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{MILD SPOILERS AHEAD!}

Ridley Scott returns to the franchise he created with Alien: Covenant, which is equal parts Alien remake and Prometheus sequel. It’s a total retread of the original 1979 film’s narrative — a group of space travelers respond to a signal on a strange planet, discover monsters, and get killed by monsters. The broad strokes are all Alien here, and Scott’s so desperate to make you remember Alien, that half the music you hear in Covenant is actually from Jerry Goldsmith’s original 1979 score. But then about halfway through Covenant, the film decides it wants to also be a sequel to Prometheus, returning to the origins of mankind and the aliens. I never needed to know where the aliens (or mankind) came from — that’s what everybody hated about Prometheus, isn’t it? Isn’t it a lot like saying Star Wars‘ all powerful Force is just midichlorians in your blood? Or taking the mask off Michael Myers and asking him how he’s feeling? But Prometheus went there, and while it’s not the way I wanted that film to go, at least Prometheus had integrity and followed through on its thematic intentions.

If I had never seen any previous Alien movies, I think I might find Covenant to be an okay monster movie. So if you just want an ‘okay’ monster movie, and you don’t care who Ridley Scott is, or how incredible the Alien franchise has been at times, or you’ve never seen the original 1979 film at all… then maybe you’ll really dig Covenant. But since I have seen all the other films (even the godforsakenly awful ones with Predators in them), I can’t judge Covenant without taking into consideration its place in the franchise — and that’s where its problems are two-fold, failing to excite me as either a remake or a sequel.

Covenant is a bit like The Force Awakens, desperately trying to be everything to all people and not really succeeding at being anything original or remarkable. The Force Awakens overcame its disjointed nature with strong characters. Alien: Covenant just doesn’t have that going for it, unfortunately. And for a remake, it simply can’t compete with Alien. Every parallel to the first film pales in a comparison match, including overall scariness. Scott showed much less of the creature in 1979 and revealed it in far more artistic ways than he does in 2017. Now the creature is just another hack n’ slash bad guy. He even gets to kill a couple of lovers in a shower this time around.

As a sequel to Prometheus, the movie might stand more of an objective chance with casual audiences. If you like masturbatory screenwriter headgames that amount to absolutely nothing when it comes to the present narrative or your engagement with its characters, you might dig the red herrings Covenant has in store for you. But if you’re not into that shit, you’ll find it as tedious as I did. I’m still not sure if Prometheus even makes sense in the grand scheme of things, so throwing that deck of cards up in the air again and rewriting the franchise’s mythos the way Covenant does is simply boring to me. Who cares where the aliens came from? Does it change anything? Does it make me care about the characters any more? No. And one final complaint: the third act. Man, does it ever suffer from showing its hand too soon. The last twenty minutes of Covenant build to a foregone conclusion that could have been so much more visceral and powerful. Instead, it’s just weird and a little bit silly.

If the Alien franchise insists on continuing, it needs to study Scott’s original Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens a lot harder. It was a mistake to make Michael Fassbender’s android character the main character in Covenant. And no amount of alien attacks and gory imagery will compensate for a lack of characters worth caring about.