Review Tuesday - Alien: Covenant

ALIEN:

COVENANT

The crew of the colony ship Covenant investigates some curious transmissions coming from an uncharted planet.

I shall review this movie from two different perspectives: as a fan (farther down) and, first, as an unbiased viewer who knows nothing of the ALIEN universe. 

Coming in at just over two hours, ALIEN: COVENANT is a sequel (of sorts) to his previous entry into the world of ALIEN, the prequel PROMETHEUS. COVENANT was supposed to solve the challenges posed in that film. One being the addition of the name ALIEN into the title. 

Ridley Scott gave the the viewer with no prior knowledge of the ALIEN series a visually spectacular film. The special effects were outstanding and seamless. The cast of characters seemed to be the mixed bag like you would find in real life, some likeable and some not-so-much. The ALIENS were terrifying. 

If you knew nothing about ALIEN, you might find this movie to be scary and entertaining and fun to watch the story unfold. In this case, I would call this flick worthwhile to watch. 

However, if you are a fan of the ALIEN mythos, you won't likely be happy with Scott or this latest chapter in the franchise. 

READ FURTHER AT YOUR OWN PERIL. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!

The movie starts at the point that there is an accident on the colonial ship Covenant. With more than 2,000 colonist lives in danger, the crew members were awakened from their cryo-sleep to assist Walter (an upgraded and NOT perfidious version of David, played by Fassbender) in getting the ship back online and back en-route. After taking several casualties, including the captain, the crew got ready to go back to sleep only to faced with a curious transmission of human origin coming from an uncharted planet. 

They chose to investigate the situation. 

I know several of my friends had serious reservations with that step. Why would a ship with a colony mission stop to investigate some anomaly? I didn't have difficulty with that decision. Something queer arose. They were the only ones who would be able to investigate in a timely manner. That's fine with me. 

They arrive at the planet and a team tenders to the planet in a drop-ship to investigate. This is when things start going wrong. Then knew full well where the signal was emanating from. So what did they do? They landed in water several kilometers away. 

WHY?!?! If you know the location why wouldn't you go directly to it? 

Then they stepped off of the craft without space suits or breathing apparatus. 

WHAT?!?! Even if they come from a universe without science fiction tales of people being plagued with all manner of contamination, they still came from a world where settlers either brought with them or met up with microbes in new places and caused mass disease and death. 

Of course from that point on it was just the crew stumbling over one problem after another until the crew were being infected and picked off one by one. it was much like any of the other ALIEN movies from that point on. But there were some details that made a fan of ALIEN to scratch his head. 

This movie tells us that David, in his most treacherous, murdered Dr. Shaw, and decimated all life on the planet of the "Engineers", the planet this movie took place on. David is also the creator of the ALIEN. (The proper name is ALIEN. Xenomorph only means alien life form and is not a species!) It was fine that the various versions of the ALIENs looked and came to be in different ways. It coincided with the claim that David was working on some genesis of the ultimate killing machine. But when the ALIEN we have come to know for decades burst forth from the chest as a fully formed, yet miniature version of the nightmare we first saw back in 1979, I had slap my forehead. Did Ridley Scott forget how his greatest creation comes to life?!?!

Then the ending implies that David intends to turn all of the sleeping colonists into his ALIEN death machines leading to the original movie ALIEN. One problem. They departed in the COVENANT and not in an Engineer craft. So how did an engineer craft filled with face-huggers and an Engineer pilot (the Space Jockey) end up as a fossilized derelict ship on LV-426? Nice job Ridley, you screwed up your entire ALIEN universe and story-line.  

  

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