Not A True Prometheus Sequel, Not A True Alien Prequel

Rating: 5/10 (7 August 2017)

I was one of the people who truly enjoyed Prometheus, I found that film to be a good balance between an alien prequel and something that could stand on its own. While it wasn't a perfect film it did leaving interested to see what happened next so I was extremely excited for Alien Covenant and it's fair to say I was pretty let down.
There was plenty to enjoy about this movie, Ridley Scott can truly do no wrong when it comes to the direction of a science fiction movie, he directed this movie superbly, he knew how to build tension perfectly, the extremely quick pacing of the action sequences worked and had a lot of gory violence that made the film seem more immersive. Covenant looked fantastic the special effects in the space sequences were all very convincing and the cinematography was excellent.
Michael Fassbender and his performance as David and Walter was my favourite thing about this movie, it was completely easy to believe that the two characters he played were two separate entities. The character of David was also a good element in this movie, I loved his mysterious nature, the creep factor he brought to the role this time and some of his more mythological opinions. I also really liked Katherine Waterston in this movie her character got some solid development and I liked how much she resembled Ripley from the original movie.
Like Prometheus the ending of this movie did leave me wanting more, I didn't set up a sequel in as a blatant a way as that film did but left on an intriguing note. I do want to see more of this franchise and hopefully the next instalment can be a more successful entry than this one.
This was a deeply flawed movie and a lot of that has to do with the characters. I've already praised David, Walter and Daniels but the other new additions were fairly bland, they just felt like expendable plot devices who didn't add a whole lot to this movie. They got next to no development and it became fairly obvious which ones were going to live through this film and those who weren't, because of this there was no real impact to their deaths which only truly served to keep the plot moving.
Another big issue I had with this movie was the aliens themselves, in the first film it took the entire run time just to kill one of the creatures but here despite there being a lot more of them there is no real danger to them because there killed off so easily again and again. The effects for them were also very weak, it just looked like cgi and was never really convinced by them.
Like I said this film had no idea what it wanted to be, so much of the plot from Prometheus is just dropped and never explored, leaving so many of the big questions that film never answered remain unanswered and made this film even more unsatisfactory. It definitely feels more like an Alien movie than Prometheus but it never truly feels like one thanks to its sub par effects and very underdeveloped characters.
Alien Covenant was by no means a terrible film it was just a highly mixed one that didn't really have any threat or stakes to it. Ridley Scott directed this film well, a few intense sequences, and good effects for the scenes set within space. But the titular aliens never felt like a genuine threat with very poor visuals to them and the characters themselves for the most part didn't to much for me. I do want to see what comes next but to get me excited I need the writers to either learn from their mistakes with this film or simply be replaced.
6.6/10: B- (Middling)