Alien Covenant Review

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan and Dante Harper

"I'll do the fingering" (Yes, that's an actual quote)

The long awaited sequel to Prometheus (A movie I actually quite enjoyed) and prequel to Alien: Covenant is finally in cinemas. The marketing really drilled in that Xenomorphs were featured in this film to attract audiences who were disappointed with Prometheus. The poster is literally just a Xenomorph's face...seriously. But what are the ingredients to a great Alien movie? Xenomorphs of course, iconic tense scenes, big kills, interesting subtext and weird sexual undertones? Something like that anyway. So how well does Covenant stack up? Let's talk about it.

When the colony ship USCSS Covenant receives a confusing message from a possibly inhabitable planet, they decide to investigate (Of course they do, it's probably in their contract as well). They face horrible creatures and encounter what's left of the Prometheus crew. It's gets more and more out of control from this point on and I don't want to spoil too much. I will say that the story is pretty strong but certainly not outstanding or even new. A lot of it is bare typical but it gets more interesting as it goes, with a few lore inconsistencies here and there. There's a few moments you could debate the realism of but I'm counting a couple as mistakes because I'm allowed. There are great things happening with David and without spoiling too much I will say that Elisabeth Shaw, a character I'm a big fan of from Prometheus is drastically short changed here and after what she survived in Prometheus, she deserved a much bigger role. One of the great things about the Alien franchise is it's undertones. The sexual imagery and gender politics in the original movies are the most interesting parts and it's why I can still talk about the films for ages to this day. I was worried about the subtleties and subtext in Covenant after the Christmas trailer but I am happy to say there's some pretty interesting things happening in Covenant, the more you think about some of it, the weirder it gets. The path of humanity, creation and android relationships are touched on and there's a couple awkward, almost sexual moments that you could really pick apart. All in all, it's really interesting stuff that encourages you to dig deeper.

The most interesting characters are the droids played by the wonderful Michael Fassbender, obviously. He plays both roles very well and he is the host of the most interesting undertones. I'm a little fascinated with David's principles and actions and he plays off Walter (Or... Himself?) Very well and they have the most entertaining (And messed up) dialog scenes. Now Katherine Waterston is also good in this film, there's passion and effort there, the problem is, it's almost impossible to ignore the resemblance to or the touches of Ellen Ripley in her. Which is already setting yourself up for failure. No matter how good she was, she'll always be remembered as Faux Ripley, which isn't fair on her because she does a great job. Billy Crudup plays Oram (The new captain) very well, I just question his choices, I understand his decisions early on and his personality but he does something classically stupid later in the movie, that I can't look past. Big props to Danny McBride, he's really good and has some strong moments throughout. He doesn't have a huge part but he does some good work with what he has. There's no lack of talent here, the problem might be that there's too much. Alien, Aliens and Prometheus to a point all have a pretty tightly knit, iconic cast. Each death is important and the stakes are higher but when you stuff your horror movie with excess cast, you give yourself canon fodder. People the audience don't care about, people there just to be killed and it takes a little terror away from the movie. Prometheus had a little of this but Covenant is taking more focus away from the main cast and leaving us with cool but unimportant kills.

This is not to say the new Alien isn't tense, there's a selection of very tense scenes and some horribly gorgeous shots. Covenant has enough blood and enough crunch to satisfy the average gorehound and effective enough scares to freak the average cinemagoer. As a whole, Covenant is really effective and quite beautiful. I do recommend the IMAX experience if you're not fixed on one yet.

Covenant doesn't have as many practical effects as I would have liked and there's a couple moments I think would have benefited from them. Although when you see a lot of the stunts they try to do with the Xenomorphs and how their movements work you'll understand the CGI. The special effects are pretty strong too, you will witness scenes that probably wouldn't work without CGI and there's a lot of energy to some of the aliens thanks to it.

Now we get to talk about the Xenomorphs! Before we get to the perfect organisms we'll deal with the creatures being referred to as Neomorphs. They start off as little white aliens that are fast, skittish and totally brutal. In a big group, these things would be the most effective killing machines ever. They're really cool and they grow into horrible pale things reminiscent of the Ooze creatures in the Resident Evil games. Our big Xenomorphs are like perfected versions of the original. They're fast and relentless and maybe most importantly, they look cool. It's unfortunate that it's very CGI but like I said, it wouldn't work as well without it. We have awesome new aliens and our revisited original Xenos, good times.

At the end of the day, Covenant comes off as a kind of mix of Alien and Prometheus, even though it does away with a lot of Prometheus. I'm a big fan of both so it's great for me but might not be for everybody. If you're there for the Xenos and sweet, sweet death, there's enough there for you and the fans on board for the deeper side of Alien should be satisfied too. There's characters who are basically missing from the movie that you'd expect to see and there's even a big Xenomorph moment from the trailer that's just gone. There's shortcuts and little inconsistencies here and there but they don't stop Alien Covenant from being a really strong entry in the Alien series.

Rating **** ½

Better than > Prometheus Worse than > Alien

Main pros -Strong cast -Interesting themes -Effective terror -Brutal terror -Awesome creatures -Gorgeous scenes