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Alien: Covenant

2017 film

Watched 20 May 2017

If you thought characters did stupid shit in Prometheus, wait ‘til you see this one. Ridley Scott is more concerned with establishing capricious moments than he is with putting out a coherent film, it seems.

This is a hopelessly misguided doubling-down on everything Prometheus got wrong, but with that film’s amazing production design and worldbuilding completely removed. Future humans on an interstellar colonization mission are literally still using GoPros.

The classic Alien title sequence is reused, but it’s no longer the opening shot, and it’s sped-up. Instead of yielding an atmosphere of slow-burn creepiness, we get low-attention-span throwback. And that sadly matches up pretty well with what Alien: Covenant feels like.

The creatures are as cool as ever, though.

About star ratings

My ratings are subjective. I’m not aiming for a perfect ranking of comparative artistic merit, just trying to represent how I feel about stuff. Here’s what they mean:

Personal favorite. I simply love it, warts and all.
Something special. Highly recommended.
Good, but unremarkable. I’ll probably forget about it.
A waste of time. Not recommended.
Practically insulting. Soulless garbage. (Rare!)