Review: Alien: Covenant
Careful, it's slippery in here.
When a solar storm causes damage to their ship and the death of their captain, the crew of the Covenant, a colonization mission to a planet galaxies away find themselves a little hesitant to go back into hypersleep to continue their mission. After picking up a transmission of someone singing a song from Earth, the new captain Oram (Billy Crudup) decides they should make a pit stop to the planet it is coming from as the terrain looks almost similar to the planet they were heading too anyways. Daniels (Katherine Waterston) objects to the plan, saying it's "too good to be true" but is ignored. On this planet, the crew and their android Walter (Michael Fassbender, with a sexy voice) encounter the xenomorphs and the shipwrecked android from Prometheus, David (Fassbender again, with a creepy voice) Things go horribly wrong.
I had a discussion with someone recently, who doesn't like horror films as much as I do about "people making bad decisions to advance the plot." It has to happen in horror films, it just does. People have to make mistakes. If your lucky, you'll get films like The Cabin in the Woods, Hush, and the first Alien film to make them look believable. The problem with Covenant is that they don't. This is the same problem Prometheus had. Sure, lean over that alien pod after a dude you just met, who is acting shady as fuck leads you there. Watch out for that blood, especially when you're holding a huge gun.
Covenant could've been so much better, but I felt like the writers forced too many events to make things end on their terms. And what this movie ends up doing to Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace from the previous film) is lame at best and offensive at worst. The final 3rd of this film is a predictable mess.
It's not a complete failure. Fassbender is great, I kind of hate myself for thinking his Walter accent was pretty hot, but the subtext between he and David was just weird. I felt like they were trying to insinuate two totally opposite ideas. Danny McBride, who I normally only like in small doses was probably my favorite part of the film. He had a lot of heart. Waterston, despite being given the galaxy's worst haircut does a good job in her Ripley-esq role. Though I can't help but think of her and get completely annoyed with what they ended up doing with her.
Recommended: If you're an Alien fan. Or a gore fan.
Grade: C
Memorable Quote: "What was that, sugar dick?" - Faris (Amy Seimetz)
"galaxy's worst haircut"
ReplyDeletehaha.
Overall, I agree with you. The dumb decisions were not believable. Didn't learn from last time...
She has a literal bowl cut. Whose idea was that?
DeleteI liked Danny in this too for some reason. I guess we needed someone to cling to.
ReplyDeleteI don't really like to watch horror movies and for some reason I forget that Alien falls into that category, probably because it's not the cheesy slasher prototype. But about 10 minutes into Covenant, I was remembering that this is what I was in for. Oh boy.
Alien for me was the first time a sci fi movie actually creeped me out. I'll always love it for that.
DeleteI guess I'm out there, silently floating in space alone, with my general love for this movie. It was basically like every other action/horror movie out there...and I was okay with that. I don't revere this franchise like I once did, and was more or less thrilled that I understood whatthe f--k was going on (I was sooo lost in Prometheus).
ReplyDeleteYes, there are a lot of bad decisions in this movie, but that's true in just about every failed mission ever. Aren't we supposed to enjoy their stupidity?
Normally, yes. I'd say in a horror movie we should want stupdity but in this case, we've had other entries in this series that didn't rely on stupidity moving the plot forward, and that's where it lost me.
DeleteI don't think this is as awful as a lot of other people do, but I can't deny it's issues. And how disappointed I was at the lack of Shaw's presence.
After the prometheus disaster I just don't trust Ridley Scott anymore. You hit the nail on the head with horror movies forcing people to do stupid things. It's almost like a "law" of horror movies. One of the few movies to break that mold was the original 'Scream' film. Don't get me wrong...people do dumb stuff especially when they're frightened, but it shouldn't feel forced.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to wait for this to come to streaming. Overall, I just don't have the heart to see movies in the theater anymore unless I'm really excited to see it (or it gets exceptional reviews). I don't know if this is part of the generational thing--or if I'm just lazy. The last film I saw in theaters was Logan. The next one will be Wonder Woman.
I get it. The theater is a lot of money and who wants to spend it on something that's probably bad/mediocre. I usually go on the discount days when I'm iffy on a film. (Like this one)
Deleteyes, the horror and jump scares are great. but these chaacters make irrationally dumb decisions!
ReplyDelete"Yeah, let's completely scrap our mission to check out this planet that came out of nowhere!"
DeleteYup won't see it and heard it wasn't that great but I love that line!
ReplyDeletelol it was a great line.
DeleteDude don't recommend it to Alien fans, I felt like those South Park kids when Spielberg and Lucas were raping Indy.
ReplyDeleteFassbender is hot but my God he looks 100 years old
I feel like if you're a fan of a franchise, you're not going to skip a film no matter what. The Star Wars prequels are great examples. lol
DeleteOh yes, I agree with everything you said. Stupid decisions are a part of horror movies, but they have to be believable. And in Covenant they were such idiots it made me too aware of all the plot devices and kinda blew the film experience for me, because NO ONE (let alone fucking scientists who trained for it) would make those decisions!
ReplyDeleteI had kind of the same problem with Prometheus every time one of them was like "what is that? let's touch it". And what's worse, these seem like pretty avoidable devices if only the writers put effort into it - which they should btw, because it's Alien and it deserves so much better. It makes me mad because I love it, idiots!!!
totally forgot in the midst of that rant:
DeleteI loved Danny McBride too, what a pleasant surprise that was! And Walter's voice *was* sexy, there's no denying it. ;)
except that flute thing, that was weird.
That flute thing, wtf were they trying to do there? That felt so self indulgent and didn't match with the rest of the film. I 100% agree with your rant. lol
Delete