Alien: Covenant Review (Minor Spoilers)

For the uninitiated, Alien: Covenant is the sequel to Prometheus. Prometheus itself is the prequel to Alien which kicks off the Ellen Ripley saga spanning 4 movies. I expected this movie to be better than its predecessor. Boy, was I wrong.

1. This movie starts off sloooooowwwwww. Like a good 40 minutes just to set up the story. Maybe it was the drinking and dancing the night before or the comfy recliner seats in the theater, but my friend and I struggled to stay awake during the early portion of the movie. Nothing really happens and it takes forever for the ball to start rolling.

2. I wish I could say this movie was visually impressive, but it really wasn’t. No scene really stands out enough for you to say “Wow, that was shot beautifully.” Even the CGI scenes were underwhelming. Nothing new or original here. Prometheus was way more visually appealing.

3. Michael Fassbender is the standout of the movie. He’s an amazing talent. He plays dual roles as the androids David and Walter, with very different personalities and demeanors. David, whom you might remember from Prometheus, in particular, is the most interesting figure in this movie, as he was in the last. What can I say? Dude is awesome.

4. The main reason I wanted to see the movie was because of Danny McBride! No one plays an irreverent IDGAF asshole better than him. I loved Eastbound and Down and his character in This is the End. I came expecting comedic badassery gold and was...disappointed. He was very underutilized, in my opinion. I understand good actors have range, but damn, I think this movie would’ve been so much better with Kenny Powers-like character in it. Alien: Covenant sorely suffers from a lack of comic relief. It takes itself too seriously at points. Some well-placed tension relieving jokes would’ve done wonders and McBride could’ve easily made that happen, but he ended up playing a pretty nondescript character. And before you say the Alien franchise doesn't have jokes, they let Bill Paxton and Ron Pearlman be great. They were both hilarious in their respective roles.

5. No one else really stood out to me. Katherine Waterson’s Daniels was the closest thing to a main character this movie had, but there wasn’t enough focus on her nor was there anything interesting about her character to warrant any special attention. Captain Oram, played by Billy Crudup, had some flashes of potential. At the very beginning of the film, the captain of the colony ship Covenant (James Franco, no less!) dies and Oram finds himself as the new captain. It’s obvious he isn’t sure of himself and is very concerned about earning and maintaining the proper respect of the crew. I thought this was a great aspect to his character but halfway through the film it’s just kind of dropped. It would’ve been cool to see his insecurities as captain screw up things down the line, but alas, nothing materializes out of this. Everyone else is pretty much cannon fodder to get brutally murdered by albino and vantablack colored genetically engineered super monsters. I struggled to care about any of them.

6. Holy shit this movie’s plot is stupid. Like monumentally dumb! Yeah, stupid decisions are fundamental to horror movie plots but this is some next level shit right here. It's dumb decision leading to dumb decision leading to dumb decision. Mind you, the people in this film are entrusted with some of the most expensive and sophisticated technology in human history. They maintain and operate SPACESHIPS for crying out loud! You would expect them to make at least SOME good decisions. It's immersion breaking to see so called skilled and highly trained flight officers, engineers and medical crew fuck up so badly and repeatedly. So where do I start?

*******WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD*******

7. Let's start out with the premise of the movie. It centers around the crew of the colony ship Covenant, on its way to colonize a new planet called Origae. It's year two out of a nine-year journey when the ship is damaged by a neutron burst, which kills a few of the crew and the colonists. While they're making repairs, the crew hears a distress signal coming from an unfamiliar planet called LV 226. Turns out LV 226 is more than capable of supporting human habitation and is much closer in distance. The crew thinks it's a good spot to check out and colonize. Now, in Prometheus, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation paid a trillion dollars (yes, you read that right) for a scientific expedition to LV-226 with way less crew than the Covenant. I'm going to assume that the expenses for most interstellar travel are in the same ballpark as the Prometheus expedition. So the crew decides within a matter of five minutes or so to abandon hundreds of billions (trillions?) of dollars of what I'm assuming is years of planning, training, logistics and research on Origae, not to mention the ~2000 lives of the colonists and crew and risk it all for a planet they just discovered.

8. They get to LV 226, and discover damn near the entire planet is covered in hurricane strength ionic super storms. See why research and planning is important? Even the ship's computer warns “IF YOU COME WITHIN 80 KILOMETERS OF THESE STORMS THEY WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP, FAM.” I'm paraphrasing, but you get it. But nope, let's send some of our most valuable crew down through these communication jamming cyclones to check it out.

9. Crew idiocy doesn't end there. The tagline of this movie should’ve been “Let’s split up, Gang!” When it becomes clear the planet is like... extremely dangerous and not the rugged paradise they had envisioned, rather than sticking together to increase their probability of survival, they gleefully split into groups of ones and twos. Ostensibly for the aliens to kill them more conveniently. That's what I'd like to think, anyways.

10. The android vs android fight was really bad ass! It was the highlight of the movie. One of the few bright spots. Great action and fight choreography all the way around. David is actually a really good villain! Totally wasted in this movie, though. Over the course of the films Prometheus and Covenant David transforms from was is essentially a soulless robot capable of mimicking human behavior almost perfectly to a darker more tortured figure that is trying to more intimately understand human emotion. Oh yeah, and is also guiding the evolution of one of the most dangerous and terrifying species to ever exist. Heh, almost forgot that part. It also doesn't help that he's been marooned on a planet for years populated by things driven by pure instinct and blood lust. I thought was a pretty cool character arc that explores how David WAIT WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS HE RAPIST?! WHY IS THE GODDAMN ROBOT TRYING TO RAPE PEOPLE?!?! Good show, Ridley Scott. A robotic rapist, holy shit, I didn't not see that coming. David alone is the reason I'm going to watch the sequel when it comes out. (Not because he's a rapist, you savages, it's because that was genuinely one of the creepiest and scariest scenes in the film.)

*******SPOILERS END*******

11. The xenomorphs themselves are underwhelming. A good part of it has to do with the fact that this movie relies on jump scares and brutal violence more than atmosphere and tension. The aliens behave like bloodthirsty puppies. Anyone who owns a chihuahua can relate. It's kind of cute until they tear someone's head off. Squeamish? Sure. Not particularly scary. The stalkery, predatory aspect of the xenomorphs has been downplayed in favor of childish curiosity, followed by bursts of ultra-violence. On top of that, the appallingly inane actions of the humans will have you actually cheering for the aliens and doing cartwheels when they make a kill.

12. Chestbursters are iconic. You couldn't have an Alien movie without them. Throughout the history of the franchise starting way back in 1979 with the infamous “spaghetti scene” no other event inspires sheer terror like having a little ball of slime, acid, teeth, and hate come through your sternum at the worst possible moment. Until now. Ridley Scott has taken this once almost sacred turning point in every Alien movie and has repeatedly run it into the ground. There's so many of them in this film! It's lost all of its scariness. All of its mojo, all if its power to horrify is gone. It became pretty funny after a while. Especially because the xenomorphs come out tiny, but fully formed like psychotic Baby Groots. It's so cute and comical! And soooo immersion breaking!

13. I thought I would learn more about the Engineers, the enigmatic alien race that created the biological weapon that would eventually spawn the xenomorphs, but you don't. Except for a confusing and kind of cryptic flashback scene, they aren't mentioned at all. That's another letdown.

14. There's this weird feature of the crew of the Covenant in that they're all married. Being married is not a bad thing in itself (supposedly) but, to quote my friend Adrienne who put it so eloquently “ it creates an annoying, repetitive grief cycle because whenever ANYBODY dies, chances are that's someone's husband/wife.” True story. You just don't give a shit after a while. The emotional impact is gone after the first two times it happens (and it happens a lot). It starts to get on your nerves when different characters scream in anguish “MY WIFE NOOOOOOOOO” or “(husband) is dead noooooooooooooo” for the eleventh fucking time. Good! Let em die!

15. The ending is.... very familiar. That's all I will say about that. Alien: Covenant is an average film. It's really bad, but it's also very entertaining in its own way. It's a really good candidate for getting drunk and watching it with some friends on a Saturday night, but make sure they are fans of the Alien films. This movie still has the power to scare the piss out of newbies, but veterans at most will be highly amused or extremely annoyed. Don't waste your money seeing it in theaters. though. Not worth it.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Silverbacks