I walked into Alien: Covenant thinking I was going to come out of the film singing its praises. I was one of the people that thought 2012’s Prometheus was an intriguing and cerebral sci-fi effort that didn’t deserve a lot of the criticism it received. If anything it left me wanting more from Ridley Scott’s Alien universe so to say I was eagerly anticipating this latest installment would be a vast understatement.
Sadly by the time I exited the theater I was left with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment that only grew as I sat down to write this review. Alien: Covenant gets a few things right that make it worthy of a slight recommendation but it does so much more wrong that makes it a lesser effort of the franchise. I guess I finally know how some fans felt after they saw Prometheus.
Alien: Covenant opens with the traditional science fiction premise of a deep space cruiser zipping along at sub-light speed on its way to a new world. On board are two thousand colonists all in hyper-sleep. The only one “aware” is Walter (Michael Fassbender), an android, who is able to handle all the day-to-day maintenance tasks without aid – until the ship runs into trouble and he is forced to wake up the crew. Everyone survives the de-freezing except the captain, Branson (an uncredited James Franco), who burns up in a fire. The new captain, Oram (Billy Crudup), is unprepared to be thrust into a leadership role, and Branson’s wife, Daniels (Katherine Waterston), struggles to do her job while coping with her loss. Once the repairs are completed, Oram decides that rather than putting everyone back to sleep and finishing the seven years left on the journey, they will take a detour to explore a potentially habitable planet. Daniels is against the decision but everyone else agrees. The planet is not somewhere even a well-armed group of explorers should be going, especially when communications between the surface and the ship are difficult.
Alien: Covenant is as much a sequel to Prometheus as it is a prequel to Alien. The film’s goal is to spin a tale that’s interesting in its own right while not losing sight of the end goal. Although Alien: Covenant ties up the plot threads left dangling at the conclusion of Prometheus, this story is more about giving birth to the familiar xenomorph than advancing the larger mythology of the universe. The only returning cast member from Prometheus is Michael Fassbender, who plays two roles: reprising his part as the android David and portraying Walter, David’s “younger brother.”
The film’s role as a sequel and prequel is where things get very murky. The film seems like it’s trying to do too much at once and I think fan service is the biggest reason the narrative doesn’t always work. The connections to Prometheus are interesting because that film ended with many questions that needed to be answered. The Alien connection feels a tad forced because director Ridley Scott seems afraid he will lose the audience if he doesn’t give them what they want. The film wants to be a cerebral sci-fi film and it mostly succeeds but it also wants to mimic the horror and tension of the original Alien and it honestly feels shoehorned in at times. This was honestly a problem that plagued Prometheus but that film’s moments of horror at least felt new. In this film, it feels like we’ve seen this all before.
The pacing was another issue for me. Some say Prometheus had moments of tedium but at least it was always interesting. There are moments when Alien: Covenant really drags and while some of the more tension filled scenes are effective, they feel strategically placed into the film as if Scott knows this is where the audience might be falling asleep. At just a couple of minutes over 2 hours, the film feels a lot longer and that shouldn’t be the case.
The special effects rival those of Prometheus and they are quite impressive. For a film with a budget of $97 million (low by big studio movie standards), it looks like a lot more coin was put into the production. The look is a mix of what was established in Prometheus and that of the 1979 film. The blending of these two worlds results in a film that offers up some solid visual moments that pay homage in the best way to what came before it. There may be issues with the narrative but Alien: Covenant is always visually interesting.
Perhaps because it has been seen so often in the other movies, the xenomorph isn’t relegated to the shadows. Scott gives it plenty of screen time and, thankfully, it has regained some of the fright it had in the original Alien. The only issue holding the creature back is that you can tell it’s a CGI creation rather than a practical one. This Xenomorph can physically do a lot more due to the fact that more special effects were used to create it. There isn’t something necessarily wrong with this but there was a sense of realism to the stalk and kill scenes in Alien that isn’t quite duplicated here.
Speaking of the stalk and kill scenes, Scott does a good job of essentially setting them up as a throwback to 80’s horror films. Since Scott has a keen eye, he manages to elevate these scenes to a higher level but some of them feel very familiar (a couple learns it’s probably not the best idea to have sex in the shower when a deadly alien is on the prowl). That’s not saying that these aren’t effective because they are and they give the film the necessary jolt it needs.
The problem with some of the kill scenes is that I didn’t care about any of the characters so when they were dispatched I was left feeling pretty indifferent. The character, in this case, characters, with the most depth aren’t even human. Walter and David, both portrayed by Michael Fassbender, are the most interesting characters on the screen and a lot of that has to do with all the nuances Fassbender brings to playing both roles. He’s always interesting and he always makes you suspect that he’s thinking more than he’s letting on. He’s consistently intriguing and he’s one of the best things the film has to offer.
The other characters all come off a bit flat. Katherine Waterston is a capable heroine but she can’t escape the film’s necessity to make her channel Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. I was invested in her because Waterston is a fine actress but the script doesn’t do her a ton of favors. This is true of a lot of the other characters as well. Billy Crudup is also perfectly fine but the character’s devotion to his faith feels more like a need for the script rather than a character trait worth exploring. Another example is Danny McBride, who gets a decent amount of screen time, but there isn’t much there. Again, fine in his role, but the character is a walking skeleton – no flesh on the bones.
Perhaps Alien: Covenant needs another viewing. I’m basing my review on my initial feelings after leaving the theater and sometimes films like this are a bit better when further removed from the hype. As it stands now, Alien: Covenant has a few moments that truly deliver but as a whole, it’s a series of ideas that don’t quite work that well together. Would I want to see more from this universe after this effort? Maybe but it would need a much clearer focus and maybe those behind any future installments should look back at what made the 1979 film a classic that has endured all these years later.
Reel Talk gives Alien: Covenant 2.5 Reels
