Was Prometheus a good film? Will Alien Covenant be a good film?

Short answer: no and I doubt it.

I expect some people will be angry that I am criticising the first film, and others may be angry that I'm casting doubt on the second.  All I can say to those who have considered the many criticisms of Prometheus and dismissed them, is that we have different views.  To those who are excited about Covenant, I share that excitement, but the bitter experience of Prometheus combined with the gestation of Covenant makes me fear the worst.

I won't rehash all the arguments against Prometheus here, but will just flag one small element that I think was symptomatic of many of the film's problems: Stephen Stills's squeezebox. Why was it introduced? A vain attempt to give the captain's character depth, which was otherwise entirely absent. What did it add to the film? Nothing. Where did it lead? Precisely nowhere. How did it fit into the narrative? It didn't - it was entirely pointless. What did it tell us about the mission? That the crew were a vacuous bunch of archetypes who would not have been let near such a momentous mission in a month of Sundays.  In itself it was insignificant and if it was the film's main failing it would be irrelevant. Sadly it was just one of very many similar inanities.

So what is wrong with Covenant? Hopefully no more than the promotion so far and the trailer suggest. As for the promotion, the addition of the 'Alien:' in the title is a tacit acknowledgement of Prometheus's failings (which, incidentally, goes equally for the hoopla made in the promotion about the horror and the adult rating). I sincerely doubt that a film will be any good when the producers seem most focused on informing us why it is so much better than its predecessor. As for the trailer - hmm. Would there have been a shower sex scene in Alien (the 1979 original)? No, because the film was driven by character and mood rather than cliche and "aren't the actors hot?" And right there is the next problem. Covenant will apparently be crewed by a bunch of models. The Nostromo, in comparison, was crewed by normal people. I appreciate the premise is that the Covenant crew are largely (though not entirely) couples of child-bearing age, but next time you see parents dropping their kids off at school, ask yourself whether they look like the crew of Covenant. And what about the backburster? The original alien appearance was, of course, designed to be shocking. And it is highly questionable that a creature of that size could have co-habited for any time in a man's chest, let alone grown so rapidly. But with a little suspension of disbelief it was plausible. And it was shocking. And it presented the central narrative of what was, lets face it, an otherwise pretty corny film (great though it was in execution). The backburster appears to simply be a nonsensical new way of mangling the human body for the sake of column inches.

Crikey, I hope I'm wrong. But I felt good before and after paying to see Alien. I new the aim of the producers was to make money, but they also seemed intent on producing good entertainment and art. The producers of Prometheus (including Scott) only seemed interested in exploiting the franchise. Nothing else. I appreciate much of my disappointment with the latter film stemmed from the anticipation of seeing an Alien prequel (though to be fair, Scott vacillated between whether it was truly a prequel or not - in itself an obvious warning sign). But I've never felt so angry about a film's failings.

With the benefit of the hindsight gained from the Prometheus experience I have very bad vibes about Covenant. Hope I'm wrong, but I may have to wait for a home release before finding out. I'm not sure I can bring myself to hand the producers their share of the cinema admission price this time.