IN SPACE no one can hear you yawn...
Sci-fi clichés, a silly sex scene and some dodgy acting, Alien’s latest outing is a horror for all the wrong reasons
Five years ago I absolutely loved
Prometheus. I loved its spectacular look, the scale of its ambition – the origins of the human race, no less – but most of all I loved the fact that Ridley Scott, one of the great filmmakers, was returning to the film that had established him in the cinema-going public’s eye a mere 33 years earlier: Alien. Prometheus was going to be the film that explained everything.
Only it didn’t, a shortcoming that I rather liked but that caused dismay among those who like their dots joined more firmly and wanted to understand every last connection between Dr Elizabeth Shaw (science officer on the
Prometheus) and the iconic, vest-wearing Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver, of course) of the doomed Nostromo. Well, the good news is that Alien:
Covenant is the film that joins those dots – most of them, anyway. The less good news is that the overriding sense – as, bit by bit, things fall into place – is one of disappointment. If Prometheus dared to think big, Covenant feels like a film that, in its desperation to wrap things up neatly, has ended up thinking small and rather unimaginatively.
As the big revelation teeters into ever-sharper view, scene by sanguineous scene, I found myself thinking, ‘Please don’t let it be that, please don’t let it be that.’ But, alas, it was. A science-fiction franchise that began with one of the most original moments in modern cinema – that first alien bursting out of John Hurt’s stomach – ends (or at least comes full circle) with an explanation that borders on sci-fi cliché.
The new film is set a decade or so after Prometheus and begins on board the Covenant, a colonisation vessel transporting more than 2,000 colonists and 1,000 embryos to a new home somewhere out in deep space. Like its passengers, the Covenant’s crew are in cryosleep, with the ship being controlled by a computer once again known as Mother and a familiar-looking android. But is that really David (Michael Fassbender), who we last saw leaving the Engineers’ planet at the end of Prometheus and see again in the ominous Kubrick-inspired opening to this one? Or do all Weyland Corp robots look the same?
But before we’ve had time to worry about that, there’s a massive neutrino burst that wrecks the ship’s huge, sail-like power array. The crew are rapidly woken up, with the exception of the captain, whose rapid defrost programme goes so badly wrong he is burned to death in his sleep pod. It is the first of many horrific deaths and, unexpectedly, one of the more shocking ones.
The problem with many of the other bloody demises is that, in a franchise now almost four decades old, we know what’s coming, which, in different circumstances, might
‘A clunky screenplay comes a distant second-best to the visual effects... the acting is none too great either’
add to the ‘fun’ but here detracts through sheer repetition and familiarity. Time and again we know what’s on its way well before the grisly action actually arrives. No, unknown member of the Covenant crew who’s still not wearing a spacesuit (didn’t they learn anything from Prometheus?), don’t wander off for a pee and a fag, you’ll only disturb… Oops, too late.
I enjoyed much of the first half, particularly the structural references to what has gone before (the crew are again tempted off-course by a garbled distress call) and the iconic reprises that make the franchise instantly recognisable (the typography of the opening titles and that brilliant handful of musical notes from Jerry Goldsmith’s original score).
But be warned, in a film that has clearly upped gore levels to meet contemporary bloodthirsty tastes, the ‘filleting’ of one poor victim is particularly nasty. Nor – in one of the film’s sillier moments – will having sex in the shower seem quite such a tempting idea ever again. For goodness sake, haven’t they seen an Alien film?
It may be that those who didn’t like Prometheus will warm to this more traditional Alien offering more but I found enjoyment levels ebbing away, partly because of its repetitious nature and partly because of the discovery that there are indeed two androids, both played by Fassbender. One, Walter, they’ve brought with them; the other, David, is waiting for them. Two androids, one actor – that’s never a good sign. I’d love to know the inside story behind the film: why Scott decided to direct this rather than the long-awaited sequel to his other masterpiece, Blade Runner; why, post-Prometheus, a new scriptwriting team was brought in; and how one of the departees, Jon Spaihts, then wrote Passengers, the opening third of which bears a marked resemblance to Alien: Covenant? Here, a clunky screenplay comes a distant second-best to the visual effects. The acting is none too great, although both Billy Crudup as the Covenant’s nervous second-in-command and Fantastic Beasts star Katherine Waterston catch the eye – she was clearly cast for her vest-sporting resemblance to Weaver. But it’s not enough. With Scott himself at the Alien helm for the third time, this has to go down as a disappointment.