Movie Review: Alien — Covenant

The Alien franchise: overthinking it since '92.

If what you’ve always wanted from an Alien film is a lengthy sequence in which a Michael Fassbender robot teaches another Michael Fassbender robot to play the recorder, have I got a treat for you.

Alien: Covenant—the latest entry in the decreasingly entertaining series centred on doomed spacecrafts—sees original director Ridley Scott returning to insist the complicated mythology he established in 2012’s maligned Prometheus was actually building to something substantial.

Doomed is right.

Set in 2104, Covenant opens on the interstellar ship of the same name as it transports 2,000 colonists to a new home; one that can sustain human life. The colonists are all in committed relationships, because the only thing easier than a years-long road trip is a years-long road trip with 1,000 married couples.

Their journey is interrupted by technical interference, and a fire that kills the ship’s captain (James Franco, cameoing unrecognisably as an overcooked French fry). The rest of the crew wakes from hypersleep, with seven years of their trip remaining, to evaluate their next steps. New captain, Oram (Billy Crudup), wants to take a pit stop on a nearby planet that seems perfectly hospitable. However, the newly-widowed Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is suspicious of its eerie calm.

Needless to say, her suspicions are soon confirmed, and stomachs are quickly compromised. Hey, even with all the ‘facehugging’ aliens they find, it’s still a less icky tale of intergalactic consent than Passengers.

Unsatisfying by almost every Alien metric (excluding Jed Kurzel’s ringing wine-glass score), Covenant is certain to disappoint old-school fans by acting mostly as a sequel to Prometheus. That was a flick I liked fine while acknowledging it raised more questions than it provided answers. It certainly didn’t fulfil my needs for Xenomorph-induced gore, focusing instead on the origins of the monsters as a biological weapon created by extraterrestrial ‘Engineers’. Okay. It at least included the gonzo sequence where Noomi Rapace performed surgery on herself, and starred Michael Fassbender as the scheming, Peter O’Toole-esque ‘synthetic’, David.

Covenant ramps up the gore, though not the thrills. The screenplay, by John Logan and Dante Harper, spends far too much time on the philosophising that bogged down Prometheus, and less thoughtfully. The first Alien, by contrast, was a sleek and efficient ‘haunted house’ movie, in which the haunting was conducted by H.R. Giger’s instantly iconic jet-black beast. Aliens, helmed by James Cameron, amplified the scope and delivered steady action (setting the template for female screen heroes). Meanwhile, Scott’s new saga (a prequel series, in fact) is bits and pieces of previous efforts, but not a 'greatest hits'. It’s an identity crisis masquerading as conjoined blockbusters.

David, whom we last saw as a detached head, is discovered here with a body, and he gets to meet his American-accented “brother”, Walter (Fassbender again), from the good ship Covenant. Scott, maybe jealous that he’s not directing that Blade Runner sequel himself, turns David into a monologuing cyborg-deity not unlike BR’s Roy Batty. He waxes lyrically about his and Walter’s godliness. He just seems like a giant a******.

He’s not the only impressive actor stranded by the material. Waterston is asked to ricochet from one emotional extreme to the next, emulating Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley from the earlier features; at first, she’s a capable crewmember, and then, within hours, she’s a vengeance-seeking alien-slayer. Weaver was given a couple of pictures to oscillate between those personalities.

The great Danny McBride is around too, showing off his dramatic chops as chief pilot, Tennessee. You know he’s a pilot because his name is Tennessee and he wears a cowboy hat. Just once, I’d like to see a pilot wear a sombrero or beefeater or, hell, a bucket hat. A not-hackneyed script would be fine as well.

To paraphrase 30 Rock: “They kept remaking Alien and it kept getting worse.” What it’s also getting is meaner. It even seeks to repeat the nastiness of Alien3’s opening credits sequence (largely agreed by the fandom to be a fatal mistake—and this from a franchise that has a basketball-fight scene.) Since the victims are all romantically involved, gleefully gruesome murders feel sour. And yet, Logan or Harper fail to take advantage of the ethical ramifications of men and women needing to make life or death decisions involving their husbands or wives. It’s cruelty without the conflict. How many opportunities can one film squander?

It’s becoming harder and harder to see the appeal of additional Alien instalments. Scott has teased two further prequels that would theoretically tie in with the beginning of his 1979 classic. I can’t lie to you about their chances of being good, but viewers have my sympathies.

2/5

In cinemas May 11. Rated MA15+for strong science fiction themes and violence.

Photo: Fox