My 5 problems with Alien: Covenant

1. What happened to Prometheus? - The conclusion of Prometheus, which was not a great movie, was mostly to set up going to the Engineers' planet, as well as a new protagonist. Well, the protagonist is dead and so are the Engineers but at least you get one small not very well framed flashback to explain it all. I think those of us that kind of liked Prometheus were really hoping to get deeper into the Engineers stuff and instead we just got to pretend like that plot line doesn't really matter anymore. Also, Shaw knew what David did, why would we believe she'd be dumb enough to "put him back together" carelessly enough to get herself killed by him?

2. Enough lazy script writing - I'm so tired of having to say "gee, that's a really stupid idea" when people do stuff in these movies. There's so much of it, from the much-discussed poking of foreign lifeforms without masks, the classic horror movie "let's each go a different way when there's trouble" and the worst and most obvious culprit: the storm. "Oh gee guys, there's this giant fucking storm going down on this uncharted planet and at the very least it's going to be really difficult to fly through, plus who knows what else. Why don't we try flying down through it right away instead of, you know, maybe waiting for it to end? Since we're definitely in a huge hurry and absolutely can't wait a couple days in orbit." David kind of even gives an easy solution to this problem by saying they can last for months, so waiting may not have worked, but there's no way the crew knows that in advance. So an easy solution? Have them wait for a couple days, the storm doesn't end, they decide to go down anyway. Then later when David says they can last months, it all makes sense. Instead the storm is just a really lazy plot device to mess up communication with the ship and the people involved all seem like idiots.

3. You can't force Ripley - We get it, Ripley was a great character. But trying to force a badass female lead every time is getting old. Shaw was alright, but this time you've really gone too far. And you're rushing it way too much. It took almost 2 full movies before Ripley became the badass we all know and love. Here you've got an axe-wielding heroine flying through the air who was just a scared crew member 30 minutes earlier. If you had brought back Shaw, we could certainly believe she was a badass by now, but like this is just doesn't work at all and feels really forced.

4. Learn from Inception - I'm talking about the top spinning at the end. Why confirm that it's David on the ship at the end of the movie? It would have been much better to leave the audience guessing at the end of the movie, and it would have given a more satisfying conclusion. Especially with the shots of him watching as they fight the last alien, he smiled at first so we were sure it was David but then at one point seemed like he was truly concerned with their success, which we weren't sure was something David wanted. Instead your desire to go "surprise, a twist!" which was really a surprise to no one ruined this and left a significantly less satisfying ending.

5. All jump scares, no tension - You show the big aliens too much and don't get anything for it. As has been discussed to death: seeing the monster isn't scary, knowing it's around but not knowing where is. On the other hand, if you wanted it to be more Aliens than Alien, it has to have a story and purpose. If that had been to further develop Prometheus's story, a more action-oriented movie would have been fine. But it seems like Prometheus got ditched so you could try to go back to doing a "scary" Alien movie but then you didn't actually make it scary because the aliens were very poorly used.

Submitted May 31, 2017 at 02:20PM by Gripeaway http://ift.tt/2qETyj6