A film review by Craig J. Koban May 27, 2017

ALIEN: COVENANT

2017, R, 123 mins.

Ridley Scott's 2012 sci-fi thriller PROMETHEUS - his first behind the camera at the time since 1982's BLADE RUNNER - was released to much audience and critical polarization.  The first film in a proposed sort-of-a-prequel, but not-exactly-a-prequel trilogy to Scott's 1979 franchise starter ALIEN, PROMETHEUS did, in my estimation, what great series films - sequel or prequel - should do: Take the established mythology and audaciously take it in fresh new directions.  

Neither a survival horror thriller like ALIEN nor a full-on testosterone induced action film like 1986's ALIENS, PROMETHEUS was more of a thoughtful and contemplative piece of speculative science fiction that dared to tackle the very notion of human existence in the universe.  It asked big fundamental questions about who we are and where we came from.  Yes, the film had elements of action and horror, to be sure, but it wasn't just another perfunctory humans versus xenomorph orgy of bloodshed.  It took thematic chances with the established cinematic universe.  I thought it was one of the finest and most compellingly rendered of all the ALIEN films. 

Now comes ALIEN: COVENANT, the second film in the aforementioned new ALIEN trilogy and the sixth overall in the entire franchise.  Reliably, Scott once again delivers a tour de force visual odyssey that's just as sumptuous to look at as anything he's previous done in the genre.  ALIEN: COVENANT also tries - with inconsistent levels of success - to answer many of the nagging questions left at the climax of PROMETHEUS while forging some new connective tissue with 1979's ALIEN.  Rather disappointingly, Scott seems reticent at the prospect of continuing to build upon PROMETHEUS' intriguing concepts and instead allows ALIEN: COVENANT to lazily devolve into many of the obligatory franchise troupes that we're both abundantly familiar with and have seen done better beforehand.  For at least two-thirds of its story, this new ALIEN installment seems to be soft pedaling and recycling most of the same situations and predicaments from the original 1970's film, which has the negative side-effect of instilling sensations of deja vu in viewers.   

ALIEN: COVENANT begins in awfully familiar territory, especially as far as this series is concerned.  Set 10 years after PROMETHEUS, we have a giant cruiser ("The Covenant") filled with astronauts in hyper sleep on a deep space voyage searching for inhabitable new worlds for human colonization.  The only being awake during the journey is Walter (Michael Fassbender), a synthetic machine that's capable of monitoring the ship's functions and vital signs of the crew, all while not requiring any long-term sleep whatsoever.  Rather predictably, the ship runs into trouble, after which time he's forced to wake up the entire crew, minus Captain Branson (James Franco, in an inexplicable blink and you'll miss him cameo), who tragically died in a fire in his hyper sleep pod.  A new captain is appointed in Oram (Billy Crudup), who initially seems fairly unpopular with his crew. 

Faster than you can scream "remake!" the crew intercepts a strange signal from a nearby planet that unavoidably hints at human origins.  Branson's widowed wife, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) still grieves over the very recent loss of her husband, but she nevertheless agrees to accompany a landing party to investigate the signal's origins.  When Oram and his crew land on the conveniently oxygen rich and warm planet they notice that something seems off right from the get-go, like the fact that no apparent life seems to be on it of any kind, not to mention that Earth-like wheat and other forms of vegetation seem to pepper the landscape.  Of course, it stands to reason that it's a foregone conclusion that one member of the landing party will indeed become infected via some sort of planet dwelling alien agent infecting his body, which will cause the remaining surviving crew members scrambling to stay alive.   

If this whole set-up sounds suspiciously familiar then you're not alone.  Scott and writers John Logan and Jack Paglen seems pretty hell bent of rehashing the original ALIEN here, giving ALIEN: COVENANT a mournfully unoriginal vibe throughout.  The film also defies normal logic at times, especially showcasing what should be very intelligent men and women of science behaving in all manners idiotic.  The crew of the Covenant venture down to the strange and uncharted world without much protection or fear of potential contamination from anything it has to offer (remote scanning the planet before making the pilgrimage never seems to cross anyone's minds, nor does the idea of wearing protective space suits).  They also make the dangerous trek down on the surface while not maintaining any consistent forms of communication with the ship above.  One crew member moronically sticks his head in the opening of an alien egg without any apprehension or fear.  Later on, the whole team is greeted by a mysterious robbed figure without much shock, and then proceed to follow him without a care in the world.  And finally, when one plants spits out microscopic spores at a naive victim, he fails to report it, gets deathly ill, and when a very xenomorph-like creature erupts from his back, his comrades are stunned.  

Note that I said his "back" and not chest.  That's been done before. 

I found it depressingly hard to care about anyone or anything in ALIEN: COVENANT, mostly because it's hard to get exhilarated by smart characters making dumb choices and the screenplay regurgitating identical pressure cooker situations from infinitely better ALIEN films from thirty plus years ago.  It's astounding how simplistically formulaic the character dynamics are here when compared to the two best films in this franchise, both of which had well drawn personas that inspired our sympathy when they were being systematically murdered by the salivating, acid blooded extra-terrestrials.  The causalities in this new film have little dramatic power, seeing as most of them are essentially puppets being served up for the slaughter.  Scott also needlessly drums up the wanton gore here, but in the process seems to forget what made the original ALIEN so terrifying; that film showed deceptively very little of its title creature and scared us with a disquieting atmosphere of unease and apprehension about what was lurking in shadows and behind corners.  We see a lot of the newly minted xenomoprh here in full CGI glory, and the effects are superb, but quantity has been confused for quality.  There are almost no tangible scares to be had in ALIEN: COVENANT, which is telling.  Nail biting tension has been replaced with visceral brutality.  That's not a good trade-up. 

Perhaps the only area of new fangled interest in ALIEN: COVENANT is with the character of Walter, played with reliable levels of soft spoken and introverted intensity by Michael Fassbender.  This robot has a very chance meeting with another of his kind, David (Fassbender), who you may or may not recall was the android that figured heavily into the ending of PROMETHEUS.  There are some fascinating scenes between the two artificial beings as they try to size up one another, and a handful of others that detail how David wound up on the same planet that Walter and his crew also landed on.  The problem with these moments, though, is that (a) they feel like they're haphazardly dealing with the ambiguously effective closing of PROMETHEUS, (b) they jettison most of the what made PROMETHEUS so enthralling in the first place, and (c) they seem tonally inconsistent with the rest of the film.  For as much as I loved what Fassbender brought to his very tricky dual role and the gripping Milton and Satan allegories contained within, they don't really gel cohesively with the film's B-grade slasher horror proclivities.  

ALIEN: COVENANT builds towards a climax that involves mechanically second-hand character beats and arcs (Waterston's Daniels is cheaply and dutifully given the Ripley treatment, but has none of Sigourney Weaver's gutsy toughness and gritty determination) and a been-there, done-that confrontation between blue collar space workers fending themselves off from a xenomorph in claustrophobic closed quarters that you just know will involve blasting that damn unkillable creature out into space.  There's also a would-be shocking plot twist near the finale that's no where near as shocking or surprising as Scott and company think it is, mostly because it can be spotted from a proverbial mile away and is painfully telegraphed earlier on.  I checked my watch several times during the final minutes of ALIEN: COVENANT, something that no one should ever do during one of these films.