It’s exciting but the audience will likely notice the hands of the writers moving the pieces where they want them to go.

Every once in a while, a writer finds that they’ve written themselves into a corner. To escape the jam, rather than going back and altering the chain of events so that the current scene looks more plausible, the writer just adds a contrivance or coincidence to save the hero or create the desired results. Sometimes the fix is a deus ex machina . As in, “Then suddenly the fairy godmother appeared.” Sometimes it’s a handy trinket that the hero pulls out at the eleventh hour. Think Adam West’s Batman just happening to have shark repellent handy when he needs it:

When this happens only now and then, the audience can forgive and forget. But sometimes the writers just don’t care, and the result is a monstrosity where every last event is driven by whatever’s convenient. That is Alien Covenant (2017), successor to Prometheus (2012), in a nutshell.

I’m not kidding. I can’t think of a single scene in this film that isn’t the result of either profound stupidity or random coincidence. Nothing happens as the natural result of a character’s logical choices. By “logical,” I don’t mean “intelligent.” I mean that the choices made are consistent with the character’s point of view—with personality and motives. A stupid character can make dumb decisions, but even those choices are driven by a particular outlook.

For instance, in The Dark Knight (2008), the Joker’s choices seem chaotic, but he has a consistent motive. Although he says he just wants chaos, it’s evident that his real goal is to prove that, deep down, everyone is like him — nihilistic.

Thus, Batman defeats him, not by overpowering him right away, but by waiting for the civilians the Joker has trapped in some moral conundrum to make the right choice. Batman bets on the people. Once the civilians have made the virtuous decision — and in so doing have disproved the Joker’s ideology — Batman overpowers the villain. But it’s important to note that throughout that film, the Joker always appeals to chaos and insists that his actions are random — although they are not.

When can events come out of nowhere?

In a good story, there’s only one time that the events inside the plot can truly come out of nowhere, and that is at the beginning, the inciting incident. After that, everything must follow a logical chain of events. For example, if a group of friends rushes in to save the hero, it must make sense for them to be there.

In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Luke Skywalker has a vision where his friends are in some sort of danger. Luke’s A plot is intertwined with Han Solo and Princess Leia’s B plot by forcing Luke to make a choice. He can either finish his training or he can save his friends. He chooses to save his friends, and although he is not a Jedi yet, he is acting like a Jedi by putting others first. So, in this way, the movie justifies Luke suddenly appearing out of nowhere to save the day:

I’m taking the time to explain all of this because, to truly appreciate why this movie is so awful, we need to keep the idea of a logical chain of events in mind. There is only one justifiable random event in this entire movie. That is the neutrino burst at the very beginning. I have no idea what a neutrino burst is supposed to be here, but it’s the inciting incident that sets up the story, and that’s perfectly fine. But after the burst, the movie falls apart.

A group of colonists is traveling to a habitable planet to start a new life. They have two thousand people in cryosleep, plus over a thousand embryos. There is also a main crew aboard, but they too are in cryosleep, leaving Walter, the newest robot introduced to this series, to take care of the ship, which is called the Covenant.

Walter activates a group of sails that are meant to capture energy and recharge the Covenant when this neutrino burst comes out of nowhere and badly damages the ship. Several colonists are lost, and the captain is killed in his cryobed. The rest of the crew wakes up in time and begins repairing the Covenant. The captain’s wife, Daniels, is obviously distraught over the loss of her husband.

With the captain now deceased, leadership falls to chief science officer Oram. He is not a very confident leader, but he does his best to take charge of the situation. While they are repairing the ship, the movie gives the audience its first unlikely coincidence.

Tennessee, the Covenant’s main pilot, is outside the ship making repairs when he receives a random transmission inside his space suit:

The ship also captures this transmission, which features a distorted image of a woman singing a song as she tries to operate a control panel. Later, this turns out to be Dr. Shaw from the previous film in the series, Prometheus.

Here is why the event seems contrived

We’ve already seen how the ships from Prometheus work. We know that the alien ship creates holograms when certain controls are touched, but we have no idea why this is done, and we have no reason to believe that these holograms are some sort of transmission meant to go out to other ships.

Why would the aliens want to send out transmissions that just show them operating their vessel? And if this transmission was some sort of distress signal, why didn’t Dr. Shaw ask for help? Are we to believe that she had to keep singing in order to continue putting out the signal? If she stopped even for a moment to ask for help, everything would turn off? What would be the purpose of that? Why would the aliens make a transmission device that can only operate with music?

The previous film showed them talking, so they have a language. Is it really logical to assume that the aliens are capable of making a transmission device that picks up tunes but not words? We have no reason to think that these holograms would serve any purpose outside of the ship, so how did this image of Dr. Shaw reach deep space in the first place? And based on what we learn later in the film, it’s unclear that she herself would even be able to do so.

Really, these holograms serve no other purpose beyond providing exposition. In Prometheus, they were used to show David how to drive the vessel. In this movie, they’re used to justify the crew abandoning their mission. These holograms are a gimmick. That’s it—no better than Batman’s shark repellent, except that the repellent was funny.

Furthermore, we’ve seen that the ships utilize music to operate the controls, but why in the world would a song from Earth be of any use on an alien vessel? And how did Dr. Shaw find the right song? How long was she on that ship singing random tunes until the lousy thing started? And if songs are used to operate this vehicle, do different tunes take you to different places? How does this lyrical system work?

But the main problem is that we have two unlikely coincidences in the first act of the film. The audience will likely notice the hands of the writers moving the pieces where they want them to go. Our willing suspension of disbelief is already shot — and the alien hasn’t even shown up yet.

The crew tracks Dr. Shaw’s signal to a planet, which happens to be habitable, and we’ll cover what happens then next Saturday.

You may also wish to read: Prometheus (2012): In the End Did Dr. Shaw Really Learn Anything? Elizabeth Shaw’s faith has been challenged throughout the film; for example, she learns that aliens, not God, created humanity. But do her responses make sense? While it’s good that Dr. Shaw manages to maintain her faith throughout her various trials, it’s unclear why she continues the quest all alone.