"Alien: Covenant"- A beautiful failure.

Rating: 2/10 (25 May 2017)

I was ready to write my 500th IMDb review on a special film that meant a lot to me in order to commemorate reaching such a number. And I was thinking about what I could possibly pick... perhaps my favorite television series? Or a game I highly admired? Perhaps a review of my favorite guilty-pleasure? Or find the movie I thought was the greatest ever made? It had to be something meaningful.
And then I saw "Alien: Covenant", and I had my answer. My 500th IMDb review will be not for a great film, or one I admired. It will be in recognition of perhaps the single most disappointing cinematic experience I've ever had. Yes, Ridley Scott's return to the "Alien" saga began on a shaky note with 2012's mediocre "Prometheus"- a film that was stunning to behold but ultimately half-baked in the story department. But oh boy, does he outdo himself with "Alien: Covenant!" I wasn't expecting this. It's almost heartbreaking, because Scott gets the entire film so fundamentally wrong. It's to the point that "Covenant" reaches the brink of being near unwatchable at times. And beyond that... it's so thoroughly ludicrous, it almost retroactively makes the earlier installments less enjoyable merely by association. It's that bad.
A vessel known as "The Covenant" is on a mission to the planet Origae-6, where a human colony will be established with a crew and passengers kept in deep hibernation, and the ship under he supervision of android Walter (Michael Fassbender). However, an unexpected neutrino blast cripples the ship and kills several crew and colonists. Awakened, the remaining crew are forced to make a hard choice when in the aftermath of the blast, a distress signal is found on a mysterious nearby planet. Descending to its surface to investigate, the crew shockingly find this previously unknown world to be a suitable analog for Earth thanks to a similar atmosphere... well, if it weren't for mysterious spores that impregnate several crew- members with proto-xenomorphs and the appearance of the android known as "David"- now the sole survivor of the "Prometheus" disaster! From there on, it's a race to survive a tangle of plot- lines as David's motivations are questioned, the crew attempts to defeat the new alien threat and the audience tries to care!
In a lot of ways, the problems audiences had with "Prometheus" are back in this follow-up- from the smallest nit-picks to the grandest logical errors and examples of faulty writing. It's very much a film where you can count along with the glaring gaps in reason and execution with each passing minute. The only thing is these issues seem substantially exacerbated by a general apathy and sense of "going through the motions" on the part of the creative team. There's no heart here as there was with "Prometheus." Say what you will... it's clear that there was a drive and effort behind that film. And when the resulting reception ended up mixed, Ridley Scott went back to the well and simply tried to make a film that was cosmetically similar to his iconic original. And that's not spoiling anything- it's in the darned title! And we end up with a film that's merely a pale imitation of what came before, leaving it a wholly monotonous and dull experience. Yes, Scott's trademark visual direction is as gorgeous as ever... but it's to the service of nothing but copying and pasting, with less thought and an added sense of convolution as it must now bridge "Prometheus" and the original "Alien."
Not that I lay the blame entirely at the feet of Scott, as there is also the poor writing courtesy a small army of screenwriters. There is a distinct lack of character establishment and development outside of Fassbender's admittedly delightful dual role. Not a single human character feels real or fleshed- out in the slightest, and the bulk of the cast come across like they're playing animated versions of the cardboard cut-outs for the film you see in your theater's lobby. Which is a shame, as there is some good talent involved, including the likes of Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup and Danny McBride, who oddly enough gives the best performance of the film outside of Fassbender. The pacing of the writing is also suspect, especially in the opening act, which is both needlessly drawn out but also vapid because we're just seeing "stuff" happen with no characters to root for. The script never finds the balance between story and character... so we're left with nothing but tenuously connected plot-beats that transparently only exist to bring us from one sequence to the next, peppered in with the occasional awkward insertion of a reference to the previous films for contrived fan-service. It's hack writing 101.
And to top it off... The film feels unnecessary. I hate to say that, because no film is technically necessary. But in the grand scheme of a franchise, there needs to be a purpose to exist or else it just feels like a cash-grab. And this feels like a cash- grab. By virtue of its own design (and again, this spoils nothing), you can't do much outside of complicate the backstory with twists and turns in a prequel such as this, which lends a strange level of unbelievability to the earlier installments. The original four-film series was haunting, and the aliens themselves were a menace that the characters happened upon. Now, with added layers of religious subtext (don't get me started on Crudup's cringe-worthy persecution complex the writers tossed into one scene), nonsensical insertion of numerous new locations that the aliens are infesting, and "Prometheus" suggesting that the xenomorphs are some weapon experiment... and I just don't buy it tying together. The one-two punch of "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" cheapen the whole series.
"Alien: Covenant" is a woefully misjudged and shockingly dull tale that takes the series to new lows. And for that, I give it an abysmal 2 out of 10.