Just saw the Alien: Covenant trailer and thus far I’m already disappointed. Not going to lie nor hold back how I feel. Obviously, this isn’t the whole movie but with trailers these days, you hardly have room to second guess what comes next.
First, I’m not trying to bash Ridley Scott. Anyone who knows me realizes that I’m one of the biggest Alien/Aliens fans out there. Back in college I wrote my own “follow up” script to Aliens since I hated everything else that came after. I enjoyed Prometheus to an extent such that I did the same. And my biased towards this trailer has nothing to do with the Prometheus 2 “script” (yeah I know I didn’t write a true “script” on this site; but that’s a different debate altogether). This is just a genuine disappointment in what I was hoping for in a follow up movie to Prometheus.
The trailer for me felt like another re-hashing of the Alien(s) series. There’s a very dry formula that Ridley Scott and James Cameron have managed to concoct that has been emulated and replicated over and over in Hollywood both in terms of the franchise and other B or C level directors, screenwriters, etc. have produced over the years. Whether that formula utilizes variations on an outer space being or a just a boogie man type of creature, the basic formula is all about dumb crew comes in, finds creature, has doubts, wants to manipulate said creature for money back in the Corporation, slowly get picked off due to stupidity and having a sole survivor after going through permutations of mutilations to appease horror/gore fans. Heck, I think most of the Sci-Fy channel’s programs are based on this formula (maybe 30%).
Just based on watching the trailer, it feels that this Alien Covenant really is the original Alien movie with a touch of the Aliens movie (namely marines/high tech cool weaponry) updated. The effects might be better than a typical Sci-Fy channel copy cat, but the plot looks the same as the other Sci-Fy copy cats. Maybe the actors might be better (Michael Fassbender) than the standard B/C level celebrity stuff you’d see from the Sci-Fy channel but you can’t save a bad movie if the characters, writing and story are poor.
I feel that the poor reviews of Prometheus and a lack of a solid follow up script forced Ridley Scott to return to what he was famous for in using the Alien brand to sell the next movie. Maybe the overall backlash from the hardcore Alien fan community might’ve pushed him (and especially Hollywood) to do a 180 in returning to the brand name. If that’s the case, then it’s a really stupid excuse.
I mentioned before that Prometheus had GREAT ideas but suffered as a result of a very poor story and awful characters. I place that blame squarely on the writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof (possibly more on him from what I’ve read/heard from the whole fallout drama). Since neither decided to return for the follow up movie, it clearly indicates that a good deal of Prometheus’ criticisms lie with them. The execution of Prometheus was quite good; the performances by Michael Fassbender and consistent bitch tone character of Charlize Theron were great. But I think the lack of the Alien name being associated to the movie was not the reason the movie failed to garner critical acclaim.
The problem with Alien Covenant is that just from viewing things it feels like Ridley Scott going through the motions and nodding at Hollywood’s overbearing stance on these things. The overall execution once again looks excellent and this is because of Ridley Scott’s film direction. This is his strength as a powerful director in Hollywood. But from the viewing of this trailer, I perceive that the prior build up of the various questions from Prometheus will go abandoned here. And that is a severe disappointment as there were some very fascinating subjects at the heart of the Prometheus script. Where do we come from? Are we the result of another species’ influence? Does Jesus and God(s) have a connection to mankind in more than a spiritual sense?
Instead, what we get is a return to boring horror. Get bigger crew, bigger ships, more guns and gear and have them get slaughtered because they’re stupid. There’s no mental challenge in that type of script. It’s been done to death in Hollywood. I don’t care about the variations of body horror that these Hollywood hacks may conjure up because they’re simply 1-offs in terms of the scheme of things.
Worse yet the Alien series digs a bigger and sadder grave in what was once a mighty franchise that everyone wanted to emulate. Now, rather than innovating where it needs to as a science fiction story, it consumes itself like an Ouroboros.
The funny thing is that I wrote my Prometheus 2 script because I wanted to have an opportunity to create something original with some of the ideas behind the Prometheus movie. It might not have been good but I wanted to tackle some of the questions that were posed in the original movie as well as add a little depth into a few characters. I didn’t want to completely follow the Alien horror genre formula and try a few different things. Same with my old Alienation script (the one that was to follow up Aliens). I didn’t care if I made a penny off my script; I did it because it felt right to me and it was something I would’ve paid money to watch.
This new Alien: Covenant movie isn’t something that I’m going to rush to the theater to see. It feels along the lines of Alien vs Predator, something that I haven’t seen and probably won’t ever see. I’ll just read the plot on Wikipedia and if it sounds interesting enough, I’ll just grab it off of iTunes. If it’s really bad, I’ll just wait a few years for it to come out on HBO, Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Yeah maybe I’m being a bit harsh. But the truth is that I don’t feel there’s anything compelling about this movie. All the really interesting stuff from Prometheus seems dead in the water. All we’re left with is just a boring formula and more gory scenes to make horror fans masturbate with sandpaper.’
Lastly, I think the problem right now is that Ridley Scott doesn’t have Dan O’Bannon at his side to create the basis of the movie. Aliens was good because it had a new perspective with James Cameron taking the helm. But after that it just went downhill. I think Alien 3 sent the franchise into a downward spiral by going into inexplicable territory with genetics (i.e. the dog burster) and the fan fiction/comics kept things within the tiny universe. Prometheus tried to expand upon that narrow minded universe but the community at large and a poor script shut that whole thing down. Without a solid script writer, I think the Alien franchise should just quietly diminish into the sunset and allow old school fans and movie history buffs to appreciate the original two.