Better, entertainment-wise, than '
Prometheus'. The characters are a lot more relatable and, for the
most part, don't do silly things (although, for some reason, loud screams and gunfire don't serve to attract anyone's attention, which was strange), which was a vast improvement.
It's basically what I predicted it would be: Interspersed with crowd-pleasing moments, but more of an inferior emulation of '
Alien'/'
Aliens' than an equal to either of them. I put it more or less on a par with '
Alien 3' (which had some better stand-out acting moments, but '
Covenant' doesn't suffer from carbon copy victims and a magically teleporting egg).
For all that, however, it had a weird effect on me, in so far as it felt like it was serving as a bridge between '
Prometheus' and whichever story is coming next, rather than trying to be memorable in its own right. Like a filler episode of your favourite TV series, which happens to feature some nice set pieces, but which still
feels like the filler episode it ultimately is. There are actually some intriguing things it reveals or hints at, but it doesn't spend time actually exploring many of them.
It also suffers from one of the major flaws of '
Alien 3': The actual creature is vicious, but is just running around and messily killing people. If you wanted to see something as memorably horrific as Dallas'/Brett's egg transformation sequences or as unsettling as Lambert's demise, it simply isn't here. There was one moment where I
thought the latter was about to happen, but either it was edited out or Scott couldn't be bothered to try - which is a shame, because aspects like these were the very things which differentiated the Alien from most other 'movie monsters' out there. I remember an old video interview with Scott, many years ago, where he observed that the creature, "Isn't like a tiger, y'know? It doesn't just eat you..." Which was what made it so different from, say, the shark in '
Jaws'.
With that said, the attacks feel more or less right. They just lack the subversive nature of what made the original creatures so disturbing and iconic.
David 8, man... F**k's sake.
I don't know what to think about this character. I preferred Walter a
lot more. David 8's motivations were as stereotyped as they were illogical, unfortunately. I guess it works for the adventure he's a part of and Fassbender performs it well, but I like David 8 even less than I had in '
Prometheus' and don't understand the character's underlying motivation (which felt like it verged on cartoon-like, at times). It was nice to see some of what was alluded to between Ash and the creature, back in the original '
Alien' novelisation, though. That was a nice inclusion.
As a whole, it entertained me and I liked it as a film. I don't feel it was rushed in the editing process. Just wish that it had taken some time to explore certain things it presented the audience with.
Also, I think I've now solved the costume discrepency. In my report for Alien Day, I mentioned how Conor O'Suillivan, the Creatures Supervisor, had repeatedly mentioned that the main Alien didn't have a suit on set, yet some other reports had referred to one. Looking at the film, all the shots of the main Alien did, indeed, seem completely CGI. However, there was one shot of one of the other creatures which
did look like a suit might have been involved. So, I now suspect this is what happened... A suit did exist, but not for the traditional Alien - for one of the other extraterrestrial horrors in the film.
This isn't to say that the Alien CGI was bad. It was decent. But you
could instinctively discern it was CGI.
There were also some character moments which I wonder about. We know, for instance, that Sergeant Lope was meant to have been in a same-sex relationship, yet this isn't really alluded to in the film. It seems odd for this to have been alluded to in one of the viral features, yet not the actual film it was meant to be hyping. There was also meant to be a female character who, due to her other half still being in cryosleep, was meant to have a f**k-buddy who was in the security team. Yet, this detail was also nowhere to be found (none I remember of, anyway). And that stuff we kept reading in interviews, where Walter was meant to have trust issues with David 8, because of regarding the latter as dangerously in need of updates and software maintainance? Nowhere - which was a real shame, because I was interested in seeing that being played out in dialogue.
So, while I don't think the editing was too rushed, stuff like this does make me think some character development scenes might have been deleted.
It's either a 6/10 or 7/10. Not quite sure which. Rewatchable, but only up to a point. Serviceable, but didn't properly expand upon its own potential in ways it really needed to.
