Uneven, unscary Prometheus-Alien-Hybrid with a lot of issues.

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2017)

Alien Covenant starts quite promising. It's very reminiscent of the original Alien (1979) movie (in a good way), while also including the cinematography and wide landscape shots of Prometheus. The sets look awesome, feel real and believable and are a nice mix between the run-down industrial look of Alien and the top-of-the-line high-tech aesthetics of Prometheus. Another great thing is the soundtrack. It immediately manages to evoke memories by incorporating themes from the original Alien movie and Prometheus, while also adding something new and unique of its own. In the first (and best) third of the movie there is tension and curiosity and some intense action scenes full of suspense (that will never be achieved again for the rest of the movie). But then it goes awry.
Shortly after meeting David, the movie starts explaining things no one asked about. What is revealed about David and the Xenomorphs simply demystifies these horror-icons! And while certain parts are overexplained, other questions, still lingering from Prometheus, are left unanswered. The movie should have been (as originally planned) about David, Elizabeth Shaw and the Engineers, not some random colonists with no character (or brain)! This just feels like a filler episode before (or after) the really interesting story.
Prometheus had its flaws, but it felt original and was pursuing its own story, somewhat independent from the Xenomorphs. The big question of where we come from made for a strong motivation. It was not really a horror movie, but more an exploration story gone wrong. I enjoyed it for that. Yes, some of the characters did one or several stupid things that eventually got them killed, but David and Elizabeth Shaw were interesting characters I was willing to care for and curious how their journey would continue.
And then there is another sin I cannot forgive Covenant. It repeats what I and many other viewers disliked immensely about Alien 3 (1992): Killing off characters we cared about from the previous movie off-screen in between movies! And in exchange we get a crew of two-dimensional cliché characters that seem even more idiotic than the Prometheus crew and whose inevitable deaths feel utterly meaningless.
The big exception, of course, is Michael Fassbender (David/Walter), who, together with Noomi Rapace (Elizabeth Shaw), had also been the best part of Prometheus. Fassbender owns every scene he's in and those are the best moments of Covenant. He manages to differentiate between the two androids convincingly and creates the only two really interesting characters in the movie. Katherine Waterston does a decent job as Daniels, but she and the rest of the humans just feel like side characters, while the real focus is on the androids.
These fine performances by Fassbender make the rest of the movie look even more soulless and derivative. It's sadly ironic, that the scenes the classical Xenomorph is in (the last third of the movie) feel like the most boring scenes of the whole movie. It's just the plot of Alien (1979) again, told in 20 minutes and without any horror. It seems like Ridley Scott felt some pressure to include the Xenomorph, so he stuffed some lackluster repetition of his old work into the end of the movie (however, forgetting how to actually make the Alien scary), to please FOX and "the fans" (who apparently complained about Prometheus) in order to tell his story about David. But Prometheus flaws had not been having not enough Xenomorphs in it (but rather a sloppy script).
Why Scott did not make a true "Prometheus 2: Paradise" about Shaw and David exploring the Engineers and at the same time give Neil Blomkamp and Sigourney Weaver the chance to bring closure to Ripley and the Xenomorphs in "Alien 5" I cannot understand. What did we get instead? A hybrid movie that tries to be both, a Prometheus sequel and an Alien prequel, ending up doing neither work justice. On its own, it's not really a bad movie, just mediocre. But as one with "Alien" in the title, being advertised as a frightening, back to the roots horror story (which it is not, it's never scary) and as a sequel to Prometheus, it simply disappoints.
I'm not even sure what to wish for now. Should Scott be allowed to do another sequel to maybe, finally answer the questions he asked about the Engineers in Prometheus (would he though?) and finish David's story? Or should he be shut down and another director (maybe Blomkamp after all? Alien 5? Please?) be given the chance to do something else with the Alien franchise?