71% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Watch it in cinemas;
Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe
Low-energy entertainment
Watch it if you: Are a fan of the Alien franchise;
Did not like Prometheus and preferred the thrilling horror death scenes of Alien and Aliens;
Are not too focused on the plot;
Aren't really looking for answers to the questions you had after leaving Prometheus
A colonising crew aboard the spaceship Covenant explore an unknown planet in the habitable zone of a Sun similar to that of Earth's solar system. Yet while the planet appears to be a paradise-like heaven for the crew to begin the new era of humans, they soon discover the hostile life that it harbours.
This film has been hailed as Ridley Scott's return to form after whatever Prometheus (2012) was, so I was pretty keen for it. It definitely does not disappoint in terms of the thriller/horror side of things, yet there is something about the actual plot that makes it quite different from other Alien films and it just does not sit well with me.
For those who haven't watched this yet, though, I won't spoil the film! But this review will be quite short and I will include a spoiler section lower down.
So basically without talking about spoilers, there's not much to say. If you are already a fan of the franchise, then it's definitely an enjoyable watch. Ridley Scott is back at it with some great build up of suspense throughout the film, and there are some sequences in here, including one really insane medbay scene, that are so brutally gruesome they are utterly fantastic.
There are also some new designs of aliens (the neomorphs) that honestly gave me shivers looking at them, and there are some moments that had me squirming around in my seat, but the blood and gore was too fascinating for me to turn my eyes away.
The acting is decent, but Katherine Waterson is not as great a female lead as Ripley or Shaw were, but she does a fine job. All the characters are a bit weak and not really fleshed out (e.g. they mention the captain's faith a couple times but this adds nothing to the story).
Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, is fascinating in this film and really steals the show.
So in the end it's better than Prometheus, and it definitely is a return to form, but there are some issues with the plot. It doesn't really flow directly from Prometheus, and it tries to answer the questions we had in a way that is different to how Prometheus tried to answer them. This results in a lot of continuity issues, and quite a lot of questions upon leaving the theatre. But for the entertainment factor, it's definitely a great watch.
Proceed below for spoilers.
!SPOILER WARNING! Consider yourself disclaimered.
So, as I said, there is one thing in the plot that did not sit well with me.If you think about it, the Alien franchise that we all know and love was born out of the advent of space travel, and humanity's speculations about finding life in space. We were excited about the prospects, but obviously there were fears over what exactly we would find out there. What if we were better off not finding alien life at all?
In the Alien franchise, the alien is the villain and it represents the terrible potential of nature. The major themes are man versus nature.
Now, because of Covenant, this is completely turned around. The events of the Alien franchise occur because of a man-made robot. The villain isn't nature at all, in fact it's the complete opposite. It actually feels like the film is venturing into Blade Runner (1982) territory as it starts to explore the Man-playing-God themes. What does it mean to be human? Why do we want to create life? What are the implications of Man playing God and creating such life? What happens when we make robots who appear to be 'more human than human?' What if we make creations 'in our likeness'; we try to play God, but being in our likeness means to be human, i.e. to err.
And so we have David, a robot whose model needed an upgrade because he exhibited qualities too similar to humans. And because he's so human-like, he becomes greedy and power-hungry. We saw glimpses of his evil natures in Prometheus (e.g. him putting the alien microorganism into the guy's glass of water just to experiment and see what would happen), but I had no idea this movie was going to focus so much on him and I definitely did not expect to see just how evil he was!
The acts of David completely flip the whole meaning of the rest of the franchise. No longer is it Man vs Nature, but it's now Creator vs Creation. Sound familiar? Well, yeh, it should for anyone who did FrankenRunner for Mod A (it's been five years and these things still haunt my dreams)!
I mean these are good questions to ask, and the film is quite thought-provoking, but honestly I just don't think it fits within the Alien universe.
So I really didn't like the plot of this film for being too diabolical. All the other Alien films were predatory and based on animal instincts, whereas this shows planned cunning and execution. It's not natural. It feels too mastermind-y.
The movie also kind of does away with a lot of the things that Prometheus built up.
Firstly, I can't believe he killed Shaw. That is just... ugh, despicable. I really liked her.
Also, there are A LOT of continuity issues that I'm struggling to wrap my head around. For example:
Doesn't this movie make the ending of Prometheus completely irrelevant? There was that one end credits scene where everyone in the theatre suddenly went, "Oh THAT'S how the alien came out to be!" but nope, that does not matter now.
Another thing was, why did the alien coming out of the captain's chest look just like an adult alien, but in mini form? What happened to the chest burster? Did David modify it even more before the events we see in Alien (1979)? I guess this would make sense, since Alien happens on a different planet to anything we've seen in these prequels.
I might just be getting confused here, but is it implied that the aliens are originally white (the neomorphs that grew from the spores)? And only after David's genetic engineering do they become black? But how does that make sense if the aliens in Prometheus were black?
BUT. Apart from these things, the movie was great. The death scenes were honestly terrifying and really fun to watch.
In the end though, the scariest part wasn't the aliens, it was David. I was probably more unsettled by him trying to feel human emotions by kissing Walter and Daniels, more so than the actual aliens themselves.
That medbay sequence was honestly glorious. Firstly, having Farris being a completely hopeless doctor, not even prepping with the medbay when a crew member specifically asked you to, but instead continuing to fiddle with equipment. Then completely mindblanking and then LOCKING YOUR FRIEND IN. Which is fine if you're going for a quarantine viewpoint, but then you OPEN THE DOOR and try to SHOOT THE ALIEN and aggravate it even more. Seriously, that was so stupid.
And speaking of stupid people, the entire franchise is built upon stupid people. This movie was just stupid decision after stupid decision. Maybe it is fitting to have David come out on top here because seriously, humanity is doomed if these guys are the ones doing space exploration and colonising new planets.
Why go onto a planet of which you know nothing about, and not wear helmets and suits when you step out?
Why do ecology work in mud without wearing a mask?
Why separate from each other even after knowing how crazy the aliens are? Seriously why do people always do this in movies? Have they never seen a horror movie?
Why follow the obviously psychopathic robot who tried to tame the alien (who just killed your friend/crew member) into his
Anyway even though I hate on the plot I'm looking forward to another movie that will hopefully explain the link between David and the original Alien franchise. Hopefully we get a few more answers. Maybe another neutrino blast occurs and knocks their pods around for them to wake up and kill that son of a bitch robot. I mean, he's gotta go eventually; he's not around come Alien time.
A few side notes that I couldn't be bothered to type up into paragraphs:
