August 18, 2017
Alien: Covenant. Saw it the other night. Impressions? They even brought a second in command with short brown hair, brown eyes. Disagreeing with the captain about his decision that puts the mission in possible jeopardy. Ripley by the book. To mirror it. I have yet to meet an Alien fan – or SF for that matter – who did not like Lt Ripley. But this one – Daniels I think – she cannot clench her jaw like Ripley, so I don’t care. I mean, I watched the movie, however predictable – that twist at the end, you know, with Walter – that was no twist at all. Now the weird thing I realized about this film was the severe lack of emotional investment in characters. First scene with Captain Jake burning up in the sleeping pod. It’s a movie. We haven’t seen Jake at all prior to his demise. So who cares. Oh, it’s James Franco – is that supposed to connect with the audience? The director should stick with the ‘pet the dog’ trick. More people like dogs than they like James Franco. And the new captain who is not an unpleasant dude at all although he is trying – I mean, not letting his crew have a moment for Franco’s Jake who is also Daniels’ husband. How “frustrating” and even more implausible was that. “They disobeyed a direct order”. Wow, goose bumps. So they find that new possible promised land. And they land. And now that guy…I don’t know, let’s call him Crew Member #5…he steps away to light a cigarette. A cigarette. The dude space traveler on an American spaceship in some 2106 has cigarettes on him. Somebody tell the director that the setting is not any place in the good old 1970s. So yeah, Crew Member #5, when you were born, cigarettes were already retired in a museum of past centuries’ bad habits along with burgers, sugar and all the other good stuff. So that flying virus in your ear – totally avoidable and some might even say well deserved for trying to fool us about smoking! Moving on to special effects. They have become so special that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to take those movie stories into any kind of consideration because they look like video games. And nobody ever downed a person or a chopper or a Donkey Kong in a video game and felt any sympathy towards the animations. At least I hope not. For their own sake. And let me tell you, the little aliens being born and plastering themselves on someone’s face as ‘it’ used to do – nice try – but it only made me want to turn off The Covenant and look for the original fucker. Now I wish that the producers, or distributors, or studios, or Kanye West, or whoever is in charge – would along with the new hopeful money makers also re-release the original Alien. You know, give the younglings a chance to experience SF greatness in the dark of a movie theater. Where everyone can hear you scream.
