Here’s a no spoiler alert: This is not a review. You want to know the plot of Alien Covenant? Google it.
Last week a friend arrived from Toronto. “What do you want to do this time?” I asked.
“I want to see Alien Covenant.”
“Really?!”
Then he listed some other movies and I went, “No, Alien it is!” but under my breath, “I’m sure Alien is the lesser of all evil.”
Truth is I owed my friend. Long story short, last time he was here, he happened to mention he hadn’t seen a play in a decade. An acquaintance had told me, “I’m in a very funny play”. Unfortunately I took my friend and his godmother.
The godmother snored to my left and friend fidgeted to my right. I felt just bad enough to suggest just before intermission, “If you want to leave, okay by me.”
He whispered, “You can’t. You know too many people here.”
Wise guy.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Yeah, the play was one of those, but he opted to stay. Somehow I knew I’d have to pay a price for his benevolence.
Hence the movie at hand. “Rainbow Cinemas,” my friend suggested. “Opening weekend. It won’t be that busy there.”
I hadn’t been there in so long I wasn’t aware it was now Imagine Cinemas. Imagine! Guess I don’t get out much (LOL).
If my friend from TO wasn’t with me I would have got lost trying to find the theatre in the remodeled Citi plaza.
As it turned out he was better at finding the plot in Alien Covenant as well!
It had been three decades since I had been “aliened”. I found Sigourney Weaver in the first movies memorable. That and Paul Reiser’s character getting his. And I’m done.
We had a lot of coffee prior (my ulterior motive was to keep awake during what lay ahead). My friend twice went out for a washroom break. I can make it to Europe without using a public washroom (Germ phobia…I sense another column on the horizon, Lisa!) Each time he returned I had to tell him he didn’t miss anything.
Even so, he loved it. From beginning to end.
I was bored to tears. Alien Covenant takes a long, LONG time to set up, lay out, puncture, well u get the picture. I don’t like gore but getting gored would have been a saving grace… and an early end to this experience.
The places your mind goes when you watch a plot played out when you can hear crickets…no, literally you could have heard a cricket. I probably did.
I was having my own alien insurrection. It took everything I had to fight back my own alien revolt. At one point I even whispered to my companion – “you owe me beotch.”
Maybe I had in mind the best line moment from the early Alien films “Get away from her you bitch.” Or maybe I just wanted anything to take me away from the film in front of me.
Dear readers, you cannot go by me. I am not a fan of UF BS (Unidentified Flying Bull****) but my friend is. I am a fan of having the bejezus scared out of me. (We both did love the horror movie Get Out from earlier this year!)
Is this how I went to spend the last minutes of my life?
But my friend is right. You’ll love it.
Sigh.
~Donald D’Haene. Retired but still opinionated
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