Film More like Alien: Cop-out
Prometheus was not a great movie. I know some people utterly despise it, but I thought it was still unique, featured a few truly horrifying moments and came up with genuinely fascinating ideas that had a lot of potential in this crazy futuristic setting.
It seems that, rather than risk another mixed reaction to a faithful continuation of that movie, Ridley Scott just decided to make another Alien sequel that abandons pretty much all of the potential seen in Prometheus, and instead throws a bunch of Xenomorphs at an even more obliviously reckless group of space adventurers.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't the worst movie or even the worst Alien knockoff you'll ever see. Ridley Scott's directing, so it looks great and all the actors are at least trying.
But let's go through it's problems:
- Flimsy characters. There was apparently a short movie released before the actual film that fleshed out the crew of the Covenant during their journey, including James Franco's character. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that he dies in the first 3-5 minutes of the movie without a line of dialogue; I didn't even know it was Franco at first. On top of this misstep, every character is one dimensional: there's the Ellen Ripley stand-in, the naive religious guy, his wife the doctor lady, the down-to-earth pilot, the pilot's wife, etc. I can remember the names of pretty much every character from the first Alien. Not so here.
- Speaking of characters, we catch up with the two surviving protagonists of Prometheus. One is written out before the film begins. The other goes from being the most morally ambiguous and fascinating character in that movie to being a comically insane Evilutionary Biologist in this one. Lame.
- That said, Michael Fassbender does a good job with what he's given here. He's the best part of the movie, even if quite a few of his scenes are laughable.
- The aliens. First of all, they aren't even really aliens anymore. They're genetically-engineered mutants. In Prometheus, it can be argued that the one vaguely Xenomorph-ish thing we see is alien to the two creatures that end up spawning it, a freak of nature (but still of nature) at the very least. Not this time. They're just unnatural killer mutants. Secondly, they're all CGI and the CGI is not very good.
- Only a couple scenes in the movie could be called "good" or "scary", and both of them are still style over substance.
- I know every reviewer has mentioned this, but the Friday the 13th style shower scene really can't be overlooked.
- While the ending of Prometheus left some wonder as to where it might go from there, the one here has no mystery whatsoever. And it's a Downer Ending. In spite of this, it's also slightly hilarious.
I didn't enjoy this movie. There's a lot of wasted potential here and not much else. The end result feels more like an over the top Resident Evil movie set in space.
Film God awful mess, just like Prometheus
5/10 rating, and that's a bit generous.
I don't know if Ridley Scott had an aneurysm that just damaged the part of his brain regarding the Alien franchise, but the last two films on the subject are terrible.
They share nothing in common with his original film. No suspense. Disposable characters. Idiots all over the place. No logical plot. Not even decent social commentary.
Covenant is a direct sequel to Prometheus, and shares all its flaws, without any redeeming qualities. Nothing the characters do seems logical, and the primary setup for the film as a sequel has enough holes to drive a Mack truck through. You don't care about the characters, even the protagonist. The villain borders on cardboard cartoon. And the xenomorphs are laughable, existing only to produce a hard R for gorn.
Just like with the Star Wars universe, the Alien universe would be far better off if someone else took the reigns from the creator, who plainly doesn't understand what the appeal of the franchise is.
Film Oh Look, It's Exactly the Same
The biggest mistake Prometheus made was being part of the Alien franchise. Imagine how cool it would be to have a high concept, big budget, cosmic horror sci-fi, in which mankind discovers that we had a creator, and that they wished to kill us in the most painful ways possible. In turn, the life we create hates us just as much. It's a sort of Frankenstein's monster story expanded to its logical conclusion. That's partially what we got with Prometheus, but because it was an Alien prequel it had to do the exact same thing as Alien did. So it had to include all the dumbest slasher movie tropes at the expense of all this highbrow philosophical stuff.
Alien: Covenant is a direct sequel to the prequel, and also does exactly the same thing as what both Prometheus and Alien did. It's amazing how much mileage this franchise tries to get out of exact same story beats; a distress signal, an alien planet, a weird spaceship, a hostile parasite that infects the crew and bursts out of bodies, duplicitous androids who adore the monsters, sensible, serious, curly dark-haired woman who can save the day by operating heavy machinery and airlocks. I've just ruined the plot to Alien: Covenant for you, but it is already ruined for you if you've ever seen an Alien movie. You know exactly what's going to happen.
This doesn't work very well as a horror because, gory special effects and spooky tone aside, we already know what's lurking in the shadows. We already know things get less scary the more familiar they become. After this many sequels, Freddy Kreuger had his own rap songs. Covenant somehow doesn't know this, and thinks we'll be scared by all the same stuff again. Where's our rapping space alien?
On top of this, like Prometheus, it has to have its characters act like stupid assholes for there to even be a story. They wander around a planet without helmets and clumsily bumble into danger, often choosing to go off on their own even after they know there are killer monsters on the loose. At one point a character slips in a pool of blood trying to escape a horror, and then a minute later, another character runs to rescue them only ro pratfall in the exact same pool of blood. It's like a Laurel and Hardy bit, only it is accidentally funny instead. You sit there shaking your head, muttering "you fucking morons" each time they manage to mess things up. I felt like I was being trolled by the movie.
Covenant doesn't get a recommendation from me. It's a worse version of what has already come before, and is all the more infuriating because of it.