Alien:
Covenant is a Confusing Disappointment
by
Kristin Battestella
Alien:
Covenant – the latest film in
the Alien franchise
and the 2017 sequel to Prometheus – struggles
with its franchise identity crisis, leaving the potentially
interesting science fiction parables and body horror monsters wanting
in the confusion.
When
the colonization vessel Covenant is damaged by passing neutrino
blasts, the android Walter (Michael Fassbender) must wake
terraforming chief Daniels (Katherine Waterson) and the rest of the
crew. After receiving a nearby signal from a mysterious, too good to
be true planet much closer than their original vetted destination,
leader Oram (Billy Crudup) decides to investigate. Unfortunately,
inhaled alien toxins on the surface birth beastly parasites, and
David (also Fassbender) – the android survivor of the lost research
vessel Prometheus – has been living alone on the planet for the
past ten years, studying the remaining Engineer evolution techniques
and perfecting their monstrous designs with terrifying results...
Whether
it's Prometheus 2 or
Alien 5, Alien: Covenant is
immediately frustrating. If this is really an Alien
movie, then Prometheus never should have held anything back in
hopes of a sequel and just told its tale in one movie. However,
returning director Ridley Scott and screenplay writer John Logan
(Penny Dreadful) play it both ways as Alien: Covenant opens
with android quizzes on The Statue of David, Wagner gems, and
Valhalla. Such meaning of meaninglessness threads from Prometheus
will confuse viewers who didn't see
it, and Alien:
Covenant restarts with the titular colony vessel and its android
custodian, Mother computer, and crew in stasis almost as if it's
trying to reboot said predecessor. Fortunately, pod fatalities,
charred bodies, memento mori, and offline systems build
suspense while radio chatter, spacesuits, and rogue transmissions
create science fiction atmosphere. Eerie forest destruction,
Pompeii-like remains, and crashed ships add mood but drop ships and
lost contact are similar to Aliens while
inconveniently convenient planetary storms mirror Prometheus.
An entire team trots off for an
expedition – leaving only one person behind to make lander repairs
– before separating further so a careless guy taking a leak can get
infected by some spooky alien particles. Educated people ask obvious
questions to which they should already know the answers, adding
stilted dialogue on top of back and forth scenes deflating the body
horror when not acting stupid for the plot to proceed by willfully
scratching and sniffing mystery polyps and not reporting when they
feel sick. Friends insist on taking the infected back to the ship,
but there's no procedure amid the hectic radio calls and blood
splatter. Women are on the mission just to whine – one tries to
lock in another when both are equally contaminated and the visual
hysterics don't let the viewer actually see the out of
control. Cutting to what's happening elsewhere is a mistake when it
leaves the bloody reveal a blink and you miss it special effect. It's
scarier when people are trapped with a fast growing monster building
claustrophobic fear toward fatal ship explosions. However, the paired
off crew members react so over emotionally to death yet barely at all
to the creature shocks, necropolis infrastructure, and the suspicious
survivor found there. Flashbacks and exposition detailing the
pathogens, crashes, and destruction post-Prometheus ten years
prior is really where Alien: Covenant should have began, but
we're watching a woman strip down to wash her open wound in what
hopefully isn't contaminated water instead. After objecting to flying
the colony ship down to the planet, minutes later the crew changes
their minds once the route is more dangerous while fast action
scenes, convoluted lingering, and rushed quality scenes contribute to
the unevenness, hampering creepy encounters with new aliens, familiar
eggs, and delicious facehugger revelations. From the prologue to the
ship and the planet to the necropolis, rival androids, and onboard
terrors; Alien: Covenant is
an overlong and confusing two hours with cargo bay trucks, out
the airlock solutions, and unnecessary sexy showers littering a
nonsensical Aliens copycat
finale. What should be wonderfully chilling – gagging up
mini alien eggs for the incubator to the Ride of the Valkyries
– treads tires because between all the Prometheus rewrites,
the four credited writers here, and who knows what more behind the
scenes meddling, nobody mapped out where this disappointing
prequel plot goes.
There
was a time when I was excited for whatever film Michael Fassbender
did next. Unfortunately, somewhere around Macbeth or
Steve Jobs, Fassbender
sold out with all these non-starters and uninteresting flops.
Despite
this superb dual performance as the poetic, T.E. Lawrence obsessed
android David and the clueless but loyal and supposedly inferior
model Walter, it's difficult to look back at Hunger
and
believe
this is the same actor who once so bled for his craft. It's totally
obvious what David is going to do, and the entire homoerotic flute
fingering sequence is the invisible car of Die Another Day franchise
rock bottom. Surely, there was a better way to show Walter as a
stunted childlike machine designed as lacking creativity expressly
because David was so disturbingly human in his desires. It might even
have been more interesting to not reveal Walter as an android until
the xenomorph acid destroys his hand when he protects Daniels. Walter
naively thinks he can gain the details from David regarding their
creator Weyland and how the Prometheus survivor came to be on this
planet. However, David waxes on Lord Byron and thinks himself Crusoe,
admonishing Walter for serving the unworthy, dying humans. He preys
on Walter's potential, saying it is love not duty he feels for
Daniels, revealing himself as an abuser who already destroyed the
life on this planet.
David wants to communicate with the neomorphs and earn
their respect while he experiments with the hybrids. Walter knows
this is wrong, but David is pleased with himself for creating the
perfect organism – and he's very disappointed in Walter for
standing in his way. David has at last procreated, and it's chilling
to see his views realized in several wild births, radical
experiments, and violent assaults. Sadly, Alien: Covenant's clunky
exposition and trite script ruin the intriguing android
developments with ridiculous encounters and not so secret switcharoos
leaving no resolution for Walter when both characters deserved more.
Alien: Covenant may
awe over David's ambition and chew on the possibilities, but there's
so much happening the audience doesn't have any time to revoltingly
enjoy the villainy.
Although
Sam's daughter Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts and Where to
Find Them) is supposed to be the
lead, Danny doesn't do a lot beyond wearing her deceased
husband's iron nail around her neck in a messianic loose thread
similar to Shaw's cross in Prometheus. She's made less pretty
than the other women, and when she officially protests stopping at
this perfect planet, she's presented as a moody bitch only sharing
her emo grief misgivings because there's no point in a home now
without her man. Naturally, all the men are allowed reckless manpain
over their ladies while Danny easily discovers what David has done
when the script bothers to have her look. By the final act she
conveniently wants a 2,000 strong colony ship to rescue her just
because the plot says it's time to let the xenomorph on board and
make her a kick ass action hero. Billy Crudup's (Inventing the
Abbotts) reluctantly in charge supposed man of faith Oram only
decides on this planet to prove he's up to snuff and doesn't realize
he messed up until it personally affects him. Tennessee cool pilot
Danny McBride (Your Highness) recognizes John Denver music in
the alien signal amid all his sexist jokes before risking the entire
mission for his woman – whom viewers already know to be dead. Of
course, shortly thereafter, he's laying the groundwork for his next
hook up. A brief prologue appearance from Guy Pearce (Brimstone)
returning as Peter Weyland should have come at the end of Alien:
Covenant to fully accent David's
twisted achievements, and Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw is
unceremoniously written off post-Prometheus with
only a few effigies. We're told she put David back together,
he loved her for her kindness, and that's that. The movie should have
started with the Prometheus characters
on this unknown planet and then met the colony ship only upon their
arrival. Alien:
Covenant is from the wrong
perspective and over crowded with far too many unnecessary
characters – mostly screwing up husbands or similar looking wives
raising the body count. Anonymous people being in relationships may
make excuses for their behavior but it isn't character development
and doesn't give viewers reason to care. Showing two guys with
matching wedding bands as an attempt at gay inclusion is also
embarrassingly homophobic when their only scene is one dying after
ejaculating a neomorph from his mouth. Sneaky James Franco (Tristan & Isolde) moments are silly as well because... it's just
James Franco in a promotional campaign for Alien: Covenant.
Thankfully,
Covenant is a cool looking spaceship with solar sails, blue hues,
green lighting, touch screens, and interface graphics along with red
alarms, spooky chains, dangerous ladders, and perilous equipment.
Unfortunately fiery damage leads to CGI spacewalks and noticeable
animation intruding upon the interstellar fantastic. Crowded
submarine style rooms and music motifs from Aliens are
also apparent amid waterfalls and mountain vistas borrowed from
Prometheus. It's also flat out dumb to waste time on a
cool drop ship water landing when there is terra firma
everywhere, and what's with all the dang hoodies? Blood, gore, and
creative reverse alien births are appropriately disturbing, however
the surrounding CGI is again weak. Dark scenes and hectic firefights
also make it difficult to see all those potentially intriguing hybrid
creatures, twisted deliveries, and scary designs. The contrasting
advanced ship technology and stranded apothecary research are
likewise nice touches that deserved more time – embryos and stasis
versus dissections and bestiary drawings. Facehugger scares, acid
effects, and freaky attacks are always fun to see, yet more than
anything, these Alien homages
cum knockoffs makes one miss the originality and practical
design advancements from Aliens. The spaceship action is very
messy in Alien: Covenant with
pointless, drawn out action sequences littering the narrative,
and it's not surprising to read interviews with the film's editor
recounting the post-production struggle to balance these multiple
storylines each playing at their own pace. Alien: Covenant
needs to be re-watched for all its Alien movies
pieces trying to bring together the creation theories from Prometheus
via confusing Engineer goo,
deacons, or xenomorphs yet this entire piece is also in dire
need of a re-cut.
Instead
of running with what was good from Prometheus,
Alien: Covenant plays
with its Prometheus
connection the way Prometheus
played with its Alien
connection. Unfortunately, such inconsistent and contradictory
carrots string along loyal franchise fans and won't gain viewers who
haven't seen Alien. As
with Prometheus and
Alien 3 before, Alien:
Covenant can't serve both its
masters and ultimately provides little repeat value, which ironically
can be said for Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection.
Once again, we have no connection to LV-426 when all people ever
wanted to know was how the Space Jockey got there in the first place.
Frustration on such could haves or should haves being saved for yet
more sequels compromises Alien: Covenant's potentially
entertaining science fiction, religious warnings, and
monstrous possibilities with ennui.
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