ALIEN: COVENANT
You can’t scare us, Sir Ridders! Oh, wait, maybe you can…
released OUT NOW! 15 | 122 minutes Director ridley scott Cast Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, danny McBride, demián Bichir
Two bona fide classics, followed by five movies ranging in quality from the decent-butflawed Alien 3 to the execrable AVPR… Let’s be honest, it’s not a great hit rate for a franchise that remains one of the crown jewels in the sci-fi movie canon. And yet, more than three decades since James Cameron’s Aliens, Covenant gets that acid blood pumping once again and reinvigorates the saga. Ridley Scott’s decision to return to the franchise that made his name finally looks like a wise one – it’s just a shame it’s taken him two films to prove it.
Covenant performs the impressive trick of retrospectively turning Scott’s Prometheus into a better film, being both a superior sequel to that movie and the Alien prequel we were waiting for. It’s always a risky business filling in holes and explaining away the mysteries in your mythology ( just ask George Lucas), but every decision here feels satisfying and consistent with Xenomorph lore. Even those niggling story issues about cosmic goop that does something different to everyone who encounters it – and the increasingly convoluted alien life cycle – suddenly seem justified as part of the greater story. In fact, Prometheus is now arguably best viewed as a prologue to Covenant, an appetiser for the main event that was just masquerading as a big-budget Hollywood movie.
The narrative threads shared with Prometheus are actually minimal, the torch carried by Michael Fassbender’s scenestealing android David and the mystery of what he’s been up to for the last decade. Instead the focus is on the 15-strong crew of the Covenant, shepherding a cargo of several thousand people in hypersleep to a new home – until they receive a signal from an unknown planet and, in the tradition of the franchise, go to investigate. What could go wrong?
If the set-up sounds familiar, that’s kind of the point. Covenant knows the tropes of the series but, crucially, remembers that the audience does too. So when Katherine Waterston’s Daniels makes a stand against her superior officer, Ripley-style, or a familiar music cue crops up, it’s delivered with a self-aware nod. And rather than trying to shock us with a facehugger leaping out of an egg, Covenant realises we’re in on the gag, and maximises the tease as someone puts their fizzog a little closer to a cocoon than they probably should have.
If, at times, it feels like a redux of Alien and Aliens’ greatest hits, the movie subverts them just enough to play with expectations – and, like Aliens did, negotiates the tricky balancing act of being consistent with what’s gone before, while bringing something new to the table. The fact that the Covenant crew is made up of
Most importantly, Covenant is genuinely scary
married couples doesn’t initially feel like a big deal, but it instantly establishes the core relationships among a group of people you know you won’t have much time to get to know. But most importantly of all,
Covenant is genuinely scary. What it lacks in actual shock value – and realistically, can any film now hope to match the surprise of John Hurt’s acute indigestion? – is more than made up for by moments of extreme ickiness, and unbearably tense sequences that make sure your heart stays in the region of your mouth for what feels like ages. Scott also realises the importance of the calm before the storm(s) – that horror is more effective when you have brief respite from the terror.
While Prometheus seemed keen to keep its Alien DNA as hidden as possible, Covenant is rather more blatant – but wisely, doesn’t overdo it. The paler new-model Neomorph species actually does most of the heavy lifting, but when the more old-school Xenos do roll out, they’re kept to a vicious, efficient minimum – it’s undeniably exciting to see them in action again, but they’re a monster whose finest scares are definitely behind them.
With many of the saga’s biggest questions now answered, it’s debatable whether any further follow-ups are required – any subsequent movies would just be dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s. But with the old franchise feeling fresher than it has done in decades, we’re not going to complain if Sir Ridley still feels he has a Xenomorph-shaped itch to scratch.