Below is a link to the Renegade Cut video essay about "AC". That will be the basis of my brief review.
* The motivation to believe in God, to have a covenant (or agreement) with God, to be God's messenger (Orem), to be Lord/a god to oneself (David), are fascinating ideas imo.
Who is god in this scenario? Is it a celestial being or is it a belief in such a being? Therefore god is a human creation of is god beyond human comprehension?
Is god the Engineers who create life on other worlds?
Then is David the god killer who then will become god?
- I enjoy thinking about these things and "AC" to me does a good job blending these ideas into the story.
* A criticism of "AC" is that the crew makes mistakes where people die and therefore this is a flaw in the film. That is not applied to other science fiction movies where similar risks are taken but characters don't die.
- A certain kind of risk can only be criticized if the story problem is recognized (when it happened) in every major science fiction film.
- Since "War of the Worlds", the concept of alien pathogens is known, yet it's usually ignored in almost every alien contact SF movie.
In "ET" the alien got sick. How come the humans don't get sick? Wasn't that an unacceptable risk?
Why weren't precautions (helmets) for alien pathogens taken in "Aliens"? Wasn't that also an unacceptable risk?
- The Covenant crew not wearing helmets is a common trope in a science fiction movie. This happening on the Paradise planet is not a flaw in a science fiction film.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPuUerPZ_xc