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Old 12-05-2017, 04:35   #4808
General Maximus
Ran Away
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Lincoln
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Re: Rate the last movie you saw

Alien: Covenant: 5/10

It is okay as a generic sci-fi action but it is by far my least favourite out of all the Alien films purely because of how unrealistic the whole story is and it just spoils the movie.
I have harped on in multiple threads many times before about how "realistic" something is and for me to enjoy it it has to be realistic. Now when I say realistic, I am not talking about the premise of the world/situation because stuff like Aliens obviously doesn't exist. When I talk about realism I am talking about the character's behaviour. If they do something or react to something which you know just wouldn't happen and they do it for the sake of the plot then it is unrealistic and I can't enjoy the film because it wouldn't happen. This is why I don't like most horror movies because you always have some idiot hearing a noise and walking into a pitch black building/room/corridor unarmed when two of their friends have already been killed so they can find out what the noise is.
With regards to this film, a colossal series of failures and lapses in judgement had to occur at every level in order for the story to pan out the way it did.

Before I start let me make a point. Think of the vetting process, screening and training NASA pilot/astronauts go through for years before any mission and all the rules and protocols in place so they know exactly what to do in the event of any situation.

Spoiler: 
At the beginning of Aliens the very first thing Daniels says to the captain when they find the planet is "we have spent 10 years searching for our planet, taken scans etc etc" so if you had spent all that time searching for a planet, taking scans and making sure it was safe you, surely you wouldn't take the risk of landing on some random planet, especially when your goal is to setup up a colony to propagate the human species and the planet you are looking at has potential signs of life.
After this point everything is just failures in security and quarantine protocol. From the get go when the first dude became ill the captain should have told Covenant to leave. I'll let the quarantine breach go on the drop ship when the pilot opened the door because the ship exploded and they all died anyway. As soon as that happened even Daniels should have stepped up for the sake of the greater mission and instructed the ship to abandon them. We are up to two command failures so far. Putting self preservation aside on the part of the ground crew, the third in command on Covenant knowing what was happening should have left them and continued with the mission. He failed to do so and put his personal feelings first but even then, the forth officer should have used common sense and not provided override authority to put the ship into lower orbit. Command failures at four levels which just wouldn't happen!
After all this, when the third in command piloted the cargo ship to the ground for evac and the alien jumps on board, he should have crashed the ship knowing that the alien posed an unacceptable risk to the mission and Covenant. Even if he didn't think about it, Daniels should have made the decision and basically said "we have done our best and failed and now it is time to do the right thing".

There are a couple of other things which bugged me but I won't dwell on them. Given the massive security risk/threat David posed, why didn't Daniels at the very least ask Walter "what happened to David?" when they got back?


Anways, rant over I have seen quite a few films this year that I had little niggles with but didn't bug me enough to moan about them, especially not enough to do it as soon as I got home and at 3 in the morning but this just does my head in.
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