Movie Review—Alien: Covenant

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell         

Alien. Released: May 2017. Runtime: 122 mins. MPAA Rating: R for sci-fi violence, bloody images, language, and some sexuality/nudity. 

Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) became a classic sci-fi film when Scott: took the horror-story trope of the “monster in the mansion” and put it into outer space, “where no one can hear you scream”; utilized the emerging technology of computer-generated imagery to create a very yucky monster (who attacks from both “inside you” and “outside you”); and bowed in the direction of political correctness by having a woman warrior memorably battle the nasty critter.

The popular Alien spawned a franchise of four sequels over the next 20 years and then a prequel in 2012, Prometheus.  Along the way, Scott also helmed another sci-fi classic, Blade Runner (1982), which presented a dystopian vision of L.A. in a kind of futuristic film-noir style, with a plot centered on a detective's search for rogue “replicants” (androids). 

Now Scott follows Prometheus with another prequel to Alien, Alien: Covenant. This film actually begins with a scene set before the main action of Prometheus. In the scene a rich old man (Guy Pearce) speaks with a newly activated “synthetic” (android) (Michael Fassbender), who has chosen the name “David” for himself after looking at a replica of Michelangelo's statue of the same name. The rich old man tells David that one day they will search for mankind's creator together. This search becomes the genesis for the events of Prometheus. 

After the scene between the rich old man and David, we find ourselves years after the events of Prometheus (which was the name of a spaceship) aboard the spaceship Covenant, which is carrying colonists in stasis pods and embryos on a multi-year journey to a remote planet, Origae-6. The ship is monitored by Walter (Michael Fassbender in a dual role), a newer model synthetic physically resembling the earlier David model. 

An energy burst damages the ship and wakes the crew from their stasis pods, but the ship's captain (James Franco) dies when his pod malfunctions. As they repair the ship, the crew receives a radio transmission from a nearby, but previously unknown, planet. The new captain (Billy Crudup) decides that this planet seems better suited for colonization than Origae-6. The first captain's widow, Daniels Branson (Katherine Waterston), objects but us overruled, and a team is sent to the planet's surface. 

Guess what? The team's time on the planet turns out not to be a walk in the park. The planet is beautiful in a gloomy way, but, of course, loaded with nasties of diverse kinds, who start knocking off the members of the team in horrendous ways. Eventually, the team encounters David, the android from the Prometheus expedition, who survived after that mission met a bad fate. David leads the Covenant team through the ruins of a city full of Engineer corpses. The Engineers are a humanoid race who apparently created the human race but eventually decided to destroy humanity, a plan disrupted by the disaster that overtook them. 

The place of humans in the universe and the relation of androids to them is debated by David and Walter. David believes that humans should not be allowed to colonize the galaxy. Walter disagrees, and the two fight. During the course of the fight, Daniels escapes the clutches of David, heroically battles nasties, and enables the Covenant to resume its trip to Origae-6. Daniels reenters stasis and feels good that the friendly android Walter is helping her go to sleep but then . . . . 

Alien: Covenant produces all the requisite scares and stomach-turning scenes that audiences seek from this franchise, delivered with striking production design, state-of-the-tech effects, and strong performances, particularly by Fassbender and Waterston. Also, Scott peppers the film with verbal and visuals allusions to Greek mythology, Milton, Piranesi, Blake, Shelley's poetry, Mary Shelley's prose, Dore, and other cultural treasures of Western Civilization. To what end? Who knows? Wait for the next installment of the franchise (and also for the Blade Runner sequel out later this year). And remember: “In space no one can hear you throw up.”