Spoilers ahead.
Full disclosure, I love the original Alien but hated Prometheus with a passion. Most of Prometheus felt like waiting for the totally forgettable crew members to die off. I was hoping Covenant with its apparent focus on the android David would break from the tired horror tropes and say something interesting. Sadly, I was as mistaken as the Captain thinking it was perfectly safe to look into a face-hugger egg with his gun down and his mouth wide-open.
Many people have praised Fassbender’s portrayal of David, and while his performance is impressively maniacal, the character never quite makes sense. He views creation as a sign of superiority, and he sees his great purpose to be creating a new master species. Why would someone obsessed with creation be content to create a master species that does nothing but destroy? Doesn’t that inherently make your creation inferior to yourself and the creative species it seeks to destroy? Granted, a species of music-composing aliens would not a compelling movie make, but David’s actions and his mission seem inexplicably at odds.
The dead body represents my hopes that the movie would be good.
Just like Prometheus, the mounting pile of deaths is robbed of any emotional weight by characters so dumb they cease to be recognizably human. What kind of outfit is the USCSS running? You’d never see that kind of amateur behavior from the crew of a NASA mission. Who taught these people how to use weapons but not that you should not enter a room where an alien just violently exited your crew member’s back? For once I’d like to see an Alien kill someone who was competent.
I know it’s more horror than science fiction, but can’t we get a bare minimum of science? I suppose I should be grateful there were no major plot points about sucking an entire star into a planet.