Traveling through space in a gigantic spaceship with most of the crew in hibernation? Check. Receiving a distress signal from another planet? Check. Discovering deadly aliens whose sole purpose is to destroy all life? Double check. About the only plot element that Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant doesn't recycle from previous installments of this franchise is the inclusion of not one, but two (nearly) identical androids, David and Walter, one good, the other bad (both played by Michael Fassbender), with the former now representing a much more evil version of Dr. Frankenstein, albeit in a galaxy far, far away (he first appears cloaked in a hoodie, resembling a Jedi from a George Lucas alternate universe). The movie really is a mash-up of the original 1979 Alien and 2012's Prometheus, with an added touch of ultra-violence and gore, but with far less thrills.
The franchise was much better served when Aliens were creepy monsters that lurked in the darkness of outer space; when we see way too much of them, they kind of lose their mystique. And we're still no wiser on the subject of "engineers", the large extra-terrestrial humanoids who allegedly created humanity millions of years ago, and are responsible for creating the Alien lifeforms as well. We see a glimpse of them in a brief flashback, but their motivation and their philosophy remains a mystery. It would seem that Mr. Scott has made a very generic sequel/prequel whose script is not only short on inspiration, but also on ideas. There really is no reason for this movie to exist at all, for we've already seen it before. Twice.
C-
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