Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollet, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz and Danny McBride
Rated: 18A
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Running Time: 2 Hrs, 2 Mins
When Fox released Prometheus in 2012, it was supposed to bring the aging Alien franchise back to its roots while injecting it with new ideological blood. As an added bonus, the godfather of the iconic science fiction saga, Ridley Scott was returning to shepherd his creation back to cultural relevancy. Instead Prometheus turned out to be a narrative mess that polarized fans and its characters inspired countless memes about dumb scientists. But the world was assured that Scott and company were going to make it up to us with Alien Covenant, his next swing at the franchise.
Make no mistake, he struck out.
Video 20th Century Fox
After a freak cosmic accident forces the colony ship Covenant to stop for repairs, they pick up a rogue transmission of apparently human origin in deep space. When they trace the signal to an unknown planet that appears to be a paradise, they decide to investigate.
They find a lush world seemingly devoid of life. Devoid except for David, the lone survivor of the Prometheus catastrophe (Michael Fassbender), whose been marooned there since his ship crashed a decade earlier. While it doesn’t take long for the crew to become suspicious of David’s story, they soon find their hands full with the planet’s other, far deadlier secrets.
If you’ve seen any Alien movie before this, you’ve already seen everything Covenant has to offer. It follows the exact same blueprint of almost every previous installement and feels like its nothing more than an excuse for alien monsters to kill a lot of boring characters in brutal, slasher movie fashion. There is nothing new here, nothing different or fresh. If it weren’t for its relationship to Prometheus and a few new faces, Covenant could have easily been assembled and spliced together from previous movies to get the same generic result.
With the ironic exception of David and Howard (the two synthetic androids), the characters are full of more cardboard than your last Amazon purchase. And once again, we witness the perils of assembling the dumbest space explorers in the history of space exploration in one place. You know whenever your travelling anywhere tropical or exotic you have to get a round of painful shots to prevent contracting half a dozen viruses or being preyed upon by nightmarish parasites that find their way into your body through the most sensitive of orifices? Well, apparently if your exploring space in Ridley Scott’s world you can just go traipsing through an alien wilderness without a care in the world. Wade hip deep through alien rivers, breathe alien air and handle alien vegetation without anything resembling safety protocols or precautions. And how many times are people, already on edge and running for their lives, going to blindly stick their face in a pulsating face hugger egg-sac? Seriously.
You know how at work the mantra is “safety first?” Here the rule seems to be “hey, what could possibly go wrong?” Get ready for another round of stupid scientist memes.
Michael Fassbender pulls double duty as the androids Howard and David and does an admirable job since they’re the only ones you feel any emotion about one way or another. While Katherine Waterson’s Daniels goes from emotionally fragile at the beginning of the film to fairly bad ass by the time the end credits roll, she’s doesn’t hold a candle to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. And it’s downright impossible to take Danny McBride, Hollywood’s biggest class clown, seriously in anything resembling a serious role. Other than that, there are zero performances of any note here, making it impossible to emotionally connect to or care about any of the characters.
Covenant simply has no reason to exist. It adds little to the Alien mythos and everything it reveals about the fate of David and Dr. Shaw from Prometheus could have been told in a two minute You Tube video. Wait, it kind of already was. Its stale at best and wholly unoriginal and its few attempts at cleverness fail miserably. Fans of the Alien franchise would be much better off watching the first two films, because not only is Covenant a desperate disappointment, it will you just remind you of how far a once proud franchise has fallen.
Image 20th Century Fox
