You know the drill by now...but now the plot holes are starting to bother me: 70%

Rating: 7/10 (26 May 2017)

This sequel to "Prometheus" and prequel to "Alien" treads the well-worn path of films in this franchise: a spacecraft intercepts a distress signal and changes its course in order to investigate...and then the crew come face-to-face with the horror that is the alien species which will either eat them or use the humans' bodies as a means of incubating its alien offspring.
Since it's been many years since I've seen "Prometheus" (I saw it during its cinema run as well), I have to say that I'd already forgotten the details of it when I sat down in the cinema to watch this latest instalment. For that reason, I'd suggest that you watch "Alien: Covenant" soon after watching "Prometheus", if you can, unless you have a really good memory! That being said, I did recognise Guy Pearce from the previous film...but drew a blank later on in the film when the character Elizabeth Shaw is mentioned...and she was the main character from that film! In other words, I couldn't remember what happened to her at the end of the previous film.
When I saw a trailer for this film many, many weeks ago, I have to say that I did find it misleading...it started off as if it was a film about humans colonising a new planet and then the trailer seemed to morph into an ad for a new "Alien" film. It made me wonder if I had missed some sort of break between trailers for two different films. I'm still wondering if a scene from that early part of the trailer was actually in the film! That being said, yes, "Alien: Covenant" does start the story off with a spacecraft (the "Covenant" of the title) travelling through space, carrying a cargo of breeding age humans, to colonise a new planet. Apart from one male, all the other humans are in suspended animation (anabiosis), seeing as the planet that they are going to is so far away. This being part of the "Alien" franchise, you know that things are going to go pear-shaped pretty quickly!
At times you wonder if the narrative is just meandering, like the spacecraft repair scene...but it is actually tight, as it moves the plot forward...eventually.
The ending of "Alien: Covenant" is obviously the starting point to another sequel, but I do wonder how well it will explain the aftermath of that ending as well as providing a bridge to the events of the original "Alien" film. i.e. presumably there is a lot at stake with the ending of "Alien: Covenant" but I'm not sure that there was any signs of how that played out in the original "Alien" film. It just seems going around circles, which isn't really satisfying, from my point of view. Going around in circles...yet another distress signal...with yet another spacecraft going to investigate, like a fly into a Venus flytrap...with yet more lethal aliens to encounter.
From memory, I found the earlier film hard to follow and looking at my review for it now, that is confirmed, along with some other elements of the film which I had forgotten. Even though "Alien: Covenant" tries to spend more time explaining the origin of the aliens, I have to say that that often raised more questions than it answered for me! It mentions "the virus" and I have to confess that I have no memory of that concept being used in "Prometheus"! There's also scenes of what looks like fungi being trodden on by humans, which releases what I assume to be "the virus"...and that really doesn't make any sense to me. Is it a virus? Is it fungal spores? How does this all hang together? Okay, let's talk about all the other things that bug me about this film...the plot holes, if you will, or just the absurdities
One thing that bugged me a lot in this film was just how rapidly large, lethal aliens developed in such a short time. Of course, this is narratively driven, as the film wants to focus on a very short period of time and it's "required" for the aliens to develop quickly as a result. Well, that just made me wish the film was set in another context! E.g. on a farm, where the alien could prey on livestock...or small children...before it was big enough to kill even armed adults. Perhaps this was still an issue in the original "Alien" film...but I suppose it was just less pronounced in how quickly the alien grew to a scary size.
Also, in this film the alien seems different in kind from previous films in the franchise...it's more akin to a psychopath in a slasher film than something that needs to kill humans in order to eat or create offspring.
Even though I shouldn't have thoughts like the following, I can't help myself! Okay, I'm having problems with the notion of just how sustainable a human-alien co-existence would be. It seems to me that the aliens would be an existential threat to humanity...in which case, if they no longer have any prey, how on Earth are aliens themselves going to continue multiplying?
Miscellaneous notes:
* The end credits have an "In memory of" for Julie Payne. Not sure who she is.
* Katherine Waterston as Daniels "Dany" Branson is good...she is small in stature but continues the franchise's form in having strong female characters...she's the alpha female, so to speak.
* Looking at my notes for "Prometheus" I noted the stupidity of the crew in that film...with this current film, I have to note how the latter part of the film is just Murphy's law writ large (ignoring the franchise trope of how humans keep coming into contact with the aliens!).