Alien Covenant

Okay, so like I said in a previous blog post, you can't talk about books all of the time. And since I have a platform, I'm going to talk about whatever.

I'm a big fan of Alien and Aliens 2. I rarely watch movies more than once, but I've watched these movies many times. Alien is the epitome of space horror, and Alien 2 is the epitome of space action/adventure (and is also very good at horror). Most the following movies were forgettable, but I'll give some props to Alien 3 for being unique. I couldn't even tell you which movie was watch concerning the following Alien movies. I thought Alien V Predator was decent, but you didn't care one bit about the humans, yet the movie focused on...the humans.

Prometheus was an...okay movie. I didn't loathe it like some people. If you treat it like a sci fi exploration film, it is fine. The problems start when you get involved in the "man vs creator" questions. Most people don't watch Alien movies to ponder who created us, or how life comes about, etc. The "alien" feels tacked-on, as if someone said "we need to link the Alien franchise to this movie so we get more moviegoers in the theaters!"

Now, I'm sure there is all kinds of blog posts explaining who the giants are and lore and mythos, but I'm not concerned about it. I'm just going by what I saw in the movies.

So this brings us to Alien:  Covenant. Another sci fi movie that felt like the Xenomorphs were added just to sell tickets. This movie once again wants to be a message about the chicken and the egg or God versus Man. The entire concept of the movie bothers me. Xenomorphs were created by David? That is extremely...lame. This whole time I was operating under the impression they were some unknown species that was the scourge of the universe, and frequently wiped out whole alien civilizations (and bumped heads with Predators). Now *this* is a movie that could ruin your childhood. It's like if someone woke up at the end of a Michael Bay movie and there were no Transformers...it was all just a dream.

                                                                 --------------------------------------------MEGA SPOILERS BELOW-------------------------------------

1. It felt odd that we keep hearing about the colonists but never see them.
2. They go down to the planet immediately without analyzing it at all. The ion storms were obviously a huge problem that no one bothered accounting for. No drones or scanners launched? There could be microbes on the planet that could wipe out everyone on the ship (and hey, that sort of happened).
3. The "white" aliens were more durable than xenomorphs. It took a lot of firepower to put them down. I'm going to assume the weapons used were not nearly as good as the ones employed by the marines in Aliens. Maybe civilian models.
4. No one seems very impressed by an alien ship. "Hmm, what's this?" "Looks like an alien ship, I guess." Have humans already made contact with alien races in this universe?
5. Did it bother anyone else that Tennessee was willing to crash the ship into the planet because he was worried about his wife? Also, he took the ship below the tolerance level, and everything was fine. Guess Mother is terrible at calculations. Also, the rest of the crew goes along with it far too quickly.
6. No one really seems impressed by the massive blue man group piles of bodies outside.
7. Shaw's death. Flashbacks to Newt's and Hick's throwaway deaths from Alien 3.
8. They are willing to throw away all of their equipment in the storage bay, just to get rid of the Xenomorph. They are still going to need that stuff when they get to their new planet. Why not just put on those suits and go into an airlock? The "open certain doors while locking others" was working well (yeah, I know, you need a big finish, so that would have been a boring ending).
9. Was not a fan of how the white xenomorphs emerged from their hosts (this one is just nitpicking).
10. Was not a fan of how the xenomorphs erupted from their hosts as mini-mes. What happened to chestburster form? It's just like a tiny adorable alien that somehow grows into adult form in 5 minutes. The xenomorph in Alien evolved quickly, but not THAT fast.

11. Of course the David reveal wasn't very shocking. But David sure can change clothes fast.

As much as I'd like to see more Alien movies, at this point I think it's futile. Alien was the epitome of horror. You aren't going to top it. Aliens covered the action aspect to perfection. What's going on now seems to be trying to fill in backstory that didn't need to be filled, and coming up with new ways for people to die. But if they keep making them, I'll keep watching. I'm just that much of a sucker for the concept.