The first Alien was a bonafide masterpiece -- there had never been a sci-fi movie like that before. Keep in mind it came just two years after Star Wars, and it took the genre in a totally different, darker direction: it's violence was shocking, its scares were legitimately heart-pounding.
Seven years later, James Cameron managed to expand on the strengths of Alien, by focusing his story on the great find of the original film -- Sigourney Weaver's skeptical and resolute Ripley -- and he made a thoroughly satisfying sequel. Alien 3 is even moreso Weaver's film, and while it has its imperfections, it at least takes the saga in a different direction.
Every other Alien film since has been lacking for me. I think the franchise suffers from the same affliction as the Jurassic Park films -- diminishing returns. Eventually, we start anticipating the jump scares and even become numb to them. Those films are essentially slasher films with dinosaurs, and in this case it's aliens committing the carnage.
This is part of why Prometheus -- Ridley Scott's ill-fated, 2012 would-be prequel to Alien -- had so much promise, It was meant to help flesh out the why of his 1979 original, which for all its power was short on context. But that opportunity to tell a fresh Alien tale was squandered on a portentous script that was lacking in character and compelling action.
It was a great looking nothing of a film, so much so that when this new film tries to make nods to it I found myself struggling to remember the details of it. And while Covenant is considerably more thrilling, and better drawn in terms of character, it still suffers from some of the very same defects.
It opens with a plodding bit that might have been a deleted scene from Prometheus and then it goes about setting up developments that have become all-to-familiar to fans of this franchise: Humans woken up unexpectedly from hibernation, which then leads to a pattern of poor decision-making -- from exploring mysterious planets to bringing clearly infected people on board which will only put others in peril.
These plot points, which felt fresh and organic in the original Alien films, feel forced here. I rolled my eyes just about every time a character insisted on investigating the disappearance of another crew member ... alone. It's all too easy for the alien(s) to kill in this movie, but more on that later.
Covenant does take greater pain to imbue its human characters with more, well, humanity than Prometheus did. However Katherine Waterson, who was so sexy and vibrant in Inherent Vice, comes across as a wimpier Ripley and is saddled with a horrible, unflattering haircut. Danny McBride fairs a little better but the real star of this movie is a holdover from Prometheus, and that film's only resonant character, a cyborg played by Michael Fassbender.
Channeling a young Peter O'Toole, Fassbender is great here -- even though some of the motivations for his character feel murky. At times Scott seems to be conflating this story with his 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, with its meditations on the nature of humanity and its relationship to machines imbued with human characteristics.
At times, this film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be -- does it want to be a serious, mind-bending sci-fi film or a traditional scary horror movie. It definitely revels in gore -- with new and particularly vivid variations on the original film's chest burster scene.
But the blood and guts started to numb me at a certain point, so much so that when two characters (in the middle of the mayhem. mind you) decide to engage in some sexy shower time you find yourself waiting for the inevitable alien massacre.
As for the alien -- Scott is hit or miss here. In early scenes Scott makes the unfortunate choice of having the alien rendered as a pale, rubbery type figure where the limits of CGI are very apparent. In the last act, the alien takes on an incarnation that we're more accustomed to, and many of those scenes are quite effective from an action point of view.
But unlike the first few films, this movie doesn't really have anything to say. It's not about corporate malfeasance -- it's about perpetuating bloodletting and at a certain point that feels very empty and cynical.
It is an entertaining movie to be sure, but it doesn't add much to what these kinds of films can be. There are a few moments early on that suggest that this Alien movie could take a different tact than films past, but ultimately it follows the beats you know and love: crew gets picked off one by one until our heroes blow said creature into space.
Now, to be clear, I didn't hate this movie. And it was head and shoulders above Prometheus, although that's not saying much. Clearly, at 79, director Ridley Scott has still got the ability to deliver the goods in a mainstream blockbuster, which is saying a lot. But the movie itself feels inconsequential, just a "greatest hits" retread of tropes from previous films.
It'd be one thing if this film truly expanded upon an established universe (like the new Star Wars films have done) or used modern filmmaking techniques to improve upon an existing template (see Mad Max Fury Road). Instead, it just plods along from set piece to set piece. It's effective filmmaking but I learned nothing from this film.
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