Alien: Covenant: Review

• I know that I'm late to the so-called "party" on this movie.

• Plot Summary: "Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, members (Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup) of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think to be an uncharted paradise. While there, they meet David (Michael Fassbender), the synthetic survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition. The mysterious world soon turns dark and dangerous when a hostile alien life-form forces the crew into a deadly fight for survival."

• I am really surprised that a Ridley Scott directed Alien movie would be this bad. I love Alien and Aliens. I really really liked Prometheus. I knew going into Prometheus that I wasn't gonna get an Alien movie necessary. I knew that I was getting a Ridley Scott directed sci-fi movie that happens to take place in the same universe. I know that a lot of people didn't like Prometheus. I really liked it. But I really liked it because I saw it as a different movie than just another Alien movie. Alien: Covenant is a strange and terrible response to the reception of Prometheus. It's an extremely messy hodgepodge of crap.

• Let's start with the technical stuff. The writing is super basic and boring. There are a few scenes with very rough dialogue. It also has a lot of the horror movie cliches like someone walking off alone, jump scares you see coming a million miles away, or characters are really stupid. I liked that in this movie you have both the triumphant and cool Star Trek-ish theme from Prometheus. And you also have the theme from the original Alien. Other than the two themes that I love, the score for this movie is nothing special. And unlike Prometheus, I didn't find the cinematography all that interesting either.

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• Katherine Waterston, I'm at a weird place with. I really like her, but she's not great at acting. She overdoes a lot of her roles. But at the same time, I'm interested whenever she's in a movie. It's kinda like William Shatner. Her character is completely boring and she's not great in this movie either. Danny McBride I thought did well and fit right into the franchise. I have no clue why James Franco is in this movie. Billy Crudup wasn't very good. Every other character was just part of a completely forgettable and expendable crew that you don't care about. And the acting is very bland. The writing of the original Alien was awesome. It had awesome characters like Ripley, and it was a big part of why it made that movie so intense, particularly because of the dialogue between the crew. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is one of my all-time favorite lead characters. Alien: Covenant has no characters that even come close to being good enough. There is no Ripley of this story.

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• The CGI for the couple of Xenomorphs you get in this movie is terrible. It's some of the worst CGI I've seen all year. Again, let me go back to the original Alien. A lot like Jaws, Ridley Scott only had a guy in a crappy suit and he hid it in the dark. If you hide the crappy effects, one the audience won't be able to tell it's crappy. And two it's much scarier. This movie has awful CGI even for today and most of the time it does nothing to hide it. There's a couple of scenes where it was hidden in the dark and it looked okay. The Xenomorphs rarely scared me. The alien in this movie is way weaker and way dumber than the original. The best Xenomorph action you get from this movie you can probably just watch on YouTube. There's no effort or creativity being put into the creatures or the horror.

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• So look, I am a fan of both the original Alien and Prometheus. They are two very different movies. Ridley Scott gave into making another movie about people getting eaten by Aliens, but he doesn't put any effort or creativity into it. I think it's because it's not the kind of movie he wants to make any more. And at the same time that he's just vomiting up a horror movie, he's still trying to squeeze in a continuation of the Prometheus storyline. And neither one of them work. So I'm a fan of both of those kinds of movies and I'm not happy at all with either side of it in this movie. It feels like Ridley Scott gave in and tried to make a blend of the two and it didn't work and now nobody is happy.

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• I do want more Alien movies. I will always be opened to more alien. We keep asking for Ridley Scott to make another good Alien movie. And I think Alien: Covenant might be the best we can get from him. I hope I’m wrong. I really hope that he's got another great horror Alien movie in him. I think the best thing to do with the franchise going forward is for Ridley Scott to be heavily involved and someone else is leading the ship. I think Ridley Scott would do awesome if someone else was pointing him in the right direction. Ridley Scott is currently talking about another movie called Alien: Awakening and it's going to focus more on the androids instead of the Xenomorphs. That sounds awful. Look I know I'm giving this movie a lot of crap. I just don't have a lot of good things to say about this movie. Yes, there is alien action. But I just think it was a very messy movie and it doesn't do anything new or very good at all. So I think they should get another director and either make a good blend of both the Alien story and the Prometheus story. Or in the words of Ryan Gosling in La La Land "Pick one, you know, do one right!" My grade for Alien: Covenant is a C-