alien: covenant Review
The Aliens franchise is in a weird place. Most would agree that 2012’s Prometheus was a crowning achievement in cinematography, set design, VFX and overall an unmistakable illustration of the superlative visual storytelling we’ve come to expect from director Ridley Scott. The complaints with that film boil down to the sprawling philosophical and religious questions it poses…and then doesn’t answer. All set-up and no payoff, as the saying goes. My position is that Prometheus is an amazing film that makes a slight misstep in assuming that viewers are willing to either fill in blanks with their imagination and/or look to the expanded universe (books/comics, video games, blu-ray commentary tracks, etc.) for answers. Alien: Covenant, the follow up to Prometheus, represents the diametric opposite of its predecessor, presenting to us a fairly rote action romp with simple “don’t die” stakes. While no one in their right mind would place Alien: Covenant in the same quality orbit as either of the two original Alien films, the plot is on its face a fairly uncomplicated tale of survival - just like Alien and Aliens. It’s almost as if Ridley Scott has grown tired of aliens. He tips his hand to a keen interest in the narrative theme of “synthetic beings with seemingly human traits” (if you aren’t watching HBO Max’s Raised by Wolves, produced by Ridley Scott with an assist from his son, you should be) by shifting the focus onto Michael Fassbender’s dual role of androids David and Walter. The scenes between David and Walter are the most compelling and as is standard for Fassbender, he elevates any film in which he appears. I’m still hopeful we might one day get that Magneto origins film 20th Century Fox teased us with before X-Men Origins: Wolverine bombed (that film gets more hate than it deserves). Alien: Covenant might always be known as the Alien film that feels “dumb” compared to Prometheus. That’s certainly how I view it. Let’s see in what direction they go with the recently announced Alien 5. Can’t be any worse than 2018’s The Predator.
Alien: Covenant receives a score of 7/10 for general audiences and an 8/10 for genre fans who understand that Ridley Scott is the Bill Belichick of filmmaking (even when he fails, he’s still the best thing going and you’d rather have him on your team than not).