I would like to come up with a better name than “review” for saying what I think about a movie. It isn’t accurate in the sense that it resembles other reviews because I will probably never explore acting ability or how the movie is good or bad in relation to other movies. I would prefer to go into its value as a tool for either entertainment or dissemination of information. Occasionally, I may cover a movie’s value as an educational or procedural tool but that may be rare. I do think that movies in general are becoming of larger significance globally and the main reason I think this is because the amount of money that they make internationally is unprecedented. I need to do a little research on this but I would imagine the stats over the past 40 years for amount of investment and subsequent return would show quite a steep spike when compared to say the 20s though the 60s.
Sometimes I may point out something that is incredibly commonsensical. It is not like I want to rain on anyone’s fun parade. I just expect more. If they are putting La-z-boys into theaters all over hell, I want my ticket price to reflect the content too. I once thought that Hollywood had the potential to eliminate some functions that Universities perform. If they don’t spend their money wisely, I will rip on them more.
As far as the movie in question, I didn’t really like it but it was entertaining at times. What was required to make it entertaining for me was too much effort though. I needed to bracket out too much basic science to go on autopilot for the eye candy. Some may take issue with me calling it basic science. I’ll explore a couple of examples.
Scanning is only good for certain things and cameras are still alive and well a few hundred years from now
We are often encouraged to think in terms of vertical structures for a scientific concept or technological application. So, if scanning of the surface of a planet is used in order to detect atmosphere or plant life, then other types of scanning are not followed up with. I know you need to build tension and create a story but why would a team of scientists not engage in thorough scanning of the surface down to the microbial level. If the alien microbes could stay hidden after an attempt, then I am on board but that was never even tried. As a little bonus on this point, I was pleasantly surprised in Prometheus how they used mini drones to map the ship. Apparently after that old Shaw mission, they seemed to have forgotten about those pesky little drones. At least they had space on the ship for construction wood.
How do David and Walter relate to their Mother?
As I mentioned, the movie can have entertainment value if you just casually block out some generally accepted concepts. On to AI. It is pretty safe to say that quite a few people could accept the whole terminator movie premise with Skynet and all. Why would it be the case that in the future, a robot would not be networked? As a matter of fact, how is it possible to write a movie script in 2016 or so and not include the fact that the robots are not networked. Is it too scary to explore? Is it too difficult to write? Too oppressive for media creators? How would Mother not know that Walter went offline. Correct me if I’m wrong but the main ship was far enough down through the atmosphere where communication was possible. NASA always knows what is up with its rovers and if one little bit of the system is out of place, diagnostics are run immediately or continually.
It is cute that we had one Synth fight another one. It is the equivalent of dreaming for the day when Yoda finally takes on Vader with his, um, mini sabre. I think Fassbender does a great job with David and Walter but if he would have thrown the script on a bar and asked me if I thought there were any holes in it, I would have said have them send it back for another revision. He was probably under contract and couldn’t escape this puppy coming at him. Maybe, really, what sells is what he knows. The general public loves to watch him and they were happy to see him get violent with himself. That sells tickets too.
Why the term “Covenant”?
Ok before I go off on another rip, I will pull back and bring awareness to the title. Obviously, it is meant as a religious term. I won’t speculate on how it applies from the writer’s point of view. But, I think that a lot of things in this movie need to be taken on faith in comparison to Prometheus. I found it quite interesting that the main figure of faith was unsure of himself and felt it necessary to bring up the subject of faith a few times.
