Much like Daniels (Katherine Waterson) was looking slightly hesitant to jump back into her hypersleep chamber by the end of ‘Alien Covenant’, and trust what she was seeing with Walter, I decided to do a double-take of my own after my first viewing– And what I found was a movie riddled with asinine decisions from the main characters, and an overall story that decided to take a literal $hit all over the fresh foundations laid by its predecessor, ‘Prometheus.’
Where do I really begin?? Well, let’s go back to Daniels’s and her gross miscalculation that Walter was really Walter at the end and not the wacky doodle David. Earlier in the film, when David laid the smack down on her, she managed to jam a keepsake nail right up into the bottom of his chin. Did it ever occur for the writers of this movie to just MAYBE, MAYBE, write that later scene, where she’s helping to fix up who she thinks is Walter, in such a way that she does take a quick peak under his chin to see if the scar was still there? Obviously this would have meant re-writing the rest of the ending, i.e. maybe have her and Tennessee (Danny McBride) not only battling an extra Xenomorph, but also the wrath of David too! But waiting until the moment the cryosleep chamber has already closed, to start questioning the android before her, just came off as blatantly ass-hat writing. Although I’m no screenwriter, it could have been much more satisfying to at least see her and Tennessee fight for their lives against him (and come what may) than seeing Daniels pry when it was too damn late:) Oh, and before I forget, letting the ALIEN life cycle turn into that of a fast-food drive thru, is also just suspect at best. At least show that some smidgen of extra time eclipsed since someone was facehugged or since a Xeno burst out of the chest before the end product is fully grown in a matter of time akin to ordering a happy meal. There was a ‘happy’ medium for that process to be demonstrated and it sure as hell didn’t end up in this flick, ha:)
Regardless, let’s continue, shall we? I think if Ridley Scott had at the very least, shot a scene in the beginning that shows the fictional company in the ALIEN franchise, ‘Weyland-Yutani’, and their overall hiring practices, that would have made things much easier to digest just how many ass-hats were a part of the Covenant ship’s main crew. Case in point, does the company set out to hire the most incompetent and unprofessional people around to be caretakers for a colony mission?!?! LMAO, like holy $hit!! Setting down on a planet you never intended to land on in the first place, only to walk around with no helmets or quality protective gear takes the taco for all-time ignoramus behavior in deep space. I realize the plot has to have some level of concessions made in the department of stupidity to keep the story moving, but perhaps maybe create an airborne pathogen that somehow eats through their suits?? Like at least try to make it look as if the characters had no choice but to succumb to things that were out of their control versus fully in their control. And shall I even mention Faris and her absolute panic-laden mode of grabbing a gun and trying to shoot the Neomorph while still inside the ship, THEIR ONLY DROP SHIP, next to highly flammable canisters?? Good grief. Write the damn scene so that she at least runs out of the vessel to get some spacing between her and the newborn Neomorph, whilst protecting their only way to get off the planet. Perhaps the scene could have been written that when the ship detected a severe quarantine threat it had its own forced self-destruct sequence that was out of the hands of any crew member– I could live with that over writing a character that goes completely hysterical and acts as if she never should have been handpicked for a deep space mission. Obviously there’s going to be some level of panic with what transpired, but no character should be written to be so egregiously irrational in that regard. Anyway, moving on….
Then there’s good ole Orem, played brilliantly by Billy Crudup— So brilliant and nuanced that it was easy to wish he had stuck around a little longer as his character was, quite frankly, the only interesting one in the entire film. (out of the Covenant crew) But, like so many other examples of asinine behavior in this picture, just when you think Orem is coming into his own and becoming a true leader by taking out that Neomorph standing in front of David, he lets his guard down and actually trusts the freaky deaky android who had just pleaded with him NOT to kill the creature which harmed the innocent. Brilliant!! Add to it, right before Orem was led into David’s house of horrors for the nickel tour, he called out David as being the devil himself. Soooooooo, why then would you trust him only a minute or two later to lead you on a safe path? Again, absolute $hit writing to the nth degree on full display with this film. Maybe David could have been written to tell Orem he’d show him where Shaw was, and Orem, already having diverted the mission to the planet on the basis a human was calling out for help, would have then followed him to what he thought would have been a living/breathing Shaw. And THEN, then and only then, David could have already pre-released a facehugger that on site of Orem would have immediately lambasted the poor guy. This would have spared us the dumb as rocks deer in the headlights sequence of Orem not only stroking the egg, but then sticking his head directly over the bloody thing.
Complaining about character decisions aside, why even go the route Ridley Scott and co. did with this sequel?? At the end of Prometheus, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw leaves that poignant log recording as she and David blast off for the unknown. And yet, all we got to see of her in this iteration was a garbled recording of her singing John Denver’s “Take me home”, and then a fake, gutted/rotted out corpse of her character. It all felt like a big waste of a previous film just to kill her off so harshly in this one– and I mean hell, we didn’t even really get to see how she died, and although it can be more fun to imagine what transpired with some films unexplained events, I personally felt jobbed we got what we did with her character’s outcome. Which led me to question even more why we didn’t just get a sequel that at least gave us one more film that featured her and David’s adventures together? Adventures that could have consisted of them finding those great big giant Space Jockey beings we saw in the last film, and yet again (albeit briefly) in this one as the Covenant crew makes their pass through of the Juggernaut ship. Why did this have to be a movie that by the last act, simply felt like a mix and mash of Alien, ALIENS and AVP 1?? Obviously the scenes with David/Walter/Walter/David were not only well done but the best aspects of this movie–Michael Fassbender showed he’s not only the connective glue of this new trilogy, but for fuck sakes, he’s really the only redeeming element of the whole kit and kaboodle!
Nevertheless, this entry into the ALIEN franchise felt devoid of anything remotely exciting and endearing. Dare I say Alien 3 is leaps and bounds better than Covenant? Well, I do. At least with that flick you had well developed characters within the prison that Ripley was stranded on, and by making it clear in the film’s first act there were no weapons of any kind to defend themselves, it automatically gave a free pass for characters to do some incredibly desperate and stupid things for survival alone. And yes, I felt far more for some of the characters in that film to those in the current one. I should also point out the last action sequence of Covenant felt like something out of a next-gen video game– CGI LADEN, generic soundtrack and not a lot of tension considering Tennessee and Daniels were enclosed in a cargo bay with the beastie! It only served to make me reminisce about the epic ending to ALIENS, where Ripley in her power loader glory got to kick some Alien queen ass as Bishop was ripped in half moments before. There was simply no true knockout punch in Covenant and any memorable film HAS to have that.
Bottom line? I could go on and on about the shortcomings of ‘Alien Covenant’, but I will be the first to admit my first assessment of this film was god awful. I drank the kool-aid. I wanted the follow up to Prometheus to be so much more and walked out of that first viewing like walking out after a first date when everything seems “promising” for all involved. Clearly I had on ALIEN goggles and learned the valuable lesson to ALWAYS, ALWAYS refrain from forming an opinion on movies (and dates) until a second serving. So needless to say, this film felt like a major downer after watching it with a clear head and now my main concern is will we even get to see a third and final entry in this new trilogy?? I’m not so sure this is the kind of movie that will warrant repeat business from moviegoers. Something about the ending, although ballsy for being so bleak, didn’t feel like the sort of thing people would want to come back for repeat viewings. It made me think of the original ending that Ridley Scott had wanted for the first movie, where the Alien would have actually bitten off Ripley’s head and then transmitted its own recording log back to earth while mimicking Ripley’s voice–Ah, yeah, because that would have worked so much better than what we got. As a matter of fact, perhaps it WAS a good thing that 20th Century Fox never asked Scott to direct the sequel back in 1986. There’s no debating he’s a brilliant director in terms of memorable visuals, set design and the overall look of a film, but his shoddy films seem to be handcuffed by a half-assed script. Scott’s best films always had killer stories in place. I’m clearly nitpicking his track record but I’m basing this off of the fact that Alien Covenant was, is and forever will be, a major misstep for the franchise in my eyes.
There was so much potential here for a great film and now we have to wait for another one to see if it can redeem what this current offering was not– but that’s assuming it makes enough $$$$$ to warrant another. Time will tell, but for now, we can all just imagine our own fan fiction of what David ends up doing to Daniels and Tennessee while they’re in hypersleep–If nothing else, it’s probably a safe bet that Tennessee would give birth to the most drunken Xenomorph imaginable, that much is certain:) Thanks for reading. Nuff said!
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