Alien: Covenant Review

        We’re almost done with looking at the Alien franchise. So far, it’s one thing to see it try to anchor the series on Ripley. The result is two disastrous entries to end her story and send the series into a temporary limbo. To prop up the series again, Ridley Scott tries to do an origin of the species itself. While I made my opinion on Prometheus, it made enough money in the box office to warrant a follow-up. With the new direction, it made sense to continue with the engineer storyline and why they would create and end humanity. All of that is thrown out with Alien: Covenant. 

1. Paradise Lost

        Before bearing the subtitle Covenant, the sequel was going to be called Paradise Lost. Continuing the plot thread of Elizabeth and David as they try to find the engineers. Of course, none of that is followed up. Well, it is but I’ll explain later. This is probably the one time where the filmmaker made a film in response to the last one. Since Prometheus lacked Xenomorphs, now we have one. And adding the detail that the engineers in this one are dead as well. I’m getting ahead of myself where it’s an even more conflicting film. One that is right in the middle between tolerable and bad. 

        We follow a new Weyland-Yutani colony ship as they cruise to their new planet. A random intergalactic event wreaks havoc as the ship is partially damaged. As the crew fixes the ship, they receive an old radio transmission and trace it back to a habitable world. I could give away the whole film right then and there but, those days are done. So, we have a new cast that we follow aboard the Covenant and keeping with Alien tradition we have a new lead. 

        If there’s one thing where I do like is that I like Daniels. I love her character and to me, she’s the only smart one out of everybody. I like how she’s levelheaded and clearly see just how questionable the new planet that they’re detouring to. I think she’s probably a close second to Ripley as far as having someone competent in a world where there’s a huge level conspiracy involving the company. Not to besmirch on the other cast since they did good with what they got, but I feel that as big as the crew is. None of them made me want to care since we can only assume that a majority of them will get axed. 

        If there’s one thing that I didn’t talk about is the seemingly stupidity of the cast. This is a recurring thing that I didn’t mention when talking about Prometheus is that everyone acts dumb for the sake of the story. What I mean by that is they do stuff that practically sets up their doom or advances the story where it must go. There are ways to go about it. The best route as seen in the first two films is that the company dictates where the crew is going. What makes it work is that Ripley is the smart one out of everyone, but they are merely going with what the company computer is telling them. 

        The bad way is doing it since the story has to go where it must go. It’s what I call autopilot or the characters being passive where the story continues without anyone taking an active direction. Like, they go to the planet because it is habitable but of course, the fact that there’s no life and where there’s an unknown creepy vibe to it should have rung multiple alarms. I think everyone lost their mind when seeing two of the crew members get infected by a pathogen. The spore enters through an opening like an ear and mouth, but it carries over from the black goo from the prior film. 

        Thinking about the film and putting it into words is slowly making me upset. It’s like it has these executions that are compounding each other, but I must give credit to the level of violence that is on display. This is probably the most brutal an Alien film that I have seen. Watching it again, it’s just gruesome with how the deaths are presented. This is the only one where the body count is massive and many of them aren’t from the aliens in question. We get a brand-new variation called the Neomorphs. They’re albino looking and way more feral as they claw and eat their prey. 

        And that’s basically it since we see very little of them since we only see two of the Neomorphs. The next tab is where I highlight most of the problems in the film, but this is one of the reasons why the movie swung so hard. I would’ve liked to see the variants instead of going back to the Xenomorph. More so that with each succeeding films prior to this one, the main variant worked its way to near the end of the film. And seeing how it’s a ferocious creature would’ve made it more brutal than what we got. 

2. Creation: Missed Opportunities

        As I mentioned earlier, the film was supposed to be a continuation of Elizabeth’s and David’s story to find the Engineers. Until Ridley Scott decided to tell another story and then work around the Prometheus story line. To me, it feels so off seeing two storylines try to weave something that is coherent where any random person can follow what’s going on. The whole movie is just a wasted opportunity and a huge feedback film in the worst possible way. 

        I call it a feedback film because it drops the initial storyline in favor of something that is close to the root of the franchise. While the whole Engineer storyline drew a line in the sand, I’ll at least commend it that it tried to do something different instead of being a basic Alien film. Yes, it probably was going to work its way into how the Xenomorph came to be. How it’s presented in this film is just confounding to me. And it all starts as soon as the movie opens with both David and his creator Weyland. 

        We see Weyland test David, by asking various questions and deeming him as he were his son. We get looks that David is annoyed by Weyland who orders him after he questioned his method to his creators. And that’s what the whole film is about, creation. It’s a different angle than what Prometheus is going for, but the way they went about it to me is just questionable. I don’t understand why they would kill off Shaw off screen. Even showing her cadaver as one of David’s experiments. 

        Most surprising than most was that 20th Century Fox released promo vids that act as a prologue for the characters. Elizabeth’s especially since we hear David’s narration as he appreciates her as they voyage to an Engineer planet. It’s a recurring thing with Ridley Scott’s films where the theatrical cut is inferior while he releases his own cut on home video. This one didn’t get any treatment, but it would have fleshed out more of the details instead of going for a shock factor that feels like a betrayal of what came before. That goes double for the crew getting their own video. We see that James Franco dies in the film, but it’s more of a punch line more than anything else. 

        I feel that more than anything, Michael Fassbender’s performance of playing two androids save the film from being total garbage. He plays the new android named Walter. A deeper voice but is committed to the crew and I like that he forms a bond with Daniels. The conversation between David and Walter is great to see since he is apprehensive of the earlier model that he hesitantly trusts him. Until, it’s revealed that David has gone rampant with his programming that he sees himself as a God. Not to harp on the promo vids again, but it’s a real missed opportunity to not have that detail at work by having Elizabeth go on a tragic path to see it. 

        This would be Ridley Scott’s last active involvement with the Alien franchise. He inevitable would have a hand in the following sequel, but this would be the last one where he had total control of where the story was going. Due to how it turned out, it’s the lowest grossing entry in the franchise. And much like the first gap in the franchise, the series was dormant. The only thing that kept it going was the video games that came out. I haven’t tried them since I’m a scaredy cat when it comes to horror video games. One of them specifically would serve as an inspiration for the next entry. 

3. Overall

        Alien: Covenant is one of the most disappointing sequels in the franchise. There are bright spots, but the glaring issues blind the film from being competent.