Alien: Covenant

There’s a scene in Alien: Covenant where Michael Fassbender’s duty-bound syn­thet­ic, Wal­ter, is lec­tured on the phi­los­o­phy of cre­ation. The speech is deliv­ered by anoth­er main char­ac­ter whose iden­ti­ty we won’t spoil here, but real­ly it’s direc­tor Rid­ley Scott doing the talking.

The cen­tral idea of this film – offi­cial­ly the sec­ond in the Alien pre­quel series and the sixth in the fran­chise over­all – is that once some­thing has adapt­ed or been engi­neered to the point of per­fec­tion, it can­not be destroyed. In oth­er words, Scott could make a dozen sec­ond-rate Alien films and none of them would tar­nish the lega­cy of his 1979 mas­ter­piece. Sor­ry, Scott haters, that’s just how it is.

Alien: Covenant is not a great film – it might sim­ply be the best worst Alien movie. But to be fair to Scott, this is not a straight­for­ward rehash of Prometheus, his grand fol­ly from 2012, as many were expect­ing. In fact, he has made a con­stant­ly sur­pris­ing, occa­sion­al­ly bewil­der­ing sequel that achieves the rare feat of resolv­ing more ques­tions than it leaves unan­swered. An expan­sive film unshack­led from its frus­trat­ing­ly con­vo­lut­ed and mealy-mouthed predecessor.

The expla­na­tions it offers up are bold to say the least. For instance, it states in no uncer­tain terms that humankind does not con­trol its own des­tiny, and that, even more fatal­is­ti­cal­ly, we are all extend­ed from a sin­gle flawed design. It’s also a film which denies the exis­tence of a divine cre­ator while cen­tring on a char­ac­ter whose dan­ger­ous­ly inflat­ed god com­plex retroac­tive­ly under­writes the entire Alien saga. That’s not unnec­es­sary revi­sion­ism, that’s ball­sy filmmaking.

Still, there’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or orig­i­nal about Alien: Covenant. The action sequences are well-craft­ed but Scott doesn’t deliv­er a stand­out moment to rival the nerve-shred­ding ten­sion of the surgery-pod scene in Prometheus. The visu­als are strong with­out being spec­tac­u­lar. The extreme­ly bloody and unflinch­ing man­ner in which the film sets about earn­ing its R‑rating, cou­pled with its brave end­ing, will appease fans of the series, but on the whole it suf­fers from a dis­tinct lack of subtlety.

Unlike in Prometheus, the char­ac­ters large­ly make ratio­nal deci­sions. From the out­set, their roles and the pre-exist­ing rela­tion­ships they have with each oth­er are clear­ly defined, so that we are instant­ly more emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in their doomed mis­sion to colonise a remote Earth-like plan­et. There is just the right amount of chem­istry and con­flict between the 15-strong crew, and everyone’s actions and reac­tions seem entire­ly plau­si­ble with­in the con­text of their enter­ing a world that is at once famil­iar and unknown to them. Dan­ny McBride plays a pilot/​mechanic/​cowboy called Ten­nessee, and it works.

Not every­thing Scott tries comes off. Kather­ine Water­ston gets to play Ellen Rip­ley for a bit but ulti­mate­ly isn’t giv­en enough to do to leave a last­ing impres­sion. Which is a shame giv­en how well she fits the role. Although, con­sid­er­ing he ticked the Strong Female Pro­tag­o­nist box almost 40 years ago, it actu­al­ly feels more rad­i­cal at this point to see Scott shift the nar­ra­tive focus. Why not pare back the fem­i­nist sub­text and have the crux of the sto­ry involve Michael Fass­ben­der play­ing Wag­n­er on a ceram­ic flute and (mis)quoting the son­nets of Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley? That’ll keep the kids on their toes!

And what of HR Giger’s icon­ic crea­ture? It too has evolved sig­nif­i­cant­ly over time, this lat­est dig­i­tal­ly-enhanced strain being faster, mean­er, squirmi­er than the shad­ow-lurk­ing spec­tre that stalked Sigour­ney Weaver aboard the Nos­tro­mo. Here, they most­ly come out in broad day­light (most­ly), aggres­sive­ly dis­mem­ber­ing and infect­ing their vic­tims in plain view. Any sub­se­quent debate over whether this makes the tit­u­lar antag­o­nist more or less men­ac­ing is moot though, as this is the first Alien film where the Xenomorph is not the true villain…