Alien: Covenant - Cinema Review

With every passing film I feel that Ridley Scott loses credibility as a filmmaker. I'm now significantly worried about the upcoming Blade Runner 2. I watched Prometheus for the first time a few weeks ago in preparation for Alien Covenant and I'm honestly not sure which is better (or "worse" might be more apt).

Prometheus certainly confused me more but Alien Covenant left me more annoyed, which is odd considering the real shit-head characters are in Prometheus. Perhaps because I had heard of Prometheus' shitty reputation long beforehand I was somewhat prepared. Regardless the take away should be that neither are particularly good films.

Alien Covenant, much like Prometheus succeeds in many technical areas like visually engaging art design and intense, atmospheric lighting of scenes. Of the several largely dark or night based films I happen to have seen recently, A.C was the most visible of them, which is relieving to know filmmakers haven't forgotten entirely how to shoot a darkened scene.

Unfortunately just like its predecessor, A.C's plot thread and characters are where the film falls apart. The crew of the colony ship "Covenant" might be the worst, most ineffective group of trained astronauts I've ever seen on film.

There is a line of dialogue where our protagonist Daniels, (the only close to competent human on board) talks of their long training for this specific mission. Now, granted their captain immediately dies and killer aliens aren't a scheduled part of the mission but you would think voyaging into the vast unknown of space, people would be somewhat prepared for the...well, the unknown.

Allow me to explain further. This trained crew are cowardly, clumsy, emotional, oblivious and incompetent. One person slipping on blood and falling on their arse is a regrettably common trope. Two people slipping on the same blood within minutes is near farcical. The second slipper is confusingly both smart enough to then hide behind netting and lure an alien onto it for a clear shooting position but not smart enough to avoid getting flustered and unloading so much ammunition that the ship combusts and is destroyed.

Yes that is technically a spoiler but I won't be recommending this shiny shallow tripe so don't worry about it. Continuing "Astronauts Do The Funniest Things" none of the surviving crew think to question a decades-old hermit android living alone in a palace surrounded by hundreds of petrified corpses and just accept his hospitality without hesitation.

Why does the acting captain somehow believe a word he says after he's seen befriending Xenomorphs next to a colleague's barely cold corpse? Why do Xenomorphs flee from a shot flare but shrug off daylight, interior ship lighting and jet engine fire to the face? I could go on about how the true lethal pathogen of Alien Covenant is airborne stupidity but we'd be here all day.

Who would live in a place like this? Apparently someone of entirely sound mental health...

Even attempting to look past this, it's also hard to feel much emotional connection to any of the characters. The protagonist, for example, starts the film having lost the will to live and at no point really recovers or moves on from that and she's the most developed of everyone. Character motivations are as unclear as a Xenomorph's life and growth span.

Quite quickly you can decipher in what order the crew of expendables will be picked off and towards the end of the film the writers seem to be actively looking for excuses to slay the remaining survivors. This includes a shower scene blatantly included just for the trailer but so tone deaf and lacking in context it felt better suited to be in lowbrow parody franchise "Scary Movie".

Let me try and think of some positives to balance this out...Well Michael Fassbender's performance is probably the most enjoyable part of the film. He doesn't carry the film because frankly I don't think any actor could but he does an admirable job and any scene focused on him is a highlight.

So returning to my original quandary, if I had to choose I suppose Alien Covenant is better than Prometheus but not by much. A.C's plot is easier to follow and whilst most of the characters are brainless idiots at least unlike the Prometheus crew, they're not heartless bastards as well.

One of the actors reads the script a little too late.