Bringing back the dread
Ridley Scott’s latest Alien saga revives blockbuster franchise
The cast keeps expanding and the critters keep evolving, but there’s one constant to Ridley Scott’s Alien series.
It’s the horrific fear of personal invasion, by something that’s about to leap up and latch onto you, causing unimaginable mayhem.
Alien: Covenant has this dread in abundance. It ranks among the better chapters of a sci-fi horror franchise that began with the original Alien in 1979.
Scott knows he dropped the ball with Prometheus, the erstwhile Alien prequel he foisted onto the unhappy masses in 2012. It barely showed the infamous beasties, choosing instead to batter senses with windy dialogue and events that seemed to betray basic elements of this decades-long saga.
Alien: Covenant brings back the visceral panic that fans expect from the franchise, along with the show-stopping title creatures: among them the face-hugger, the chest-burster and the canoe-headed xenomorph of artist H.R. Giger’s terrifying imagination.
They’re waiting to greet the unsuspecting crew of the spaceship Covenant, who have travelled to the far reaches of the galaxy in search of an Earthlike planet to colonize. (The most terrifying thing of all, barely acknowledged, is the thought of what must have happened to Earth if large-scale evacuations are underway.)
The Covenant carries 2,000 passengers and 1,140 human embryos, all frozen in cryogenic deep sleep, and with an emphasis on preserving couples and families as they make the years-long journey to a planet called Origae-6.
Something happens that interrupts the journey and prompts the exploration of an unknown closer planet that looks to be every bit as inviting — until events prove that theory disastrously wrong.
Alien: Covenant brings back the visceral panic that fans expect from the franchise, along with the show-stopping title creatures
Scott and screenwriters John Logan (Spectre) and Dante Harper tidy up loose ends from Prometheus, making a much better story of the gods versus men versus machines ideas that director Scott has been exploring for decades, with Alien and also with Blade Runner.
In so doing, they revive a moribund franchise in much the same way The Force Awakens reignited the Star Wars saga, by reconjuring characters and themes from the past.
It won’t take you long to figure out who the “Ripley” character is here, for example, and the perilous planet narrative dates right back to the original Alien, and indeed to the dawn of sci-fi moviemaking.
This might make the film seem too derivative for some.
But for those willing to embrace the retro elements — count me among them — it works like gangbusters.
And a story like this can’t get by on terror alone. It also needs good actors to put it across, and Alien: Convenant more than delivers on that score.
Michael Fassbender reprises his android character David from Prometheus, but this mechanical man acquires deeper intrigue when he’s matched against his factory double, an upgraded model named Walter, also played by Fassbender.
This is a grand performance times two that demands to be remembered at awards time.
Other standouts from the brilliant cast are Katherine Waterston as fearless scientist Daniels, Danny McBride as good ol’ boy pilot Tennessee and Billy Crudup as tragically promoted second-in-command Christopher, a weak man who assumes authority at exactly the wrong time. (Watch also for cameos from Guy Pearce and James Franco, as they help connect the dots between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.)
Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and composer Jed Kurzel skilfully combine to boost the film’s fear of the unknown. They make the remote New Zealand shooting locale look and sound both like the verdant paradise the mystery planet is thought to be and the brutal hellhole it actually is.
Franchise films very often disappoint, especially as later instalments run out of fresh ideas. Not so Alien: Convenant, which breaks new ground even while revisiting old concepts.
It leaves us seriously wondering what will happen next, but I can’t tell you more or you’ll yell — not only on Earth, but maybe also in space, where no one can hear you scream.