Alien: Covenant Review - YMS

[Music] so I just saw the new alien covenant and it was pretty [ __ ] ridiculous I mean I had fun and everything but I don't think I would have if I had a serious investment in how much sense the alien universe makes luckily for me I don't really give a [ __ ] and they can write the story however they want without making me upset I was almost able to pretend as though the hilarious scenes in the film were actually meant to be that way like there are several scenes in this film that you could throw into an alien parody film and leave unchanged without spoiling anything there is legitimately a Three Stooges level of slapstick humor within a scene that is supposedly meant to invoke fear in tension and since I don't have any serious investment over how an alien prequel is handled I was able to enjoy it as a comedy I did not feel as though my movie ticket purchase was a waste of money and you know what despite plenty of unintentionally hilarious scenes there are actually other scenes in the film that are done well in terms of action excitement and overall entertainment I'd probably say that this does a better job than Prometheus but as an entire film I'm not sure that's the case one thing that I could at least say about prometheus is that there was some breathtaking cinematography within the film but with alien covenants although generally well shut I could say no such thing like sure there were some cool designs to be found that they copied and pasted from hrg hers notebook but the cinematography itself just felt very low effort compared to Prometheus not only that but all the computer animation within alien covenant just feels incredibly outdated even something as simple as metallic textures found on the little robots and the ship just seems so incredibly unpolished like even objects that we've more or less perfected at this point in the computer animation industry just feel fake and it obviously doesn't help the experience of the film if these things don't look real I don't know maybe I just have too high of expectations for a 97 million dollar Ridley Scott directed alien prequel but unfortunately the final product often feels as though the animation department did not get the budget they needed anyway I'm about to start spoiler talk so if you don't want to hear spoilers just skip to this part in the video this is the type of film that requires me to talk about the plot in order to properly criticize it so here we go there's your warning three two one at the beginning of the film we get a cold open with Peter Weiland and David David's like yo dude you're not immortal and I am isn't that crazy and Peter Williams like this is a sensitive subject for me please stop talking about it and then we cut to much later and we see a big spaceship and a jumble of unnecessary text appears at the bottom of the screen you know that really cliched effect I talked about in my World War Z review that only exists in movies because they think it looks cool I guess obviously I'm not saying that a movie is automatically bad if it does this but when every single bit of information within that text effect is revealed through dialogue in the film anyway why would you make the decision to take us out of the film's universe to give us information that we're already going to get I don't know call me crazy but I think it's a little easier to get sucked into a film's universe if I don't have notifications enabled on my screen while the editors trying to DM me during the film whatever I guess it didn't really matter too much whether I got sucked into it or not anyway because this whole opening scene was absolutely atrocious so essentially the Covenant is a colonists ship and everybody on board is sleeping except for the Android David look-alike named Walter the ship AI named mother tells him that the ship needs a recharge so he deploys the energy recharge sails all seems to be going well but then some random neutrino burst from somewhere in the galaxy causes a power surge and this [ __ ] up everyone's sleep pod for some reason so Walter initiates an emergency crew revival pretty much everybody is able to get out of their pod except the ship's captain who's still asleep and his pod won't open for some reason so the other crew members are trying to pry his pod open but then a girl does jumps on top of it like I get it the captain's your husband and you must be very concerned but you are now lying on top of the pod that they're trying to pry open to save his life but I guess it doesn't matter because they all witness him die in a fiery blaze as though it was not any kind of hibernation pod but actually an incinerator perhaps Walter accidentally set the dial to broil also the captain was James Franco for some reason anyway apparently that's just something that happens when you get a power surge and now the second-in-command is the new captain we then learned that because of this neutrino burst they lost 47 out of the 2,000 colonists how come they didn't get an emergency wake up I mean unlike passengers this is a film where the pods actually allow you to go back to sleep could those deaths have been prevented if those pods were opened up because it seems as though that would have been the case the captain whatever they're just peasant civilians [ __ ] them so the new captain's like what happened here and how can we prevent this from happening again and Walter's like it was a neutrino burst it was completely random and there's no way we could have prevented it in the captain's like know I don't believe in coincidences you don't know what you're talking about mister Android who was specifically designed to know what you're talking about quick everybody get to work repairing the damages or we're all going to die but the crews like we're not in any immediate danger right now can we at least more in the death of the 47 casualties or maybe even our captain and he's like no that's a direct order you're not allowed to mourn even for one second hurry up we're all going to die all throughout this intro they paint the new captain as some absolute [ __ ] so the captain dicks off and the crew gets to work on a few things and then a bunch of them have a toast to the old captain before ejecting his dead body off the ship apparently Danny McBride really loves Jack Daniels with the label covered but even though they only took like two seconds to do this and immediately got back to work the captain's literally watching them from a security camera in another room going like ah they deliberately disobeyed a direct order I'm so mad like everything this new captain does just perfectly fits the mold of some stereotypical villain you know not necessarily the antagonist in the film when you have a movie like this and the plot doesn't work unless people are stupid and things [ __ ] up he's pretty much the embodiment of a stereotype that you would expect [ __ ] things up but at no point does he ever sabotage anything I mean I guess it's preferable that he's not just a plot device but after I watched the movie all I could think was why would they even make him such an [ __ ] like the problem I have is that he's not a realistic [ __ ] he's the kind of [ __ ] that only exists in movies because slot devices need to be filled but he didn't and I can't understand why the film decided he should be so incredibly unlikable you know maybe during his death scene you could have had a scene where the audience cared about someone dying what was the point in spending so much time making sure the audience hates him I don't understand so anyway Danny McBride is outside doing some repairs on the energy sale and I guess because he's in a certain spot outside the ship some transmission just pops into his helmet so he brings the transmission inside to show everyone and it turns out at someone singing country roads by John Denver nevertheless they decide to trace its source through geometric data and mother computers like yo it came from this really sick soup inhabitable planet that's like two weeks over that way and all the crew members are like yes let's check it out maybe it will be much better than the planet that were actually supposed to go to and since the original destination still seven years away everybody's kind of like yeah I don't really want to get back in those pods again I didn't realize they were actually pressure cookers one of them actually adds hey wait a minute I thought we scanned the whole galaxy for planets and that's why we're going to one that's still seven years away how did we miss that one and the question is never answered they get near the planet and they're like others a plasma storm in the thermosphere so the Covenant stays up top while a smaller ship goes down to check things out so at this point it's been over half an hour and things are moving by at a painfully slow pace in all seriousness the first half hour of this film is an actual challenge to make it through as soon as I noticed they were on the planet I thought oh I guess things are actually going to start happening now so I elbowed my sleeping friend next to me so he would wake up and not miss any of the not boring parts so they start walking around heading towards the signal some of them decide to just hang out and explore I guess and I [ __ ] you not one of them says I got to take a leak and walks off by himself at which point anyone in the audience who's ever seen a horror film in their entire lives is now groaning inside their head I got to take a leak I hope nothing bad happens to me and the weirdest part about him going off to fulfill his role as mr. plot device is that he never actually takes a leak he seriously just leans against the tree and lights a cigarette are you ashamed that you smoke pretty sure there were other people in the group that were smoking did you not have to piss anyway because he accidentally steps on some weird planting these little tiny things come out and go inside his ear oh and the whole sequence is done in this weirdly overdramatic way meanwhile everyone else is getting closer to the signal and one other guy in the group is just way too curious about things and falls victim to the same fate except instead of not even really being able to avoid it like that last guy he just starts poking these things with his finger while his face is right next to it and practically just inhales them in like yeah I want to get a real good whiff of this unidentified plant species on this planet I've never been to so then the guy who was smoking starts getting sick and the girl he was with brings him back to the tiny ship he's vomiting blood and they get him into the quarantine medical room or whatever then he shoots blood out of his back and it gets all over this other girl's face and then she locks them in the room as though she didn't just get blood all over her you got a little baby alien thing burst out of his back so she's like oh [ __ ] I guess I better go get a gun meanwhile the girl in the room hilariously flips over the blood on the floor she still manages to grab a knife but because she sucks so much this little baby alien manages to kill her anyway so the other girl comes back with a gun ready to shoot this thing lining up the shot perfectly but then she slips and falls on the exact same pool of blood it was genuinely hilarious and as she crawls away in shame and tries to close the door behind her she closes it on her own foot I was having a blast we scare people fish quite different then they run around the tiny ship and she shoots at it but she sucks so bad that she blows herself and the entire ship up everybody else comes back to it like I said how are you going to get back to the Covenant now and the other really sick guy dies a ton tiny alien bursts out of him and nobody kills it and it runs away and because of this weird storm that they decided to do all of this during they can't get in contact with the Covenant anymore then the alien comes back and it's much bigger and it kills one of them and eats Walters arm and then runs away and some weird dude in a cloak shows up and it's David from Prometheus and he's like yo guys follow me and everybody's like well there's no reason to trust you but sure so he brings them to his fortress where everybody believes they're safe now despite the fact that it doesn't have doors and it has an open roof not to mention the place is literally surrounded by dead bodies then everybody gathers around and David's like yo I came here with dr. Elizabeth Shaw ten years ago but this deadly pathogen accidentally deployed as we were landing and also she died in the crash oops sorry and then we get this really weird scene of David teaching Walter how to play the flute and throughout this entire scene it seems as though it only exists to go hey look at what we can do we can have Michael Fassbender and Michael Fassbender interacting with each other in the same scene with camera movement isn't that cool like sure it looks kind of cool but it's not exactly new technology or anything it's just kind of a useless long and awkward scene are we supposed to be impressed it was also very strangely erotic I swear to God one of the lines with David saying watch me I'll do the fingering meanwhile everyone else splits up for no reason like you've all clearly established that there's a major threat and all you have to do is wait you don't want to maybe hang out near each other to make sure that you don't die now I hate those guys I'm going to hang out by myself OOP so a couple of them finally get through to the Covenant and tell them that there's been casualties in Danny McBride's like mother get the ship closer to the planet even though it's going to be right next to the storm and mother's like we can't do that because it's not safe and the ship will probably break and everybody around him pretty much agrees with mother but Danny McBride comes back with the most hilarious reasoning ever he literally says we didn't leave Earth to be safe and I laughed out loud in the theater and then everybody around him like yeah I guess that's true let's go do it I guess what meanwhile back on the planet people are like where is everybody disappearing to so they're like we should go look for that girl from our group who is now mysteriously missing so the captain goes to look for her by himself so then David walks off and finds the big alien eating her remains and they have kind of an intimate moment where it looks like they're going to kiss but then the captain steps out from behind the corner with his gun drawn and David's like don't shoot it I just want to hang out with it we're getting along really well but then he shoots it then David starts freaking out like how could you it trusted me we were going to get married one day then the captain's like David you should probably tell me what's going on or else I'm going to shoot you and David's like oh yeah sure just follow me over this way by yourself I know that's exactly what I said to your entire group earlier and now there are more casualties and you're very suspicious of me but do it again this time alone so the captain follows David into a room with a bunch of alien eggs and David's like here why don't you just stick your face really close to it I promise it'll be really cool and the captain actually does it so then Danny McBride's bringing the ship down and the remaining crew members are like wait where is everybody we can't leave without everybody why are we [ __ ] idiots meanwhile David is throwing rocks at the captain and the captain wakes up and then a chestburster burst out of his chest David just awkwardly smiles and fondly looks at this thing bursting out of the captain's chest and as weirdly inappropriate emotional music starts playing it was such a strange and unintentionally funny scene that many people in the theatre started laughing so then Walter finds some of David's weird [ __ ] laying around and he's like the pathogen didn't accidentally release into the environment you did that on purpose didn't you and he was like yes I did that because I hate human being so much we find out that the reason why David hates human beings is because human beings are not immortal he's like humans are just bad at being alive so I don't want them to live doesn't really explain why he's so obsessed with Xena more so by what unit of measurement have you determined them to be a better species than human beings and David kisses him on the lips and stabbed him in the throat and these two guys show up and they immediately split up a face hugger shows up that then the other guy stabs the face hugger wallets on him and now he has a massive acid burn on his face but he's fine then Daniels is wandering around by herself and David finds her and tries to make out with her then Walter shows that gut because he wasn't actually dead and Daniel's runs away David and Walter have a little bit of a fight scene and Walters almost killed him but David's like hey why don't you hesitate a little and not actually kill me so I can say a couple sentences thank and from that moment it's excruciatingly ly obvious what's going to take place between the two of them wouldn't you know it we don't actually see the rest of the fight scene and we just see one of them show back up as everybody's leaving the planet he has one arm so it must be Walter right it was borderline offensive how long the movie pretended as though it was Walter this is the film equivalent of Ridley Scott pinching your face and saying got your nose but you're an adult and you can tell it to some and without a shred of self-awareness he just keeps it going and it's like no see it's your nose right here I've got it right between my fingers like somehow he just doesn't understand that that only works on people aged 5 and under the only thing that's overdone cliche was missing was having a scene of the two of them going shoot him I'm the real Walter [ __ ] right off so everybody gets back on the ship and it takes off but it looks like the alien is hanging on to the side and what follows was a kind of fun but incredibly cheesy action scene Daniels latches herself onto the outside of the ship as it's flying around while she's shooting at the alien and somehow Danny McBride operates a claw attached to the outside of the ship and picks the alien up with it while he is piloting the ship and while they're flying around crashing into things she's literally dangling from a [ __ ] rope on the outside of the ship and she shoots the alien seriously watch this scene it's ridiculous it's a scene that feels as though it would be more appropriately fitting in hardcore Henry it was like a scene that was intentionally trying to be cheesy and hilariously unrealistic it's as though this scene was meant to be played for left and since I don't really care what they do with this franchise at this point I sure as hell enjoyed it so now they're back on the Covenant and they're fixing up that guy's face in the medbay and they're essentially just using a tongue depressor to smear around goo on the guy's face but the goo is like a weirdly thick consistency that you'd never expect any school staff to be applying on an open wound like she's putting in a lot of muscle to spread that [ __ ] around on the guy's face it was like she was trying to spread around some kind of gummy candy that was left in the Sun for five minutes it was very strange then some time is passing Danny McBride goes up to Daniel's and is like hey I took mother offline she took some damage in the storm I guess and so I had to restart her but then later when the computer starts an alarm goes off and is like Daniels get to the Med Bay and she's like white and mother's like because there's an unidentified life-form on the ship so Daniels and Danny McBride are like okay well let's try to shoot and kill this thing meanwhile the other two crew members are in the shower [ __ ] and since they have music on I guess it's supposed to imply that the music was so loud that they couldn't hear the ship's alarm but you can very clearly hear the water from the showers running how loud could that music possibly be and how quiet could the alarm possibly be anyway the now fully grown black colored alien kills them both no idea how long it's been running around on the ship anyway then we get a really long and drawn-out seeing the tries to recapture the feeling of the first film long story short the alien gets sucked out to space yay looks like everything's going to be okay so now everyone's going back to hypersleep Daniel's puts Danny McBride under and is like good night and then Walter tucks in Daniels and then once her pods closed and she's just about to fall asleep she's like oh wait one more thing let me just now ask you about that thing that I've been talking about the whole movie that only Walter would know what I'm talking about but not David oh no it turns out you're David it was annoying so then David makes her fall asleep and then vomits up two alien embryos that he sticks inside with the human embryos in the fridge and that's it that's the end of the movie now obviously I highlighted a lot of negatives and although I don't really think that anything in the film was done amazingly it was still very entertaining once you get past the first half-hour there's a reason why people keep wanting to see the next alien movie it's a fun setting to return to even if it's handled really poorly like I said I do not regret buying a ticket to see this movie but if you're someone they can see yourself easily getting upset with Ridley Scott not giving a [ __ ] about what he actually does to the story then maybe you should just stick with the first couple movies and I'm giving this one a five out of ten hey guys just letting you know Synecdoche New York part 5 should be out June 10th this one's been a little slow because I had to teach myself completely new editing stuff we're still working out the kinks but I think I've got a pretty good rhythm now the software I was using previously is incredibly outdated and I was long overdue for an upgrade I'm also trying to finish up films for my 2015 list so stay tuned for that and I'll be starting up a new YMS review after synecdoche part 5 thank you bye like the first date and the continent is very gritty and dark this is going to be the scariest one out of all of them you

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,110,817

Rating: 4.878036 out of 5

Keywords: alien: covenant, alien, covenant, ridley scott, yms, review, funny, daniels, danny mcbride, james franco, bad, sucks, prometheus, thoughts on, adam, adum, xenomorph, michael fassbender, flute, david, walter, weyland

Id: Q1NcoMYH77Y

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I enjoyed this movie except for how dumb the characters were, and I feel like the 2 androids were the only interesting characters.

[u/DWW_ME_TGTBATU_PM_SO]

I rewatched Resurrection and it's still just...atrocious.

[u/hniball]

I couldnt forgive all the stupidness in this movie no matter how good the message was, the visuals, whatever..

you stumble upon some random planet, check scanners for some basic stuff like oxygen and nitrogen levels and decide it is a good idea to just go there without some protection? like full body suit or at least a mask?

one would also think that an expendition of this caliber would warrant a better crew selection. like what was the criteria here? be literate? are most of the people in the future dumb because they rely on androids too much? they make it seem like these kinds of colonisation/terraformation missions are taking place every week.

[u/BlooToo]

I actually enjoy watching the Alien prequels, but I will admit they're no amazing pieces of art. I had a lot of the same thoughts when I watched the movie, especially the David/Walter switch which I found really insulting.

I liked it better than Prometheus and thought it was fun to watch with some friends. Not many good movies out right now (in my theaters at least). If anyone reading this is on the fence about watching it I'd say it's worth a discount ticket day.

[u/Ikilledmypastaccout]

SPOILERS!
I can never forgive Ridley with what he did with David and Walter. Someone has no scar below his chin, which he should have. Fuck noscar.com.

[u/Tieblaster]

Wow, the actress who plays Daniels looks exactly like a female Spenny from Kenny Vs Spenny.

I can't be the only one to see it, right?

[u/LevynX]

Sounds a bit too much "so bad it's good" to me, and those movies never work for me. I'd probably be that guy who slept through the whole thing.

[u/i-am-qix]

u/anUnkindness 14:50-ish, it was Daniels that was operating the crane, not T. She had the remote with her. The only time T operates the crane is to reel it back in after the xenomorph got dropped off the edge.

[u/BackwardsMarathon]

Great review! I love the movie more than most, but you give a lot of good points that theres some pretty fucking ridiculous moments. Looking forward to Synecdoche Part 5!