Ridley Scott sh*ts in his own pool, thereby assuring nobody else will ever make an alien movie Contains spoilers:
I love scifi and find any scifi movie with a decent budget to be watchable and enjoyable as do many scifi fans. That is the one and only explanation for the OK ratings of Alien Covenant, a movie where Ridley Scott proudly burns his own franchise to the ground so that nobody else ever dare touch it.
First the petty stuff... while the graphics are pretty and the alien world is foreboding, the over-reliance on computer graphics significantly detracts from how scary and foreboding the "aliens" are. Where in previous alien movies the aliens had a gestation period, you know, like a normal life form subject to the laws of physics, now they are completely separated from all reality. They look like computer sprites, they bounce around like computer sprites, the eat face like computer sprites, and they gestate in nanoseconds like computer sprites. Everything about the way the "aliens" move on screen screams out you're watching a cartoon and that the evil aliens are no more than figments of imagination and of graphic artists. Certainly, this is the way of the world, everything is animated and everything is less satisfying and less scary because of it, but what are we going to do, make a model and drip ketchup off of it so it looks more real? No, we'd rather spend billions on computer sprites that convince nobody and move like phantoms that are beyond the laws of physics. In fact, were you to watch the 86 Aliens and this movie back to back, you'd be surprised at how much better and more convincing the special effects were.
Ridley Scott apparently has alzheimers and forgot the first Alien movie revolved party around a malfunctioning synthetic organism that was there to help the crew. Ridley Scott came up with this incredible idea for a movie shortly before creating Alien Covenant, what if we had a malfunctioning synthetic organism that was supposed to help but turned evil? Nobody in his inner circle has gumption to stand up and say "sir this plot seems oddly familiar."
But the real reason God will probably give Ridley Scott herpes is... the alien is now not an alien but a biological weapon?? Are you f'cking kidding? Do you know how non-scary that is? Do you know how not- scary that makes the entire franchise, all the old alien movies, all the video games... oh it's not actually an Alien, it's a biological weapon created by a malfunctioning synthetic which is totally an original idea I came up with right before I made this movie. I just don't even... what a joke of a human, what a joke of a director.