Films > Film Reviews

Alien: Covenant

Cinema City

12/05/17

What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Yes, Empire Magazine’s 96th scariest horror character is back… actually that’s much less impressive than I thought it was going to be. I honestly thought it would be higher, especially out of 100. I mean, I can think of about three things scarier than a man eating alien with acid for blood that bursts out of people’s chests, grows to over ten feet tall then eats everyone, not 95. Mrs Voorhees is 94th?! Well, all I’ve got to say about that is that I know who I’d rather fight in a dark alley, and Ol’ Ma V is going down with a punch to the throat. Anyway, my point is that there’s a new Alien movie out, and thanks to Cinema City, I went along to see it.

A sequel to Prometheus, and a prequel to Alien, the events of Covenant happen 11 years after the former and 18 years before the latter (how’s that for context) and centre around the colony ship Covenant as it heads out across the universe, full to the brim of frozen humans, farm animal embryos, and Pot Noodles.  Crewed by the obligatory rag-tag bunch of diverse characters (one of them is religious, one of them is named after a city, one of them has a hat…) they are attempting to boldly go where no one can hear you scream, and then set up camp and have kids and stuff, because, y’know, the Earth is dying. Probably. Or something. Anyway, if there’s one thing that this film proves, it’s that the “why” is not important. They just are. They’ve got their eye on this little planet, ideal for first time buyers in every aspect, the only catch is that it’s in a galaxy far, far away. Now, as anyone who has ever driven from our fine city to Scotland with a two year old child in the car will tell you, anything can happen on a long journey. As such, it isn’t long before a neutrino-something happens and damages the ship, causing the crew to be woken, and the ship’s captain (James Franco) to die before he’s even spoken a word. Shaken up by this latest turn of events, and faced with new captain and erstwhile God-botherer, Oram (Billy Crudup), the crew decide to bin off their intended utopian destination for a much closer one that they only discover when they discover a mysterious distress signal that appears human in origin coming from the new planet. And that’s it. Sound familiar? Well, the events play out predictably enough from there, with some of the doomed landing party quickly finding themselves unwitting hosts for our virulent villains, and the rest finding themselves on the menu.

There’s no denying that Alien: Covenant looks good. From the claustrophobia of the spacecraft to the wide open spaces of the planet, this movie creates and builds up the hunter/prey suspense like it’s been practicing since 1979, and it never gets old watching Aliens attack woefully underprepared settlers. Which is a good job, because this movie is just shiny enough to distract from just how tried and tested its action is, but it’s all a bit too familiar, sadly, to do any more than that. It’s like watching a compilation clip show of other Alien movies. They should have interspersed the face huggers and xenomorphs with Harry Hill offering 250 schmeckles for every chest bursting video that they use, before he introduces his top ten whilst Sting wails “Woahoah, I’m an alien…” in the background.

Even the concept of the crew is so trite and clichéd that their diversity is as obvious and expected as to blend into anonymity. Even Danny “always-the-McBridesmaid-never-the” McBride is criminally dialled down, and barely manages to pilot himself into memorability. On the plus side, this lack of depth-of-character allows for more time spent watching Fassbender act his tits off as the duo of flat-crotched android non-cocks David and Walter, but on the minus side you don’t care about any of the characters because you’re not invested, and nothing puts a dent in the tension like a lack of connection with the potential victims.

As you all know, there are many questions left over from Prometheus such as where did the engineers come from, what happened to them and how did the classic Giger aliens evolve from the pasty, blind prototype? Does it attempt to answer these questions? Yes. And no. It doesn’t so much answer them as steamroller them into non-existence, because - spoiler alert - the fucking space-butler did it! And that’s it. That’s all you get. One quick flashback, some vague mention of DNA, and… RUN FROM THE MONSTERS!

The problem for me is that I wanted a movie that validated Prometheus, not apologised for it by glossing over the unanswered and swerving away from the unexplored. When I was researching the background for this review, I came across an online article titled “Ridley Scott admits he got Prometheus wrong”. Oh yeah? Says fucking who? Sure, it may not have been what everyone expected, but I want my movies to take risks, not play it safe, and sadly this time the colours stay firmly within the lines. By keeping it in the safe zone of successful familiarity, Ridley Scott has not made a bad movie. It’s just never going to be a great one, and it never was. And he knew that whilst he was making it. And that, my dear reader, is what pisses me off the most. That the latest chapter in one of the greatest sci-fi sagas ever lacks, of all things, vision.

6/10