covenant verdict

Watched Alien: Covenant (2017) yesterday. 

It’s a sev­enth Alien film and the se­quel to Prometheus (2012), a jum­bled mess of in­con­se­quen­tial events and ter­ri­ble script writ­ing, com­pen­sat­ed by Ri­d­ley Scott’s strong direction. 

Only this time the script is bet­ter. It has more fo­cus, bet­ter de­fined char­ac­ters, and sto­ry that you can ac­tu­al­ly fol­low. It has a num­ber of plot prob­lems but not many enough to ruin the ex­pe­ri­ence (at least while I was in the theatre). 

While I think it was a good fol­low-up from Prometheus, it still has a very weak con­nec­tion to the orig­i­nal Alien (1979). It’s as if the screenwriter(s) hasn’t seen it for a while and do not re­mem­ber how it starts.

The best char­ac­ter is Michael Fass­ben­der. His an­droid char­ac­ter has a lot more depth and clear­er mo­ti­va­tion than David in Prometheus, and is a joy to watch. 

The main girl from Fan­tas­tic Beasts is okay but not strong enough, eas­i­ly over­shad­owed by Fassbender.

The Alien crea­ture is good but un­der­used. I think edit­ing was too ef­fi­cient with the crea­ture, and things hap­pen and end with­out enough ten­sion built around. It does a good job when it’s on screen, but it was not giv­en enough weight.

It’s a good Alien film, but a pret­ty for­mu­la­ic one. Ri­d­ley Scott does great job at sto­ry­telling both in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, it’s just that the sto­ry he’s got wasn’t good in the for­mer. This time it’s bet­ter – but not great or memorable. 

There are huge gaps be­tween Alien and Aliens duo, and the rest of the fran­chise. I think Alien: Covenant sits right be­tween them. ⁷⁄₁₀.

It’s amaz­ing that Scott is still di­rect­ing films de­spite his age (near­ing 80), but I am not sure if he should spend the rest of his cre­ative life mak­ing se­quels, which seem at this point just nos­tal­gia-based cash-grabs.
 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2017 Toshi Omagari.

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