Alien: Covenant

photo courtesy of comingsoon.net

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Everyone’s favorite face-hugging aliens return to the big screen this summer in Alien: Covenant. Covenant is the sixth film in the Alien franchise and the sequel to the divisive prequel, Prometheus. The whole exercise is an attempt to get back to the roots of the franchise after Prometheus steered the ship away from unexplained, raw horror into a more cerebral exploration of religious and mythical themes. Covenant tries to strike a balance between these two extremes, but it ends up missing the mark.

     The story centers around the crew of the Covenant, a ship designed to carry colonists to a future home-world. A stray transmission brings Dany Branson (Katherine Waterston), android Walter (Michael Fassbender) and the rest of the crew to a promising, earthlike planet. You know the rest, right? Things are not quite as they seem, and in time the crew comes to realize that the planet holds secrets centuries in the making…and unspeakable horrors waiting to be unleashed.

photo courtesy of avpgalaxy.net

     Alien: Covenant benefits from having the experienced hand of Ridley Scott in the director’s chair. He proves masterful in his engineering of the storytelling, the pacing, and that unsettling feeling that makes audiences go wild. In terms of style, atmosphere, and visual cohesion, Covenant is a work of art.

     Thematically, the film acts as an extension of Prometheus, meditating on the same issues and continuing the same discussion. Even if the filmmakers seem scared to admit this film’s relationship with Prometheus in public, Covenant is strongest when it owns up to its heritage. There’s a sense that Scott has something more to say about the ponderous questions he raised in 2012—and Covenant speaks to all of them: the survival of religion in the face of science, the impact of loss, the responsibility of creation, the meaning of existence itself.

photo courtesy of avpgalaxy.net

     When the film delves into straightforward Alien territory, it veers too close to been there, done that. The formula of the Alien movies is now so overdone that the only innovation filmmakers bring to the table is how the alien invades its host. Everything else is the same: the typical horror-genre stupidity of central characters, the “don’t-go-in-there” boarding of a mysterious ship, the subsequent body horror. There’s not much suspense involved.

     Covenant packs in a few thrills, to be sure, but for the most part it’s devoid of genuine fright. All the notable moments starring the actual alien are in the trailer—and they’re not that scary to begin with. Even though the classic alien finally makes its reappearance, it’s the variant, unfamiliar aliens who steal the show, mostly because audiences have never seen them before.

photo courtesy of slashfilm.com

     The scariest and most interesting scenes are those that come closest to the Prometheus mythos. Michael Fassbender plays two androids in this film (and sort of reprises his role as Magneto from the X-Men franchise), and their interactions are by far the most fascinating parts of the film—due in part to Fassbender’s remarkable performance. The androids provide all the mystery, the disturbing sexuality, and the sickening surprise that audiences expect from the Alien franchise.

     As a sequel to the inventive yet troubled Prometheus, Covenant proves that the prequel trilogy has new places to go and new territory to discover. As an Alien film, it demonstrates that the titular aliens may be out of steam. Either way, you can be sure there’ll be another one (or two) in a few years. 

photo courtesy of aintitcool.com