Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by John Logan, Dante Harper

Starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterson, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride

Alien: Covenant is a joke. Pure and simple, plain and true. I feel like I’m just wasting my time and energy and breath talking about it already. How in the fucking hell did this get a 73% on RT? Yet another movie that should have received a 0%. This isn’t the kind of movie where we can agree to disagree, or understand a “mixed” response. This isn’t about it not being good as the original two, it’s not about a declining franchise. It’s not about going against the grain or walking into a movie wanting to hate it. This is about wasting people’s mother fucking time. This is about a once great director capitalizing on a franchise he helped start, and now milking it so dry at the expense of all of us. Angry Joe was right “YOU DONE FUCKED IT UP”. Ridley Scott, more like Ridley Shit.

I think the best thing I can say about it is that it’s made me appreciate Prometheus’ wacky over the top bullshit. I did not like that movie, but hell, it was beautiful to look at. And at least I remembered how ridiculous it got. At least I had some semblance of feelings you’re supposed to have when you watch a movie during it. At least I was TRICKED into being unsure of my response right as I left the theater. At least I could talk about and theorize why the giant white alien ripped David’s head off and tried to kill Shaw. At least we could all pretend we cared about its implications. For days I couldn’t decide my ultimate thoughts for it, all the while running through the better sequences in my head (like the C-Section scene).

But now, those few cool segments in Prometheus have been downgraded to small “moments” in Covenant. There are a few 1-2 second sci-fi things that are interesting to look at. And actually, I really liked the opening scene between Michael Fassbender and Guy Pierce. For the first few minutes I was like Hey, this ain’t so bad, I’m kinda getting into this. And as soon as I had that very thought is as soon as I realized how stupid I was to hope. No, it didn’t take long for the movie to show its true form. Maybe 6 or 7 minutes. As soon as their ship gets damaged and all the crew is forced out of their hyper sleep on their mission. The way this opening sequence for our crew is shot and cut is so poorly conceived, so lazily thrown together with out of place edits and boring angles and bad performances that you can just feel how unenthusiastic the whole production is.

It really only goes downhill big time from there. Characters are assigned short labels and dialogue to trick us into thinking people are being developed. Billy Crudup, we are told remember, proclaims he is religious and all about faith, yet makes a decision early on that is in direct contrast to his “ideology”. Later on in the movie his “faith” is never brought up again and has no importance. So why is he religious again? I dunno, probably the same reason there are 2 (or 3?) married couples in the crew. Why are they married? So we can pretend to be sad when one of their partners dies. I can’t even remember if we ever see the actual couples together in the same shot. Seriously, people are all over the place. Katherine Waterson is TERRIBLE in this movie HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Not her fault, she was obviously cast to look like the short haired woman in the first Alien crew, or to remind of us Ripley in Aliens. Either way it’s despicably bad casting and Scott directs her all wrong. Her lines are shit and her performance is shit. What the fucking hell was Scott telling her to do? It was all just so wrong. She has a disagreement with Crudup about a major mission decision, and as I watched the horrible scene unfold I couldn’t help but think….these characters have the opposite opinions than they should. Waterson should be arguing what Crudup is saying, and vice versa. They switched them. You’ll understand when you see it. But don’t see it.

Covenant doesn’t add anything to the Alien franchise, but instead takes away from all of it. The lore, the mythos of the great two original sci fi movies has been all but ruined. Remember how long it took for the Xenomorph to fully form once the parasite had laid it’s egg inside John Hurt? Remember how great it was so see it’s many forms slowly growing, how frightening and special it all was? It’s a good thing you remember, because Ridley Scott doesn’t. It doesn’t take but mere minutes from when these idiot explorers decide to land on a foreign planet for them to get infected. And guess how it happens? Black dust in the air goes into their ears and noses. And not even 5 minutes later they have mini Xenomorphs bursting out of their chests. One guy in my theater loudly said, “well that was fast”. No shit. Scott thinks showing the aliens faster and more translates to better cinema. Fuck that shit. the aliens are onscreen WAY too often in this movie. They actually become boring. There are even some variations of the Xenomorph but I just don’t care cause it all fucking sucks. And why did they take off their helmets on a foreign planet again?

And, correct me if I’m wrong someone, but to my eyes the Xenomorph and all the aliens were entirely CGI all the way through. There may have been a couple shots where there were practical effects but maybe I didn’t notice. The point is this is laughably bad CGI. Am I supposed to be impressed with this? How come I can turn on the original Alien from 1979, and then Aliens from 1986 RIGHT NOW and legitimately be wowed, WOWED at how great they still look. How imaginative and magically gross those aliens are. How come I watch Covenant in 2017 and I’m laughing at the monsters? How come I’m not even scared or wincing? How come I don’t care?

Oh, that is another thing. The only two reasons you would have for seeing this movie after I tell you all this would be for the character’s death scenes and the “twists”. The Alien films have usually been good at those. This movie is perhaps the very worst of all of the franchise at delivering on those fronts. There are about two cool gross out variations of the chest bursting scene in this, aside from that, most of the characters die very quickly or offscreen/in darkly lit settings where you can’t see. And you see all of them coming way in advance. You know exactly who is going to die right before they die. There’s no buildup. You’ll hear a creak behind someone who obviously went off alone and seconds later you will watch them die. And all of them make dumbass decisions all the way through. Think about how much you hated the two scientists in Prometheus, and now imagine them as all 15 members of the crew and you have Convenant. Not joking, not fucking joking about that.

The twists are deplorable. You see everything coming well before it happens. In fact, IN FACT if you have seen Prometheus, then you know exactly what will happen in this movie down to the smallest detail once you reach about the 25-30 min mark and a certain “mysterious” character enters cloaked. The moment you see this character intentionally hiding his face is the very moment you know what’s happening in the next 90 min. No I am not joking. Even if you have never watched an Alien film before you will know what’s going to happen before it happens. This is what passes for $100 million scripts these days folks. The only real twist here is that Danny McBride is not the worst part of this movie. Somehow, ironically I guess, the movie doesn’t suck more because of him. His response to a certain character’s death is but one brief and real moment where I did not cringe and hate everything.

Michael Fassbender is a great actor, and I guess I gotta give it to him for playing two androids. There’s a homoerotic eternity of a scene where Fassbender plays with himself. There’s a flute involved in there I think. Yeah, you read all that right. Anyway, it drew big awkward laughs from my theater. Fuck this movie.

The whole film is poorly shot, poorly lit, poorly paced. This doesn’t even have the consistently great lighting Scott’s movies are usually known for. Almost always his films LOOK good. Prometheus had that classic imagery and lighting that hearkened back to the original Alien. Covenant looks like pure shit. It is so painfully obvious how rushed this movie was. From its awful script to it’s tragically pathetic camera setups and lighting.

AND THAT ENDING HOLY SHIT THAT ENDING

Talk about the worst possible way to reveal the worst possible twist. A 0/10 moment for sure. There’s no defense of it. I was exploding with rage at how it sets up for yet another sequel of which I hear Scott wants to make 3 more.

Covenant just continues bad movie traditions of bad movie characters making bad decisions just cause bad filmmakers keep making bad movies. At what point is enough going to be enough for us? Are we no longer allowed to even be tricked into enjoying ourselves? I often wondered if Ridley Scott was laughing as he filmed this. There’s no way he was directing that shower scene with a straight face. It is impossible.

It just feels like the cast and crew are wasting their time with this, and so are we. But you don’t have to. You can sit this one out. I saw this shit so you don’t have to. Life is short, too short to waste on movies that would deprive you of seeing James Franco die onscreen. One star. Fuck you Ridley.