fabz

For the first 10 minutes of this movie I truly wondered if it was just a spoof. The unintentionally jocular film maker starts off pretending to have believed all his life that hot dogs and fast food were healthy only to recently have found out otherwise because of some study. He then moves on to interviewing "experts" that claim sugar and carbs are healthy. It goes downhill from there, stretching half truths and presenting opinion as fact. This very poorly produced piece of vegan propaganda will fail to reach anyone outside the grass munching community due to its complete bias and creative interpretation of the word "fact".

Verdict: This movie seems like the intellectually challenged child of "Alien" and "Idiocracy". Ridley Scott's lazy execution has killed the series.

Review: Looking at the list of people involved in directing and producing this movie, it is incredible to realize that they got so much wrong, and I'm not referring to nit-picky scientific facts here. The problems with Alien Covenant are much more basic than that: casting and plot. Is there anything good here? I tried hard, but all I could think of were the sets and the special FX.

The lazily executed Alien Covenant contains the usual jump scares and gore that we've seen many times before. I could easily look past the trite scifi/horror box-ticking exercise if the story or the crew were interesting, but alas they are the real letdown. It would be harsh for me to blame the cast for their poor performances because I can't quite pinpoint the exact cause of their failure. The result is clearly inadequate, regardless of the cause which is likely a mix of poor direction, poor script and ordinary acting.

Whatever the reason, the entire crew of this spaceship manages to leave any charisma and personality back on Earth and travels to explore the universe armed only with clichés and stupidity, such as casually landing on an uncharted planet with a cigarette or cigar in the mouth or wearing a cowboy hat inside a spaceship (that's character development right?).

Ultimately it is the plot that sinks Alien Covenant. I can't imagine anyone thinking that it would be acceptable to send a pathetically inept crew to colonize a planet far far away, in a very expensive spaceship, with the added responsibility of thousands of colonists in stasis. This is a crew with close to zero skill and even less common sense. A crew with a weak chain of command and a lot of bad attitude (one quote from memory, when the bumbling idiot left in charge utters to his wife: "This is not fair, the crew don't trust me just because I'm a man of faith").

Alien Covenant interprets humanity, human actions and motivations in a very warped manner, so much so that the choices made by every character seem completely irrational. Some examples:

• Detour from a planned massive colonization mission because of a single garbled message.

• Land humans on a mysterious uncharted planet as soon as you get there and without first sending a probe or doing any research. Despite an impenetrable atmosphere, with several visible cyclones and extreme storm activity going on.

• Have zero mission protocols and allow each individual to basically touch, fiddle and play with whatever they find on said mysterious planet.

• When something goes wrong get into a massive panic, but only until it's time to relax (shower, play the flute, etc.), at which point we wait for the predictable monster strike.

• Blindly and repeatedly trust a synthetic (robot) that was known to have been faulty.

• The new synthetic is an upgrade of the old synthetic, but somehow is not very rational and so is consistently outsmarted and beaten up by said inferior unit (humanity seems to have only one synthetic mold since they all look alike, even 10 years apart).

• Quarantine? Backup plan? What are they?

Nobody in their right mind would behave the way these characters do. Let alone individuals that should have been trained and primed for the circumstances.

Alien Covenant had the chance of being a good movie, but it appears to have been executed from beginning to end with a laziness that deserves contempt. Ridley Scott has had some hits and misses. He has made some of my favourite movies (the original Alien being one), but also some of my least favourite (such as Alien Covenant). I sincerely hope that Blade Runner does not also become tainted by the kind of cash-cow attitude that has ruined the Alien series.

Colony has a fairly original premise. The characters are at times a bit hard to stomach, but overall it's a pleasant watching experience. I found it well worth sitting through an at times annoying first season just to get through to season 2, which is much more interesting. The character development in season 2 has been quite impressive and they are now much more acceptable heroes and anti-heroes. Worth watching.

You have a problem with a colony on a distant planet? Don't summon a scientist. Why would you get help from a chemist, a physicist, a biologist or a psychologist when you can just hire a priest!

This has to be one of the silliest shows I've seen in a long time. I won't bother going into the plot as it has been detailed by countless other reviews. However should you choose to watch this, be warned to brace yourself for an amazing amount of religious mumbo jumbo. The sets have a distinct low budget feel. The writing is clichéd. Worst of all the priest in space story is just the silliest idea ever. I know it has been done before. It was silly those other times as well!