Despite a heavy marketing campaign that included multiple short film connections, and endless promotional material, “Alien: Covenant” limped into the box office this weekend. The followup to “Prometheus,” and the latest entry in the ongoing string of prequels that will eventually connect to “Alien” (though we’ll see if 20th Century Fox is still interested once they crunch the numbers on ‘Covenant’), generally scored well with critics, but there are a vocal minority who are completely baffled by the sheer idiocy of the characters in the film, and its predecessor. Without going into spoilers, if “Prometheus” saw its crew members make some dubious choices, ‘Covenant’ goes much further, as one character after another makes distractingly bone-headed decisions. And if you feel the same, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Vulture caught up with “Hannibal” and “American Gods” creator Bryan Fuller, and asked him about the prequels, and he didn’t mince words. “I think the last two movies have had too many similarities to bad ‘Friday the 13th‘ sequels and not enough similarities to good ‘Alien’ movies,” he said.
In my opinion, he’s certainly not wrong, as both films lean hard toward conventional slasher film tropes in a way that “Alien” and “Aliens” didn’t, which is exactly what made them so special. Still, Fuller concedes that the movies are “masterfully executed on a technical level” but he still can’t get around “really smart characters doing really stupid things.”
Even the small details in ‘Covenant’ bother Fuller. “So, you see this chest-burster [in ‘Alien’] and how disturbing and snakelike it is, and then the other chest-burster in ‘Alien: Covenant’ is just [a baby alien] standing up,” he said. “It’s like, He has good posture.”
So, some candid thoughts from Fuller about why “Prometheus” and ‘Covenant’ missed the mark. If you agree or disagree, sound off in the comments section.
