A great disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (2 June 2017)

Alien: covenant
I really wanted to like this movie, I really did. After all its a sci- fi, and some of the others in the series were amazing. I try to stay upbeat on the blog but sometimes I just can't.
I think the reason it is so bad came down to the details. There were many things that just did not make sense or were not thought through, things that made me stop seeing the people as competent or even moderately intelligent.
Spoilers are ahead, be warned.
-The movie never really explained how they were traveling, they do not show any form of FTL but were able to reroute a bit too easily and quickly for a ship traveling relativisticly. They also acted as if they had entered the sector, done scanning then decided on the destination rather then planning their entire trip before they left.
-It strongly hinted (but never said that) they were the first colony ship to go to this destination yet only had one shuttle. I refuse to believe that a ship like that could ever land, having one shuttle would be absurd. They had two thousand people to decant, were they going to spend a year just offloading people? What if it breaks down? Two shuttles would be the bare minimum. I would imagine they would have with three or four being more likely.
-When they found a new planet along he way that looked better then the one that they were going to, they diverted (I doubt it would happen but I can buy this under some circumstances). The crew then sent their only shuttle down with most of the crew knowing only that it looked like earth and had a very similar atmosphere. Even assuming that they made sure the airmix was right off screen, the idea of just walking around freely on a planet you literately know nothing about is ridicules. And of course, what happens to them is a consequence of that. I find it hard to feel sorry for people who are only in trouble because of their own stupidity and lack of diligence. I might feel differently, if it was just them. They made a stupid decision and they payed for it. However it's not just them. They were reasonable for the lives of two thousand people who were in status.
-The landing party split up a lot, like almost every scene. They knew enough to take weapons when they left the shuttle but not enough to stick together even when they knew aliens were after them. Is that how they were trained to act when they got to their new home?
-The crew never planned anything out. One of the things I like about Ripley in the first alien movies is how she used her head, she was not just a thug or someone acting out of pure emotion. In Covenant, they mostly wonder, scream, die, then group up and do it again while yelling for the pilot to bring a cargo shuttle down to the surface (which was not designed for decent into an atmosphere but we will just ignore that part)
JoshuaLawrencePike.com