All the wrong decisions, both within and outside of the film

Rating: 4/10 (13 July 2017)

Obviously, it's fair to say that a large amount of directors have been privileged to have a crack at the Alien franchise - there's been the fantastic James Cameron with Aliens, the exceptional David Fincher with Alien 3 that while he hates that film I thought was fine, and French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with assistance from Joss Whedon with Alien Resurrection. However, Ridley Scott was the first and is the most infamous, and in terms of franchise, I would say that Alien is strong: I liked the first, loved the second, was fine with the third and the fourth is garbage, but fun garbage.
I was then really looking forward to Prometheus when I saw it in cinemas and was very disappointed with it, for its idiotic characters, lack of focus, expository dialogue and audience insulting antics of stupid science in the infamous caesarean scene, or just straight up refusing to answer any questions.
With this film, I hoped that a lot of my questions would be answered, or that Ridley would fix a lot of the issues. He does not. In my opinion, this is only mildly better than Prometheus: whilst Prometheus starts strong and gets weaker as it goes on, Covenant gets better, but not my much.
Oh, by the way, James Franco's in this movie. Yep. True, he blows up after 20 seconds and in a part that could've been played by the second unit directors brother, but he's there.
The very telling fact about this movie is that Ridley Scott took the wrong advice away from Prometheus and has pretty much decided with this film to forget all about it. We know this because there both the interviews where he says this, and also the fact that they literally nuke everything set-up in the last film. And it causes more confusion than answers AGAIN! Seriously, in Prometheus, the Engineers made the Xenomorphs, but apparently not because in this, David from the last film is the real creator of the Xenomorphs. And Shaw, who I was quite interested in following, is killed offscreen by David which felt really cheap.
Speaking of cheap, the characterisation of EVERYONE in this film outside of Michael Fassbender's exceptional portrayals the androids David and Walter and a few others, is so non-descript that it goes beyond lazy. Most of the time, I had to Wikipedia for names afterwards because everyone is referred to as "my wife" or "my husband" SO GODDAMN OFTEN you will know no-one by name. The only real exception, and the only fully formed character is, to my massive surprise, Danny McBride as the ships captain, Tennessee, as has the distinction of a personality - he's a hard drinking, driven professional who will go to great lengths to save the crew when serious s**t goes down. By contrast, Katherine Waterston, who plays 'Not Ripley' Daniels, is wasted: she comes alive for the action scenes, but there's only two that she's involved in for the final act. Apart from that, Daniels is a boring bland stand-in for Ripley or even Shaw. Then everyone is either meant to die, or just too stupid to live. Here's the level of characterisation, Demian Bichir is in the film, and his character is gay - I know this because Wikipedia told me, as did the prequel YouTube short. By the way, why do I have to watch YouTube shorts BEFORE I watch a film rather than just put the footage in the film? At least DC gives us all the stuff that should've gone in after the fact, but not before!
Within this, however, there's an interesting idea of David becoming this Frankenstein that makes the Xenomorphs, and Michael Fassbender is as great in this as Prometheus as he gives both of these films a better performance than they deserve. Here it is: Engineers made Humans, Humans made David, David destroys the Engineers. Humans made David, David made Xenomorphs, Xemomorphs destroy Humans. It's an idea that is interesting, but is screwed because it's the secondary focus, when really, if this movie was told solely from David's POV, it would've been so much more interesting. You see him create, scheme, and it would've added actual tension to the ending that is so obvious you can see it 45 minutes before the end.
So, what else? If you thought Prometheus had a dumb crew, wait till you see these guys. They venture forth, onto an unknown planet, and when they land, they wear NO protective gear. This would've literally made the whole movie pointless if they had. THEN when a Neomorph - first generation - attacks the ship, two crew members slip over in blood, which was ridiculous and then one blows up the ship with a shotgun. Then, you have the stupidest sequence of events, with the idiot Captain and designated exposition dumper Oram, played by Billy Crudup (who is wasted here) at the centre, in an event that leads to a moment that reminded me way too much of the Spaceballs movie. Then the ending, which is really obvious, could've been avoided by doing basic checks on the androids to check which is which.
There is some good things in the film: namely the character David is wonderful, Fassbender is great as always, the action scene in the final act when they are hunting the Xenomorph on the ship is intense, and the acting from Waterston is strong despite her character, and she has good scenes with McBride. It's well scored, the CGI is alright. I can't say its a not a mess, but I wouldn't tell anyone not to see it. It's certainly an experience; make of that what you will.