Alien Covenant is a visually beautiful, dark-comedy of errors. Yes, that's right, AC is not a horror film, nor an action film, it is a sci-fi themed comedy of errors.
Sure, it has its action, and attempts at horror, but ultimately, it's a comedy. Unfortunately, Ridley Scott isn't known for his comedies.
The laughs begin with the opening scene, when David smacks down Weyland, and we learn how ignorant and arrogant it is to construct a machine that thinks it's perfect. After this otherwise boring opening scene, we are introduced to the Covenant, a colony space ship headed to some earth like planet. The ship is hit by an energy wave, which kills several crew, including the captain.
This is the next big laugh moment. You see, the captain is in his stasis pod, and he somehow catches fire. What do the supposedly highly intelligent, highly trained crew do in response? They attempt to smash open the pod and free the captain. This is hilarious because there is a fire burning inside the pod, that if released would threaten the ENTIRE ship and rest of the crew. Why not just starve the pod of the oxygen it apparently has?
We later see the charred corpse of the captain being hauled on a body bag. Not in a body bag, on the body bag. Why? A few seconds later we see that the body bags can be closed around corpses. Why wasn't the captain's corpse in the bag? Well, the scene is supposed to make you feel bad, but there wasn't any emotional attachment to the character to begin with, so it's as tragic as seeing a background character die. Terrible, yes, but no-one the audience cares about, so the emotional weight is lost and it just serves to remind us this crew is actually quite stupid - after all, they can't figure out body bags on the first try.
Next we see the new captain say: "No funerals! Fix ship first!" Bullshit, because we see a funeral for the dead captain, again, maybe minutes later, and funerals take like all of a few a minutes. Hilarious.
Then we get the plot hook. Shaw (from Prometheus) sent out a signal, and it leads to ANOTHER Earth like planet on the way to their destination - what are the odds? Also, what are the odds that a energy wave would intercept the ship at just the right moment for them to pick up Shaw's signal, AND be reasonably close to this planet?
Because this new planet looks good too, the new captain decides to go check it out - most likely breaking all of his contractual obligations with his employer and with the crew.
So they go to this planet, and like complete rubes, they get out and explore it without any form of environmental protection. Again, for supposedly bright people, they're not so smart. Aren't there protocols they have to follow? Written procedures?
Of course, the scene is written this way, otherwise, no Aliens - right? We then get the inevitable infection of crew members.
This leads us to one of the funniest scenes in the entire movie. One of the infected soldiers is brought back to the landing ship with two women, and stuck in the med bay. The back burster appears and one of the women traps the other woman in the bay with an obviously dangerous creature. We are then treated to a Benny Hill sequence of slap stick comedy. The trapped woman slips and falls in a pool of blood and dies. The free woman runs off, gets a shotgun, but comes back to only slip and fall in the blood as well, then she tries to escape again, but gets her foot stuck in the door. She frees herself, and runs to the cargo bay. Here she jumps a flight of stairs, lands, and breaks her ankle. Then she gets a shotgun, fires wildly at the Alien and blows up the ENTIRE ship in a spectacular fireball!
I laughed so hard. See, this works on many levels. One level that it works on, is that is subverts the Feminist propaganda that women are just as bad-ass as men, if not more so. They show us women freaking out, slipping in blood, mishandling a shotgun, and blowing up the ship getting themselves killed, all because they didn't follow procedure and wear fucking environment protection equipment.
There are more laughs after this, of course, but honestly, it's pretty stupid, and I only really wanted to talk about the above scene. Daniels, the main female lead is quite conveniently kept alive the entire movie, because of plot armor. She kills 1 Alien by wasting millions of dollars worth of equipment that they're going to need on their new planet, how much will that retard their colonization efforts? This again subverts Feminist propaganda.
In the end, it's an unintentional comedy of errors that's trying too hard. Pleasant to look at, but otherwise vapid.
If you haven't seen Alien Covenant, I don't recommend it. I honestly had to find this movie funny, and laugh at its flaws in order to stick with it. If you want to watch it, watch up until the landing craft blows up. You'll get some laughs and won't waste a full 2 hours. If you want to watch it to completion, open yourself up to its hilarity and enjoy some good belly laughs.
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