Alien: Covenant Was So Annoying I Walked Out - Here's Why | Movie Review

Alien: Covenant Was So Annoying I Walked Out - Here's Why I was really looking forward to seeking Alien: Covenant, the latest movie in a series that's almost as old, and came out during the same era, as Star Wars, and started with the classic Alien. A number of people hated Prometheus, the 2012 Ridley Scott film that was the first exploration into how the Xenomorphs, and perhaps our humanity, came to be. I, on the other hand, liked it with the exception of the weird ending with the two creatures, even though that plays a mayor role in what the future will bring. I was also most taken with the idea that a giant multi-planet corporation would grow to that point via making fake people – androids. David, scarily played by Michael Fassbender, was the creation of Sir Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), the Founder and CEO of Weyland Industries, that giant multi-planet fake-people, making corporation. In a must-watch 2012 prequuel video that featured Pierce's Weyland brilliantly and hauntingly speaking before a giant TED audience on the android shape of things of come, we are treated to challenging ideas that shaped Prometheus, and I thougtht would make their way into Alien: Covenant. Whichever one of those ideas made it to the introductory opening scene featuring Pierce and Fassbender, they were quickly crushed under the unbearable weight of a plot full of ideas that are un-Alien. For example, the hallmark character trait of the spacecraft crews of the previous movies was smart decisions related to what to wear when visting an alien planet – a spacesuit. In Alien: Covenant, the crew of the Covenant don't even think twice before going down to the planet where they think a live person might be, and getting out of their space craft without wearing a space suit or even a helmet. The result is two of the crew members become the unknowing hosts for a kind of airborne particle that, when it gets into their skin, cause a creature to form within them, and then come out in what is now typically nasty Alien fashion. That decision not to use spacesuits, and what happened to the crew afterward, just pissed me off. It was just plain out of school for what crews had done before in Alien canon. Perhaps it made for an easier story to write, but at that point, Alien: Covenant stopped looking like the latest version in a smart movie series, and took on the appearance of a massively poorly written hack flick. I was so unsetteled by that story assembly, and the over-the-top destruction of the landing craft which happened because of it, that I walked out of the theater. For a moment I entertained the idea of going back to see if the movie might, somehow, overcome that plot issue, but I went home instead. It was upon arriving hone that I learned the two androids played by Fassbender, David and Walter, are never tied together in the story. That one revelation, unless it's challenged by some throw-away line or easy-to-miss reference seen, is terrible. I may go back and see Alien: Covenant in its entirety. I'd like to meet and talk with Ridley Scott about this. I'm sure this master of sci-fi suspense has an answer I didn't anticipate. Stay tuned.

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