Quote from: Jonesy1974 on Jul 25, 2017, 01:43:20 PM
The point is for me that going for a wash, saving a cat, going for a sleep and so on are all pretty inconsequential in the broader context of a film. If you like the plot, characters etc then these things don't bug you so much but if you don't like these key components then the smaller things like movie tropes take on greater significance.
I agree to some extent. The thing is that while Rosenthal's death, as a single event, is pretty insignificant, she's a symptom to a larger problem: the script and character development. Her wandering off by herself is just another bad decision in a chain of bad decisions the characters take on every turn, starting off with the very decision to visit the planet. The script has the audience second-guessing its character decisions all the time, and as a result undermines the threat it is supposed to establish with the creatures themselves. The threat in Alien:Covenant is not the Neomorph or Xenomorph/Protomorph/Whatever - it's the glaring incompetence of the characters.
So ok, the characters make dumb decisions all the time. Fine. But the characters aren't even really characters in this film. Rosenthal as is with the audience for 3/4 of the film, but we don't even learn her name until after she dies. Her entire character can be summed up as "the jewish girl" (her last name's Rosenthal and she wears the star of david on her neck when the Neomorph decapitates her). That's about as much of a character as a street sign. I don't know her as a person. I have no idea what she likes/doesn't like or how she behaves in situations that aren't forced. If, for example, we would've learned earlier that she's very sensitive about hygene (silly character trait perhaps, but bear with me), going to wash off would at least fit as a character motivation. That's why laughing at the stupidity of her death is the emotional extent people are willing to go in regard to that situation.
You might think I'm being unfairly hard on Rosenthal because she's just a supporting/minor character, so let's go dissect Daniels, who is supposed to be the protagonist (I suppose): She's the wife of James Franco, whatever his name was in this. Other than that, she's pretty much along for the ride same as every other character. She constantly has stuff happening to her instead of actively dealing with dilemmas that could've flushed her out as a character (Ripley's quarantine scene in Alien as an example). She has a small backstory about her wanting to build a cabin that she tells Walter, but that's more of a Walter/David character element, as its only use in the film is to flush out the "twist" at the end. You might say she's as resourceful as Ripley was in Alien because she pushes the alien out of an airlock, but is she really? In Alien, the crew tries several plans to get rid of the alien with it constantly outsmarting them until eventually Ripley manages to get rid of the alien in a mixture of improvisation and a lot of luck (if the alien hadn't been sleeping in the first place, she would've been dead as well). Her pragmatism is built up in various scenes throughout the film, so there's consistency with her. In Covenant, Daniels just does the first thing that comes to her mind ("blow it out the airlock") and succeeds on her first attempt by throwing a space truck at the thing. Am I supposed to be impressed by this Die Hard 4 In Space schlock moment?
Every character in this film is completely one-dimensional, save for two: David and Walter. Why? - David's character was established in Prometheus, and Walter's character is a sharp contrast of David. Maybe Oram had a little bit more going for him being an insecure idiot with faith, but even that might be a stretch because I can't really point my finger at a smart crew member in order to deduce that Oram's stupidity is how he's written as a character, and not simply a result of the entire script. If the film cannot establish deep characters for me to care about, why would I be afraid about them dying off? The alien might as well attack cardboard cutouts.
