Alien Covenant, a review

In my last article, I concluded by saying "What is the point of watching something if you know the outcome?".

The other day I watched Alien: Covenant, and saw about two thirds of the film then abruptly left the theater, fighting off disgust and disdain for the shit show I was watching.

If you haven't seen it and plan to, spoilers ahead. If you haven't and don't plan to, then this won't change your mind either way.

The premise of the film is in essence a soft reboot of the original Alien. An android sabotages a crew in order to make an alien that is reminiscent of an H.R. Giger monstrosity.

What's interesting to note, is that if you haven't seen Alien before, but are half way intelligent, you'll still probably be bored by the film.

I went ahead and saw the original Alien again recently to make a comparison, and what I noticed was that Ian Holm's character in the original, Ash, was extremely subtle about his betrayal. We only discover it when Ripley hacks the computer logs near the end of the film to discover the original purpose of their mission.

What made that plot interesting was the Company's deliberate evil, they were willing to spare the lives of the crew in order to get a living specimen on board.

This time around it appears to be a total accident that they decide to visit this Alien planet, some weird transmission from Prometheus's Dr. Shaw is caught in Danny McBride's helmet (makes no friggin' sense at all) and they decide to take a massive risk and visit this rogue planet.

No bio-hazard suits, no protective gear, no precautions of any kind, they just land and this mysterious black ooze quickly causes two aliens to hatch and the chaos begins.

I must admit, the visuals are stunning, and are blindingly real. What the film lacks is any form of tension and anticipation whatsoever. This is compounded by the fact that the character of David is so obviously a traitor from the get go, the way his eyes gloss over when they mention that they have 2,000 human beings in space pods is laughable.

What is further laughable is the script and the reactions of the crew. Every single action can be deconstructed as totally nonsensical, but for the sake of brevity I will only demonstrate two such examples. (For a silly breakdown of more nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmwyWerz5KI)

Firstly, Crudup and McBrides wives carry an obviously sick human back to their drop ship, his skin is off color, hes puking out massive amounts of blood and if he does have a viral infection, than they are all contaminated at this point as he has vomited large quantities of blood onto one of the women and coughed heavily in their general direction. Airborne viruses move quickly.

And yet, minutes later, when it is a simple matter of opening the door and letting the woman through because she is stuck in the room with the man who is minutes from having an alien pop out, McBride's wife decides to let her die because she is afraid of contagion, which no doubt has already spread. Then she decides to open the door any fucking way to shoot the alien but slips on the blood fucks up and dies horribly.

The film is about as cerebral and subtle as a deliberate kick in the balls, which is very strange to say about a Ridley Scott Alien film.

The second example of stupendous idiocy is the scene where David and Crudup's character (pardon but the characters are so forgettable I can't remember their names) stumble upon an alien who has just brutally murdered one of the women in the crew. Crudup does the sensible thing and kills the beast, and David chastises him aggressively claiming that he was building trust with the animal and how could you be so cruel...about an alien that has indiscriminately murdered several of the crew.

Then David brings Crudup into a room filled with creepy experiments, descends into an even creepier basement filled with the classic Alien eggs. Crudup's character is either mentally retarded or has no capacity for rational thought, as he does not suspect David at all, nor does he find the large disgusting eggs creepy, and idiotically listens to David when he says to him "Go ahead and take a close look, its perfectly harmless".

See the script is a hastily written piece of shit by a novice, which is why the characters don't make any sense. Who in their right mind would stick their head near that alien egg, AFTER it opens its flaps? After being led down by a creepy android who is clearly a few screws loose? Not an ounce of suspicion or agency on the part of the character, that would require depth and thinking.

As an audience member who knows with exact precision what is about to happen, you just kind of sit there and wonder what the fuck these people were thinking when they made this piece of shit movie.

I repeat my previous article's statement, What is the point of watching something when you already know the outcome?

Maybe this film was hastily made just to make a buck, I don't know what the point is anymore, whatever happened to genuine inspiration and infusing actual passion into your work?

Fassbender aside (he may be predictable, but he's still somewhat entertaining to watch), there is no reason whatsoever to watch this film, which is why I didn't finish it.

Avoid at all costs.