12 Awesome Performances That Saved Underwhelming Films

Alien Covenant was one of the most frustrating films of recent times. It promised lots of scary alien action, answers to Prometheus' questions and thought-provoking philosophical themes. It didn't fulfill any of that.

The plot-lines from Prometheus were abandoned, with the Engineers and Elizabeth Shaw biting the dust (The latter not even on-screen) and no questions being answered. The Xenomorph stuff was never remotely scary while one couldn't take all the interesting philosophical meditations seriously given how weak the script was.

Despite this, Alien Covenant is a 5/10 and not quite a 2-star movie. The reason is Michael Fassbender. He was already the best thing in Prometheus and he's even better here. His dual performance as the 2 androids is both terrifying and hugely powerful. David's motives and ideas are always fascinating and at times, he's even strangely sympathetic.

All the stuff to do with Walter and David is more interesting than anything about the rest of the movie and Fassbender is the one who gives the film its rare moments of emotional power and actual feeling. This was a truly amazing tour-de-force from Michael Fassbender, and while he was at the center of the most obvious twist ending in the history of cinema, one mustn't let that spoil the memory of such a great performance.