Either way the plotting of Covenant still rolled on fine with David the android becoming even more insane and villainous with his experimentation and intentions. Apparently their stories aren't finished according to Scott. I especially was left a bit underwhelmed with Shaw's mysterious fate. If this would've added about 45 min of backstory and extra footage surrounding those gaping questions it could've been a masterpiece though it was still excellent. This aspect however seemed to detract Ridley Scott's original Engineer/creator/Shaw plot line into oblivion as it was extremely glossed over rather quickly and unexplained which was a huge let down for me. While I enjoyed Prometheus in all of its cryptic and philosophical glory, I still desired more time visually spent on the alien creatures themselves, and let me tell you when they are sparingly shown in Covenant they are truly stunning and absolutely vicious to the point of extreme gore and utter chaos. While I enjoyed Prometheus in all of its cryptic and philosophical glory, I still desired more time 4.6/5 A fantastically bloody and grim action packed spectacle that has probably the most disturbing scenes/aliens out of the entire franchise. … ExpandĤ.6/5 A fantastically bloody and grim action packed spectacle that has probably the most disturbing scenes/aliens out of the entire franchise. Ridley otherwise has an astounding body of work and he could rest on those laurels. OK, ok, the space FX, spaceships & indoor/outdoor settings are all beautifully done, I'll give them that, but on no level do they redeem the pic. And lastly, zero continuity is set forth between this and the events approximately 15 years later in the original Alien. And FYI to FX teams, a mix of CGI and a well-crafted on-set in-camera creature would still be superior to the nearly 100% CGI creature FX here. Oh God, and then there's the moment Fassbender's android PLAYS THE THEME FROM PROMETHEUS on a recorder/flute thingie. Worse yet, in one unbelievable jump-the-shark moment, Ridley doesn't seem to even be aware that he's channeling "Spaceballs" - at which point I totally checked out. The rules of Alien biology clearly established in the first two films are wildly violated here (it is supposed to take days for full alien incubation - but we don't have time for that in this script, so let's just take 5 minutes this go-round), yet one would think Ridley would be loyal to his own invention. We've been here before, and much more succinctly.
Worse yet, this movie is less about the Alien and more about "The Fassbender Show" with seemingly endless heavy-handed dialog on android aspirations. Empty shells staged for some poorly paced bloodletting. And when it did, it was compelling, dreadful, terrifying and chaotic. In "Alien" and "Aliens" you could sink your teeth (ahem) into some very well-drawn and well-acted characters, and invest in them, well before the acid-for-blood hits the fan. I really do not understand the overall favorable reviews from critics. In "Alien" and "Aliens" you could sink your teeth (ahem) into some very well-drawn and well-acted characters, and invest in them, well before the Just awful.