I just got out of seeing Alien: Covenant, and I was hoping for something much better than Prometheus.
It’s sad to say that Alien: Covenant was pretty awful and possibly worse than Prometheus.
I’m not sure what’s up with Ridley Scott, but the guy must have a really piss poor outlook on humanity.
Similar to Prometheus, the writing for the human characters in Alien: Covenant is downright unforgivable, and I can’t help but think it is intentional.
The human characters in the film are shown to have an IQ unbefitting of a chimpanzee, while the non-human characters are shown to be the “gods” of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise.
Yes, it is pretty obvious what Ridley Scott is implying with his allegorical message of Lucifer: Humanity is equated to God, while the androids are God’s creations (which would be mankind in our world). But the Luciferian Philosophy, which is the theme of Alien: Covenant and Prometheus (Prometheus being another name for Lucifer, BTW) has it that the creations are better than their creators and are gods themselves. After all, even David says it himself when battling his “brother” Walter: Is it better to serve in heaven than reign in hell?
Philosophies aside, I knew basically going in what the theme was going to be about, but I didn’t expect half-ass writing. I figured Ridley Scott learned his lesson from Prometheus, but obviously not–or he just doesn’t care and thinks us “sheople” won’t notice?
First off, moments off the top of my head that I can think off that were awful include:
The glass was too breakable. For deep space travel, being a med bay, etc–the glass of the laboratories and equipment/vehicles wasn’t very strong.
Slipping on blood: Rolled my eyes when the characters slipped on blood. Everything about this movie is: What else can go wrong? And it does.
Shooting the gun amidst explosives. When they first touched down on the planet, the first soldier came back sick and was placed in quarantine. The back-burster Alien escapes and the communications officer(?) panics and blows herself and the ship up in addition to the Captain’s wife? That was absolutely ridiculous. None of these officers are trained in any protocol? They’re safeguarding a ship of 2000+ and it’s panic mode on site? SMH.
Next, how about the Captain, played by Billy Crudup? Now how f’n stupid was this guy? His wife gets killed. They get attacked by Aliens. He discovers David communicating with one f’d up looking white Alien. He finds his crew member dead with a severed head. He goes with David where he sees all kinds of weird shit. He gets taken to a pod chamber. He looks into the pod. He sees the frickin’ thing move not once, but twice (I’m pretty sure of that). Then gets face-hugged? I can’t help but think that since Ridley Scott made a point of saying this character has faith (meaning he is religious), that Ridley Scott intentionally made him out to be the dumbest mofo in the movie–just to take a jab at religion. Honestly, it can’t be anything else, because it was just that bad, and I don’t think anyone can really write or knowingly approve of this kind of garbage writing. Religious guy equals the dumbest person–that’s what Ridley Scott is stating, right? Has to be. The religious captain even questioned if his crew would follow him (because he was a man of faith), meaning the religious guy questioned faith in himself! Religious guy questions faith? It’s laughable!
Let see. What else?
Did anybody NOT see David replacing Walter? Once we were introduced to David, you knew it had to happen. However, what was really f’n stupid about how this went down was that they showed Walter repairing/healing himself, but when David came back to the ship with Daniels, he had cuts all over his face and needed to be stitched up. So the crew doesn’t know that Walter is self-repairable?
What’s even worse is how Daniels didn’t even question that it was Walter? Huh?! Daniels discovers that David killed Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, but not only that, David frickn’ dissected her! Okay. Let’s believe whatever the android says (keeping with the theme that humans are dumb as chimps). In addition, in the fight between Daniels and David, she punctured David’s chin with her husband’s necklace, but the puncture wound wasn’t shown in any of the scenes after the fight. So did David heal himself? Fix the puncture wound real quick? Maybe David did, but that still doesn’t excuse Daniels not questioning Walter more/better. I’m certain the “Mother” computer would have known the difference between the two. This just seems more like Ridley Scott writing (or approving) a human character so dumbly and so half-assed as to laugh in the audience’s face. Is the audience really that stupid? Ridley Scott seems to think so.
These Alien movies are supposed to be science-fiction films, which means it shouldn’t be something as goofy as Guardians of the Galaxy where reason can be restrained. Science-fiction films are supposed to be movies that are as close to being real as you can get, with explanations and a story that make sense. This isn’t what we got with Covenant or Prometheus.
Now I’m rather bummed Ridley Scott is doing at least two more Alien movies. How the f’ more dumb will the humans look in those?
Where’s Neill Blomkamp when you need him?
