometimes too much action; no sense of rhythm for sure. And there are some characters that are just plain forgettable—you don't really care much when they die because you didn't get the chance to know them in the first place.
But ultimately, what really shocked me the most was that I couldn't relate to Michael Fassbender's character. As we have come to expect from Fassbender, the acting is superb, but the story just doesn't give enough time to properly motivate the character's actions. I oftentimes found myself confused: Why does he do the things he does? What's the big deal?
Besides shortcomings in the plot, the frantic and jittery action is at times off-putting. And then there's massive use of CGI. Oooooooh.... CGI ! Hardcore alien fans have come to hate it. Call me old school, but I really did long for more practical effects in this one. The xenomorphs, despite multimillion dollar graphics, just didn't seem to be "there", they didn't have a real presence.
I give it a 6 out of 10—slightly above average because the movie did manage to entertain me... and because of the genuinely gruesome and gut-wrenching body horror. But then, you can't base a good movie on just that. In the end, you need a compelling story.