Now, to preclude this entry blog, I want to mention that I am a true fan of the Alien franchise. I remember watching Alien and being blown away. I don’t think there really was ever a sci-fi movie that was as scary as that first installment to the movie franchise. The Xenomorph was unique on the whole alien concept, and the fact it incubated in humans while they were in an unconscious state and when they finally regained consciousness, and they thought the worst was behind them! But oh no, incubation was no where as bad as having a damn baby alien bursting right out of your chest and there ain’t one, god darn thing, you can do about it.

I mean, thinking of the whole concept behind the movie, it was very simplistic. A space crew expecting to be heading home, when they come across some transmission that they are by company policy, mandated to investigate. Upon investigation, all hell break loose and now they have to try and find this creature that is currently habituating along with them, on their spacecraft. Simple, but yet brilliant, because the suspense is continuous and the dynamics between the crew members as they realize their own impending doom, is nerve jerking.

So, with that being the criteria every Alien movie from thence fort had to live up to, it didn’t seem like a very difficult task to accomplish. But it seems that after Aliens, it became very difficult to the point that we all kind of gave up on ever getting a movie to live up to our expectations. Then ‘Prometheus’ came, after years of not hearing a word about this lovely franchise that had so much potential. The fact that they were going to introduce us to the engineers that were seen on LV-426 in ‘Alien’, or at least that’s what we thought and hoped, gave us an excitement for the successful resurrection.

Then ‘Prometheus’ actually came out, we all rushed to the movie theaters with excitement, and just left wondering what the hell just happened. We couldn’t put our heads around it because it just didn’t seem like it did much of anything. It was an exciting movie, stand alone, but the fact that it was a prequel to Alien, we just expected more answers, rather than developing more questions.

So, aside from the disappointment that was ‘Prometheus’, we had hoped that with our rage and opinion on it, it would shake a little enthusiasm in Ridley Scott, to produce a movie that would actually satisfy our palates, rather than leave a sour taste in our mouth. So after a lot of negative criticism was given, we started hearing through the grapevine of a new movie, another installment, another sequel of Alien to be brought to the movie screens. With the amount of time between ‘Prometheus’, which came out in 2012, and ‘Alien: Covenant’, all the mistakes in the former, should have been eliminated all together, in the latter. Or, at least that’s what we all hoped.

I honestly would have to say that ‘Alien: Covenant’, is one of the worst Alien movies, within the franchise, out there. I felt it had no point. At the end of ‘Prometheus’, Shaw left the planet with David, expecting to be taken to some planet that the Engineers may be inhabiting and because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you or provide insight from articles I have been reading about the movie, etc., I am not going to go too much into that. But, that was the expectation of anyone who saw ‘Prometheus’. In ‘Alien: Covenant’, we are taken to a planet that Shaw and David navigated to but it doesn’t provide any more answers to all the questions that ‘Prometheus’ brought up. So it’s like they gave us a movie, made us build up a lot of questions and felt confident that with any sequel, it should answer some of those questions. Instead, yet again, we just have new questions on top of those old questions. Just a lot of damn questions!

The crew of the Covenant have to also be the dumbest crew we have come across in the Alien franchise. You would have expected a selection of individuals who are leading a colonization mission, would be the best of the best. But nope, the dumbest of the dumbest. A lot of things happened, when there was no reason for it to happen. A lot of scenes happened, without giving explanations to it. It also didn’t seem like it flowed well sometimes. You will see certain things and not be given much explanation for it, and probably will never get explanations for it. It did feel like it was also rushed, and with a movie about colonization of a planet, you’d think we’d get a little more character development or maybe an explanation on why they were colonizing other planets. I mean what happened to earth? I ask this because in ‘Alien: Resurrection’, it was 200 years after ‘Alien 3’. At the end of that movie, Earth is clearly a wasteland, but Covenant is a prequel to that, so it would be about 200 plus years before the events of ‘Alien: 3’. So was earth really a very crappy place or soon to be? If so, how is it that the crew of Nostromo were so eager to go back to earth?

Another thing that a lot of fans were upset with, is the incubation period for the aliens moving from possible 24 hours, to possibly a few hours, if that much and then growing rapidly over a few hours also, into adult stage. From Alien, it seemed the incubation phase and the infant to adult cycle, was a much longer one. So it seemed a rushed incubation period was suddenly developed for this movie. The even sadder bit, is that video clips online that are scenes that were removed from the movie, the prologues they were added to YouTube and avid Alien enthusiasts explaining bits and pieces of the movie that made no sense to the rest of us; was the only way to actually appreciate the movie, if that’s even the word to use.

It also seemed like they tried to pay homage to the original movie, with the introduction of the name of the film, being done in the same manner as the first one. I only noticed that the other day while I tried to get back my love for the franchise, by watching ‘Alien’, all over again. Unfortunately, that was as close as they got to heading back to their roots, when it came to producing a very suspenseful, and scary alien movie.

Personally, I would be okay with the Alien franchise coming to an end, and I wished it had just stayed as being over, instead of them trying to revive it. Unfortunately it seems there may be a few more movies in the works but with the poor reception of the movie at the theaters, I am not sure if this will continue to be a reality but hopefully, remains a dream that never see the light of day! Because to be frank, this franchise is on serious life support right now and it’s time Ridley just pulled the plug!

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