Alien: Covenant movie poster. 20th Century Fox.
It's been a long time since I have posted a movie review but it's not because I haven't been watching movies. The movies I have seen have either been "so ok it's average" or too out there to write up on this blog. I mean, I could have wrote up The Neon Demon, but I think Google would have kicked me off the site for that one! I just haven't watched many that I had much to say about, even though I generally watch one or two new ones a week.
But I finally found one I want to review. Alien: Covenant. I've been a fan of the Alien series for quite some time. I believe that Aliens was the first R-rated film I ever saw and Alien: Resurrection was the first R-rated film I saw in theaters. I've seen all of the main movies and the first dreadful AVP movie but temporarily gave up on the series after AVP2, which I resolved to never see and is widely regarded as total garbage. When I was in college I took a film class and my big paper for that class was analyzing the last scene in Aliens. And I got an A on it, just in case you were wondering! As the years when on though, my interest in the series waned, largely because I thought that the AVP movies ruined the series, even worse than Resurrection did.
My interest returned after Prometheus. Though the reaction to that film was divided to say the least, I am one of its defenders as I enjoyed it and saw it in theaters. It wasn't as good as Aliens or the original film, but I put it above Alien 3 and way above everything else. So I was excited when I heard that there was going to be a direct sequel to Prometheus and I was hoping to see it in theaters.
(So to review, my rating scale is Aliens>Alien>Prometheus>Alien 3>MASSIVE GAP>Resurection>EVEN BIGGER GAP>AVP>GAP SO LARGE THAT IT MAKES THE GRAND CANYON LOOK SMALL>AVP2)
Then, through word of mouth, I decided to wait until it came out on DVD. And it turns out that was a good descion. I did not like Covenant at all. It's not a horrible film, like Alien: Resurrection or the AVP movies, but it's definitely one of the poorer entries in the series. It's a bad movie, but sad to say, there are worse entries in the franchise. The main problem is that the film didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It tried to both be a sequel to the deeper, more cerebral Prometheus, a big dumb action movie like the AVP series and a straight horror film like Alien. By trying to do all it failed.
And I also have to say that I am not sure I like the direction the series is taking. This movie totally changed the lore of the origin of the Xenomorphs from what it used to be. Now I am not talking about the AVP origins where they were ancient creatures used by the Predator aliens to test themselves. Thankfully, that has been excised from cannon officially by this movie, so at least the film did something right. But I think that the choice that was made was fairly controversial.
I would have to say that I do not recommend the movie to all but the most dedicated fans of the series. Traditional Alien fans won't like the Prometheus lore that dominates the film. Prometheus fans won't like how much of that lore got pushed to the wayside to focus on the Aliens. Horror fans won't like how cliche and non-scary it is. And there just isn't enough action to call it a true action film. Right now the only reason to watch it is to cleanse the AVP lore out of your system and to perhaps setup the next movie in the series. Everyone else can probably skip it.
The rest of this review will have SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen Covenant and still want to for some reason after all that, skip the rest of it. Also, it's pretty much impossible to discuss this movie without completely spoiling Prometheus as well, so if you haven't, you might want to skip this part as well. Given the relative quality of Prometheus compared to Covenant, that might be a shame, so keep that in mind.
Spoilers begin now!
This just wasn't a good movie. Regardless of what side you are on with the previous film, I think that everyone will be disappointed in this movie. Like I said before this movie tried to do too many things at once and it failed at all of them. Which is very disappointing because there was potential here.
My first huge problem with the movie is just how stupid the characters were. I know that was a major criticism of Prometheus as well, but at least some of those incidents were handwaved. Yeah, it might be dumb that the guys in charge of the maps got lost, but they were smoking pot, and so on. They made some bad decisions, but at least the movie attempted to justify it.
In this movie there were no excuses. First of all, the landing party decided to land on an uncharted planet with no kind of biological protection. Sure that happened in Prometheus eventually too, but at least they started with protection and took it off when it seemed safe. A dumb move, yes, but not comically stupid. It was NEVER safe on the Engineer's planet, since it had an advanced biosphere, and every death could have been avoided had they just had even the most basic PPE.
Second, the movie overused the horribly cliche horror movie trope where one person wanders off alone and gets killed. That could kind of be justified with the guys that got infected because then nobody knew there was danger about, but once the neomorph aliens showed up, they should have stuck to the buddy system. The fact that they didn't was just baffling and is a descion that can't be defended. And it was so unnecessary as well! The attack in the wheat field showed that even when they were all together the neomorph was still a major threat, so why not up the tension a bit and keep people together so you don't instantly know who is going to die?
Third, there was the entire lander sequence. The deaths of Faris and Karine were about the most stupid sequence of events I have ever seen in film. I'm going to bullet point it:
-Two people help a third into the medbay and realize the security officer is having problems.
-Karine sees that something horrible is happening to the dude's back and instead of getting away or trying to do something medial, she HUGS him and gets a spike near her hand.
-Faris LOCKS Karine in with the monster after it bursts out of his back!
-Karine, instead of picking up the fully loaded assault rifle sitting right next to her, grabs a knife after slipping on blood (ok, i'll accept the clumsiness, but everything else about that was stupid!)
-Faris runs and picks up a gun, but gets her leg caught in a doorway and runs away again without killing the neomorph.
-She then heads to the hanger and her potato aim ends up destroying the entire shuttle, killing her and the monster.
The whole scene was so stupid! I mean, yes, people panic but the only way that happened was because of massive amounts of stupidity. And it came from a character, Faris, who was described as a person who never gets scared!
That scene is often cited as the worst in the movie, but one later in the movie was even more baffling. Captain Oram, fresh after seeing that David is communing with the neomorph and gets really pissed after he kills it, goes along with him, completely alone and listens to him admit that he's been experimenting with the aliens.
Right now, if I was him, I'd been shooting his ass for admitting that. Hell, I probably would have shot him when he was trying to talk to the neomorph. The fact that he was trying to save the monster probably means that he's not my buddy. Oram has ZERO reason to trust David right now and should know that he's in mortal danger.
But no, Oram decides that following David is a good idea. He also decides that touching the alien egg was a good idea as well. And when David says to look inside the egg, what does our genius of a captain do? Well he looks right inside it! And that is how the first Xenomorph gets born people! I mean I guess it's better than the whole "Predators brought them to Earth and nobody seemed to remember it in the future" origin story that the AVP movies had, but not by much. We deserved better than that.
At this point I had the critical reaction that dooms any movie. I thought to myself, "I don't care what happens to these people". They were all so stupid that I am convinced that they would have all died no matter what happened. It also ruined much of the horror of the movie as you have to care about people to be scared with them. And these aren't even the only examples, there were more! But if I covered them all I wouldn't have time to cover anything else about this movie that I didn't like.
Another problem I had is how they wasted a few characters. Sure, the stunt casting of James Franco in a cameo role was probably a waste, but he wasn't the main problem. I would have preferred if he had been killed by an alien, but whatever, not a big deal. He does kickstart the plot so I guess it was ok.
Completely wasting Noomi Rapace's Elizibeth Shaw though? Unforgivable. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that she was killed off. Indeed, doing so was in tradition with other Aliens movies. But she didn't get any kind of sendoff and we don't even really know how she died other than that David killed her.
Hell, I think they wasted a great opportunity to completely freak out the audience and ramp up the horror levels considerably if they had her speak when she was found by Walter. Sure, it wouldn't make any sense, considering her... um... condition, but it would have scared the hell out of everyone and nothing else in the movie makes sense anyways. Why not go for it?
Worst of all, they wasted an entire race. We never learn anything else about the Engineers, which was one of the big draws of Prometheus and a reason I liked that movie. I was hoping to learn more about them and their culture but they all end up dying without contributing much to the plot.
Are they extinct? Why did they create life on Earth? Are they all jerks or was the guy from Prometheus just having a bad day? None of these questions were answered at all, and it was disappointing. Supposedly the next movie in the series will cover them, but who knows when that will be? I wanted it in this movie!
This review has been fairly harsh, but I do think there were some good parts to this movie. I think that both Danny McBride and Kathrine Waterson gave good performances and the special effects were very good. Not enough to save the movie mind you, but good.
If there is anything to salvage from Alien: Covenant it's the performance of Michael Fassbender in a duel role. Both Walter and David were compelling characters and Fassbender portrayed them very well. And I think the dueling ideas on humanity that the characters expressed were the most interesting part of the movie. Had the movie focused on them more and fixed at least some of the issues I posted, i'd be willing to call it a good movie. But as it is now? No way.
As for one issue that I am not sure about, I don't know if having David be the creator of the Xenomorphs is a good idea or not. We can't really call them aliens anymore if they were created by a human-made android. On the other hand, we always knew that the Xenomorphs were a weapon, so someone had to have made them. Still, I kinda wish that it was a joint project between David and the Engineers or something.
Do I regret seeing it? Maybe? It was pretty terrible and I even the dumbest of horror movies tend to have smarter characters. I also don't like the direction the series is heading. But on the other hand, it got me to write another movie review. That's something at least, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment