Alien : Covenant
Not-so-great Scott…
Ridley Scott’s Alien resurrection is exactly the film all but the most ardent apologists wanted from 2012’s Prometheus. It’s smarter, scarier and boasts a nightmarish atmosphere comparable to Scott’s ’79 original. But with this comes a crippling reverence for the past – Alien: Covenant too often plays it safe in a way that Prometheus, for all its faults, rarely did.
Set a decade after the events on LV-223, it centres on the 15-strong crew of the colony ship Covenant: pioneers responsible for transporting 2,000 passengers to Origae-6. After intercepting a signal from an undiscovered planet, a landing party investigates. Among them are
Katherine Waterston’s proto-Ripley Daniels, Demián Bichir’s Sgt. Lope and Billy Crudup’s Captain Oram.
Few filmmakers can rival Scott’s world-building and Covenant’s lush planetoid offers something strikingly new for the series. Devoid of organic life, it’s a haunted house on a grand scale, with all the biomechanical stylings and creeping corridors of Aliens past lurking in its dark corners.
The Covenant’s blue-collar crew are a thinly sketched, but largely likeable bunch of E.T.-fodder, the group dynamic enriched by the fact that everyone on board is married. Crudup’s nervy captain stands out, and Waterston proves a resourceful and empathetic lead. But it’s Fassbender who again makes the biggest splash as new artificial person Walter (effectively a robot Spock) and duplicitous droid David. The scenes between the two bots are some of the most compelling; but David’s entry into the story also grinds the propulsive pacing to a halt, the script hurtling towards a climax that plays like a mini-remake of Alien, with some clumsy leaps of logic.
But what of the xenomorph? H.R. Giger’s biomechanical beauty is back in Covenant, its re-introduction expanding the mythology in satisfying ways for long-term fans. But the xeno encapsulates the film’s disappointing dependency on past glories. Not only has the man-in-a-suit been replaced by unconvincing CGI, it’s wheeled out for underwhelming set-pieces, never used as effectively as you’d hope, and is upstaged by new nasty the neomorph. The latter’s entrance has a literally visceral impact that the rest of the film can’t rival. A shame, then, that the neo is quickly forgotten when plot and audience expectations dictate that the xeno occupy the limelight.
Also problematic: Jed Kurzel’s score, which borrows heavily from Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic Alien soundtrack. As with much of Covenant, it gives you more of what you want from an Alien film, but proves it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Jordan Farley
THE VERDICT
Ridley’s Alien redemption rights the wrongs of Prometheus, but owes too much of a debt to the ’79 original. Third time lucky?