Movie Review: Ridley Scott returns to the franchise he helped to spawn in “Alien: Covenant”.
Spoilers ahead.
Among the popular film franchise currently monopolizing our attention spans and streaming services, the “Alien” films are notable for possessing a certain intrigue, even in the lesser installments. Ridley Scott’s bloodcurdling 1979 original is rightfully heralded as the gold standard of Monsters-in-Space terror, with James Cameron’s action-packed blockbuster sequel coming in at a close second. David Fincher’s “Alien 3” is a flawed, compromised work that nevertheless maintains a consistent mood of unease whilst simultaneously announcing the debut of one our most renowned American auteurs, while “Alien: Resurrection” is mostly noteworthy for the curiosity factor of seeing “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet deliver an unabashedly junky popcorn spectacle. I don’t include the “Alien Vs. Predator” films in the canon, truth be told — mainly because I choose to view them as harmless, dunderheaded offshoots of a much more serious series of films.
All these aforementioned “Alien” movies have their merits. And yet Ridley Scott’s original film — that relentlessly scary bump-in-the-night shocker set within the confines of an alluringly antiseptic space vessel — remains not only the high water mark for the series, but for modern horror and science fiction in general. Almost forty years later and Scott’s breakthrough film has lost none of its sadistic luster. How could something like Daniel Espinosa’s recent “Life” have been made without it? Compared to the noisy, overcluttered films that came in its wake, the original “Alien” is a marvel of economy, patience and tension.
Film nerds know that, for budgetary reasons, Scott wasn’t able to show the movie’s now-iconic monster — the Xenomorph, a ghoulish perversion of human anatomy replete with spiny, razor-sharp teeth and a propeller-shaped head — as much as he probably would have liked to. And yet, this sense of suggestion, of feeling the monster’s presence without ever really seeing it (save for one gruesomely memorable occasion), is what gives the original “Alien” its enduring power. Scott had only made one other film before he made “Alien” — that would be his lush and assured 1977 period epic “The Duelists” — but already he was displaying the imagination and craft of a veteran director. The thought of him returning to the franchise he helped to create after nearly half a century was nothing if not tantalizing.
Now, before “Alien: Covenant” — Scott’s grim and pessimistic re-immersion back into the “Alien” world” — the legendary British director had already technically waded into these waters with 2011's “Prometheus”. “Prometheus” was a well-made movie whose consummate technical excellence ultimately became the crutch for a script that was annoyingly opaque at best and, at worst, utterly hollow. “Prometheus” is not technically an “Alien” film, though it splashes around in the puddles of that earlier movie’s mythology, scared to make a mess of anything the fans might disapprove of. But having seen “Covenant” — which is a scarier, funnier, and altogether more pleasing spectacle than “Prometheus” was even in its most promising passages– I find myself compelled to go back and revisit that earlier film.
What Scott has done in “Covenant” is a very rare example of fan service and world-building reaping big narrative dividends. Watching this new film, you begin to appreciate the seeds that the director was sewing in “Prometheus,” as they pay off in dazzling, often horrifying ways here. Scott has always been a very calculating director: he’s a usually one or two step ahead of his audience, which is why his movies, even when they’re predictable, never feel inert. He’s a technician above all else, but he’s one of the best we’ve got. In that regard, “Alien: Covenant” is the director’s twisted parlor game, with Scott playing the role of mad scientist. He’s not setting out to make his masterpiece here: he’s having a lot of sick fun, and with how well-made and persuasive the finished product is, it’s hard to not want to go along with him.
One of my problems with “Prometheus” was the inexact nature of its tone. The movie never really seemed sure whether or not it wanted to be a gross-out body horror flick, a glum parable about Gods and Men, or a kinetic sci-fi vision quest loaded with portentous metaphors. There are lots of criticism you can make about “Alien: Covenant” — that the characters often make appallingly stupid decisions, that the film’s supporting characters are underdeveloped, etc. However, lack of a strong tone is not a complaint that applies here. “Alien: Covenant” is a full-on Hammer Horror-style gorefest that freely makes allusions to Byron’s “Ozymandias”, the literary horror of Mary Shelley, Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” and the work of H.P. Lovecraft, all whilst doggedly returning the “Alien” series to its horror movie roots. Above all else, “Alien: Covenant” is proof that, after all these years, Scott hasn’t lost his ability to goose an audience. When the shit starts to hit the fan in this new movie, you’ll hear a slow wave of disbelieving gasps and giggles roll over the audience, and you may not hear them stop until the movie’s final credits go up.
To be completely honest, there is not a lot in “Alien: Covenant” that we haven’t at least seen variations of before. There is the scene where our heroes must endure a rocky storm on their passage to a hostile new ecosystem: it’s a device we’ve seen riffs on this year in both “Kong: Skull Island” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”. There are many scenes of characters skulking down dim hallways as we hear unholy shrieks and screams muffled on the soundtrack. There’s also more of Michael Fassbender as David: the wry android demigod who popped up in “Prometheus” and whose brother, Walter (also Fassbender) is introduced here.
And yet, while “Alien: Covenant” doesn’t get points for originality, it is delivered with a real showman’s flair, and an aura of downbeat gloom that I found arresting. In its best moments — like a lingering shot of a severed head floating in a puddle of viscera, or David summoning his Xenomorph spawn like a demented concert conductor — “Alien: Covenant” possesses a unique Gothic grandeur that feels uncommonly personal for this famously protean director. Big-budget tentpoles are rarely this insistently haunting: at almost eighty years old, Scott is still making movies with the zeal and intelligence of a youthful geek obsessed with space operas and Victorian horror. I say bless him, and bless “Alien: Covenant” too, flaws and all.
“Covenant” opens with a cheeky close-up that tips its hat to Scott’s classic “Blade Runner” before seguing into a cold open that brings us back to Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, who went hard in the old-age makeup department in “Prometheus” and is more relaxed here) and David, first seen playing piano and admiring the famous sculpture with whom he shares his name. This prologue is compelling but disconnected at first, and it’s not until much later that we realize exactly how this disparate thread connects to the larger story. “If you created me,” David asks his maker, with the innocence of a wide-eyed naif, “who created you?” It’s an early warning sign that Scott could be treading back into the maddening pseudo-philosophy that marred “Prometheus’s” many lull stretches, but fret not: the director is playing a wild card here, one that doesn’t pay off until much later in the film.
“Covenant” unfolds in the years after “Prometheus” — specifically, the year 2104, as a title card tells us early on. Covenant also happens to be the name of a colony ship that serves as the film’s primary focus. The ship is traveling to sector Origae-6, carrying a team of explorers who hope to settle and inhabit a planet outside of earth’s solar system. Before the ten-minute mark, a furious neutrino burst strikes the ship, triggering a freak accident that injures several crew members and kills the ship’s captain (played in a distracting cameo by a certain ubiquitous actor you may recognize). This leaves our central crew rattled and dispirited, without a leader to guide them. Billy Crudup’s shrewd, mystic Christopher Oram then reluctantly assumes the role of leader, though Katherine Waterston’s Daniels is the closest thing the movie has to an audience surrogate. Also aboard the ship are a charming husband-and-wife team played by Danny McBride and Amy Seimetz, a mercenary, played in a thankless turn by the very talented Demian Bichir, and also Walter, the more polite, seemingly less malevolent brother of David.
I wouldn’t be spoiling much if I told you that the plot really kicks into action when the Covenant crew intercepts a rogue signal (an audio snippet of John Denver’s merry ballad “Take Me Home, Country Road”, no less) that points them towards a potentially inhabitable planet just a few jumps from their current location. Soon after our heroes descend upon this eerily silent and forbidding new planet, various diabolical organisms begin to infiltrate their bodies, which results in lots of chest-bursting and exploding stomachs that will have fans of the original movie’s infamous John Hurt sequence reveling with glee.
This middle stretch of “Covenant” — in which our characters are assaulted by the Xenomorphs with a ferocity that occasionally forces you to remind yourself that Scott will turn eighty this year — is one of the most visceral passages of uninterrupted mayhem since the director’s great, underappreciated war movie “Black Hawk Down”. But the film has brains to back up its action-movie brawn. After Marvel and D.C. have threatened to sap any ounce of sincere intellectual engagement out of the sci-fi/fantasy wheelhouse, it is nice to see a mainstream tentpole film take its ideas as seriously as this film does without resorting to turgid self-parody. “Alien: Covenant” noodles around in the theological inquiries that “Prometheus” hinted at, and there’s an arresting sequence where David welcomes the Covenant crew to his home — a kind of hellish necropolis that looks straight out of Francis Bacon’s worst nightmares — that’s as visually stunning as anything Scott has ever filmed (in a film rich with allusions to the classic 1930’s monster flicks, this moment in particular is chock-full of them). Above all else, “Alien: Covenant” is a straight-up, no-bullshit horror movie, and by that account, the film is a rousing success.
Many fans have taken issue with the movie’s decision to continue exploring the “Prometheus” mythology, while (supposedly) neglecting to give the beloved Xenomorphs enough screen time. While I don’t entirely see the logic of this argument, I will concede that “Alien: Covenant” is far from perfect. The dialogue is occasionally clunky and sometimes bluntly expository, and the final thirty minutes feel rushed and bloodless, whereas the movie’s middle section is alive with mania and a divine sense of craft. That said, the movie is ultimately so polished and confident that any reservations I may have had about the finished product were ultimately bulldozed down by the demonic purity of Scott’s vision. This is a director who has clearly done a lot of films for hire (see “Exodus: Gods and Kings” if you don’t believe me) but there is an alchemy in “Alien: Covenant” of unfettered enthusiasm with time-honed technique that, while it doesn’t improve on the 1979 original, very much puts this new installment in good enough standing alongside the first two films in the series.
Every character in “Alien: Covenant” is more or less a type, which isn’t really a surprise. Katherine Waterston is our Ripley surrogate: a steely female badass who earns our hearts early on and gets to kick some Xenomorph ass before the film is over. Danny McBride is wonderful in the relaxed, country-boy role that Bill Paxton had in “Aliens”; the comic actor brings a degree of levity to the otherwise dead-serious proceedings, and he’s dynamite in a later scene where his character, Tennessee, learns of the unfortunate fate of his beloved wife.
Fassbender almost seems to be assuming the mantle previously held by Ian Holm in the original film. His David is mannered and viper-charming, in that icy, European sort of way, while Walter is a more reserved, scary-calm creation. All the performers do fantastic work — particularly Waterston, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses of the moment — but for me, the movie belonged to Fassbender, who has a habit of taking these supporting roles and using them to steal the movie. Playing these dual roles can’t be easy: both characters are essentially neutral when it comes to their respective emotional compasses (you know, being androids and all), and only the subtlest of nuances can be made to distinguish the two. But Fassbender brings a mood of campy, agreeable menace to the movie, particularly in a mesmerizing scene where David teaches his brother the finer points of melody and music by fiddling on a flute.
Scott has implied that “Alien: Covenant” is to be the first of a series of “Alien” reboots that will connect these more recent efforts to the events of the original film. While “Covenant” is so good that I’m ultimately excited to see where Scott decides to take this series, there’s a part of me that is already weary of this baffling fanboy compulsion that is currently pervading our culture and forcing viewers to prioritize shared-world trivia nonsense over a good story. If the entire string of “Alien” sequels become about the tiresome act of setting the table and connecting the dots so that we may understand, woah, the events that took place in the first film were like, connected, man… do you see my problem here?
Granted, there’s some danger already in the making of an origin story whose main selling point is the enigma and mystery of its central monster. Plenty of hardcore horror fans hurled that complaint at Rob Zombie when he remade “Halloween,” claiming that the trash-horror auteur was robbing John Carpenter’s iconic masked murderer of his otherworldly mystique by bestowing to him a generically traumatic serial-killer childhood. Granted, “Covenant” is a far more clever and assured piece of filmmaking than Zombie’s corny “Halloween” remakes, but my worry still stands, and I would hate to see this franchise grind itself into nothingness like so much processed lunch meat.
Alas, with “Alien: Covenant,” that does not happen. In spite of the movie’s occasionally glum tone and a handful of logical inconsistencies, “Covenant” is a smart, spooky and wildly entertaining return to form for both Scott and the “Alien” franchise in general. And while the movie doesn’t stack up to the original “Alien,” or to the best of Scott’s work, it’s still a refreshingly adult blockbuster in a cinematic landscape that is quickly becoming overcrowded with juvenile world-saving fantasies. Look upon Ridley Scott’s works, ye mighty, but do not despair… for “Alien: Covenant” pretty much shreds from start to finish. Grade: B+.
