Alien: Covenant Is Another Nail In The Coffin For Franchise

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup

Genre: SF, Horror, Action

Year: 2017

First Alien was an excellent little SF horror and with Blade Runner best movie of Ridley Scott career. Aliens, made by James Cameron (Terminator 1, 2, True Lies, Abyss, Avatar, Titanic), was in my humble opinion one of the rare examples when a sequel was even better than the original. Alien 3, directed then by a newcomer David Fincher (who will later become one of the best Hollywood directors in the past 20 years with movies like Fight Club, Seven, Social Network, The Game, Zodiac, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), wasn’t on the same level as first two and many fans rejected it but I still like it pretty much. Even 4th one, called Resurrection, was in my opinion ok movie although it had many problems.

Then Ridley Scott announced that he’s returning to the franchise that he started in 1979. And fifteen years after last Alien movie (Resurrection; I’m not counting those horrible AvP movies) we got Prometheus.

And fans were disappointed, myself included. Instead of being a proper Alien sequel, Prometheus was an ambitious SF with many interesting ideas. It was a movie that dealt with themes bigger than life. However, its biggest problem was the script that left so many questions unanswered and had really stupid characters that were making so many dumb decisions. Still, in my opinion, it wasn’t a bad movie, it was just a so-so.

For some time Scott was telling us that he’ll make a sequel to the Prometheus that will further explore themes from the first movie and answer all the questions. But then 2 years ago, Neill Blomkamp, director of an excellent SF District 9 (and not so good Elysium and Chappie), pitched this interesting idea about a direct sequel to Aliens that will ignore all other sequels. And when Fox greenlighted this, all of the sudden Scott changed his story and instead decided to make a movie that is more an Alien than Prometheus sequel. And five years after Prometheus we got Alien: Covenant.

A movie that looks and feels like a collection of all other Alien movies – they took some stuff from first Alien, then some from Cameron’s Aliens and some things from Prometheus (like Terminator Genisys). So yeah, Alien: Covenant is a Prometheus sequel but it feels like Scott was afraid or more probably didn’t know how to continue themes from Prometheus so he threw a couple of aliens in it.

In Alien: Covenant we are following a group of colonists that are traveling to a distant planet but receive a signal from an uncharted planet and decide to visit it and maybe start a colony here because this looks even more promising than their initial destination. Of course, they are wrong and soon all hell breaks loose.

Unfortunately Alien: Covenant doesn’t work. The script is maybe even worse than in Prometheus and characters are maybe even bigger imbeciles than “geniuses” from Prometheus. I could write two pages about all the dumb decisions they make in a movie but I don’t want to spoil a movie for you. And if you were hoping you’ll get answers to questions from Prometheus – bzzzz, wrong :). Yes, David, played by Fassbender (actually he plays two androids in this movie, David and Walter) is in this movie but you need to wait for three more movies to get all the answers :). Yes, Ridley Scott intends to torture us with 3 more crappy alien movies but thank God it seems this is last alien movie from Scott because Alien: Covenant underperformed at the box office.

So if the script is bad, characters are complete idiots and everything that happens is so unconvincing, then what’s left? Well, movie looks really good. Performances are ok. There are even couple of ok scenes. And bad CGI aliens. And Michael Fassbender’s fingering and playing the flute for 5 minutes.

That’s it. It is an uninspired, boring mess of a movie that’s not much better than AvP movies. Fuck you Ridley Scott.

You can purchase Alien: Covenant on Amazon if you’re interested.

Blu-ray:

4K:

And there is also a pretty cool Alien Collection set available which includes all 6 movies – Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.